Get Rid of Your Car and Grow More Tomatoes

One of the stated aims of Canadian Organic Growers is "to endorse practices which promote and maintain long term soil fertility, reduce fossil fuel uses, reduce pollution, recycle waste, and conserve non-renewable resources".;

For the past ten years, we’ve fulfilled this objective in urban Toronto by using our paved driveway as planter space for growing tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, peppers, and flowers. (We have found that beans do not grow well for us in containers.) The asphalt holds solar heat, so that roots warm up daily, plants grow quickly and tomatoes mature early.

In 1979, we sold the family car. More than thirty years of driving and spewing pollutants into the environment seemed long enough, and we were now living within a one-minute walk from a bus stop. Formerly, we lived in a ranch bungalow on the Peel Plain – prime farmland just west of Greater Toronto – and drove 50 km to work and back each day. It was as wearing on the conscience as on the body and soul, and we welcomed the opportunity to put the commuting behind us.

Our driveway is now mainly a spot for container gardening. In the fall of 1993, we broke up some of the asphalt in front of the garage, now a potting and storage shed. We planted raspberry canes and about 60 tulip bulbs, making an L-shaped border some six meters (20 feet) in length. We plan to keep our houseplants in this new bed during the summer. In addition, a few meters from the side door we dug a hole for depositing compost in the winter.

We fill the containers with ordinary garden soil, adding some peat moss for water retention and, when available, composted manure. Watering is done by hose when required. We grow three or four varieties of tomatoes from seed, sowing them in the house in early April and planting them out in mid-May. Lettuce and cucumbers are sown right in the soil in the largest containers. Some lettuce can be seeded as late as August for a fall crop; it doesn’t freeze easily. We save our own seed from the nonhybrids.

We have placed all the containers in full sun near the edge of the asphalt to create a patio area and provide a clear pathway to the back yard. The driveway is right outside our side door, and last year we had it enclosed with a high wooden fence and gate for privacy. This newly fenced driveway-cum-patio provides a safe play area for visiting grandchildren too.

From our driveway containers and a nearby allotment garden plot, we are able to grow enough fresh, organic vegetables to last us the season. Because we don’t have a freezer and prefer to keep the garden area small enough to handle manually, we don’t even attempt to grow a year’s supply of vegetables.