Sustainable Agriculture

3.14.25Is Organic Food Better for You?
Study Shows Benefits of Eating Organic Foods
Is eating organic food better for your health? Does it have more nutrients than conventional food? A landmark analysis of organic vs. conventionally grown food provides answers. No surprise, but good news. A comprehensive study from Newcastle University confirms […]

2.12.25Plant a Seed Saving Garden
A Way to Always Have Your Own Seed Supply
By growing open-pollinated plants and saving seeds, you’ll always have enough for next year’s garden. Seed shortages and rising food prices have generated huge demand for backyard gardens. Unfortunately for gardeners, this need collides with a rapidly consolidating seed industry. […]

9.7.24How to Save Tomato Seeds
Saving Your Favourite Tomatoes for Next Season
If you enjoy eating tomatoes ripe from your garden, consider saving the seed of some of this season’s harvest for next year. Saving tomato seeds is easy. The basic rule is to choose heirloom and open-pollinated tomatoes for seed saving […]

6.23.24Grow a Climate Change Resilient Garden
Gardening Techniques to Curb and Adapt to Global Warming
As a gardener, you have many ways to build climate change resilience. Using ecological and regenerative gardening techniques, you can help your garden withstand unexpected weather extremes and bounce back from hardship. You can even help slow climate change by […]

4.2.24Deer Resistant Plants That Attract Pollinators
Pollinator-Attracting Herbs, Vegetables and Flowers that Deer Avoid
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 […]

3.2.24Three Roosters and a Challenge to Local Farming
Court case may have widespread repercussions for small-scale farms
On Salt Spring Island, a court challenge about the noise of three roosters may have an outsized impact on the future of local small-scale farms throughout the region.

11.1.2312 Vegetables You Can Grow in Winter
A Guide to Planting and Harvesting Winter Vegetables
If grocery-store produce has you wishing for something fresh from the garden in winter, consider this: you can grow a surprising number of vegetables throughout the winter in our moderate south coast BC maritime climate. (Article continues below slideshow.)

4.26.23Plant a Bee Attracting Garden
Urban Gardeners Can Help Provide Habitat for Bees
By planting native flowers, plants and herbs, you can create habitat in your garden and help rebuild threatened bee populations. Most of us are familiar with honey bees. In addition, Canada has 800 species of native bees, ranging from tiny […]

3.22.23How Open Source Seeds Can Increase Food Security
Keeping Seeds in the Public Domain
Open source seeds increase food security by keeping seeds in the public domain. As community food movements bloom across North America, their efforts to provide food security face a nearly invisible threat from multinational seed patent holders like DuPont and […]

11.20.2215 Plants that Help Bees through the Winter
Cold Hardy Flowers, Trees and Shrubs that Benefit Bees
You can help bees through the winter by growing plants and flowering trees that bloom during the colder seasons. (Article and plant guide continue below slideshow.)

10.15.22Threshing Dried Beans
A Low-Tech Method for Small-Scale Growers
Small-scale dry bean growers often lack the large equipment needed to quickly thresh their crop. In this video, Rebecca Jehn of Rebecca’s Garden in Victoria, BC, demonstrates a fast, low-tech method for threshing dried beans.

5.24.22How Oregano Can Help Save the Planet
Culinary Herb Reduces Cow Belches and Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Can a simple herb help fight global warming? The aromatic herb oregano, a staple in most modern kitchens, commonly meets our taste buds mixed with tomato sauce as a topping on pizza. This versatile plant’s virtues, however, extend beyond the […]

3.8.22The Deer Resistant Food Garden
A Guide to Vegetables, Fruit, and Herbs Deer Don’t Like
Unless you build a tall fence, the best way to minimize deer damage in a vegetable garden is to grow plants deer don’t like to eat. This year, try planting from our list of deer-resistant fruit, herb, and vegetable plants […]

11.20.21Three Simple Ways to Test Your Soil
Four Season Garden: DIY Soil Tests and Reading the Weeds
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 […]

10.21.21Six Ways to Screen and Winnow Seeds
Simple Tools for Threshing Seeds
Gardeners who save seed, or grow and harvest grains, know that separating seeds from their pods or husks can be a time-consuming job. While large industrial growers use machines to thresh and winnow seed crops, home seed savers can look […]

10.10.20Chayote Squash: A New Staple Crop for Northern Gardens?
How to Grow Chayote Squash
What is a chayote squash, you ask? Bright green, spiny, pear-shaped chayote squash may just be a new reliable staple crop for BC coastal gardens. What makes chayote squash so unusual is that it has a mild taste like a […]

7.10.20Growing Your Own Garden Seeds
A Look at Seed-Saving Vegetable Plants in Flower
The shortage of garden seeds this spring gave a foretaste of what it is like when supplies run out. If anything, the shortages demonstrated just how important it is to grow and save your own seeds. Many gardeners miss the […]

8.1.19Plants That Attract Beneficial Insects
Slideshow: Flowers and Herbs that Draw Pollinators to the Garden
Beneficial insects can be a gardener’s best resource for protecting crops against destructive pests. Beneficials include pollinators, predators and parasites. By attracting a large enough population of helpful bugs to counteract plant damaging insects, you can keep your garden healthy […]

7.7.19Protecting Mother Nature at the Ballot Box
How Ordinary People Rewrote the Laws to Protect Nature
Earlier this year, a group of people showed how quickly ordinary citizens could rewrite laws to protect nature and transition to sustainable farming. It took just four months. Bavaria’s Campaign to Save the Bees

