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What better surprise on a work day than returning to your desk to find a joyous bunch of flowers. For an eco-weenie like me, seeing that my friend had chosen locally produced flowers sent me from joyful to ecstatic. It’s great to see that a growing (sorry) number of florists are offering organic, local and fair trade flower options.

According to an article (linked here) in the Toronto Star, “Roughly 75 per cent of all cut flowers that are sold in Canada year-round come from Colombia and Ecuador and another 10 per cent from Holland, says Flowers Canada, which represents 1,000 industry retailers and wholesalers. The rest are from Kenya, California, Ontario and B.C.”  According to the book, “How Bad Are Bananas: The Carbon Footprint of Everything” a single red rose flown from Columbia to the UK has a carbon footprint of 350 g of CO2, where a red rose from a Holland greenhouses flown to the UK has a horrific carbon footprint of 2.5 kg (5.5 lbs.) of CO2 .

Wow. I’m definitely going to try to give people flowers from my own garden when I have a local birthday to celebrate. That’s one way to reduce carbon footprint!

Of course the climate change impacts are bad enough, but according to the Star article, there are major social impacts as well. “A big bunch of the commercial flowers produced in South America are reportedly among the most toxic and heavily sprayed agricultural crops on the planet. And concerns persist surrounding the low pay and poor working conditions of those in the field, particularly women and in some cases children.”  However some Canadian florists are purchasing Fair Trade flowers from South America. Click here to read this terrific piece from The Tyee about the differences that makes to floral industry workers.

Here are some of the things that Eco Stems, the company my friend sent flowers from, is doing to reduce their environmental impact:

- They use a mix of local, organic and Fair Trade flowers

- They do their deliveries by bicycle!

- They send their flowers in kraft paper, not clear plastic (which, I believe, can’t be recycled)

- They use a renewable energy supplier for their electricity

- They print their brochures on 100 per cent recycled, FSC certified paper stock

Sometimes I feel like a picky parker asking people where things are from, what’s in them or how they were made (but, to the annoyance of those around me, I often ask anyway). Would you ask your florist where their flowers came from, or would you feel hesitant to do that?

Last weekend I enjoyed getting out into the warm sunshine. I had a look around my garden to see what was coming up, and I spent some time starting flower and veggie seeds. I was proud to plant some of my own seeds: I’d planted nasturtiums last year, with their beautiful orange edible flowers. I saved a lot of seeds from them, and as I put the tiny, shrivelled pods into the potting soil, I felt a wave of optimism. Hope comes in small packages!

In addition to my favourite spring bulbs, including tulips and hyacinth, I was happy to see native Columbine coming back. Here it is, below.

I’d heard that now is the best time to get ahead of weeds, so I armed myself with spade and trowel. I have a cute but aggressive purple violets that tried to take over part of my garden, and I’m battling them back to a very small area. They aren’t technical invasive, but they seem like it!

And only five days later, my seed-starting efforts were rewarded! Yesterday my first sprout popped up: marigold won the seed-starting race. Here it is:

What’s coming up in your garden?

The Canadian local food season is underway! It’s too early to put tender plants in the soil (I don’t know about your garden, but I might just dent my shovel if I try to dig a hole right now). But it’s not too early to buy seeds, trade seeds, and (yes!) germinate seeds (OK, indoors). Amidst all of this I’ve noticed that seed exchanges seems to be a hot trend.

I heard about so many several seed-swapping events happening this March and April, last weekend I finally found my way to “Seedy Sunday”, an exchange event in north Toronto. I was blown away by the number of people who’d turned out, from young couples to grannies to big families with kids.

Some people were there for the free seeds, but many were there to chat with growing experts and buy their little envelopes of good things to come: organic, native and just plain delicious and beautiful plant seeds. After all, what else can you buy for just a couple of dollars that can provide for you – nutritionally or aesthetically – for a whole season?

