Home-gardening talkoot

Talkoot is a great Finnish word to describe a type of activity that is made in group. The English translation would be group work, or voluntary work. In Portuguese "mutirão" maybe gets closer to the meaning.

On the past weekend I organized a gardening talkoot at my place, because I realized that it would take me forever to do all the work by myself. Also I do love gatherings with friends, so the idea of a talkoot was all win-win to me.

I've participated in quite a few talkoot in Finland inside the Permaculture circle, where they are also called PermaBlitz or even PermaCamp. Basically someone that has a garden or personal project asks for volunteer physical help with it. In exchange the volunteers get know-how about that task, create community, and usually a nice free meal after all the work. Through this I did all kinds of garden work like planting, weeding, harvesting, also fences, pathways, some construction, and even design thinking.

Here's my collection of pictures from these events on the past years:

So it was quite natural to come to the idea of organizing my own talkoot at home. The tasks that I wanted done were not massive nor technically complex, it was basic home gardening. They were:

• Recycle my old soil. The soil doesn't get bad from year to year, what happens is that it looses nutrients and shape, becoming poor with time. I used the guidance and the recipe of soil mix from the blog Plantea en verde.
• Boost my mushroom bed. I got more left-over Oyster mushroom substrate from Helsieni Farm and added it to the bed I have from last year outside in my building's backyard. Last year I harvested A LOT from this bed, several kilos (I didn't weight), and Oyster is one of the most delicious mushrooms ever, so I want it every year now. Instructions for mushroom beds here.
• House plants. My green inside plants needed their anual care, by renewing their soil (with the soil mix we made) and transplanting them to bigger pots if necessary.
• Start seedlings. I promised myself last year that this year I would not start many seedlings because I went crazy last Spring and I ended up not having time, space or energy to take care of these delicate demanding little baby plants, and then killed most of them, and then felt like a failure. So, this year I accessed my availability better and I admited that home gardening will again not be my main hobby (since I spend the day professionally gardening, I want to give me room to do other things on my free time). This time I choose some tomatoes, 4–5 flowers, 4–5 vegetables and that's it.

I invited some of my friends, all with different levels of gardening skills (from none to professional skills), and from different areas of my life, so most of them didn't even know each other. In the end it was a quite interesting mix of people and we managed to find lots in common, we laughed a lot, learned, shared and got work done too. I promised them some nammy lunch in return, and served vegan lentils bolognese that I prepared on the previous night with some pasta cooked on the spot.

We divided ourselves in 4 groups, one for each task, and from there found our work rhythm. A friend that didn't want to get dirty hands found his way in the kitchen, making and serving coffee/tea, and also warming up and serving lunch. On my original plan I thought that I would have time to do this, and this was a mistake: I was busy everywhere and following everyone, supervising, doing, showing, hosting. And I had dirty hands all the time. Shame on feminist-me for having diminished the kitchen work and not planned to have someone taking care of it. I will do better next time.

Also the cleaning final part, close to lunch time, was tough. We had been working hard for almost 3 hours, and by the end we were tired and hungry, so I lost some "soldiers" and the work force went down significantly. We managed to clean, but we were quite exhausted afterwards… So, I would have organized a group just for the cleaning as well.

This is how our talkoot looked like:

Yoko-cat hanging out | Soil mix station | Tags for the seedlings.

Compacting mushroom substrate in the box | Seedlings

Garden talk | Transplanting plants | Cooking lady ;)

And what I took from it:

What I liked?

• I got all my garden tasks done in half a day.
• I had an excuse to meet some friends.
• All the gardening talk.
• There were also lots of political talk, but well, gardening and politics… I can easily find several reasons to jump from one talk to another, so I gladly accept that the connection was naturally made.
• Cooking in big amounts is always so much fun!
• The community feeling it creates.

What I didn't like?

• Lack of space to work.
• Cleaning afterwards.
• Physical exhaustion and muscle pain on the next day.

What would I have done differently?

• Think and plan better the prep work, as it could have been easier on me, and also provided us with more smart and bigger space to work.
• Remember that kitchen work is lots of work.
• Remember that cleaning as well.

This is the result work:

Bed ready for Oysters | Yoko enjoying the green around

Happy plants | Seedlings getting the best sunny spot in the house | Basil cuttings

I hold this day as a precious demonstration of care I have from my friends. I am truly thankful for having got only positive replies when I invited them to this talkoot. Even friends that couldn't come asked me to plan it again some other time so they could participate. *Yay*

Also, nature! Plants! Life! DIY! Hands! Soil! Mushrooms! Love! All the hippie stuff! *Happy me*