It's All About The Food

I have to start with a small back-story.  Many, many years ago I attended a friend's "kitchen-themed" shower.  I’d spent a lot of time over my present, picking out a collection of things I knew a new housewife would need – seasonings, baking powder, baking soda – things in that vein.  When she opened my present, the bride-to-be glanced at me with a smile on her face and said fondly, “Ah, practical Pat!”  At the time I was a bit insulted, but now I know that’s exactly me.

Concrete raised beds can grow a lot of food

When we first bought this property and started landscaping the grounds, it was esthetics I was concerned about.  My husband and I were both working and with the travelling time, there wasn’t much left for gardening.  I planted perennials and shrubbery.  Eventually we began thinking more about providing some of our own food and quickly learned that our rocky property wasn’t ideal for vegetable gardening.  Concrete raised beds became our way to get around the negatives of our property and the multitude of cedar trees in the forests surrounding us.  Lots of information on how we built these beds can be found on this blog. 

Some of our own potatoes - German Butter and Pacific Russet

As time has gone by, growing our own food has become the focus of our gardening.  We are fortunate to have access to lots of irrigation water – an extremely precious commodity on the Gulf Islands – but it has made clearer where our priorities lie.  Landscaping has shrunk to what shrubbery can survive without watering.  The majority of our efforts have gone into practicality – what we can eat.

Today’s climate situation has made that even more important.  British Columbia, Canada has come to rely too much on other areas of the continent to provide our food.  Now that those areas are experiencing weather hardships – drought, unseasonable cold, unseasonable hot and floods – it’s more than ever vital that we get back to supporting ourselves.  Unfortunately, a lot of extremely valuable farmland has been turned into housing and has now vanished.  At one time, British Columbians produced the vast majority of what they needed.  Now only a tiny portion comes from home with the rest being imported from the United States.  How are we ever to get back to being self-supporting?

Lettuces and swiss chard not only taste good - they look good, too!

We think it’s important to take on some of this burden ourselves.  We need to either grow our own if possible, or support those locally who can.  On our little island, a excellent little market garden, jollity FARMS,  has been created in the last few years.  Right now they are selling subscribed boxes to locals and the excess produce at the farm a couple of days a week.  They not only sell vegetables, they also sell bread and meat that they produce as well.  If we weren’t growing our own, I would definitely be subscribing!

So how can we help ourselves? 

A cascade of Sweet Million cherry tomtoes

Start by growing what is most useful to you.  Do you eat a lot of salads?  Lettuces and green onions take up very little space and look attractive.  A small investment yields a big return.

Herbs in pots on the deck

Use up every little space.  Pots on a deck can grow vegetables and herbs.  These days, plants are developed especially for container gardening.  Tomatoes are even grown in hanging baskets! A friend sent me a picture of a square planter that had a colourful variety of lettuces in it.  Very pretty and very practical!

A variety of pepper plants

Grow what works for you.  Can’t grow spinach?  Wood bugs eat mine as soon as a seedling pokes its head out of the ground.  Try swiss chard instead.  Or start the seedlings elsewhere and transplant as soon as they can withstand the bug onslaught.

Cantaloupe!

Think outside the box.  A friend found some large rope-handled plastic tubs on sale for a terrific price.  She drilled holes in the bottom and is growing a wonderful crop of potatoes in them.  We turn half of our 2-bin compost box over to something each year.  This year it’s cantaloupe again, and we’ve used it for tomatoes and squash in the past.

Copra onions take up one full raised bed

Think about winter storage.  We grow our full year’s worth of onions in one raised bed.  Same for garlic.  Some crops can be left in the ground and harvested as you need them.  I leave my leeks out and use them until spring.  Other friends leave potatoes and carrots in the ground – which you can in our mild climate.  I imagine they probably stay in much better condition that way.  Perhaps a mulch on top would help, too.

This year's Three Sisters Garden

Remember to put back what you take out.  Intensive gardening can be hard on the soil.  You need good quality compost and organic fertilizer of some sort to replenish the nutrition.  This year I’m also applying a liquid fish fertilizer to my crops and have already noticed a difference.  My Three Sisters Garden also fulfills this as the beans put nitrogen back into the soil.  The vegetation gets chopped up and composted at the end of the season.  We also collect leaves in the fall, which are run through our shredder and then used as mulch.

I apologize for the long lecture, but this subject is very important to me.  We need to rely less on others to feed ourselves.  If we don’t, the end results could be catastrophic.