STRATEGIES FOR SUSTAINABLE GARDENING IN CALGARY

STRATEGIES FOR SUSTAINABLE GARDENING IN CALGARY

An Evening of Discovery and Discussion about what SUSTAINABILITY means for your Garden

A presentation featuring Rob Avis, Verge Permaculture
When: Friday, January 21st, 2011
Where: Unitarian Church of Calgary, 1703-1 St. N.W.
Cost: early registration $5 per person or $10 at the door
To Register: book your seats through: http://www.calhort.org/events or call the Calgary Horticultural Society office at 403-287-3469, ext 0

An event sponsored by:
Community Garden Resource Network-A project of the Calgary Horticultural Society;
Green Sanctuary (Unitarian Church of Calgary)
Apiaries and Bees for Communities &
An Alberta Community Spirit Grant


CURES FOR THE MID-WINTER BLAHS!

Even in the depths of winter there is always great things for an avid gardener to do.

The Calgary Horticultural Society hosts workshops on most Saturday mornings on a wide variety of subjects to the gardener in you.

Upcoming workshops include:
Jan 29th- The Household Jungle-How to care for your Indoor Plants
Feb 5th- Passionate for Petunias
Feb 12th- The Edible Flower Garden
Feb 26th-Plant Propagation-Know before you dig

Please check the Society's website at www.calhort.org and click on the 'Our Workshops' button for further details. New workshops are always being added so check back frequently!

Making Lemonade

Sometimes I wonder if I’m crazy. Other times, I’m gosh darn sure I am. This is one of those times. I planted quack grass today. You heard me; I am growing this uber-noxious weed on purpose. I dug up some rhizomes, cut them up into sections, buried them in potting soil, and to add to the insanity, I even added some organic fertilizer to help it grow better.


This all came about when I was watching a friend’s cat this summer. As soon as he was let out into the yard, he would make a beeline for the quack grass and start chomping away. He completely ignored the grass on the organic lawn, the fresh catnip patch and the fancy cat grass grown specifically for him. I have noticed this behavior with dogs as well. They seem to have a clear preference for quack grass. Since it doesn’t appear to do the cat any harm, I decided to pot up some quack grass for the little dude this winter. I’ll also pot up his usual cat grass to see which one he likes best.


The McClure garden has a wealth of quack grass (that’s where I got the rhizomes from), and like they say, “If life gives you lemons, make lemonade!” I think I have found the quack grass lemonade. There is a neurotoxin in quack grass that kills slugs. That’s why you won’t find slugs on these weeds. You can chop or grind up the quack grass leaves and roots and sprinkle around your plants. You can also make a tea by soaking chopped quack grass in water for 24 hours and spray/water on the soil as a deterrent. My personal favorite is the quack grass cake recipe from The Mighty Internet (www.ghorganics.com/page13.html).


Mix together 1 ounce of corn bran, 3/4 of an ounce of powdered milk, 1 ounce of cornstarch and 16 ounces of beer. Combine all of these with 8 ounces of dried quack grass to make a thick paste that will form pellets. It goes on to say you should run this through a meat grinder to create pellets which you then allow to air dry. Spread the pellets around the boundaries of the seedling bed. Slugs will be attracted to the beer bait and eat the toxic grass!

You realize what this could mean, don’t you? McClure’s biggest weed could be converted into marketable products for fundraising. Think of these value-added items:

• quack grass tea bags for easy brewing of a toxic tea


• powdered quack grass for sprinkling around your plants and because it’s powdered, you don’t have to worry about the quack grass growing and taking over


• quack grass cake – poisoned pastries for unwanted guests


• gourmet pet grass – the clear choice of discerning cats and dogs.

I’ll have to create some prototypes in the Spring and do some testing. When people ask what I do at McClure, it would be so much fun to tell them I grow weed as a cash crop.

Striking Gold in the Garden

This has been a great year for potatoes. The picture shows the yield for one Yukon Gold potato plant harvested on August 27, 2010. The monster-sized one weighed over a kilogram!

Have you ever wondered if it makes economic sense to grow your own food? Today I decided to crunch the numbers for this batch of potatoes and check it out.

Costs: Total outlay $1.70
- one seed potato $0.20
- rental of two square feet of space in a community garden to grow the potato in (water, compost, and tools were included) $1.50

Yield: 4.02 pounds of potatoes at $1.49 per pound (reasonable estimated price for organic Yukon Gold potatoes in the stores) gives me $5.99 as the market value of my harvest.

Return: In just a little over three months, I’ve achieved a whopping 253% return on investment. Wow! If only the stock market was so generous.

Conclusion: My analysis confirms that it is economically worthwhile to grow your own potatoes. If I save one of these potatoes to use as seed next year, my returns could jump to 300%. Yay!