Tag: Education
Community Supported Forestry (CSF)
Growing Climate-Resilient Neighbourhoods One Tree at a Time If you’ve ever signed up for a vegetable CSA, you already understand the idea behind Community Supported Forestry. You invest in something local, share in the harvest, and become part of something bigger than a transaction. Now imagine doing that with trees. From Vegetables to Forests Community…
Edmonton Youth Beekeeping Club
The Northlands/Prince’s Charities Edmonton Youth Bee Club From Spring until Fall, students from across the Edmonton gathed at Northlands to learn about honeybees. Sponsored by the Prince’s Charities (Now Kings Trust), twenty students, acged 13 to 18, managed ten beehives on site. Each week, weather permitting, we covered important beekeeping topics and performed routine hive inspections.…
The 5 School Garden Pace Layers
Designing Better School Gardens Using Pace Layer Thinking School boards live for centuries, school buildings last decades, teaching careers come and go in thirty to forty years, the curriculum changes every decade or so, students come and go every three years, semesters turn over twice a year, units last weeks, and lessons are over in…
BeeComm Community For Small-Scale Beekeepers
BeeComm, contains more tools, resources, videos, and opportunities for community collaboration.
Garden Design Course
Online ecological garden design course covers five techniques for creating a garden that reduces work, increases yields and works with nature
Making Walnut Ink and Dye
Making Ink and Dye From Walnut Seeds I discovered walnut ink while collecting and processing (dehusking) walnuts to plant with the Shrubscriber community. Locally, the most common Walnut is the White or Butternut Walnut (Juglans cinerea but I occasionally run across Black Walnuts (Juglans nigra) and Manchurian Walnuts (Juglans mandschurica). I gather seeds, a process…
Cold Hardy Food Forest Plant List
A Growing Inventory of Cold Hardy Perennial Plants Since 2015, I’ve been propagating and growing tonnes of USDA hardiness zone 1 to 5 perennial plants in my Edmonton backyard and urban farm plot. The list has grown to over 285 species across 152 plant genera. Tagging each species by edible component (fruit, nut, leaf, bark,…
Classroom Container Gardening
Start A School Garden With Pots and Containers One of the easiest ways to introduce gardening to students is through classroom container gardening. A significant obstacle to growing food in the classroom is finding a permanent space, but pots and containers allow any teacher to start small without a fixed garden space. Container gardening can…
Creating A Classroom Aquaponics System
Why Set Up A Classroom Aquaponics System? Lots of classrooms have plants and fish, but not many combine them into a symbiotic classroom aquaponics system. When connected, fish waste provides water and nutrients to the plants while the plants clean the water for the fish. Aquaponics systems contain a complete nitrogen cycle and symbiotic relationships but are…
School Urban Agriculture Supports Local Food
Growing Food in Schools To Kickstart Urban Agriculture One of the best ways to kickstart a local movement is to provide early access to training. I saw this firsthand when culinary teacher and Pastry Chef Kelly Hobbs’ culinary students won more than 28 awards between 2009 and 2017. After graduation, a sizable number of them enrolled in…
School Garden Challenges and How to Avoid Them
Avoid These 4 Common School Garden Challenges Over the past decant, I’ve seen a significant increase in schools interested in school gardens. School gardens are important teaching tools that support learning, local food, and resilient communities. Traditionally run as extra-curricular activities or horticulture classes, the school garden is a tool for differentiated instruction, problem-solving, and…
Espalier Fruit Trees
A Leafy Wall of Fruit. Save Space, Increase Yields, and Extend the Growing Season with Espalier Fruit Trees Espalier fruit trees are a great way to conserve space, grow food, and create a beautiful garden. Espalier is the ancient practice of training plants against a two-dimensional surface such as a wall or trellis, typically trees,…