Taken from Eclectic Gardener @ www.teachinggarden.org
Written by Alan Hickman

Sometimes it’s really strange how things work out.
Peel Teaching Garden’s nursery area is divided into blocks thirty feet wide by about 120 feet long and each year an additional block is brought into cultivation. The process for transforming a chunk of overgrown meadow into nursery beds is quite simple. The Brampton Fall Fair generates many tons of waste hay, straw, and manure and this is dumped, several feet thick, on the grass and weeds where the new beds are to be.
Over about a year the large amount of vegetable matter and small amount of manure rots down to a relatively thin layer. In the process of decomposition, all the weeds are smothered and the following spring the land is ready for planting. Apart from making a trench to plant potatoes, there’s really no digging involved. Peppers, tomatoes, cabbages and all sorts of seedlings pop in to individual holes and corn and mellon seeds just get pushed into the soft compost layer.
As the fair is in mid September and as it usually takes a couple of months to get around to moving the huge straw pile from the back of the arena to the garden, there isn’t any great urgency to get the new area marked out and prepared. Last year the layout wasn’t done until late November, but, for no good reason at all, last week I got an urge to see where the 2008 vegetable garden would fit.
The temperature was thirty something, the weeds and grasses were chest high, and I wanted a path cut around 3500 square feet of meadow - using an old three-and-a-half horse push mower - and all for no better reason than I wanted to see what it looked like. Lesser follies have probably caused rebellions and murders most foul.
Luckily, it must have been too hot for violence. Measurements were made, stakes were driven, and, by Sunday morning, the last bit of the perimeter had been cut. With the job done, it did occurred to me that farmers can get aliens to make crop circles overnight for free but we’d had to sweat for a week to get a weed rectangle.
While we’d been hacking through the jungle there had been a lot of activity at the fairgrounds. Out of curiosity I took a drive by and one of buildings had been set up for a cattle show. Wall-to-wall prime beef and, more to the point, wall-to-wall wood shavings and straw. How convenient! When the show closed Sunday afternoon, in little more than a couple of hours, eight wagon-loads of material had gone from the barn floor to the newly laid-out block of nursery beds.
Timing is supposed to be everything, but sheer dumb luck clearly goes a long way. Perhaps the moral of this story is: If you get an unreasonable urge, follow it up. As a precaution one might add ‘Just don’t get caught’!
While the Force was clearly with us last week, for too many of Brampton’s citizens the timing has been off, their luck has been bad and, one way or another, they have been caught in desperate straits.
With no money for food, a facility like the Knights Table, 116 Kennedy Road South, can be a life saver. Last year the restaurant alone served over 35,000 meals and the associated food bank is currently helping some 480 people per week. Most disturbing is the fact that every month around a hundred children - 15 years or younger - are coming for meals either alone or with parents.
One of the objectives of Peel Teaching Garden is to contribute to the fresh produce reserves of local food banks and low cost eateries. With the coming of August, the crops planted in the detritus of the 2004 Fall Fair are beginning to be harvested and, over the long weekend, the first of the tomatoes were delivered to the Knights Table kitchen. Soon, potatoes will become available and there should eventually be a half-decent crop of cooking onions for fall soups and stews.
Although it is gratifying to be able to help, PTG can only supply a tiny proportion of the fresh produce that is needed. Those of us who have the luxuries of space for a garden and the time to tend it would do well to remember that most of us are only a pay-cheque/pension-cheque or two away from the food bank ourselves. As the harvest comes in and the surpluses mount, call the Knights Table (905-454-8725) or one of the other local caring organizations and see what you can contribute.