When it comes to
being green, there’s no better place to start than in your own backyard. An organic garden can keep your
kitchen stocked with juicy apples, crisp lettuce and sweet tomatoes, all the while cultivating a healthier
and more sustainable world. By working with nature, rather than against it, organic growers are giving the
term “green thumb” a whole new meaning.
In recent years, more and more Canadians have rediscovered their inner home-based horticulturist. “Gardening
in general, whether organic or not, is probably the number one activity these days,” says Laura Telford,
national director of Canadian Organic Growers, an education and networking organization for farmers,
gardeners and consumers across the country. At the same time, the number of backyard gardeners who are moving
towards organic methods is on the rise, she says. “This is pushed not only by more awareness about the
environmental impact of fertilizers and pesticides, but also by the local pesticide by-laws that we’re seeing
across the country. So I think that’s causing people to rethink the whole chemical use thing.”
Though there may be new motivation and new technology available today, the foundations of organic gardening
are built on knowledge our great-grandparents would have possessed. “By and large the foundation for organic
farming has been there for generations,” says Telford. “It’s really resurrecting some old skills.”
So what exactly makes a garden organic? The answer can be divided into two parts. First is the set of things
you leave out, which includes anything synthetic — synthetic fertilizers, synthetic pesticides, even treated
wood. But even more important, says Telford, is the set of things you do. Organic growers use natural methods
to nurture the soil, manage pests and diseases, and increase production. It all starts, literally, from the
ground up. “You have to build the soil,” she says. “The point of building the soil is to focus on building
healthy plants with lots of nutrition that can have strong immune systems so they can fight off their own
battles without using the pesticides.”
Bylaws aside, there are other benefits to going organic. One is personal safety. “Not having to store and use
harmful chemicals is a big one for the backyard gardener,” says Telford. For many organic gardeners, it also
comes down to growing for their children’s children. “When you use synthetic you’re actually decreasing the
quality of the soil. You’re killing the micro-organisms that work with Mother Nature to help nourish
and grow plants,” says Telford. “When you garden organically you’re actually leaving the soil better than you
found it so that it can continue to produce food for future generations.”
Growing organically may also have financial perks in the long run. “I think what gardeners would find is
they’re going to pay a little bit more for certified organic seeds, but they’re going to pay less if they can
cut out the fertilizers and pesticides,” says Telford. “So overall you probably end up paying less.”
AN ORGANIC GROWER’S TALE
As a teenager, Roxanne Beavers began volunteering at a demonstration organic garden in her hometown
of Peterborough, Ont. It soon turned into a summer job, and the beginning of a lifelong infatuation. “I
really fell in love with gardening and plants and growing food,” says Beavers. “I think I’ve gardened
every summer since then in some way… It’s really kind of like the best, most local food you can have, to grow
it yourself.”
Now living in Lower Onslow, N.S., Beavers has turned her green thumb into her livelihood. By day she works as
an agricultural consultant specializing in organic inspection and research. At the same time, she tends to
her own organic garden and has been selling at the farmers’ market in nearby Truro for the past five years.
Her operation, Salad Bowl Gardens, proudly runs under a philosophy of “24 hours from fridge to field to
fork,” with greens picked the day before the market.
It helps that the greens are grown a mere 11 km outside of town, on Beaver’s three-acre property. “[The
garden] is under half an acre and we grow salad mix and heirloom tomatoes and a whole mixture of other
different vegetables,” she says. She starts planting around March and sells until the end of September, but
continues to harvest beyond that — even in early December she discovers things she could be harvesting from
the fields. Last spring Salad Bowl Garden received organic certification from Eco-Cert, which means the farm
underwent third-party inspection and proved that it met a high standard for sustainable farming practices.
Around that time, Beavers launched Club SBG, a community shared agriculture program that offered a weekly box
delivery service to its 20 members.
Beavers has extra motivation for staying organic: her son, Oliver, who is turning two this year. “I try to
feed him as much organic food as possible,” she says. “I think we’re exposed to a lot of different pesticides
when we’re buying conventional food from the grocery store; we don’t know where it’s coming from. So it just
makes me feel safer.” She has also found her garden to be quite the money-saver. “We eat from our garden all
summer long, our grocery bills go way down, and it’s really healthy, fresh food that we wouldn’t necessarily
go into a store and buy every week.”
