Co-op Community Greenhouse
Funding provided by Co-op Community Spaces
The Spence Neighbourhood Association is pleased to announce that your Community Greenhouse at 689 Maryland Street is up and running for this season!
Open hours are on:
Tuesdays & Thursdays, 9:00am-12:00pm.
Reach out to our Environment and Open Spaces Coordinator if you have any questions!
This 3-season community greenhouse operates from March to December. We are so excited to garden for another year!
Are you looking to contribute to your community? Learn more about growing your own food? Go green? Then check out the Spence Neighbourhood Association’s Community Greenhouse Volunteer Program.
Activities include: seed planting & saving, plant care, harvest & processing, composting, administration and publicity.
Interested in volunteering? Fill out the Application Form!
This project can only succeed if it meets the needs of the neighbourhood. We are seeking local residents to sit on an advisory council to help guide the direction of work at and around the greenhouse site.
This will be a small group, representing different elements such as youth, elders, gardeners & neighbours. The council will meet at least 4 times a year, and a modest honorarium will be offered.
Interested in becoming a Community Advisor? Fill out the Application Form!
“The garden is a wonderful teacher – and of its many lessons, one of the most valuable is patience. In the cold dark season of winter, we must patiently await the spring. After planting seeds, we have to wait for sprouts. We learn that the vegetables we eat as a quick snack are the end result of many months growing.”
And so it is with your community greenhouse. At every step along the way, delays are teaching us to be patient (but hopeful!) Slowly but surely, progress is being made. We are pleased to report that, since the last newsletter, electricity has been connected. Heaters have been installed. Water (thank-you Shoal Lake) has been hooked up. We have received generous donations of woodchips & sand (thank-you Reimer Soils) which have been spread around the site, so it won’t be a mess of sticky clay come springtime.
After 2 years of fallow, community gardeners are returning to 689 Maryland, to claim their beds for 2022. Some have agreed to volunteer over the winter inside the greenhouse, helping tend the crops. Local schools have expressed interest in participating, so soon we hope to be introducing students to the practice of urban organic food production.
Once we have water, light & heat, we can begin planting. We’ll be starting off with crops like lettuce, greens and herbs, that are tolerant of low light and temperature. We are still hoping this can happen in November. For the first few weeks, the focus will be on learning how our new facility fares in the Winnipeg winter. It will be heated by a boiler connected to a loop that runs through the concrete floor. We will be keeping careful track of conditions such as temperature & humidity. What will we need to do to maintain the best possible environment for plants to grow in?
Another priority for this season is planning and preparing for the new year: many catalogues consulted & seeds ordered. Currently, the plan is greens for neighbourhood consumption, bedding plants for community gardeners and a social enterprise salsa garden. I personally am looking forward to growing sweet potatoes and ornamental chillies. If there are specific plants you are interested in seeing grown, now would be a good time to get in touch.
Stay tuned for more updates and ways to get involved.
Thank you to Co-op Community Spaces
We would like to thank Co-op Community Spaces for funding this greenhouse initiative. With their support, we have had the opportunity to further develop the green spaces in our neighbourhood.
