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.

Goats. Then emus. And then ostriches. (HAVANA)

I've had an obsession with Latin culture ever since traveling a bit of South America two years ago.  That and escaping portions of the Canadian winter (though it's January 29th and hasn't really arrived yet to Hamilton...?) to go to warm places where there is good music, a different language, cheap food and beer, and a lively growing season.   I spent a bit of time in Cuba this month where I was able to experience all of that, though perhaps the most interesting thing I experienced was a Cuban approach to issues of food security.

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There are 87,000 acres of land used for growing food in the city of Havana.  90% of all fruits and vegetables consumed in Havana are grown in Havana.  

Cuba's imports almost completely disappeared after the fall of the Soviet Union and the tightening of the US Trade Embargo in the early 1990s.  The country was forced to become as self-sufficient as possible in as little time as possible.  This period of time in the 1990s is known to Cubans as the Special Period.

While in Cuba, I was able to see a decent portion of the country.  I spent my time volunteering on a couple of urban farms (called Organoponicos) and talking with locals about the Special Period, Cuban food security, and the future of Cuba.

Imported food by % (1989)

Cereals:                            79%

Beans:                               90%

Rice:                                 50%

Total calories in diet:        57%

Change in imports by %

(1989 - 1992)

Petroleum:                      -53%

Fertilizer:                        -77%

Pesticides:                        -63%

Animal feed:                    -70%

The State had created the Organoponico system in the early 1990s as a way to combat the huge decrease of food imported from the Soviet Union.  Today, there are more than 7,000 Organoponicos in Cuba.  Many of them are found in cities.  They are cooperative in structure and local in distribution.  Everything grown is also organic.

The drastic decrease of imported petroleum, pesticides and chemical fertilizers during the early 1990s has lead to local innovation.  The ideas and structure associated with the Organoponico system are not seen on a national level in many other countries. Many Organoponicos in Cuba produce their own organic fertilizers.  Larger Organoponicos also produce their own humus as soil quality in urban environments is poor.  Oxen are used to till soil rather than tractors, eliminating the need for petroleum and decreasing the amount of soil that would be eroded by the use of tractors.
Although the Organoponico system in Cuba is extremely efficient and is a good model of a local food system - which as North Americans we could learn from -  food security in Cuba remains a huge issue 20 years after the Special Period.  While I was there, it was obvious that food security is very poor.  (*Note that if you have ever heard friends or family return from an All-Inclusive resort in Cuba to say that "the beach was nice but the food was terrible", this is why)

Since the imports of animal feed (or wheat, corn or cereals to produce animal feed) almost disappeared 20 years ago, there are very few cows in Cuba.  Buying beef in Cuba is either impossible or very expensive.  Pigs are more able to digest compost or household organic waste and so most meat you will find in Cuba is either ham or sausage.

Likewise, the fruits and vegetables that are available in Havana are almost entirely grown in the city, and therefore only certain crops are available at any given time of year.  Although it is possible to grow year-round in Cuba, the cooler, drier weather from October - March is better for growing most vegetables:  The plants don't get waterlogged (as they can in the summer) and it is easier to grow varieties of lettuce in 25 degrees Celsius rather than 35.  As a result, there are often shortages of fruits and vegetables during summer.

This is one reason why it has taken a long time for average daily protein levels and caloric intake levels to match those of the Soviet era.  In 1992, average daily protein and caloric intakes were 35% - 40% lower than 1989 levels.

After spending time on these farms and witnessing what food is and is not available in Cuba I concluded that North American's have a lot to learn from.  The organic methods (organic fertilizer, humus production) and social infrastructure (distribution networks, stakeholders) used by the Organoponicos did not spring up overnight.  With the drastic decrease in imports to Cuba and an economic situation (which, generally, mimics what peak oil may look like to North Americans) Cuba is well on a path toward a sustainable food system.

Canada and the US cannot say the same.  By the time the cost of oil increases drastically and therefore everything that we depend on as imports (keeping in mind the average Canadian meal travels 2500 km before arriving on our dinner plate) either disappear from store shelves or triple in price, how prepared will we be?

When I arrived back home to Hamilton the other day my Mom told me all about the new buzz at City Hall.  I'd consider her and my Step-Dad to be fairly politically engaged in Hamilton and so they usually have some pretty interesting things to say about municipal politics.  City Council is now reviewing the prospects of making it legal for people in the city to have chicken coops in their backyards.   Though it is a good move (and some Councillor's are for while some are against [see below]), we have a long way to go.  Bring on the birds.

“I tell you what is going to come next: goats. Then emus. And then ostriches” 
- Councillor Scott Duvall