Big City, Little Homestead

Living rural in the city is great – you can do it, too.

Page 5 of 18

How can you protect birds during nesting season? (Short answer: don’t cut trees). And, BirdFest.

Migration is pretty much over now, and all birds are where they want to be if they’re sitting on eggs in a nest, or raising a clutch of nestlings. It might give us an opportunity to have a peep into their nest boxes and niches and see them raise their babies (mostly by web-cam — something we all love!), but it doesn’t mean the dangers they face are completely over. There are still things to watch out for in the city…

Tree Felling During Nesting Season

Every spring, members of my local birding club notice incidents of tree cutting and felling in and around Montreal during this period, when birds are nesting. Even trained ornithologists have difficulty locating nests, so we’re concerned that these activities may harm or even be fatal. People need to proactively protect nesting birds, and not assume anything.

Perhaps making matters worse is that while tree felling is an activity a homeowner needs a permit for, the permit process might not take into account the time of the felling  – and the businesses that fell trees, like landscaping services, don’t need to have a license from the Régie du Bâtiment du Québec. We can’t know whether having a license would necessarily help birds, but it’s at least one reliable avenue for educating contractors.

What can you do if you witness tree felling during nesting season in your neighbourhood? One or all of the following:

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How cracks in my asphalt driveway revolutionized my life

If you’ve been to this blog or my Facebook page at least once before, you’ve probably seen photos of my green driveway. They’re all over the place, like in the video here. And yet every year, just like several years before I put it in, some contractor dude who’s thinking “that ain’t right!” drops by with a card to “fix” it. (I can’t blame him for pounding the pavement looking for clients, but still…).

Sometimes he even jots a quote on the back as to how much it would cost me to rip out my green driveway and put down some blacktop asphalt driveway. You know, my green driveway cost a little more than what he’s quoting, because it was kinda fancy underneath, but I won’t have to “repair” the crack every five years like he wants me to. No, thank you.

I used to have an asphalt driveway. About the only thing you can do on an asphalt or concrete driveway that you can’t do on mine is play basketball. And maybe make chalk drawings, but you know, the city sidewalk’s right there, so that’s no biggie.

See, for a long time I had cracks in the driveway where plants would grow. That’s why they’d wanna “repair” it. But why would I let that bother me? Water percolating into the soil and being taken up by plants actually cools the air through transpiration.

“But frost heaves!” – it’s a driveway, not a highway; a little bump from a crack is not a problem.

“But bigger cracks!” More plants!

Why would I want black top + hot sun make my driveway and home hotter, rather than something cooling it down? Besides, when the plants were growing in the cracks in my driveway, guess what the bunnies’ favourite outdoor snacks were?

That’s right – CRACK SALAD!

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Visiting one of the last remaining urban wetlands – the Technoparc

Two weekends ago, I participated in the Good Friday Migration to save the Technoparc Wetlands. Read more about it – and see the French-language Pimento Report on YouTube (embedded) here.

With this post, I wanted to mention to readers that I’ve got a new pop-up to subscribe to my email list. See a similar box at the bottom of this post for more details.

I’ve been draggin’ my heels on writing this post ever since, for a false reason. I’ve been making it a bigger deal of writing a blog post than in than the writing actually is, because the issue is a bigger deal than most people realize. So I might say something controversial, but seems clear enough for someone to say.

Part of the game of development is “build it and they’ll come.” There’s no big influx (except if it’s downtown – proper brownfield building development!) but in the meantime, the first occupants will pay for servicing the building and the taxes. Though this is just kicking the can down the road, cities sees that new development, that new tax base as proof of … something usually vanity-related, and a revenue base for existing services. In time, because there’s no incentive for municipalities to forego development without a large NIMBY crowd, their services:tax base ratio will get skewed again. Development sure looks like a Ponzi scheme.

This is the view of the park from overhead, from the south.

Situated in this tension, with no voice but for those who speak up in time, is nature, where the birds carry on with their nestlings like they always have, only the conditions are less and less optimal while development games are played to make them unwelcome. Continue reading

10 tips for an urban homestead garden in Montreal

“Can an urban homestead work in Montreal?” This was the query of someone who found my blog once upon a time. “Yes, of course.”

But. (There’s always a qualifier!) You need to have sun, and then you need to have space. If you don’t have sun, you can’t do it (unless you go to step #2, community group part, and then it’s a garden, not a homestead, but that’s OK).

If you have sun and space, then the only other thing you need (than water), is to be ready and willing to put up with the learning curve and the occasional need for help on any of the following things:

1. Start your seedlings indoors in March (some as early as February). That means now! Many require eight weeks before planting.