I had a chance to meet Laura Watt of Cubit’s Organics, who sells organic and heirloom-variety seeds from her home-based business in the east end of Toronto. I bought the veggie and herb seeds from her, including the beets, tomatoes, purple peppers and herbs shown in the photo at the beginning of this post. Laura has a terrific blog about local, heathy food, linked above. You can buy her seeds via her Etsy shop, here.

Colette Murphy of Urban Harvest was there too, featuring her expansive line of certified organic, Toronto-grown seeds. That’s part of her display, above. She sells so many varieties of tomatoes, and I wanted to buy them all!

It was hopeful to see these tender young plants from Heritage Line Herbs of Alymer, Ont. They were also selling some vegetable oil blends, vinegars, and of course lots of seeds.

Given the popularity of this seed exchange, I’ll definitely have to make it out to the many native plant sales coming up in late April and May. Because I know that I won’t have sown all the seeds I’d like to, and I’ll have some catching up to do!

Do you like buying seeds? Have you ever exchanged seeds, cuttings or bulbs with anyone?

Looking to create more growing space in your yard this year? Maybe this is the year to let your garden take over some of your lawn.

North Vancouver mayor Darrel Mussatto is encouraging his city’s residents to make the most of their real estate by growing food on it, rather than manicure grass. According to this article in the Vancouver Sun, Citing reasons such as food security and the cost of food, Mussatto says, “We want people to convert the yards of single family homes to gardens and even commercial farms.”
The idea of converting lawn space into produce space may  horrify anyone who has spent loads of time manicuring their lawn into a perfectly groomed green carpet. After all, aren’t lawns already pretty eco? Well, sorry, but no. They’re a monoculture that doesn’t offer native insects and wildlife much in terms of food or protection. Lawns crowd out native plants that do offer these benefits. And people often dump chemicals on them (see study here showing that yes, this is still happening). That cause harm to the aforementioned wildlife, and, surprise surprise, us. So, in my books, lawns aren’t eco friendly.

Companies that use a tuft of green lawn as a symbol of “going green” are clearly disconnected from what makes a healthy planet. To read about how a grass monoculture became a ubiquitous North American concept, click here.

This is the year for me to tackle the lawn problem in my own garden and landscaping design. I have raised beds in my garden, but they only get late-day sun. I have space to grow foods in containers on my little deck, and they can get a fair bit of sun through the course of the day. If I want to enjoy delicious home-grown veggies, I’ll have to take over a lot of my little backyard lawn, which gets sun for most of the day.

Here are five steps to transitioning your lawn from a high-maintenance monoculture into a prodigious, environmentally beneficial garden:

Step 1: Evaluate your needs
How do you use your lawn now?  Will you need to do more than garden in that space? How can you accommodate other activities around your garden?

If your yard is a place for kids to play, perhaps you want to keep a large area of your yard as an open space to run around, so some drought-tolerant grass may be the best thing for you. However there are low-growing groundcovers that can create a mat of verdant beauty that you don’t need to mow. For areas that won’t see too much foot traffic, try Dutch white clover or even thyme.

Do you bring out a table and chairs to dine al fresco? Perhaps you could locate a small patio area within your new garden space, perhaps next to a tree (which can be used to hang lighting from). For instructions on laying a stone patio, click here.

To create a beautiful border to your vegetable garden, consider using lovely wildflowers. They will attract pollinators such as bees to help pollinate your veggies.

Step 2: Take stock of threats

Is your yard a haven for neighbourhood cats? (Mine is.)  You may need a structure around your veggies to prevent them from using the space as a litterbox. Are raccoons often prowling through your yard at night? Again, protect your food plants.  Raccoon contact means potential exposure to raccoon roundworm, which can cause brain damage and loss of eyesight. Front-yard gardens may suffer from road salt damage (see my earlier post about road salt here), so you may need to plant salt-tolerant plants around the border of your garden, such as blueberries.

Step 3: Plan out your space

What can you do with your new-found garden space? Plotting out your plans may help you decide what you want to grow, and where. To draft your plans, first measure the space. You could represent the area on graph paper and sketch in the garden beds, patio stones, furniture and other features on it. Or you could take a photo of the area and draw on it, either via a print out or using a program with built-in stencils such as OmniGraffle.

