The cultivation boxes offered by the city have become a hit in Turku. This summer, the delivery of Helsingin Sanomat’s Turku will also get acquainted with the secrets of box cultivation.
“It would be good sunny place then? ”
This is what the City of Turku Resident Coordinator asks Mika Maaskola. The place is Kupittaanpuisto, where you are looking for a good place to grow a box.
Cultivation boxes have become very popular in Turku. The city distributed them to its residents for the first time already in 2016.
This summer, HS Turku suppliers Milja Virtanen and Linda Laine test whether even beginners can keep plants alive in the heartbeat of the city. Do the seeds germinate? Can the box be quiet? Will there be a harvest?
Neither has any previous experience of growing vegetables, roots or berries. Instead, green plants are familiar. With them, too, things have not always gone according to plan.
“I have a bad habit of drowning my greenery in over-watering,” Laine worries.
“My plants were last destroyed by eyelashes,” says Virtanen.
Let’s see what comes of this.
Search box for crop boxes lasted a week this year, and they went like hot stones. Some of those willing were left without a box.
“We had 50 boxes to distribute, and there were exactly 70 applications during the week,” Maaskola says.
A total of 115 cultivation boxes were requested, as some would have preferred more than one box.
The idea is that the farmer is allowed to keep the crop, but the crops are a joy to others as well.
“They beautify the city and delight all passers-by, ”says Maaskola.
The most popular the plants in the cultivation boxes in Turku have been calendula, potato, lettuce, velvet flower and sunflower.
In the box, however, you can try to grow almost anything. This is the opinion of Livia Vocational College’s lecturer and production team leader Jaana Jaakola-Joento.
For example, cucumbers, pumpkins, cress and beets are suitable for a beginner’s box. Those who want to experiment can try to grow corn, watermelon or ginger.
You can get started with ginger by buying a rhizome from a grocery store and putting a piece of it at home.
“Ginger needs a lot of heat. The bud begins to grow slowly, but quite surely. The pre-grown ginger will be transferred to a cultivation box in June, ”says Jaakola-Joento.
In the fall, the prize is fresh ginger. The green stem can also be used.
“Growing ginger takes time, but you can still try and collect lessons for next year,” says Jaakola-Joento.
Watermelon, on the other hand, is faster to grow. The seeds have time to germinate in April.
Sowing flowers According to Jaakola-Joenno, the growing box is now trendy and serves pollinators. Popular are, for example, dandelion flowers dancing in shades of yellow and orange, and squirrels shining in blue.
Some flowers can also be eaten.
“Pansies are one option, but cucumber or pumpkin flowers can also be used for food,” says Jaakola-Joento.
Certain flowers can also protect food plants from pests. These include velvet flowers and cress.
“Velvet flower has a really strong scent, which reduces or repels pests and attracts butterflies, for example. Cress, on the other hand, help fight snails and aphids. ”
If you need butterflies for the box plant, you should plant annual perennials, giant verbena, giant straw flowers, sunflowers or perennial liverweeds, red hats, acankas, asters or orchard grasses.
“All farm plants are really good butterfly plants and bring variety to the crop. Very highly processed flowers do not necessarily produce nectar in the same way and are not good for insects, ”says Jaakola-Joento.
City offers a box in Turku as well as first year soils.
The farm comes to the land owned by the city, and the farmer is free to choose the place he likes. From the beginning of May, the boxes will be delivered to places designated by the farmers.
Maaskola hopes that more boxes would go to the suburbs. The most popular places have been downtown parks, and this is also the case this year. Now the clear number one is Polish Park.
There are a few things to keep in mind when choosing a location.
“We usually look for a sunny place to get the crops done well. Midsummer may be a little hot, and the crop may require a little more watering. When you don’t know which strange summer is coming, the sun is usually what you want most, ”says Maaskola.
The proximity of the water point is also worth considering.
“Many people have to bring water from home,” Maaskola says.
Mika Maaskolank’s family has its own cultivation box.
What about can the crops be at peace?
According to Maaskola, surprisingly well. Sometimes the farms have been visited by animals. Maaskola talks about cases where someone has put seeds in a box managed by another without permission. The harvest has also sometimes been weaned.
However, there has been little vandalism.
“If there are more than 700 boxes and 300 farmers, then we are talking about individual cases. It says it’s really rare. ”
Read more: Many of the plants that look in the garden are completely useless from a natural point of view – do this if you want a diverse nature in your city garden
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