Whatever their incentive, organic growers rely on certain tricks of the trade to ensure a thriving and
environmentally friendly garden. Here are some practical tips for creating your own green paradise at
home:
Rotate the crops. Each kind of crop uses up particular nutrients in the soil, and attracts
specific pests and diseases. The solution: crop rotation. Moving the crops around from season to season
restores the soil, prevents the build-up of pests and diseases, and even helps when it comes to the dreaded
“W” word. “[It’s] one of the key strategies that we use to manage weeds, which are a devil if you don’t have
chemicals,” says Telford. Some good rotations are growing corn after legumes such as beans and peas, and
potatoes after corn.
Feed the soil. Compost, manure and mulch are invaluable ingredients in good gardening. When
these organic materials break down in the soil, nutrients are restored, drainage is improved, and the soil is
kept damp and airy. “You need to make sure you have something to add fertility,” says Beavers. “You can buy
bagged compost in stores or you can make your own. And that just helps give the plants good soil
conditions so that they can grow better, and nutrients as well.”
Consider transplants. For novice gardeners, starting seedlings indoors is a great safety
net. “You can get pots and soil and just start them on a window ledge or in your kitchen, wherever you
have a little space, and that allows you to get a bit of a head start on the season,” says Beavers, who
initially got her transplants from nurseries but with more experience now grows her own. Tomatoes, which
generally take a long time to grow from the seed, are an ideal crop for transplanting. Especially important
for organic gardeners, transplanting also reduces the exposure of your fledging plant to dangers such as
insects and weed competition.
Do companion planting. In lieu of chemical sprays, planting certain crops together is a
natural way to protect your garden. Mixed crops and strong-smelling plants such as aloe vera and garlic can
ward off unwanted bugs, while the flowers of some plants such as carrot and mint can attract beneficial
insects. Do some research into which plants make good neighbours. A particular crop may repel pests that are
likely to invade the next row of vegetables, or put nutrients into the soil that the plant in the next row
needs.
Weed wisely. Not all “weeds” are bad — some attract beneficial insects like bees and
butterflies, while others, such as clover, enrich the soil with nitrogen. Then there are weeds that threaten
your garden by attracting pests like aphids that take light, food and water from your plants. When the ground
is damp, you can remove these weeds by digging, pulling or cutting them off under the surface. “You want to
make sure you get a couple of really good hoes or hand-cultivating tools,” says Beavers.
Use cover crops. The first kind of cover crop includes things like rye and grain that are
planted and plowed down, but not harvested, says Telford. Organic gardeners plant these as a way to keep the
soil covered at all times. In the spring they’re tilled back in the soil, which increases the amount of
organic matter there. The second kind of cover crop is legumes, which is how organic farmers get fertilizer
into the soil. “We capture nitrogen from the air through legumes and then they put it in the soil and put it
in a form that is made available to plants. So that’s how we avoid using the fertilizer in the bags,” says
Telford. “We get it from Mother Nature.”
Work with the weather. Organic gardening relies on working with your natural environment,
and that includes climate. Luckily, the Atlantic region is ideal for a wide variety of crops, says Beavers.
Growers produce greens such as lettuce and broccoli, and root vegetables such as carrots. “Potatoes are
a big one out here,” she adds. However, the climate does require Beaver to give her heirloom tomatoes special
attention. “They don’t always have the same resistance to disease that newer varieties have, so because
our weather is so humid and moist out here, sometimes we have problems with diseases,” she says.
Wildlife-proof. If you’re not careful, hungry critters will get to your plants before you
do. Beavers’ garden has been challenged by slugs, caterpillars and a persistent fellow known as the flea
beetle. Her solutions: handpicking the pests off in the evenings, or covering her crops with a thin fabric
known as a row cover. “It’s almost like putting a blanket over the specific plants that are having a problem,
and that works really well,” says Beavers. •
Photo courtesy
of Salad Bowl Gardens