Step 4: Build your garden beds

Turning a lawn into a garden is best done by building up the space into raised beds. Use stone or wood to create boxes to fill with high-quality soil and compost. Kits for building raised beds with lumber corner pieces make building the beds quick and easy. I love the kit linked here from Lee Valley.

Step 5: Select your plants and start your seeds!
As I wait for spring to arrive, I’m enjoying buying seed packets and researching seed starting. Seed packets note when you can start your seeds and when you can plant them outdoors. Enjoy planning a mix of fruits, veggies and herbs that you love to eat. Try to include some early starters and late bloomers so that you’ll have super-local produce throughout the growing season.

Do you think you could give up a slice of your lawn for a kitchen garden?

More of our food is wasted than the quantity we eat in Canadian restaurants each year? Yes, a study by The George Morris Centre, an agri-food thinktank, (story linked here) says it’s true – $27 million in food is wasted here each year. “This wasted food represents approximately 40% of all the food produced in Canada,” notes the study authors.

It strikes me that food and energy are very similar. We have enough of both here in Canada at the moment, but we’re worried that the cost of both will go up, and that, given population growth, the demand for both will go up. We’re also concerned that there may be shortages of both due to resource depletion (oil and gas reserves; soil fertility, climate change effects and poor land use choices). But there is a lot of waste involved in both, in part because we as consumers are inefficient (we throw out a lot of spoiled and unwanted food; lots of cars on the highway contain only one person), and because both our food and our energy come from a long distance away from the end user (us).

So, just as local energy savings mean a lot (upgrade your old fridge and pay hundreds less in electricity each year), enjoying local food can mean avoiding a lot waste as well.
- Buying locally means supporting food produced near you, so less food is lost to spoilage as it’s transported (and less energy is used, a bonus for the earth).
- High-quality foods from local producers are usually a bit more expensive than big-box grocery prices, so perhaps we’re likely to buy smaller amounts. Eating smaller portions of healthy food is good for our waistlines.
- Growing your own fruits, veggies and herbs means harvesting just what you need for your evening supper.
- Knowing the work that goes into  growing your own veggies means you’re more likely to can, dry, freeze, donate or otherwise make use of extra food.

I made avoiding food waste a goal a year ago, and Homemakers.com has helped me with this!  I’m now adept at steering my softening, wilting and otherwise imperfect yet edible foods into delicious meals. Here are a few examples.

- Egg dishes, such as strata. Try the options in this fun recipe how-to story, Strata-Various 1-2-3.
- Soup. I often make “kitchen sink” soups, which contain everything but. I do try to create nice flavour pairings, and I follow Homemakers guide to creating homemade soup, linked here.
- Risotto. Here is a collection of risotto recipes from the Homemakers test kitchen.
- Paella. Try using leftover rice in this tasty paella recipe.
- Pasta. In this article, our food editor, Andrew Chase, shares how to create tasty pasta dishes with meat and veggie leftovers.

Do you find food goes to waste? How do you try to avoid wasted food?

Looking for a potted Christmas tree like the one I mentioned in yesterday’s post? While I bought a tree at a garden centre, I’m planning to plant that tree in the spring. For those of you keen to reap the benefits of a potted tree – it’s portable, plantable and it doesn’t end up on the curb – you’re in luck.

Check out this potted-tree rental service, “Gift of Green,” available in the Toronto area. Gift of Green delivers a two to four-foot tree (Native to Ontario) to your door before the holidays and returns afterward to retrieve it. The trees are all native to Ontario; you can choose from Balsam Fir, White Pine, Black Spruce and White Spruce. If you fall in love with your tree, you can keep it by forfeiting the $30 security deposit. Starting at $80, the tree rental service gives 10 per cent of the fee to one of two charities – you pick which one when you order.

