Tag Archives: maple ridge

Growing Food Course in Maple Ridge (plus notes on crop rotation)

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{Photo of Chris from last summer in our garlic, peas & bean bed. OMG, I can’t wait till it’s that warm again.)

This weekend, Chris M and I attended the February session of a new, year-long, food growing course in Maple Ridge. Taught by master organic gardener Gail Szostek (article of a course she taught last year here), the classes take place over an entire year so that gardeners can learn about food gardening from the preparing to the growing to the harvesting and eating. Every month features a new topic that will fit the season. 

February’s topic was Seeds & Scheduling. The class was great and I’m really glad I went. I learned new things, enjoyed the social atmosphere and got very motivated to start planning my garden beds carefully. Included in the session were lessons about vegetable plant types (legumes, greens, solanums, brassica, roots, cucurbits and alliums), a how-to on deciphering information in seed catalogues and a lot of discussion about crop rotation. We each drew up a map of our own garden spaces and started drawing in a planting plan and timeline according to crop rotation rules.

Crop rotation is the act of rotating annual plant varieties from one bed to another every year (instead of, for example, planting garlic in the same space year after year). This is very beneficial because it helps keep diseases and pests away that will make homes in spaces that remain unchanged year after year. It also helps return important nutrients to the soil. Monocrop farming (planting the same things in the same space year after year) leeches essential nutrients out of the land and never replaces them, whereas crop rotation allows those nutrients to be replaced. (A simple example: beans are great at putting nitrogen into soil. Therefore, including bean plants in a bed’s rotation schedule that also includes nitrogen-hungry plants like corn means that your soil’s nitrogen supply will continue to be replenished after the corn has gobbled it up). Practicing this is an important step to maintaining healthy soil year after year.

In class, we were taught the 4 rules of crop rotation:

  1. Root crops are not to follow potatoes
  2. Potatoes should not follow legumes
  3. Brassicas should follow legumes
  4. Root cropts should follow any crop with mulch

If you’re interested in incoporating crop rotation into your vegetable gardens, you should plan out what you want to plant where and also think about timing. Careful planning means that you can time your plantings so that you are getting multiple plant varieties out of one bed in a year (instead of just one variety a year). Here on the west coast, we have an opportunity to do spring plantings (for late spring/ early summer harvest), summer plantings (for late summer/ early fall harvest) and fall plantings for winter crops. That’s a lot of production from one bed if you plan well. And don’t forget about planting in cover crops during in-between stages. Cover crops (like crimson clover, fava beans and rye) help infuse important nutrients into the soil during gardening down time. Turn these crops right into your soil before they go to seed.

There’s a lot more information I could relay from my class notes, but for now I’ll just encourage you to do some internet searching if you want more info on crop rotation and recommend that you attend some of these Growing Food courses this year. If you can’t make it to all of them, you’re welcome to pay for classes individually and just attend the ones that fit your schedule and interest. 

The classes are held on the 2nd Saturday of every month (unless otherwise specified) from 12/12:30 – 4/4:30 at the CEED Centre in Maple Ridge. I’ve listed the upcoming months and topics below, but to register or for more information, contact Gail at greenspaceconsulting@live.com.

The Curriculum:

  • Jan – Sites and Soils
  • Feb – Seeds and Scheduling
  • Mar – Propagation and Spring Warmth
  • Apr – Garden Structures
  • May – Bed Prep and Planting
  • Jun – Compost and Fertilizer
  • Jul – Water, Teas, Brews
  • Aug – Winter Gardening
  • Sep – Harvesting and Seed Saving
  • Oct – Preserving
  • Nov – Winter Prep
  • Dec – Christmas Party and Wrap-up

Visit us at GETI FEST!

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This Saturday, the Farm for a Year crew will be participating in GETI FEST! ‘GETI’ stands for the Golden Ears Transition Initiative, a Maple Ridge community-led response to the pressures of climate change, fossil fuel depletion and increasingly, economic contraction (decline). Transition Initiatives (or Transition Towns) are popping up all around the world in response to people’s desires to pursue happier and healthier communities. Growing local food using permaculture principles (something we’re trying to do on our farm) is a major focus of Transition Initiatives.

