The Dufferin Grove Farmers' market has its own website

The Weekly Market Notes are available on-line at www.dufferingrovemarket.ca

The Farmers' Market continues all year round, every Thursday, rain or shine.

Current News

The Summer 2016 newsletter. This is the Water Issue, with lots of news about water play in the park.

The Dufferin Grove playground club

August 13, 2016: Drought finally breaks

oak almost dead

Between June 12 and August 12, we had less then 30 mm of rain. On August 13, we had 28 mm in one day, then another 12 mm on August 16. Some of the almost dead trees are sprouting new leaves. Can they recover? We'll post follow-up pictures here.

The good water news:

The sandpit watertap at the adventure playground uses about 4000 liters a day versus the wading pool which uses at least 43,600 liters a day. The sandpit water goes to the trees, so the shady maples at the playground are living longer than expected. The wading pool water only goes down the drain toward the lake. We asked the city plumbers if the wading pool water can be used for tree watering too, but they said the city is trying to phase out wading pools in favor of splash pads. Well, maybe splash pads are an even better candidate for water recycling. Something to research.

main drain, May 2016

Wading Pool

City staff say that next year they will remove the slippery coating and return to the concrete surface below. The current wading pool troubles -- and some examples of easy fixes -- are shown here.

Some older wading pool adventure stories are here. The step-by-step progress of the $227,400 wading pool renovation in 2008/2009 is here. The fixes that had to be done right after the renovation are here. The current chlorine regime is analyzed here.

Skateboard park

The unofficial skateboard park on the rink pad is busy despite the heat. Thomas Berry and friends have done lots of repairs and rebuilds, along with a new piece donated by Converse.

Skateboarders like to make videos, and there are lots posted by people from Dufferin Grove -- a sample is here.

Farm video

Farmers Ayse and Jens from Marvellous Edibles Farm told us at the market that one of their summer interns has made a short, lively video of life on their farm. Watch it here .

Our public ovens website now includes 17 Toronto ovens

Every oven has its own page with pictures and diary entries.

The Dufferin Grove oven has a few interesting issues, under city management: read about them here.

News flash: the new but still rarely-used bake oven set-up at Christie Pits park came to $161,800 -- the costliest oven until then was $22,000.

Community-built cob café

cherry blossoms at cob café

The cob café is now in its eleventh year. After the most recent winter, some small repairs were done. The maintenance page for this year is here. The cob structure survived the winter pretty well; only a few inexpensive fixes were needed.

The outdoor rinks

To read about the problems that challenge the city's outdoor rinks -- and some easy fixes -- see this CityRinks 2016 Outdoor Rinks Report. It was presented at city hall on April 13, with this deputation. The councillors asked for a recreation management response for the September committee meeting. Will that actually happen?

A summary of the meeting outcome is here.

Parts of this website are now an ARCHIVE. There are fewer postings of Dufferin Grove Park city-run events. To find out why: editorial