Darwin called these creatures the "ploughs of the earth". Without worms we simply wouldn't have soil. Or food.

The Wormy Truth:

1. Every acre of soil can contain a million worms. You’re lucky if you have this many.
2. Nightcrawlers—the burrowing worms—pull leaves downward into the soil as they eat them, aerating soil and leaving fertile castings—the worm poo we love.
3. Red Wigglers—the surface living worms—live on partially decomposed organics; they’re the ones used in home worm composters (vermicompost, if you want to get fancy). They can eat half their body weight in food every day. I bought a vermicomposter last year during the garbage strike, and all my tea bags and banana peels go there, instead of my city bin. Why should the city get all the good stuff?
4. Humus creation—the most important natural chemical in soil—is one of the best upsides of worms. Humus lets plants absorb existing soil nutrients and helps them withstand drought. You can pour gallons fertilizer onto soil—not that I’m recommending that!—but if there’s no humus, nothing will happen.

Best way to add more worms to your garden is to mulch with anything organic, leaves, compost, grass clippings, even cardboard. Make sure no bare soil is showing. It’s all food for the worms, who do the garden work for you while you sleep.

Country in town: Ashbridges Bay, Toronto. Chicory, Queen Anne's Lace and sweet clover in bloom.

Before green apples blush,
Before green nuts embrown,
Why one day in the country
Is worth a month in town.

I agree completely with poet Christina Rossetti on this one. But while there isn’t any way to get “city” in the country—unless you count high speed internet—luckily there are plenty of places to get “country” in the city. You just have to find it. Back alleys, vacant lots, and untamed parkland are now full of wild flowers, like Queen Anne’s Lace, intensely blue chicory, and—the smell of summer, for me—sweet clover. I’m thrilled to have these wild green spaces in the city, like Evergreen Brickworks, and Ashbridges Bay by the lake. One thing, however, I’m sure I won’t see in the city is a group of wild turkeys crossing the road like those I saw this weekend in the country.

Why did the wild turkeys cross the road? Peer pressure, perhaps?

If you feel like Christina Rossetti and me, let us know  your city / country strategy. Fave places to go? Share in the comments!

These succulents are planted into hollowed out mushroom table funghi.

Gardeners get to be good at finding objects to plant into. You don’t always have the perfect pot at hand when a plant needs a home. You might be planning a garden on a shoestring, so you make do with what’s lying around the house. Gardeners have been known to repurpose any hollow object we might discover.

My first roof garden many years ago was made in part with milk crates lined with plastic. Red plastic milk crates are not particularly attractive on their own, but I disguised the outside with bamboo curtain blinds. Good thing about crates is they hold a lot of soil, and stack nicely.

Metal pots attached with ordinary hardware to a fence. Easy peasy.

Nowadays I collect anything metal, like old aluminum wash buckets for  planters. They look great clustered together. I have a passionflower in one that actually has rollers on the bottom, and a sturdy handle, useful when I have to move it.

I found these metal sap buckets attached to a fence with ordinary hardware. What sorts of non-traditional containers have you found useful, and what’s the craziest thing you’ve used to give a plant a home? What worked? What didn’t?

Dino is friendly & knowledgeable, surrounded by happy plants and the great rain barrels Fiesta sells.

The people at Fiesta Gardens would never think of taking plants off a delivery truck and then forgetting about them, or letting them bake in the sun to fend for themselves. Plants in many retail spaces are lucky to get a splash of water now and then, but that’s not the case here. Here we have a plant enthusiast, Margaret, who really cares about the plants she provides. Between Margaret and Dino, the two plant specialists here, plants are well sourced, well researched and well looked after till you get them in your hot little hands. (especially hot these days!)

I caught Dino and Margaret at Fiesta Gardens on a blistering hot day and they took time out from ushering out orders or cleaning perennials to tell me a bit about themselves.

Margaret came to the garden world like many other gardeners, from the world of art. I find it is often a natural progression for many artists and writers, to take relish in nature, growing things and creating spaces of beauty. She has lectured at the Royal Ontario Museum and worked in pottery, and said it’s only natural that she became interested in plants, as the clay of pots comes “from the earth”. She’s also something of a scientist and researcher, and constantly has botanical projects on the go at the store and at home, ever curious to enlarge her knowledge of the plants she provides. Growing up in a tropical country no doubt primed her interest in growing things, and she is currently passionate about the plants of Africa.

Horticultural education is crucial to Margaret, she wants to know that the plants she sells are going to thrive when you get them home, and she’ll fill you in on any plant requirements and how to look after the ones you buy.

Dino’s main passion are the large nursery items, the shrubs and trees, but he is particular about the annuals and vegetable starts he sells too. He was sprucing up an order of massive hanging annual planters when I spoke to him. To me they looked magnificent, he said, “They weren’t bad.” High standards here.