5.7.19A Low-Carbon Citrus Greenhouse in Canada
Growing Subtropical Fruit with Minimal Inputs for Heat, Water and Nutrients
On Salt Spring Island, in Canada’s Pacific maritime climate, oranges and avocados flourish in an innovative, energy-conserving greenhouse. The subtropical fruit greenhouse, called simply “The Garden,” uses renewable energy, thermal mass, nutrient cycling, and rainwater harvesting to grow citrus fruits […]

1.17.19Bringing Back Ancient Grains and Seeds
Growing Old World Grains in Gardens and on Small Farms
Ancient grains are making a comeback, as farmers, millers, artisan bakers and diners seek them out for their exceptional flavour, nutrition, and low-gluten content. The heritage wheat, barley, rye, buckwheat, amaranth, quinoa and flax at Dan Jason’s farm come in […]

10.22.18How We Can Regrow Sustainable Agriculture in BC
Investing in British Columbia’s Food Security
British Columbia is facing an agricultural crisis. Sixty percent of farmers in BC are over age 55, and the new young generation of farmers cannot take over. At the same time as baby boom era farmers are retiring, speculation has […]

7.18.18Why Farmland Protection is Not Enough
Report Outlines Ways to Fully Use BC’s Agricultural Land Reserve
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 […]

6.17.18A Movable Urban Farm
Sustainable and Profitable Small-Scale City Farming
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 […]

5.13.18European Union Bans Neonicotinoid Pesticides
A Victory for Bees and Other Pollinators
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 […]

4.19.18Native Plants Bring Valuable Benefits to Farms
Natural Habitat Increases Pollinators, Pest Management, and Soil Fertility
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 […]

2.28.18Profitable and Ecological Small-Scale Farming
French Permaculture Farm is a Model for 21st Century Agriculture
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, […]

11.23.17Neonicotinoid Pesticides in Honey
A Worldwide Survey
A new study in the journal Science found neonicotinoid pesticides in 75 percent of honey samples from around the world. The honey samples contained neonicotinoids (neonics) at levels known harm to bees and other insect pollinators. Although numerous studies have […]

10.26.17Inside a Shipping Container Farm
Year-Round Indoor Farming at Bright Greens Canada
High-tech shipping container farms like Bright Greens Canada can produce fresh vegetables and herbs year-round using indoor vertical growing. (Article continues below video.) Video: Year-Round Growing inside a Shipping Container Farm

8.14.17Home on the Bison Ranch
Helping to Keep Bison Genetics Strong
Ethical farming is helping to preserve bison on Vancouver Island. Today, it’s hard to envision the millions of bison that once thundered across the North American prairies. Continuous herds, hundreds of miles long, roamed the plains in a great migration […]

8.1.17Canada’s Bees Will Have Their Day in Court
Lawsuit Says Failure to Enforce Regulations on Neonicotinoids Harms Bees
Canada’s bees have won a small victory: the right to have their day in court. In July, the Federal Court in Ottawa allowed a lawsuit to go forward against Canada’s Pesticide Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) for failure to enforce Pest […]

6.10.17Who Are the 21st Century Farmers?
British Columbia’s Agricultural Future
A new report from Statistics Canada provides a snapshot of farmers and farming in Canada. In a year that has seen baby boom generation farmers retire at a rapid rate, it comes as no surprise that the average age of […]

5.16.17Weeds that Indicate Soil Conditions
Four Season Garden: How Weeds Can Help Identify and Correct Soil Problems
Recognize these weeds? Weeds can tell you a lot about the condition of your soil. Not only that, weeds, when composted, help improve the soil by releasing into it the very minerals and elements it needs. (Article and Weed Guide […]

4.18.17Happy Birthday Agricultural Land Reserve
Next Steps for the ALR: Achieving Food Security for BC
The Agricultural Land Reserve gave British Columbia the potential for food security with two objectives: preserve farmland and encourage farming. Today, the second half of that goal remains unfulfilled. However, a study of the economics of small-scale farming points the […]

12.6.16Can Local Agriculture Drive Economic Development?
Surrey Study Shows What is Possible
British Columbians often give several reasons why local food is the best choice for everyone: Locally grown food tastes better, has greater nutritional value, protects the environment, strengthens genetic diversity, and develops the local economy. The last point raises an […]

5.30.16Online Farm Map for Vancouver Island’s 100-Mile Diet
A Guide to Farms and Local Food in Greater Victoria, Vancouver Island and Salt Spring Island
The 100-mile diet on Vancouver Island has just become more accessible. The online Vancouver Island Farms & Food Map offers a way to find hundreds of farms and fresh local foods in Victoria, Vancouver Island, Salt Spring Island and Gabriola […]

4.19.16The Power of Pulses
Saving the World with Peas, Beans, Chickpeas, Favas & Lentils
It’s the International Year of Pulses, and a new book, The Power of Pulses: Saving the World with Peas, Beans, Chickpeas, Favas & Lentils, is here to guide the way. If saving the world sounds like hyperbole, it’s because pulses […]

10.13.15Starting a Farm in One Year
How Two Young Farmers and a Love of Fine Food Created The Fickle Fig
Three hundred sixty-five days, more or less — that’s the time it took. When Mitchell Morse and Chris Margetts told their friends they planned on starting a farm, no one expected to see it in a year’s time. Because back […]

10.13.15Starting the Fickle Fig Farm
Farm to Plate from the Ground Up
In this video, Mitchell Morse and Chris Margetts talk about the planning, hard work and adventures that went into starting The Fickle Fig Farm. In just one year, they transformed an empty hay field on Vancouver Island into a fully […]

5.8.15Growing a Local Mediterranean Diet
Citrus Fruits, Olives and Pomegranates on Vancouver Island
Scientific studies have long hailed a Mediterranean diet of oranges, olives and subtropical fruits, along with vegetables, nuts, legumes and grains, as one of the healthiest in the world. Until now, however, British Columbia food distributors have had to import […]