Category: Organic Gardening

Survey for Garden St. Food Forest

February 12, 2025

A group of interested neighbours on Garden Street, with the support of the Compost Education Centre are making efforts to have 2518 Garden Street listed officially as a community garden and obtain an official license of occupation with the city of Victoria. We are conducting a survey to ensure that the community is consulted. 

The vision for the Garden Street Food Forest, which currently is an existing unique garden space that is managed by neighbours, is to improve upon this already well established urban oasis green space, with a magic “secret garden” ambiance as a powerful and alluring quality of the unique space for immediate neighbours and the broader community (of human and non-human beings, think birds and bees) to come together for relaxation, sanctuary, education, food security, and to build social connection and community.

If you have any questions about this project, please reach out to Kayla at the Compost Education Centre at 250-386-9676. Thank you for your input, it’s appreciated. 

Farmer to Farmer 2025

January 31, 2025

On Thursday January 23, Site Manager and Education Director, Kayla had the opportunity to attend the Farmer-to-Farmer conference hosted by the South Island Farmers Institute. A weeklong conference, that consists of field trip days to tour local farming operations and learn on site. This event gave Kayla the chance to attend lectures by farmers, for farmers. As the main steward of the CEC demonstration gardens and seedling grower for our plant sales, Kayla found the company and information provided at different lectures, very supportive. The roundtable lunch time conversations were so helpful for hearing how other farmers steward their soil, grow their seedlings and have a productive farm business.

Kayla attended an interesting talk called “Floods, Fires, Storms and Heat: Can we manage risks in a changing climate?” where an expert instructor talked through the importance of managing risk, disaster possibility, and dramatic climate conditions in gardens, farms and landscapes. Later, Kayla confirmed some of what she held to be true in her soil microbiology knowledge by attending a talk called “The Essential Role of Microorganisms”. At lunch she learned a ton from other farmers with seedling operations (germination chambers, hoop houses, vermiculate, fans, times, oh my!). In the afternoon, more talk about soil stewardship came from a farmer with a large acreage. They conduct academic research on cover crops and best management practices for small scale farms on the coast. It was fascinating to hear so much about the benefits of cover cropping. Kayla wrapped up the educational portion of the day with a talk about emotional and mental resilience for farmers and growers – how to avoid burn out and bounce back from busy seasons. Not only did she learn tips and tricks for staying healthy through busy times, but she also enjoyed partnering up with other growers to hear how they take care of themselves during the busiest parts of their year. The day wrapped up with a jovial farmer trivia game! While the team Kayla was a part of did great, they didn’t win, but the laughs and challenge were very enjoyable.

Fall Plant Sale Fast Approaching!

July 25, 2024

The Compost Education Centre (CEC) is hosting our annual all-organic Fall plant sale! August 10, 10am-12pm!

The plant sale will take place in our site at 1216 North Park street. Stay for a while and enjoy bike pedal-powered music in the garden. Entry by donation or free for CEC members. Dogs welcome.

The Fall Organic Plant sale features veggie starts that are perfect for your overwintering vegetable garden.

What you can look forward to:

• A selection of annual vegetables suitable for fall and winter growing

• Native plants for your low maintenance garden

• Perennial edibles like berry bushes and other fruiting shrubs

• Medicinal herbs like English lavender, chamomile and yarrow

• Live bicycle powered music!

The Compost Education Centre is located on unceded and occupied Indigenous territories, specifically the land of the Lekwungen speaking people—the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations. These nations are two of many, made up of individuals who have lived within the porous boundaries of what is considered Coast Salish, Nuu-Chah-Nulth and Kwakwa’wakw Territory (Vancouver Island) since time immemorial. At the CEC we seek to respect, honour and continually grow our own understandings of Indigenous rights and history, and to fulfill our responsibilities as settlers, who live and work directly with the land and its complex, vital ecologies and our diverse, evolving communities.

