Volunteer Orientation and Brainstorming Session

In early April we had our first event - a huge brainstorming session and volunteer orientation at the World Cafe in Edmonton. Over fifty people came together and brainstormed ideas relating to art in the garden, sustainable agriculture, how to create a meaningful community, and how we are going to build a shed and benches. 

We had an amazing group of individuals come to the World Café including other urban farmers such as Ryan from Reclaim Urban Farm Inc. and Shirley from Green and Gold Garden. We had dieticians, yoga instructors, local food bloggers, small business owners, and students, staff, and faculty from a range of offices and disciplines. Out of this diversity grew a number of great ideas for Prairie Urban Farm including evening interpretive tours of the garden, hobbit house cold storage, plans for a shed and rainwater storage, and an interest in focussing on natural pest control and heirloom seeds.

We followed this weekend up with a transplanting work bee the following Saturday. A lot of our seedlings had already grown to over four inches tall! Many of these were starting to get cramped in their small containers, what is typically called becoming “root-bound”. They wanted to stretch out and keep growing but for that they needed to be moved into larger pots. A group of five of us re-potted over 500 seedlings into larger containers that Saturday! We could practically hear those 500 plants breathing a sigh of relief as they stretched out their roots and explored their flashy new pots.