2. Try not to spend more than $250 on the initial effort. Every new venture — and this is a work of pleasure and a cost-saving measure— should be started with a minimum of capital until it looks promising. If you invest too much and your plans fail, you won’t be happy at the end of the growing season, or if you spent more for your harvest than buying it from a CSA. Sure, you’ll benefit from the experience of gardening, which is therapeutic, but you need to derive value or success from it to make it an ongoing thing.

  • If you worry about failure, join a community garden group, where the power of people and experience will help you derive what you need from it until you’re sure you can succeed. (Just make sure you show up for all your shifts, for your own sake as well as others.)

3. The growing season in Montreal starts with a huge leap of growth – but you need city soil to be well-amended to take advantage of it. Here’s how:

  • Test your soil as soon as you can! Make the necessary pH corrections with lime. Think about the future productivity of the garden; unless your soil already is acidic enough to support an acidophile plant with minimal sulphur, don’t plant blueberries. (If you soil is acidic, then plant all the acidophiles you like, and add more sulphur if needed!). You will need to dig in your soil amendments, not top-dress them.
  • Take a day in April if you can, or early May, to procure (the Ville gives it away by borough in May) and dig in your compost. It’s better to dig the compost in several days before the plants go in, not after, except on top as mulch. Compost can burn seeds and roots of young plants.

4. When the plants go in, install a grow fence (plants go up) or exclusion fence (keep animals and humans out) —you’ll almost certainly need to. The fence should still allow wildlife to get around or through at safe points, because otherwise you’ll trap them (neither nice, nor good), or they will destroy it anyway. Also keep in mind: if the fence is too rickety or fugly, neighbours might complain. Cute counts.

10 tips urban homestead
The pickle barrel rain barrel bought from the Eco-Quartier for less than $50, since replaced with a fancy Home Depot version.

5. Buy a rain barrel (cheap if you get one from an EcoQuartier) and a seeping hose from any garden centre. Obtain permission from landlords and neighbours to get water from their downspout, if necessary. Montreal is prone to having an early heat wave beginning with the Victoria Day / Fête du patriotes weekend, just when the growth is getting going. This causes lettuce to bolt and other plants to stop growing. Rain barrels with seeping hoses are the way to keep the ground just moist enough for highly transpiring plants during the growth phase. And mulch!! — but just enough to cover the soil. Don’t smother it like a blanket!

6. The late June-to-July and then the August heat waves happen in this climate zone. If you come from a different zone, or you are just learning, read up on strategies in the garden and the varieties of fruits and vegetables to plant. We are in Plant Hardiness Zone 5a, but due to the urban heat island effect from too much paving, not enough green space, and people using air conditioning (especially in their cars), the city is more like 5b and even 5c, depending on the direction your building faces and the amount of sun it gets. You probably won’t need to shade anything, but water, early and often — and also be aware of our Mon-soon-treal moments, where we get a deluge. (Hence, rainbarrel, and put out pots to catch even more!)

7. Put a net over top of the delicate leafy things as they get started, because house sparrows love them. They and, yes, the occasional rat (don’t panic!) predate on seedlings, and very young plants do not often get the opportunity to unfurl their 4th and 6th leaves – they are often gone by the first two. 
Which brings me to say: Squirrels don’t care about your plants, they’re going for the disturbed soil. Wherever they see fresh dug soil, they have to investigate: “There’s a nut in there, I just know it!” So try to plant your seedlings after they’ve gotten “big enough to defend themselves,” and cover up the soil with mulch. Replant them if they get lifted out in search for food. Once the delicate things are hardy, you’ll need the net to stave off the squirrels going for your fruits. Though the next point is critical about that:

8. Put out a water dish for wildlife. Fruits growing on a plant are just a convenient Capri-Sun pack of hydration for a passing critter. They go for your cucumbers, tomatoes, and other fruits just to have a drink of water. Provide them a water bowl, and change it consistently, and they’ll come to know your place as they place to get a drink. Be their oasis, not their Veg-Capri-Sun convenience store.

9. Hang a house for solitary bees, just in case. Leave a messy corner in your yard for others, especially for ground-dwelling bees. Offer them every form of hospitality, because we’re dependent on them. Assume an insect is beneficial first, and then learn to identify and only be deadly towards those that actually cause harm. Sugar ants, stinkbugs, wasps, hoverflies, and all kinds of bees, ladybugs, spiders, centipedes, or sowbugs—all have a part in our great chain of biodiversity.

10. The season here goes to the end of October. Get a good gardening book that tells you the stages for successive plantings, and keep going with planting new seedlings until mid-to-late August for an autumn harvest. Peas, spinach, and Swiss chard are cool-weather crops you can enjoy until the snow flies. Or even after, if you put them into a cold frame.

Give it a go, and good luck!

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