Precious Pickling

Last week, we organized a pickling workshop with our friends and Baycrest. We harvested cucumbers from Baycrest's container garden and brought in beans from a local market. We all had a fabulous time and are excited to eat the pickled goods in two weeks at our end of season party.

The beans!

The cucumbers from our very own container garden.

The Garlic!

The Dill!

Filling the jars with beans, dill and pickling spices!

Tasting our fresh cukes!

Morris's beatiful jar of dilly beans.

Our not-so-secret recipe.

Morris the bean-master.

Oh my garden goodness!

Zucchinis! Tomatoes! Cucumbers! Oh my! The Kavanah Garden is thriving thanks to all of the many hands and hearts that have helped it grow and flourish.

Harvesting monster zucchinis for tzedakah.

Big zucchinis are fun to play with!

Art in the Garden

Our grape vines are happy! Only 1-2 more years until we can harvest them!

Harvesting our first batch of Kohlrabi for tzedakah

Weighing our cucumber harvest. Can you guess how many pounds?

Enjoying a wild black raspberry smoothies made on our very own bicycle powered blender.

Music in the garden at our Free Family Drop-In Program courtesy of Rythmic By Nature.

Making fresh mint tea in our solar oven at our July Family Festival

Black Raspberry harvest

Bicycle-powered blender at our July Family Festival!

Yoga courtesy of Marni Levitt at our July Family Festival.

Kavanah Kids are officially Shomrei Adamah (stewards of the Earth)!

Some of our 10 varieties of heirloom tomatoes. YUMMY.

Black-eyed Susans in our native pollinator garden.

Sampling garlic scape pesto at the Tikkun Adamah CSA.

Kavanah Garden Goodness

Kohlrabi in the Daled bed.

The Wandering Jews Are Looking to Root Down

We recently submitted an application to the Six Points Jewish Venture Philanthropy Fund. The Fund did a call to visionaries in the Toronto Jewish community asking for their next big idea that would move the community forward.

In our application, we asked for support to help find a permanent home for the Kavanah Garden. UJA Federation generously donated the Garden's current land to us for 3-5 years. Now, in our third year, we have to make a plan to move somewhere else.

As organic gardeners, we spend a lot of time building and strengthening the soil so that our crops can flourish without the synthetic fertilizers. It is therefore very important that we find land that we can stay on for a long period of time and build the soil up over generations.

We hope you enjoy our video. You can view it below or by clicking here: http://sixpoints.ca/project/kavanah-garden

If you or anyone you know might want to be involved in helping us root down, please be in touch.

Kavanah Kids-Summer Camp in the Garden!

We just finished our first week of Kavanah Kids and boy, did we have a blast! Painting, storytelling, catching crayfish and butterflies and learning how to garden. We are super excited for the August session.

Our crew

It finally stopped raining and now we can water the plants.

Water from the creek into the garden...

Sacred river

Seed Exchange

Reading by the Pollinator Garden!

Music with Mati

Look Ima! I found a crayfish!

It all starts with a seed...

Garden Beautification

Composting!

Swallowtails are pretty.

The Good Life

Late Spring in the Kavanah Garden = AWESOME!

With summer just here, we have started harvesting the fruits of our labor! We are also thrilled that the Tikkun Adamah CSA is back at the Kavanah Garden and that 65 families are eating local, organic, fresh vegetables from our friend, Daniel Hoffman.

Harvesting our first radishes for tzedakah !

This toad has taken up residence in our toad abode!

Getting ready to do some serious creak exploration during our thursday afternoon free family drop-in program

Our grapes are doing great! we'll be making our own juice for kiddush in no time!

CSA-Sprouts!

CSA-Green Onions!

CSA-Mustard Greens!

Seeds Balls, Watering Cans and Native Bees

My, oh my! We are a busy bunch of gardeners and ecologists at the Kavanah Garden. Last week, students and teachers from Robbins Hebrew Academy (Bayview) and Netivot HaTorah came out to help make seed balls, tend to our native bees, weed unwanted plants and of course, water the emerging seedlings.

Enjoy this wonderful photo journey of these awesome students working joyfully with nature at the Garden.

The Garden of Sages features sage plants from around the world with quotes from various sages.

Seed Balls are awesome!

We love getting our hands dirty!

Planting is fun!

Learning about native pollinators at the Kavanah Garden's Pollinator Garden.

Planting seeds.

Watering is the best!

Vermicomposting with Shoresh's lead Environmental Educator, Kyla.

JKs love the garden.

Precious.

Worms + Seeds + Soil= Awesome

"This was by far and away the best field trip I have ever gone on."

-Day school teacher