Yes it is August and yes it is Autumn

The other day I woke up to the first heavy frost and snow covering the mountains a little ways outside town.  Although it's only late-August, the weather, frost, and falling leaves seems to be the equivalant to early-November in southern Ontario.  That means it's harvest time.. just about.

Frost covers and snowy mountains

And check out the container setup!  Three container gardens built atop pallets.  With the help of a fortlift, you can move them to areas that get more sunlight come late-August.  Up here in the Yukon, the Sun moves so much, depending on the season, you gotta keep up with it.  Frost covers added for effect (yes, it's cold up here but not that cold -- these two pictures were taken early-August).  

Native Plants and Aesthetic Design in Beaver Creek

Before moving out to Beaver Creek this past Spring I spent a few days staying with a friend in Whitehorse, giving myself a break from being on the road the days prior.  While in Whitehorse, I wanted to find a plant identification book about herbs of the Boreal forest but was recommended 'The Boreal Herbal' by a few friends instead.  The book, which I had purchased shortly thereafter, focuses on Boreal herbology and provides extensive information on topics like edible plants of the north or medicinal plants and their traditional uses.  Since then, the book has become my bible and I have been putting its lessons into practice.  

To bring you up to speed, I manage 35 - 40 garden beds ranging from 6' X 1' to 10' X 18' in size - this includes constructing, prepping, planting, maintaining and harvesting / autumn clean-up(ing) either some or all beds.  I work at a roadside resort here, in Beaver Creek, where I am paid to make gardens look good, and I have full creative control over what aesthetic approach and horticultural methods I choose to use.

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Fireweed

The more 'traditional' approach to landscaping involves removing any vegetation from a given piece of land, including much of the existing soil, and replacing it with top soil and non-native species of plants.  Though adding more soil is often a smart move to any garden, the use of non-native species of plants often makes for difficulties when maintaining (different plants from different ecosystems require different amounts of water, sunlight, heat, etc..).

Not only does traditional landscaping often require more maintenance and use of chemical fertilizers, but it also disables our abilities to use native plants for edible or medicinal means.  The use of non-native and ornamental plants in landscaping disable us from understanding our local ecosystems and what they offer.

Yarrow

For example, early in the season, Fireweed can be harvested and cooked with butter and garlic for a type of "wild asparagus".

                                                                                         

Also, the flower of the Yarrow plant is an effective antiseptic / anti inflammatory / antibacterial medication.  While on hikes, many people up here use it to stop the bleeding of scrapes and cuts by lightly pressing the Yarrow flower onto the wound.


Simply put, the benefits of using native plants in landscaping are plenty:

       a) Native plants have edible and medicinal uses that many of us could benefit from.

       b) Native plants are free as they grow everywhere.  In the Boreal forest, Fireweed and Yarrow are as common as the dandelions and thistles of the Carolinian forest (southern Ontario and eastern US).

       c) Native plants can also look awesome in gardens when a bit of planning and creativity is added to the mix.

As such, I've been working on a few projects which are now (mid-season) beginning to come to fruition.  For the garden bed in the picture to the right, for instance, I kept Fireweed (purple) and Arctic Poppies (orange) in the centre of the bed to add dimension and a backdrop for anything ornamental planted close to the border.  I also kept the wild Yarrow (white) mixed in with ornamentals to give to garden a wild yet managed look.

Good times.

High-Latitude Gardening: Round One

A few weeks ago I moved to the village I'm going to call home for the summer. It's the village of Beaver Creek, along the Alaska Highway in the Yukon.  The soil quality is poor, growing season short, yet in a few weeks' time there will be 23 hours of daylight.

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Beaver Creek, YT - population: 125

While I was doing my Undergrad at Trent I learned how environments along the high-latitudes of the planet are sensitive to the increasing fluctuations in temperature and precipitation caused by climate change.  Since I've been living up here, I've also learned how areas this far north are also senstive to the increasing fluctuations in the cost and movement of goods caused by things like rising oil prices or landslides along the Alaska Highway (currently an issue 4 hours east of town..). 

Food security in the north is a big issue.  The cost of living in the Yukon is expensive.  Food is shipped up here from the south making the amount of "food miles" placed onto an ordinary apple from Ontario, for instance, much greater than most other areas in the country.  With the exception of maybe two or three villages further north, Beaver Creek is the furthest destination from most food distribution centers in Canada (by car, the distance between Toronto and Beaver Creek is 6,000 km).  Because of this, food prices are high and food quality (freshness) is low. 

Whereas many areas further south have access to fresh local food, the Yukon doesn't.  In all of the Yukon, there are very few farms due to poor soil quality and the short growing season.  Most of these farms are located around Whitehorse and usually grow nothing more than hay, I've been told. 

With that said, the 23 hours of daylight through the summer means that vegetables which prefer cooler climates are able to thrive.  The largest kale plant on record, for instance, was grown in Palmer, Alaska.  If it's done right, high-latitude gardening can be very rewarding.

Old container gardens at the back of the property - mid-May

Once I arrived to Beaver Creek I looked around to see where (or if) I would be able to plant a small vegetable garden.  Sylvian, one of the returning workers here, had built a few container gardens in the past and says it's really the only way food can be grown in this type of an environment. 

Here are a couple reasons why:

We salvage and screen whatever soil
we can find -  like flower pots.

