Local Delicious

Have a couple of hours this Saturday and want to get down and dirty? How about volunteering to help maintain gardens for the Edible Garden Project.

The mission of the project is to create a network of communities where locally grown food is collected and distributed to organizations that provide food to low income families and individuals. The Edible Garden Project connects homeowners with gardens who want to donate a portion of their harvest, people who have under or unused garden space and would like to cultivate this land for growing food, and volunteers who want to contribute to the growing, sharing, and learning around locally produced food.

Saturday, June 27
10:00 am to Noon
North Shore (Vancouver, BC)
For location details, contact: coordinator@ediblegardenproject.com

Meet up with other gardeners, get great garden advice, and help the community.

Composting is all well and good, but no one wants their bin to send the equivalent of an engraved invitation to critters. Especially really big critters!

The Edible Garden Project is offering a workshop on Composting in Bear Country — Coexisting on the Edge of a Rainforest:

Wednesday, June 24
6:30 pm
District of West Vancouver City Hall, Council’s Chambers

Register with the Lynn Canyon Ecology Centre by calling 604.990.3755. (Note: they only take reservations by phone or in person.)

You can also visit the Edible Garden Project events calendar for more information on this and other workshops.

The Edible Garden Project is a brilliant initiative of the North Shore Neighbourhood House. The simple aim of the Project is to ensure that the community’s low-income citizens have local fruits and vegetables to eat, by collecting donated food from home gardeners and running community gardens that then supply produce to organizations, such as the Harvest Project, which in turn distribute food to those in need.

The Project also offers workshops and information on how to grow, preserve, and store your produce. Check out their events calendar for details on upcoming sessions such as Composting in Bear Country and Invasive Plants, Identifying and Replacing the Bad Guys.

You Can Get Involved
The Edible Garden Project is always sourcing new land for growing food. Do you have an unused backyard space that could be cultivated by the Project’s volunteer team? Or, if you are already gardening, how about donating some of your excess harvest? Take a look at the drop off schedule for details and locations.

Invasive, non-indigenous plants (i.e. not from here originally) can choke out the local vegetation and impact localized micro-ecosystems. It doesn’t seem like a big deal, but think about the big picture. When the plants that house and feed the bugs that feed the birds we’re used to seeing no longer grow, neither do the bugs or the birds.

And, contrary to popular belief, some bugs are actually good bugs that we’d be lost without! Same with the birds.

The Edible Garden Project and local landscaper, Heather Schamehorn, are offering a workshop to learn to identify plants that threaten our native species and find out what to do about them:

Invasive Plants — Identifying and Replacing the Bad Guys.
Saturday, June 13
1:00 pm
Lynn Canyon Ecology Centre, outdoors

Call the Ecology Centre at 604.990.3755 to register. You can also check out the Edible Garden Project events calendar for more information on this and other workshops.