Compost Education Centre memberships get you free workshops, discounts at garden centres around town and more great perks! Sign up or learn more on our website.

Accessibility Information

The Compost Education Centre is committed to creating a welcoming and inclusive experience for all our community members.

Getting to the Compost Education Centre

The Compost Education Centre is located at 1216 North Park St. The closest bus stops are:

• Pandora Ave at Chambers St (Stop ID: 100169) (300 meters away) served by Routes 2, 5, 27, and 28;
• Cook St at Balmoral Rd (Stop ID: 100160) (350 meters away) served by Routes 24 and 25;
• Fernwood Rd at Grant St (Stop ID: 100227) (450 meters away) served by Route 22; and
• Bay St at Cedar Hill (Stop ID: 103733) (750 meters away) served by Route 10.

A bus transit planner is available on the BC Transit website (https://www.bctransit.com/victoria/).

The Compost Education Centre is accessible by bicycle, and there is ample bike parking available. Bike routes are visible on the CRD website (https://maps.crd.bc.ca/Html5Viewer/?viewer=BikeMap).

Parking

Parking is very limited. The closest parking options during the week are:

• Two 2-hour parking spots at the corner of North Park St and Chambers St (50 meters away);
• Three 2-hour parking spots at Haegert Park (100 meters away);
• One 1-hour parking spot at the corner of North Park St and Cook St (250 meters away);
• Multiple 1-hour parking spots on Gladstone Ave opposite the Fernwood Community Centre (300 meters away); and
• One 1-hour parking spot at the corner of Caledonia Ave and Cook St (350 meters away).

All other parking within 400 meters of the Compost Education Centre is residential-only. While construction is occurring adjacent to the Compost Education Centre at 1211 Gladstone Ave (projected to be complete in June 2025), parking is even more limited.

On Saturdays, parking is available in the Victoria High School parking lots that are accessible off Grant St and Gladstone Ave. From these parking lots, it is less than a 300 meter walk to the Compost Education Centre.

Site Accessibility

The Compost Education Centre site has paths made of wood chips. Mobility devices with wheels (such as wheelchairs, walkers etc.) are sometimes difficult to use on site. The Strawbale learning classroom is accessed via a wooden ramp, and it has a wide double door and a ramp leading up to it. Once inside the Strawbale, the floor is a level hard surface. There is a single-stall gender-neutral washroom on site. The washroom is not wheelchair accessible. There is a wooden ramp up to the washroom door and a small step over the doorframe into the washroom. The retail space is not wheelchair accessible; there are four steps up into our retail space.

Garden Plot Plan

May 14, 2024

Because I won’t have the plot until the end of the March at the earliest, it’s my plan to focus on summer crops to start. I’m trying to choose vegetables based on what I like to eat (duh), how easy they are to grow, and what people have suggested. So far I have: tomatoes, basil, and sweet peas. Ooh and I definitely want to grow some happy flowers for some happy pollinators.

The garden plots at Oswald Park are not big, which I think will be great for a novice gardener like me. I don’t really know what I’m doing and I tend to fill my summers with activities. The thought of having a relatively small space in which to mess up in sounds just about right. I took a look at the “square foot garden plan guide,” which shows how many plantings to do per square foot. This is what the current plot map looks like:

Most of the plants above can be direct sown, but the tomatoes need to be started early. I had a few seeds left over from a failed balcony container gardening experiment a few summers ago, and I bought a seed packet from the CEC, too.

I’m planning on traveling for a two week span over the summer so I’m also thinking ahead to watering needs. At the Victoria Seedy Sunday, I met the folks from Mayne Island Clay Works. They make these beautiful “ollas,” which are designed to buried in the ground and filled with water that is then slowly released to surrounding plants. We have one in the CEC retail space right now, and I’m kinda obsessed. I sent them an email, and they’ll bring one down to Victoria the next time they’re here doing deliveries. I’ve got this wild idea that I can dilute the Bokashi liquid in the olla for my fertilizer and irrigation needs. Stay tuned.

