Growing your own food is right up there with riding your bike when it comes to green acts. It doesn’t get more earth-friendly than the hundred foot diet.

With our short growing season, the tomatoes that we put in the ground in late May can’t be in seed form. Traditionally, Edmontonians head to their local nurseries when the time comes to buy tomato seedlings. With a bit of foresight, though, you can save yourself a bunch of money and reduce the impact of your tomatoes even further.

Seeds

A couple of weeks ago I bought some open-pollinated tomato seeds from the good people of A’bunadh Seeds (from Cherhill Alberta – they had a booth at Seedy Sunday this year). I’m no seed expert, but I believe that open-pollinated means that I can harvest my own seeds from the resulting tomatoes (as opposed to hybrid seeds).  Earth’s General Store sells some great seeds too.

Any old tomato seeds will do in a pinch though. I chose a yellow, cherry, paste and beefsteak varieties.

Soil

The way to start your own tomatoes from seed is to get a bunch of small containers, they could be anything from actual seedling containers to Tim Horton’s cups, and fill them with soil. The soil should come from your backyard. Conventional sources will always tell you to buy potting soil from your local Home Depot or nursery, but I’ve never done so.

Potting soil ranks up there with bottled water on the list of useless items that companies have manufactured demand for. One website claims “garden soil is not a good choice, as it compacts too easily and can harbour organisms that cause diseases.” So how exactly will your tomatoes grow in this disease-infested soil once you plant them in said garden? For large greenhouses that have disease problems, sterilized potting soil makes sense. For the backyard gardener, it’s just another example of diminishing returns on investment.

(fill some containers with backyard soil)

Once you have soil in containers, plant the tomato seeds about 1/8” deep. I labelled the containers with strips from an old Venetian blind that I found in the alley.

(pieces cut from old blinds make great signs to label plants with)  read more... »

Edmonton has a new movement: guerrilla gardening. A group of Edmontonians has started organizing and enacting gardening events that aim to promote "issues of community ownership, food security, native habitat, biodiversity, and the direct replenishing the environment in which we live our daily lives". Awesome.  read more... »

It's harvest time in Edmonton, and that means fresh, delicious food from our gardens at virtually no cost to the environment. Last night I made some soup, with 90% of the ingredients coming from my garden or the farmer's market. If I had a bigger/better garden, it could have been a 100-foot diet soup.

Ingredients:  read more... »

While weeds have been a part of my diet for over thirteen years now, and I've had many occasions to speak about eating them, it's been a long time since I've actually served them to anyone. In fact, apart from my wife, I can only recollect that reporter from the St. Albert Gazette, and my room-mates from just before I was married. And with my roomies, it was only dandelion root coffee.

Dandelion root coffee and chickweed omelets were part of a strategy to introduce weed-eating to people using the least foreign tasting species. Something like prickly lettuce isn't a friendly starting point. "Just that picture of prickly lettuce in your blog looked menacing," amandi_khera said. "I don't think I'd ever put something like that in my mouth."

Today though, I'd start with lamb's quarters. It's not just "least foreign tasting". It really tastes good.

This was my supper tonight:

 read more... »

Prickly Lettuce, a weed found in Edmonton gardens.

First: nomenclature. Which words to use?

Wild plants suggests wilderness. Untamed. Possibly dangerous (ie. toxic). But weeds implies a valueless nuisance. An overgrown eyesore.

Alright. We'll go with 'weeds'.  read more... »

I grew up eating Sunny Boy hot cereal. It use to come in a box. And the sunny boy looked different. With a bit of brown sugar, the taste probably reminds many Edmontonians of Saturday morning cartoons and cold winter mornings before school.  read more... »

If you've somehow stumbled upon this "Market Report" hoping to get an update on your IBM or Bear Stearns stock, please move on - nothing to see here. If, on the other hand, you've come here because you're interested in local food in Edmonton, come on in.

When it comes to "eating green", vegetables have it all over meat (despite the advancements in "in vitro meat"!). Even better, if you can eat in-season, organic, locally-grown produce, you've hit the trifecta.

For those of us without the benefit of a garden in our backyard (or a backyard at all for that matter), the farmers' market is our best source of locally-grown produce, much of which is grown organically. Beyond the environmental benefits, the vegetables are fresher, they taste better, and you can often talk to the folks who grew it.  read more... »

Grow Your Own!

What better way to embrace spring than to plant a few seeds and watch the creative life forces unfold before your own eyes… . Starting your own seedlings indoors is an easy and satisfying way to get into the gardening spirit while it is still freezing outside.

‘Growing your own’ has many other advantages too. It can save you a lot of money, and generally produces plants that are stronger and healthier than the chemically-fed bedding plants that are imported from California or B.C. and sold in most of our commercial greenhouses and big box stores these days.Here’s what you need to get started.  read more... »

At a time when the organic food market is booming in record proportions and interest in the local food movement higher than ever, it is puzzling to hear that the Edmonton S & R (Sharing and Responsibility) food basket program is in serious threat.  read more... »

In countries like Germany, beer and many foods play an important role in local culture. A small German city of 75,000 - 100,000 people will have one or two local breweries that its people are fiercely proud of. If we followed suit, Edmonton would have ten or more local beers for us to choose from. Drinking beer would be way more fun.  read more... »