Gardeners often ask how they can grow and harvest vegetables all year long. Here are our top ten tips for a sustainable, organic year-round garden:
RECIPE
These savoury zucchini pancakes will not last long! Flavoured with sweet onions, hot out of the pan, they make a delicious side dish for meat or pasta, or a light vegetarian meal. Zucchini pancakes freeze well and are a great way to preserve an overabundance of summer squash.
Zuchinni pancakes are delicious hot off the griddle, topped with parmesan cheese.
Bee-friendly plants that repel deer? It sounds like a gardener’s dream. As it turns out, quite a large number of flowers, herbs, and even vegetables are deer resistant pollinator plants.
Gardeners and farmers who struggle against deer damage know how difficult it is to grow flowers, fruits, and vegetables with these voracious browsers about. At the same time, growers depend on bees, flower flies, butterflies and hummingbirds to pollinate farm and garden crops. If you select carefully, you can have both together: plants that attract pollinators and are also unpalatable to deer. (Article and plant list continue below slideshow.)
BC can expect to face a future of rising food prices and food shortages unless it protects and fully utilizes its Agricultural Land Reserve farmlands.
A new report from the Institute for Sustainable Food Systems at Kwantlen University, shows why simply reserving land for agriculture without comprehensive programs to expand and develop farming is not effective public policy. The report, Protection is Not Enough, looks at why so much of BC’s preserved farmland is underused, and presents ways to protect and revitalize the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR).
On a vacant gravel building site in the heart of Victoria, Topsoil, a movable urban farm, shows what innovation can do. Looking out at the empty rooftops one day in 2013, Chris Hildreth, founder of Topsoil Innovative Urban Agriculture, had an inspiration. Could a small-scale farm on a city rooftop or unused lot be sustainable and profitable? (Article continues below video.)
Homemade salad dressing greatly surpasses any you can buy in the store. Fresh herbs and lemons, quality oils and full-flavoured vinegars make all the difference. Here are five classics to make at home: Honey Mustard dressing, Basic Balsamic Vinaigrette, Italian dressing with fresh herbs, Ranch dressing, and Sesame Ginger dressing.
Five classic salad dressings you can make at home: (left to right) Honey Mustard dressing, Balsamic Vinaigrette, Ranch dressing, Italian dressing, and Sesame Ginger dressing.
Alarmed by a massive decline in bees and other insects that pollinate food crops, the European Union voted on April 28, 2018 for a permanent ban on three bee-harming neonicotinoid pesticides. The new regulations ban the outdoor use of the three most widely used neonicotinoids— imidacloprid, clothianidin and thiamethoxam— in EU member states. Regulations are expected to take effect by the end of 2018.
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Kristen & James Miskelly, two young biologists dedicated to native plants and natural habitat restoration, are working on a big problem: the rapid decline of vital plant pollinators. At Haliburton Farm in Victoria, BC, where the Miskellys operate Saanich Native Plants nursery, they demonstrate how habitat and wild plants bring productivity and economic benefits to farms. (Article continues below video.)
What do you know about the soil in your garden? Knowing your soil type can help you determine what to plant and how to amend your garden to its best advantage. Three simple do-it-yourself tests can help you find out the texture, composition and pH (acidity or alkalinity) of your soil. By doing a 2-minute hand test, by assessing the texture of your soil in a jar, and by looking at the weeds that grow naturally in your garden, you can learn a lot.
All soil comes from components of rock: sand, silt and clay. The kind of dirt you have in your garden depends on the proportion of each of these components.
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Le Bec Hellouin Farm in Normandy is a model of how small-scale biointensive farming can drive economic development and produce greater yields than industrial agriculture. Combining the age-old techniques of Parisian market gardening, biointensive farming, permaculture, and edible forest gardens, La Ferme du Bec Hellouin shows how small farms can be profitable and sustainable on as little as one quarter acre of land.
Le Bec Hellouin Farm in Normandy, France, uses biointensive permaculture methods such as ponds, island gardens, terraces, a forest garden, and raised hot beds to increase farm production and profitability.
In this video, Mitchell Morse, professional baker and owner of The Fickle Fig Farm Market & Bistro on Vancouver Island, takes you through the process of making crusty, artisan baguettes.
“I’m always going for a crispy, crusty bread,” Mitchell says, “which is achieved through natural sugar in the bread . . . and by steam.” He likes to make bread that is “more European,” with a crisp, flavourful crust and a mellow, buttery-tasting interior.
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