How to plant a nut tree in the city
Mar. 23rd, 2012 10:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
halifaxearthtechI realise I haven't posted here in some time, spring is filling up and getting busy!
On Wednesday I met with COuncilor Jennifer Watts who had gathered together people interested in planting fruit and nut trees in the city and there were a good crowd. The results were uplifting.
Jayme melrose of the Common Roots Urban farm was there, as were Adjala and Courtney of St Mary's University Garden Action group, the city forester John Simmonds and the city forester's colleage Peter Duiker at Dal school of Sustainainability, and Schuyler with Reach-Ability.
The upshot seems to have been that there is already a process in place to apply to put a community garden on city land, and such a process could be used to put orchards in place. The city is unveiling an Urban Forest Master Plan sometime next month. There will be a short section in the UFMP generally encouraging the inclusion of fruit and nut trees but without a very specific process of getting that off the ground.
Basically the city wants to make sure the fruit and nuts will be in use by people, and so the best thing is for a group to apply for this orchard and assure the city they will be in existence at least until the time the trees come into maturity. "And emphasise how such an orchard would increase canopy cover on public land" said Duiker, "we are tasked in the Master Plan to increase canopy cover".
Schyler Smith is starting a gleaning circle with disabled youth looking to gain job skills by picking surplus urban fruits and nuts, as well as making salable products from the fruit to sell at farmer's markets. He will be launching the project this month but if you would like help harvesting your fruit or nuts you can contact him through UrbanOrchard.
For those of you wondering whatever happened to my mushrooms, I had to use most of them for compost after the crop fungus failed to compete with Penicillium fungi. The major difference is that I did not pasteurise the (sawdust and straw) medium this time and that seems to have made the crucial difference.
I've set my seedlings and they are coming up nicely. I'm also propagating a fair number of currants, gooseberries, quince and Saskatoon (we'll see if this works) for an exciting number of food forests that I will be helping with this summer (possibly three or four). The Sea buckthorn has come up and I'm excited to be able to set them out this summer if they do well. ac
An alarming new record temperature was set yesterday of 28. The previous record for March 22 in Halifax was 11. The average is 4. I don't like to go on about the problems with climate change when I could be suggesting solutions, but what concerns me most is methyl clathrate eruption. Basically there are vast stores of methane (CH3) in the permafrost and in the cooler reaches of the deep ocean. They have been released before in geological history, though not because of people being there of course. This was 250 million years ago, and was associated with a release of methane from storage and resulted in the extinction of 83% of all genera on earth. The good news is that I don't think there exists enough carbon on earth to make it become like the planet Venus . Life did rebound after these extinctions but you can be sure humans would not be in the picture.
Perhaps I will go through all the things we can do to mitigate our carbon emissions in another post. Transition is still the best idea I've heard so far.
On Wednesday I met with COuncilor Jennifer Watts who had gathered together people interested in planting fruit and nut trees in the city and there were a good crowd. The results were uplifting.
Jayme melrose of the Common Roots Urban farm was there, as were Adjala and Courtney of St Mary's University Garden Action group, the city forester John Simmonds and the city forester's colleage Peter Duiker at Dal school of Sustainainability, and Schuyler with Reach-Ability.
The upshot seems to have been that there is already a process in place to apply to put a community garden on city land, and such a process could be used to put orchards in place. The city is unveiling an Urban Forest Master Plan sometime next month. There will be a short section in the UFMP generally encouraging the inclusion of fruit and nut trees but without a very specific process of getting that off the ground.
Basically the city wants to make sure the fruit and nuts will be in use by people, and so the best thing is for a group to apply for this orchard and assure the city they will be in existence at least until the time the trees come into maturity. "And emphasise how such an orchard would increase canopy cover on public land" said Duiker, "we are tasked in the Master Plan to increase canopy cover".
Schyler Smith is starting a gleaning circle with disabled youth looking to gain job skills by picking surplus urban fruits and nuts, as well as making salable products from the fruit to sell at farmer's markets. He will be launching the project this month but if you would like help harvesting your fruit or nuts you can contact him through UrbanOrchard.
For those of you wondering whatever happened to my mushrooms, I had to use most of them for compost after the crop fungus failed to compete with Penicillium fungi. The major difference is that I did not pasteurise the (sawdust and straw) medium this time and that seems to have made the crucial difference.
I've set my seedlings and they are coming up nicely. I'm also propagating a fair number of currants, gooseberries, quince and Saskatoon (we'll see if this works) for an exciting number of food forests that I will be helping with this summer (possibly three or four). The Sea buckthorn has come up and I'm excited to be able to set them out this summer if they do well. ac
An alarming new record temperature was set yesterday of 28. The previous record for March 22 in Halifax was 11. The average is 4. I don't like to go on about the problems with climate change when I could be suggesting solutions, but what concerns me most is methyl clathrate eruption. Basically there are vast stores of methane (CH3) in the permafrost and in the cooler reaches of the deep ocean. They have been released before in geological history, though not because of people being there of course. This was 250 million years ago, and was associated with a release of methane from storage and resulted in the extinction of 83% of all genera on earth. The good news is that I don't think there exists enough carbon on earth to make it become like the planet Venus . Life did rebound after these extinctions but you can be sure humans would not be in the picture.
Perhaps I will go through all the things we can do to mitigate our carbon emissions in another post. Transition is still the best idea I've heard so far.
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Date: 2012-03-24 11:24 am (UTC)