Garden Wisdom Blog — category: Organic Growing

West Coast Seeds is a proud supporter of the amazing organization, Growing Chefs. These “Chefs for Children’s Urban Agriculture” bring food into the urban classroom in the form of raw ingredients that are completely unfamiliar to the students. Their mission is to educate children, families, and community members about healthy eating and healthy food systems. Over the course of three and a half months, the chefs visit the classroom every two weeks, helping the students plant and tend to indoor vegetable gardens. The chefs engage the students in games, lessons, and activities focusing on plant growth, local and urban agriculture,...

If you ever find yourself tempted to purchase kale from a supermarket, you really ought to try growing it. By its nature, kale is one of the easiest, hardiest, and most productive of all crops. It doesn’t need warm soil to germinate, it’s perfectly at home in containers, and it actually improves in cold weather. Heck, it thrives in cold weather, and can be harvested all winter long. Much has been made recently about kale’s nutritional quality as a Super Food. One cup of chopped raw kale contains just 33 calories, but delivers the following amounts of the recommended daily...

As we continue this Twenty-one Days of Green, planting trees seemed like an obvious choice. There are several fruit trees already growing on the farm at West Coast Seeds, so the idea came to expand the orchard area and expand our perennial food garden. With a minor investment and a bit of digging, planting just one tree improves the world tremendously. We planted two. We stopped off to visit our friends at Art’s Nursery in Langley, where they have a fine selection of common and collector fruit trees. These trees are readily available at your local garden centre, and start...

With just eight more days left to Earth Day, we thought it would be good to list some of the many Earth Day events planned for next weekend. There are some big events in the city, and lots of local events planned for smaller communities. We’re going to post this list to Facebook, so if you know of an event we missed, leave a comment, and we’ll add them to this list. Don’t be shy. These events provide an excellent chance to show solidarity for the planet, so we’re asking you to be sure to attend your local event. This...

One of the amazing opportunities facing all gardeners and farmers is planting for wildlife — or, at least, growing food with biodiversity in mind. Organic gardeners understand that soil health is inherently dependent on robust biodiversity in the soil. Earthworms, invertebrates, fungi, bacteria, and many other organisms play different roles in the breaking down of organic matter into forms that are available to plants. But this concept carries on above the soil, too. The most obvious wildlife in most gardens are the legions of pollinators and other beneficial insects, not to mention the pest species many of them prey upon....