1.  Due to the permafrost, ground temperature up here is consistantly cold.  I've been told that carrots (if one were to actually attempt to grow them up here) will often begin to grow horizontally (making a "J" shape) due to the temperature of the ground just beneath the Earth's surface.  They simply want to stay as close to the surface as possible, where it is the warmest.

Boreal forest, with muskeg floor.

2.  Muskeg covers the forest floor, rather than soil.  Much of the boreal forest (stretching from Alaska, through the Yukon, northern Ontario to Labrador) is made up by a type of northern wetland - consisting of moss (often 2 feet thick) and a bunch of smaller plants which grow out of the moss.  Aspen, cedar and black spruce are the most common trees which grow out of the muskeg.  Carrots do not.  Nor does any other vegatable which grows out of soil, rather than moss (the vast, vast majority).

For these reasons, container gardens are often used to grow food in the Yukon.  The bonus, as mentioned above, are the 20 - 23 hours of daylight in the summer.  To catch the most amount of sunlight, Sylvian builds containers atop of old skids.  During late-August and September he moves the containers with a fork-lift to the roof of surrounding buildings to catch more sun as it moves just above the horizon.

I'm using two of Sylvian's skid-containers and building two more using his approach. 

More on this to come.

Edible Landscaping in Hamilton

There are a number of stories of recent university grads who can't find work and who have decided to "give Hamilton a try".  By that I mean people who are creative, entrepreneurial, ambitious, and want to take advantage of the cheap rents and unsaturated creative sector in Hamilton.  Moving to Hamilton to find work (or to make work), for some, is a way of avoiding the over-saturated markets of university grads who can only find jobs paying minimum wage elsewhere.  Essentially, this was the approach that I took a year and a half ago when I moved back to Hamilton after being away for 8 years.

Here's an article that popped up in The Spec today about a couple of people who have started up a small business this season.  Their mission is to make money building vegetable gardens in peoples' backyards.

I'm excited to see how successful their first season will be.  The only other (I think..?) edible landscaping company or social enterprise based off of principles of food security in Hamilton is Backyard Harvest.  They are only a few years old.  Some people say Hamilton doesn't have the market for these types of smaller businesses.  Others say Hamilton is "ripe" (..) with opportunity.

This season will tell.

April is the Month for Container Gardens

This was my second experiment in building container gardens.  I finished it this afternoon.  I built the last one out of reclaimed wood (resourceful and cheap, yet not as quality) so for this one I spent a bit of cash and made it out of cedar with a bit of pine.  It was worth it.

Aside from the harvest, the best part about using these things to grow vegetables in is that they allow us to use otherwise unusable land.  Whether this unusable land is a concrete pad in a suburban backyard, or contaminated / gravel-heavy soil in an inner-city backyard, container gardens allow us to reclaim previously unusable land to grow food on.

They also look really cool.

Apart from also looking really cool, container gardens are easier to maintain than most other types of gardens as the soil beneath the container (if applicable) and the soil inside of the container is separated by wood and geotextile (also patio stones, in this case).  This means that there is minimal time spent picking weeds out of container gardens.  Also, they don't require as much bending over, so our backs don't get bent out of shape by maintenance or harvest.

In southern Ontario, container gardens are a practical and efficient way of growing tomatoes, leafy greens and herbs.

I've started germinating a bunch of seeds sow in a few weeks time I'll be planting tomatoes, basil, spinach an perhaps a sunflower or two in this 8X2X1 container.

If you're in the Hamilton area, let me know if you want one built in the next couple of weeks and we can talk about what dimensions you want, what seeds germinated and we can negotiate a price!  289 426 5657.  Really cool.

"Lausy" Smarch Weather... (and the expanding economic viability of growing food for profit)

Two great things happened today:  The first being that it was warm out (20 degrees on March 13th) and the second being that I went to talk to my new friend Phil Collins who is the Co-Founder of Fresh City Farms in Downsview Park in Toronto. 

While helping to flag off garden beds for the coming season on their 1.5 acre plot of land, the two of us got talking about the expanding economic viability of growing food in the city.  Most CSA's are no more than 10 years old.  Also, we got talking about the increase in seasonal share holders that a lot of CSA farmers are benefiting from.  Last year was the first year that Fresh City Farms was in business and they had 30 share holders.  So far for this coming season they have 140 share holders.  Each of them will receive a box of vegetables once a week.  Most of vegetables will be grown on their plot and in backyards throughout Toronto.  

This increase is being seen at CSA's across the country and means for some good business prospects!

Anywho, I stumbled upon growingyourgreens.com (which is completely unrelated to Fresh City) a while ago when looking for cool recipes for smoothies and was really amused by the enthusiasm and character involved in this guy's videos.  He grows most of his greens in raised beds in his front yard and is proud of it!  This video of his is about a company in the States which now owns the patents to a few terms associated with urban farming.

The Case for Separated Bike Lanes

This Street Films video about NYC's need for separated bike lanes summarizes a discussion that I bet is happening in many North American cities.  If there is enough room on the street, separated bike lanes are practical, convenient - whether on a bike or in a car.

But what about where there is not enough room on the street?  Since Rob Ford became Mayor of Toronto in 2010 he has been at war with cyclists.  While Ford (and many others) believe that the city's non-separated bike lanes should be ripped out for reasons of safety and efficiency, cyclists believe there must be another option.