When you’ve finished with your tree and it reaches a height of about seven feet, your tree will get planted by Gift of Green’s partner, Northway Gardens of Muskoka, Ont.

Perhaps Christmas-tree rental services such as Gift of Green’s are one way to get around the moral conundrum – to cut a tree (then leave it curbside for chipping) or buy a fake one and reuse it for years (and then landfill it when it looks tired)? While many have demonstrated that trees are a renewable resource, and that supporting tree farms is the better way to go (see this link from the Recycling Council of British Columbia for one great take on it), I know many people still agonize over the decision, and that’s why I think potted trees are a great solution.

But if a potted tree isn’t for you, there are other ways to do the green thing this holiday season.

If you live in the Vancouver area, you can recycle your Christmas tree with the University of British Columbia’s botanical garden. For a $5 donation (or more), UBC will chip your tree for use on trails and pathways. Read more about it here.

If you’re responsible for corporate gifts, you can give a tree conveniently via Tree Beginnings, which offers Canadian native tree seeds in nicely decorated, eco-friendly boxes for just a few dollars each.

If you’re just interested in giving a symbolic tree, or a practical fen’s worth of trees (enough to make a little habitat shelter area), you can give the gift of trees through organizations such as Trees Ontario.

What’s your take on the tree debate?

As he offered a tour of the roof-top garden and apiary last week, 14 storeys above Toronto’s Front Street, towering over Union Station and with a view of the Toronto waterfront, The Royal York Hotel’s Executive Chef, David Garcelon, showed us a modest looking group of sea-foam green wood boxes. It turns out that the six stacks of beehives (established in partnership with the Toronto Beekeepers Cooperative and FoodShare) are home to enough bees to produce 500 pounds of (fabulously floral-scented — I tried it) honey used by the hotel’s restaurants in the past year, about a third of the honey the Royal York uses annually (the rest is sourced from local Ontario producers).

Yes, apparently you can have an apiary at the heart of Canada’s largest city. (And one offering terrific puns: hives are given names such as “The Bee & Bee Suite”, “Honey Moon Suite” and “Stayin-A-Hive Suite.” Groan.)

The space is also home to an herb garden: the bees help pollinate edible flowers and delicious herbs planted in the hotel’s garden beds. Served seasonally in the Royal York Hotel’s EPIC restaurant, the hotel’s rooftop honey and herbs are part of their environmental program. And the basil-scented rooftop makes a great tour for hotel guests.

The Fairmont’s rooftop space is beautiful and prodigious, but it is not massive and it doesn’t meet all of the hotel’s needs. To me, whether it’s food or energy production, we’ll find a more sustainable future if we all participate in the patchwork rather rely on just a few sources. If we try to create at least some of what we need, in a healthy, low-impact way, and source the rest from those who have bounty to sell, we’ll all lower our carbon footprint –- and reap the delicious rewards.

I spent most of the day yesterday getting my garden ready for winter (my sore back can attest to the hours spent). Even though the days are still warm and I still have nasturium flowering beautifully, and my herb garden continues to produce fragrant oregano, thyme and mint, I know that the risk of frost is closing in here in Toronto.

I know that my garden has areas with less than ideal soil. (How do I know? Not much will grow in certain pockets, and a few inches below the surface, the soil is more grey and sandy than dark and rich.) This fall I decided to try to improve my garden soil through top dressing, a process of adding layers of high-quality soil and mulch. Hopefully by the 2011 gardening season, my garden soil will offer more nutrients and retain more water for my collection of native perennials (my columbine and black-eyed Susan were superstars this year) and showy annuals (that nasturium, with its bright orange edible flowers, just won’t quit).

