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1.Choose crops with short shelf lives to reduce food waste
Did you know vegetables and fruit make up 45% of Canada’s food waste? Growing your own ensures fresh harvests when you need them, instead of spoiled vegetables in the fridge or grocery store. Growing crops with short shelf lives like baby leaf lettuce, spinach, arugula, cilantro, parsley, or dill goes a long way to reducing waste.
2. Choose crops commonly sold in packaging to reduce plastic use
Did you know plastic food packaging makes up 1/3 of all plastic packaging in Canada? Crops commonly packaged in plastic like English cucumber, cauliflower, herbs, and strawberries can easily be grown at home.
3.Grow by seed to eliminate plastic in the garden
Starting seeds at home by direct sowing or seed starting indoors can eliminate the plastic pots and peat produced when you purchase from the store – and save you money. Ditch plastic by exploring earth-friendly tools such as soil blockers, hemp fibre cubes, CowPots, coco coir, potmakers or re-using toilet paper rolls and empty yogurt containers.
4.Grow organically without pesticides
Instead of reaching for organic or synthetic pesticides at the first sight of pests like aphids or spider mites, you can plan ahead for natural pest control by inviting predator insects into your garden through companion planting.
Adding umbelliferous flowers and herbs, such as cilantro, dill and yarrow which produce scores of tiny nectar-rich flowers on an umbrella-shaped plane, can attract beneficial insects that eat pests.
In addition, a trap crop such as nasturtium that is highly attractive to pests can be planted near, but outside, of your vegetable garden to help you monitor levels of pests in your garden and provide a bank of food for predator insects.
Physical barriers such as floating row cover can exclude pests like cabbage moths from your brassicas to prevent damage, naturally.
5.Grow organically without synthetic fertilizers
Rather than showering plants with synthetic fertilizers which provide big boosts to foliar growth only short term and long term harm the network of roots, microbes and soil below ground, we can build living soils where plants thrive.
No-till gardening increases carbon, soil structure and microbial life, and decreases weeds. We can plant directly into compost or manure added on top of garden beds.
Adding leaf mulch in the fall and planting cover crops such as fall rye, buckwheat, or fava beans when crops are finished ensures there is habitat and roots in the ground for soil life.
Create your own compost with a backyard compost pile, bokashi composter in the kitchen, or worm composter for natural fertilizers.
6.Practice Water-Wise Gardening
Water early when soil is coolest for less evaporation. Water less frequently, but more deeply to encourage deep roots. Water the soil, not plants to reduce evaporation. Mulch to help conserve water in the soil.
You can take it a step further by capturing water in dedicated rain barrels. Or experiment cycling or storing water with hydroponics or self-watering reservoirs.
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