Editor’s Note:I recently discovered a wonderful blog called Avenue Homesteader. Carissa Halton writes about her experiences with green local living in Edmonton’s Alberta Avenue area. I love her focus on food production and community efforts in the area. Carissa has generously offered up a guest post for Green Edmonton readers:

Cross-posted from http://avenuehomesteader.blogspot.com/:

For members of my household who love pumpkin pie and butternut stew, 2009 was a disappointing year. Total number of winter squash: 2. I gleaned one Buttercup and another Spaghetti squash from six large plants. It was a lot of green square footage producing a whole lot of nothing.

After some sleuthing and input from my squash-crazy sister-in-law, we’ve deducted a pollination problem. In 2009, I had plenty of flowers and the fruit would look like it was growing then instead yellow and die.

This year, I have taken matters into my own hands and started playing ‘Birds and Bees’. The first thing to surprise me was the sheer number of available male flowers and the woeful number of willing female compatriots. The ladies are more inclined to draw their virginal petals up demurely around their centre and remain like this most of the day. In my patch, fruit-making action happens exclusively in the mornings.

So if you share my problem, or skipped the Bio class where they taught this stuff, here’s how you can increase the conception rates in your squash patch:

1. First, figure out who’s female and male. The female flowers blooms from what appears to be a miniature squash. They look like they’re growing from a new fruit while the male flower buds burst from a long, narrow stem.  read more... »

Myles Kitagawa is my favourite Edmonton-based environmentalist. He articulates an intelligent, realistic vision for where we need to go as a society.

Myles works full-time, for very little money, to improve Alberta’s environment and to mitigate the impacts of humanity’s destructive activities. Watch the above video to get a feel for how well Myles understands the issues, and how much sense his approach to solving our problems makes.

Myles is the executive director of the Toxics Watch Society of Alberta, a livejournal blogger, and an occasional contributor to this website.

This is Gordon Howell (www.hme.ca). He is Alberta's (Canada's!) leading guru on solar electricity.  He is my first choice for a series that I'm writing on Edmonton's Green Leaders. 

Gordon has been working tirelessly on the issue of solar electricity (among other solar-related topics) for as long as I've been paying attention. He lectures often in the city, and his talks are always full of topical, relevant information. The man is thorough, too. His information is always very accurate.

Gordon is a key member of the Riverdal NetZero Project, and he has worked on my own Mill Creek NetZero Home.

If you're interested in learning more about how to live greener in Edmonton, I highly recommend going to one of Gordon's talks. Better yet, email him (ghowell [at] hme [dot] ca) and find out when he'll next be teaching his multi-day solar energy course.

Like many of the true leaders in our city, Gordon has contributed countless unpaid hours. He has added tremendously to the public knowledge and discourse regarding solar energy. I for one am very grateful for his contribution.

To learn about renewable energy applications in our city and province, visit Gordon's website today.