GETI FEST will be a celebration of community. From noon to 9:00pm, there will be information booths set up (manned by local action groups), an artisan fair, a People in Motion parade, a community bbq and a dance. Farm for a Year is a GETI action group and we’ll have a booth set up in Memorial Peace Park from noon – 4:00pm. We’ll have fresh veggies from our garden on display, as well as photos and information about our farming project. Please come by and say hi!

To find out more about the event, visit the GETI FEST event page on Facebook.

Julie featured in school garden story

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I’ve been a little slow at getting this story up here, but better late than never! In August, Julie was featured in this story about community gardens at local schools – go Julie! I love the idea of food gardens being incorporated into school green areas. It seems like an ideal way to educate students about food, gardening and health while presenting a great opportunity for increased community involvement at a real human level. As more schools adopt the idea of community garden beds, hopefully more teachers, parents and community members will hop on board as champions – extending education well beyond the classroom and young minds.

Story (reprinted below) and photograph by Maria Rantanen, Maple Ridge Times.

School gardens blooming as forum for learning

Planting and growing their own food becomes an extension of learning for school children

BY MARIA RANTANEN, THE TIMESAUGUST 23, 2011

Gardens are flourishing at schools across Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows, allowing students to learn in an outdoor classroom.

The first gardens were started in 2006 in school district 42 with a Union of B.C. Municipalities grant, and there are now nine with a 10th one planned for the coming school year.

“[The program] has a huge effect because it teaches families to garden,” said Christian Cowley, executive director of the CEED Centre – the centre for community education on environment and development – who helped set up the gardens.

The garden is an extension of the school, Cowley said, and is meant to be a place of learning.

“The main purpose of the school garden is to do school work in the garden,” Cowley said. This could include subjects like math and English, he added.

Julie Clark was teaching at Blue Mountain Elementary this year.

The school garden was largely driven by the principal Linda Dyck, who saw its inception two years ago. But after Dyck left the school in the fall, the link broke.

In the spring, Clark started ask-ing who was going to take care of the garden. And as it turned out, it fell to her.

Clark pointed out school gardens at Blue Mountain Elementary and at other schools are a great community resource and she hopes that the surrounding neighbourhoods will get involved with them, for example, grandparents or other people who have gardening skills.

“They’re not just for the school – they can be a bridge between the community and school,” Clark said.

Planning and reaching out to the community should start in the fall, though, Clark said, so that in spring when it’s time to plant the community is involved.

The gardens are great for physical exercise and they create a different outdoor environment for classroom learning and socializing, healthy food choices, gaining knowledge of growing food, importance of soil, and the environment, said Christine DiGiamberardine, recreation coordinator of neighbourhood development for Maple Ridge.

The gardens are meant to be neighbourhood school gardens, she said.

The nine school gardens are at Albion, Blue Mountain, Davie Jones, Glenwood, Harry Hooge, Maple Ridge, and Pitt Meadows Elementaries, as well as Maple Ridge and Westview Secondaries.

The 10th is planned for Pitt Meadows Secondary for this upcoming school year.

“In order to sustain the gardens we encourage building relationships with the neighbourhood residents, businesses, community groups… who can all contribute to building, maintaining, and harvesting the gardens,” she said.

But to make the school garden a success, each school has to ensure there is a group of “champions” within and around the school to ensure it’s sustainable, DiGiamberardine said.

Parents have become involved with the school gardens, and DiGiamberardine counts this as a success of the program.

When Maple Ridge Elementary started its garden this spring, about 50 people came to build it, bringing along shovels, rakes, plants, lumber, tools, paint, and brushes.

“It was a wonderful example of people working together – everyone has passion, talent, skills, and resources, something they can contribute,” DiGiamberardine said.

This spring, the Red Barn and Plants, a three-acre farm located at the north end of 224th Street, donated 50 flats of plants to the school district.

Twenty went to Aldridge Acres where the school district has an alternative learning program, and 30 went to the various school gardens.

mrantanen@mrtimes.com