Category: Fact Sheet

Updates from an Amateur Gardener, Pt. 1

April 10, 2024

I feel like I’ve won the lottery! A few weeks ago, I got an email from the Oswald Park Community Garden letting me know that there was a garden plot for me. How exciting! 

I live in a third-storey apartment with a very small balcony that doesn’t get a lot of light. I worked from home during the pandemic, and like many people, I got very into my houseplants. I did what I could with the balcony (and I confess I’ve killed a lot of plants). But after working for the Compost Education Centre amidst a beautiful demonstration site (come visit anytime!) for a couple months, I started to hanker for something more. The reasons to grow your own food are extensive. It increases your personal physical and mental health, leads to greater food security, and creates community. I think I also wanted to make the work I do a bit more tangible. As Executive Director, I do a lot of sitting at my computer and in meetings thinking and talking and writing about composting, circular food systems, and community resilience. I love it, but it can feel a bit abstract. I guess I want to make and use some compost with my hands instead of my words. 

I went down a bit of a rabbit hole trying to get my apartment building to okay me starting a boulevard garden, and I received a hard no from the building’s strata council. I put my name on some community garden waitlists, and I daydreamed about starting a guerilla garden somewhere on a piece of neglected land by our apartment. My partner and I talked about housing prices and whether we’d ever want to move out of our cozy apartment to somewhere with a yard. It didn’t feel like my energy was going anywhere. So when the message from Oswald Park Community Garden popped into my email inbox, it felt like a ray of sunshine on a grim late February day. It felt like the promise of spring warmth and long summer days. It felt like I had a place to put my energy. 

I’ve started polling folks for advice, and I have to admit my recent Google search looks something like “first year community garden plot help.” If I had known a few months ago that I was going to have a garden plot, I probably would have registered for Kayla’s “Grow the Best Garden: 5-Part Workshop Series.” Kayla is the CEC’s Site Manager and Community Education Coordinator, and one person who attended her workshops described her as their “invaluable gardening mentor guiding [them] through this journey with unwavering expertise and passion.” I’ve already missed the first two workshops of the series so I’m following the advice of one Redditor to “be patient, be prepare to fail, and be happy to start again.” I’m also asking Kayla for advice on our lunch breaks, and I’m poring over the CEC’s extensive factsheets. 

Stay tuned here for more updates! 

This new factsheet will walk you through: How to build the best soil;  what time and money you’ll need; easy & productive plants to grow; and how to care for your plants throughout the growing season.

All factsheets are free on our website and onsite thanks to funding provided by the CRD.

Click here to read the factsheet

Factsheet #18: Vermin Resistance

December 7, 2017

Factsheet #18: Vermin Resistance

#17 Understanding Compostable Plastics

New Factsheet: #16, Rainwater Harvesting

May 5, 2017

Spring is the perfect time to be thinking about the best ways to conserve water for the dry summer months. To assist you in ideas around how to construct efficient systems that store our abundance of spring and fall rain, the CEC has created a new factsheet that spans a range of rainwater harvesting systems, from cisterns, to rain gardens, to bioswales. #16 Rainwater Harvesting Factsheet

The Healing City Soils project has been completed for 2016! Almost 140 soil samples were tested in Victoria and Esquimalt through this joint project with Royal Roads University and the results made into an interactive map (coming soon!) to inform the community about potential for soil contamination and best practices for growing healthy produce in back and front yards and boulevards.

As well, we are thrilled to announce that two of our new factsheets from the Healing City Soils project are now complete.  These factsheets will help urban gardeners learn more about soil contamination and protect their health while growing their own groceries.

Soil Contamination:  Whether you are already growing food or would like to begin a garden, it’s a good idea to learn more about your soil so that you can grow food safely. Urban soils are often compacted and nutrient deficient, and can sometimes contain heavy metals and other contaminants as a result of historical industrial activity, past and present land use and proximity to pollution sources (e.g. a major road). Soil contaminants may get into or onto our veggies and fruits and have negative health effects over the long term. Gardeners can take many simple and inexpensive actions to reduce their exposure to urban soil contaminants. Soils can be managed, improved and made healthy again so that you and your garden can thrive.  Find the factsheet here.

Best Practices for Healthy Urban Gardens:  We recommend that all gardeners follow healthy gardening practices to help reduce exposure to heavy metals and other contaminants. Generally, maintaining a neutral soil pH, adding organic matter and compost to your soil, mulching your garden soil and thoroughly washing your garden produce can reduce your exposure to many soil contaminants so you can enjoy the many health benefits of eating fresh garden-grown fruits and vegetables. Find the factsheet here.

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Brand new factsheets!

March 16, 2016

We are excited to share two new factsheets with you!  We have been getting lots of inquiries about tumbler composters and bokashi and we decided to put together a factsheet for each one to help answer your questions and spark your interest.  If the descriptions below spark your interest, check out the new additions on our factsheets page.

Bokashi is a Japanese term meaning “fermented organic matter”. Different from composting, which is aerobic, it is an anaerobic process that allows a person to deal with a wide variety of food waste on-site. Bokashi harnesses the power of effective microorganisms (EM) dehydrated onto a cereal base to carry out the fermentation process . It is best used as a partner to a compost pile, because you will need a place to compost the ‘spent’ material once it has finished going through the bokashi process. It is a great alternative to the green cone food digester as it breaks down the same types of materials but doesn’t need sunlight or to be buried down 2 feet in your garden work. You can make your own system or purchase a ready-to-use unit.

In general, tumbler composters are in the form of a barrel mounted on a stand so the unit can be turned or “tumbled” around a central axis.  They can be mounted horizontally or vertically, both work  well.  Turning these units easily incorporates air into the material inside the tumbler, which can speed up the decomposition process.  It is possible that you may get a finished product faster than with passive backyard composting due to the increased aeration that tumblers make possible.  However, beware of manufacturers that say you will have finished compost in three weeks or less – anything that looks finished in this short amount of time will be unstable and need to sit for at least 6-8 weeks longer to cure.

When we built our new greenhouse wanted the plans for this project to be free and readily accessible.  As such, this factsheet includes a budget and materials list for the greenhouse, a list of the lessons I learned, and some photos of the building process.

Check out our updated factsheets!

June 24, 2015

If you’ve popped into our office lately you may have noticed our swanky new factsheets, but we wanted to give an official introduction to them as well!