While some think about putting their gardens to bed while the days grow shorter, Ralph Persad is getting in a second crop of greens.

The long-time gardener at Thornciffe Park Garden Club is planting spinach, radish and Bok Choi for harvest throughout late October and November. Meanwhile, his mainstay crops are enjoying a renaissance. After summer dry spells, the tomato vines have started to set new fruit on yellow blossoms, and his pepper plants are getting a second wind.

In fact, with multiple crop cycles — and a little help from his freezer at home — Ralph enjoys a kind of perpetual harvest.

“I grow a lot of hot peppers and freeze them all,” Ralph says.  “I take them out whenever I need them throughout the year and blend them into sauce.”

He also freezes tomatoes straight from the vine. “When it’s time to make tomato sauce in the winter, you hold the frozen tomato under some hot water.” There are no frozen tomatoes close at hand in the East York Town Centre food court at the moment, so Ralph demonstrates using an imaginary one. He crunches his fist and the imaginary tomato’s skin pops off nicely. An interviewer can almost smell the sauce starting to simmer.

Frozen bitter melon, long beans and other greens also put food on Ralph’s table year round.

“They say bitter melon is good for the blood. You can fry it up with some onion, garlic and a little olive oil. It goes nicely with a pita and some melted cheese.”

Ralph comes by food-growing honestly, having helped his parents work a 26-acre mixed farm near Rio Claro, Trinidad as a boy.

“Before school, I was up at 5:30 to milk the cows, and I would deliver the milk in bottles on my bike to local customers.

Ralph wasn’t compensated for the milking duties, but his father did offer a 50-cent bounty on squirrels. “They would nibble our cocoa pods and bananas so they were considered pests. After milking the cows, I would try to shoot a few squirrels before school. The dogs got the squirrel meat and the tail went to my dad as proof so I could collect the bounty.”

Ralph’s parents both ran small businesses during the day but also produced bananas, mangoes, coffee, cocoa and oranges on their farm. Ralph would pick the oranges on demand – 4 cents each for 100 – for a woman who upsold them as snacks for 6 cents each outside a local movie theatre. The family also had a “cooking garden” near the house to produce greens year-round.

His uncle was working for the TTC in Toronto and invited the teenaged Ralph up from Trinidad for a few weeks in the summer of 1970. Ralph recalls the vibrant scene on Yonge Street when a long stretch south of Bloor was closed off in the summer as a car-free music and culinary mecca.

In short order, Ralph completed a welding course at a school on Jarvis Street, and obtained his welding licence, a work permit and a welding job at a hot water heater manufacturer. When the company moved out of Toronto, Ralph followed in his uncle’s footsteps by joining the TTC.  He brought his welding skills and upgraded his electrical, machine-shop and lock-smith talents as an all-purpose trouble-shooter for maintenance of TTC properties.

Around the same time, Ralph got back to his food-growing roots when a friend invited him to see his garden plot at the Thorncliffe club, one of Toronto’s oldest community gardens.

“I call it my backyard,” says Ralph of his small rectangular garden loaded with organic vegetables. “I go there, listen to my gospel music. I can sit and meditate. I relax and play a game of cards with my plot neighbor, or start a conversation with people passing by.”

More than 100 plots at the community garden — on hydro land north of Overlea Boulevard — offer fresh air, friendship and fresh produce for Thorncliffe residents and their families.

“This is my therapy,” he says. “When my garden grows nice, I sleep better. I put my head on the pillow and nothing bothers me.” A diet of organic vegetables, and daily exercise including running, doesn’t hurt.

Ralph learned new growing techniques for the Canadian climate from garden plot old-timers and likes to return the favour to younger gardeners.”  He says he’s still learning. In fact, he has his eye on a radish-like green grown by Indian gardeners that is reputed to be good for the heart.

At 61, the man of the perpetual harvest is still in perpetual motion at his job. But he’s planning retirement soon. He will work part-time with one of his sons, who has a heating/cooling business. And he wants to offer his energy and talents to the developing world.

“In life, you give, you get.”