I would usually winterize my garden by simply adding a layer of much. This year, after suiting up in my toughest gardening gloves, I took these steps:
- I removed any trace of invasive plants (including gout weed) and also took out a lot of aggressively seeding blue violet (a wildflower known as viola sororia).
- I dug up a few herbs and annual flowers that won’t survive frost and potted them to bring indoors, even if just to extend their lives by a few weeks.
- I scooped up pine needles from the soil surface, since they are acidic and could lower the pH of my soil. The City of Toronto says beech and oak leaves are also acidic. My pine needles went in a yard bag for curb-side pickup.
- I scanned the ground for slugs and snails, tossing them into my compost bin as I worked.
- I shovelled on a thin layer (less than 1 cm) of rich, dark soil containing organic compost. I also added soil from potted annuals. Hey, that rich soil I used in spring didn’t look depleted, and it had to go somewhere!
- I shook out some dried organic hen manure pellets to add a bit more nutrient to the garden.
- I followed with a layer of cedar mulch, also about 1 cm thick.
- I raked the leaves in my yard into a big pile, then distributed them to my flower beds in a thick blanket, particularly around the stems of each of my plants. Why put those leaves in a yard bag to be hauled away when they can help protect my plants all winter?
- I emptied some of my rain barrel, distributing the water over the topdressed garden to keep the leaves in place.
- I distributed good soil over patchy areas of my tiny lawn, and added white clover seeds to those patches. Although this fall seeding was recommended on the seed packet, I saved most of the seeds for spring!

Hopefully, after all this work, come spring my garden will be well fertilized (without any synthetic fertilizer) and terrific at holding moisture — and I’ll have a lot less work to do that I did last spring. I’d love to see my stable of plants grow a little larger this year, particularly the pollinators for the bees and butterflies.

How do you get your garden ready for the cold months?

It’s spotty. It’s misshapen. It has a couple of small but suspicious-looking holes. But it’s from a tree once part of an orchard, likely cultivated over a hundred years ago. It’s an old variety, and the tree was left to grow organically for dozens of years.

Yes, I would eat this apple. Maybe with a knife, cutting out a few bits, but yes, I would enjoy its sweet tartness, free of any waxes and traces of chemical aftertaste. I’m trying to embrace the idea that good food doesn’t need to look like perfect food. That flavour and health benefits, not to mention benefits to the local ecosystem, far outweigh aesthetics. As Joni Mitchell said, “Give me spots on apples. But leave me the birds and the bees. Please!”

How about you – do you eat carrots with two legs, lumpy squashes, spotty apples and other imperfect fruit?

Looking at my grocery list the other day, I realize that I often buy the same things. Whether in my organic food delivery box, at the store or at the farmer’s market, I seem to like Boston lettuce, button mushrooms, zucchini, asparagus, grape tomatoes and broccoli, maybe some fennel. I grill, stir-fry and roast these things, put them in salads, saute them for pastas, drop them in risotto. Don’t get me wrong, I love these tasty veggies. But I recently learned a fact that made it clear I’d be doing the planet a favour if I expanded my shopping list.

According to The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Self-Sufficient Living, “Throughout history, nearly 10,000 different plants have provided food for humans. Today, only about 150 species are used anywhere in the world. More than 70 percent of our food comes from just 12 of these.”

Wow. I can see how not only eating locally, but trying new things would benefit local producers — and the environment. According to this paper from the University of California, “Properly managed, diversity can also buffer a farm in a biological sense. For example, in annual cropping systems, crop rotation can be used to suppress weeds, pathogens and insect pests.”

So the next time I’m at the farmer’s market (that should be tomorrow) I’ll pick something new, and let you know what it was and how I prepared it as part of a tasty meal.

In the meantime, here are a few delicious recipes from Homemakers that include veggies that, I’m betting, are outside of that top 12 list!

Grilled Quail. Yes, diversity counts in the butcher shop as well!

Beet and Jerusalem Artichoke Salad with Blue Cheese Dressing. Yes, Jerusalem Artichokes can be grown locally!

Braised Baby Bok Choy with Lemon and Lemon Grass This sounds so tasty, I’m looking forward to finding some fresh bok choy!

Cilantro and Mint Raita. This is a tasty dip, and feels cool on hot days.

Green Superstar Soup. This features kale, collard greens and spinach. Healthfully delicious!

What are your favourite unconventional summer foods, and how do you prepare them?