Next Steps

And we’re rolling, people! I’ll be keeping an eye on my tomato starts, drinking coffee for the Bokashi bran, making the Bokashi bran, and planning my planting dates for my other vegetables. Check back in a few weeks to hear how I’m doing!

Spring Plant Sale happening soon!

April 19, 2024

The Compost Education Centre (CEC) is hosting our annual all-organic May plant sale! May 11th, 2024 10AM-2PM

The plant sale will take place in Haegert Park (1202 Yukon St.) one block from our site on North Park street. Bring a blanket or a picnic so you can enjoy the music in the shade of the giant Sequoia tree. Entry by donation or free for CEC members. Dogs welcome.

The Spring Organic Plant Sale features local farmers offering a wide variety of organically grown vegetable, flower and herb seedlings to get you off to a successful start this growing season.

There will also be a Parent-Child workshop taking place during the sale, from 11:00am-12:00pm so bring the whole family!

What you can look forward to:

• The largest selection of organically grown heirloom tomato varieties all in one place for easy shopping

• Organically grown vegetable starts from arugula to zucchini

• Native plants for your low maintenance garden

• Perennial edibles like berry bushes and other fruiting shrubs

• Medicinal herbs like English lavender, chamomile and yarrow

• Culinary herbs like Genovese basil, dill and chives

• Companion plants like marigolds, sweet cicely and comfrey

• Live bicycle powered music!

The Compost Education Centre is located on unceded and occupied Indigenous territories, specifically the land of the Lekwungen speaking people—the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations. These nations are two of many, made up of individuals who have lived within the porous boundaries of what is considered Coast Salish, Nuu-Chah-Nulth and Kwakwa’wakw Territory (Vancouver Island) since time immemorial. At the CEC we seek to respect, honour and continually grow our own understandings of Indigenous rights and history, and to fulfill our responsibilities as settlers, who live and work directly with the land and its complex, vital ecologies and our diverse, evolving communities.

Compost Education Centre memberships get you free workshops, discounts at garden centres around town and more great perks! Sign up or learn more on our website.

Accessibility Information

The sale will be happening in Haegert park which is grassy and slightly sloped, there are curb cuts at various entrance points to get into the park.

Visitors can park at the Vic High parking lot between Gladstone Avenue and Grant St. The parking lot is a 200m walk from Haegert Park.

Updates from an Amateur Gardener: Thinking About Soil Quality and Compost

April 19, 2024

I haven’t officially taken possession of my plot, but I’ve wandered over to take a look a few times. The soil doesn’t look as happy and healthy as the soil at the CEC demonstration site (although the CEC’s soil is about 32 years in the making), and it doesn’t smell as “earthy” or “mushroom-like” as Kayla recommends for a vegetable garden. It feels and looks a bit sandy, which has me thinking I should try to add some compost and/or organic matter.

A few months ago, someone dropped off a Bokashi at the CEC because they weren’t interested in using it anymore. The Bokashi system is a 5-gallon bucket that facilitates anaerobic fermentation of organic matter that produces a nutrient-rich liquid that you can use as plant fertilizer as well as a fermented residual that needs to be further composted. At the time, Zoe-Blue encouraged me to take the Bokashi home for some experiments. I hesitated for a few reasons. The first is that while I have many houseplants, I don’t have so many that I need a constant supply of liquid fertilizer. The second is that I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the residual besides put it in our apartment’s organics green bin. The third is that the Bokashi system uses a “bran,” or a mix of essential microbes on a cereal base. While you can buy bokashi bran online from Bokashi Living, I felt daunted by the shipping costs. So I had left the Bokashi sitting (lonely) on our balcony for the past few months.