Apart from the fact that the plants are well cared for and ready to thrive when you get them home, the selection is fantastic too, with unusual specimens of vegetables, like black-eyed peas, callaloo, and scotch bonnet hot peppers, among others. The Hort Couture section is full of hard-to-find plant specimens like agapanthus, castor bean, and many other varieties new to me.

All this is available right downtown, no need to drive out to the burbs to buy a tree. And when you buy that tree, or pot of annuals, you know it’s had the best head start it could possibly have.

Before

Our yard is small, we live in the city so we accept it. Most of our gardening is done in containers. We stick to herbs and flowers mainly after a few unsuccessful attempts with tomatoes.

My husband Kerry is in charge of the yard. His idea of gardening is to let weeds thrive so things look lush & green, hence the lovely milkweed and crabgrass border leading to our door.

We have this horrible area in the back of the yard that barely gets any sun. Kerry decided he wanted to make it nice, so he transplanted some of his precious weeds over to it.

Enough was enough. I dragged him to Fiesta’s Garden Centre and told him to stock up on real plants. After the requisite ‘kid in candy store’ routine, we brought everything home and started planting.

Some English ivy, Lady ferns and forget-me-nots went in, with a few Stiletto hostas – the most reliable shade plant ever. Our dog Betty regularly digs up the hostas or lies on top of them and they just keep on growing. We like tough plants that can stand up to dogs. Maybe that’s why Kerry has such a soft spot for tenacious weeds.

Some other plants that do well in shade are wild geranium/cranesbill geranium, Jack-in-the-pulpit, Dogs Tooth violets, plumeria, bleeding hearts and Canadian Colombine.

Get yourself some rickety old pink flamingos and you’ve got a lovely shade garden. The forget-me-nots didn’t do so well, but everything else is thriving. It’s been hot & dry so Kerry is watering every day, including the milkweed & crabgrass border.

After

Fiesta Gardens now sells the popular Urban Harvest organic Seed Collection

Just Arrived:

Many vegetables and herbs including Organic Red Oak Leaf Lettuce, a must for any vegetable garden.

Our Perennial Department is now fully stocked with an amazing collection of perennials for sun or shade.

Spring, Summer and Fall Bloomers

Hellebores Galore!

Clematis- many varieties

Ground covers, Hostas and Ferns

Native Plants

Special and Hard to Find Treasures!

Here we will profile people in this province who have helped to shape the way we eat, cook and think about food.

Antony John, farmer

Stratford Farmer, Antony John

As the owner of Soiled Reputation, Antony, has devoted his career to organic greens and vegetables. His farm in Stratford grows all year round thanks to four large greenhouses. “Except for a few tough weeks in January and February, we’re picking all year.” he recently told Gremolata.

Those greens end up on the menus at restaurants all over the city and have sparked our current insatiable interest in fresh, organic produce.

Where did you start out in the food world?

I started out right after university, working for Tina’s dad on his dairy farm.  From there it was landscaping for The Old Prune and Rundles in Stratford, and eventually growing food for them.

What changes have you seen over the years in how the people you meet feel about local farmers and food?

I came into this at the bottom of the pendulum, where I’d get quotes from chefs like “I don’t care if it’s local or organic, as long as it’s green”.  I say pendulum because, up until the 1950’s, market gardeners in North America were respected craftsmen.  I feel that tradition is only recently enjoying a rennaissance.

What is your favourite vegetable?

I’d have to say the Romanesco cauliflower is my favourite vegetable, because it represents so much for me.  First, it’s flavour is remarkable, it stays a vibrant, life-affirming chartreuse when you roast it, it’s the best example of fractal geometry and a Fibonacci mathematical sequence in the living world, and it’s structure is a perfect visual metaphor for the connectedness and complexity of ecosystems and food webs.  Lastly, it’s only around for a few weeks, so enjoy it while you can, just like life!

farm animal?

I’ve worked with most farm animals over the 25 years I’ve been farming, and I’d have to say it’s the Holstein dairy cow

season?

Spring is my favourite season – it’s still full of potential and promise, you haven’t screwed anything up in the field yet, and songbirds are migrating back from their winter homes!

Where are some of your favourite places in Ontario for food/drink?

Perth County has some of the most productive soils in Ontario for growing food, an envious combination of clay and loam, coupled with fairly regular rains from Lake Huron. Just as in viniculture, this has a trickle-down effect into the flavour of the food. In addition, Stratford is blessed with a vibrant culinary scene, so I’m lucky and glad to eat right here!

For wine, I head to Marin Malivoire’s winery and sample (ok, hoard) his incredible wines. After that, we might go back to join him and Moira at home and cook together. Two Soils = One Passion.

the farmer as a young cowboy