With the availability of a garden plot, I’ve felt re-energized to use the Bokashi. I stumbled upon this recipe for Bokashi bran using used coffee grounds. I had everything I needed on the recipe list to make the Bokashi bran except the “Effective Microorganisms,” (EM) and I was able to order those locally from the Organic Gardener’s Pantry. The Pantry’s owner, Christina, dropped the EM off for me at the CEC office this week. I’m excited to keep drinking coffee and get this Bokashi going. (I also realized when ordering the EM that Christina also sells Bokashi bran…so I’ve got a backup plan if this DIY approach doesn’t work out.)

In the meantime, my friend Amanda let me know where I could get some partially decomposed horse manure. Animal manure from cows, sheep, and horses can be an awesome soil amendment for home gardens. The manure supplies primary nutrients and micronutrients for plant growth, and it’s also a source of organic matter. By increasing the organic matter of the soil, you can increase the soil’s water-holding capacity, improve soil drainage, and promote the growth of beneficial soil microorganisms.

I have a few months until I plant and harvest so I applied about a wheelbarrow’s worth of manure, and I worked it in the soil. My plan is to keep any eye on it over the next few months, keep working it into the soil, and hope that it is more fully decomposed before planting.

After I mixed the manure in with the soil (which was so much fun!), I did get the warning from another friend that horse manure can contain a high amount of grass and weed seeds. This is something I’ll keep an eye on over the next few weeks, and I might do something differently next year!

My partner recently sent me this article, Urban agriculture’s carbon footprint can be worse than that of large farms, and I felt a sense of outrage and surprise. I love urban agriculture!

I was relieved to dig a little deeper into the publication to find that the study did find that urban agriculture has a smaller carbon footprint than conventional agriculture when the following practices are followed:

– Composting

– Rainwater harvesting

– Using construction debris and demolition waste for infrastructure

– Longer-term use of infrastructure and tenancy of a space

The Compost Education Centre helps to steward several urban gardens including at our demonstration site, a boulevard garden network in the Fairfield-Gonzales neighborhood, the Alexander Park Orchard, and SJ Burnside Secondary School’s teaching garden. Our demonstration site features eight different composting systems, rainwater cisterns and barrels, and a solar-powered aquaponics system. Come by anytime for a visit!

We have found that urban gardens serve as powerful outdoor classrooms that inspire local climate mitigation and adaptation activities. For example, our urban gardens empower community members to:

– Produce food locally with the objective of improving food security and mitigate emissions associated with our food system.

– Cultivate native plant and pollinator gardens to support pollinators, which are under threat from climate change.

– Implement rainwater harvesting to reduce climate change vulnerability.

In addition to acquiring technical skills, our community members experience increased connectivity to a peaceful and welcoming space in Victoria. We consider our urban gardens to be a nature-based driver for social cohesion and improved climate change adaptation – and we’re excited that the research backs us up, too.

Claire Remington, Executive Director

May Plant Sale

April 5, 2023

The Compost Education Centre (CEC) is hosting our annual all-organic Spring plant sale on May 13th from 10AM-2PM!

The plant sale will take place for the first time in Haegert Park (1202 Yukon St.) one block from our site on North Park street. Bring a blanket or a picnic so you can enjoy the music in the shade of the giant Sequoia tree. Entry by donation or free for CEC members. Dogs welcome.

The Spring Organic Plant Sale features local farmers offering a wide variety of organically grown vegetable, flower and herb seedlings to get you off to a successful start this growing season.

There will also be a Parent-Child workshop ‘Spectacular Seeds’ taking place during the sale, so bring the whole family and learn about seeds while you’re here!

What you can look forward to:

• The largest selection of organically grown heirloom tomato varieties all in one place for easy shopping

• Organically grown vegetable starts from arugula to zucchini

• Native plants for your low maintenance garden

• Perennial edibles like berry bushes and other fruiting shrubs

• Medicinal herbs like English lavender, chamomile and yarrow

• Culinary herbs like Genovese basil, dill and chives

• Companion plants like marigolds, sweet cicely and comfrey

• Live music!

Thank you to the City of Victoria and Cold Comfort Ice Cream for generously sponsoring this event.