Find a corner, grow a world
by Morris Lemire
With environmental pressures rolling in on us, new ways and places must be found to grow food a bike ride from home. You can find ways to grow food on property you don’t own.
There is more wasted space in forgotten back yards and laneways than you can possibly imagine. Walk or bike along the city’s back lanes and you will find open ground full of weeds (weeds that the city is trying to eradicate.) Open ground appropriate for growing eatable perennials on land ripe for rescue, is land you can discover and negotiate for access.
You may be thinking, isn’t that the role of community gardens? Consider this: Edmonton has over 100 community gardens, most with a waiting list. My advice? Don’t wait! Form a small group and find the land. Of course, you will need permission; Sustainable Food Edmonton can help with assurance and perhaps even funding.
Consider that as many boomers are getting older and perhaps deciding not to manage a vegetable garden, unused yard space is going to increase. Perhaps you can negotiate a shared plan. The owner gets some of the crop, a friendly visitor once a week and the city gets help with those weeds. A local initiative, Abundant Community Edmonton, is already doing this on a small scale.
Perennials offer great potential because they don’t require a lot of space, or time. Lovage, by year two, will fill in a cubic meter and that amount will feed a group of 20 gardeners. One clump of chives will provide for a family and dozens of bees. In contrast to the repetitive seasonal process of planting annuals, planting perennials is a one-time endeavour. Yes, 2019 was a difficult growing season in Alberta. Yet, perennials, against the same rain-soaked odds, produced a better crop than many of our garden annuals.
Zero work gardening is an oxymoron, an urban myth, and perennial eatables are no exception. They need occasional weeding, watering, fertilizer and deadheading, but none of these tasks takes a lot of time. Smart gardening strategies like simple mulching will reduce the time required for each job, lessening the over-all effort.
Many of the edible perennials that can be grown in Edmonton’s climate (zones 3b to 4a) are herbs and adjuncts to our beloved comfort foods, like dill and potatoes. They rescue many a dish, and in the process, add interest, and nutrition.
This is a list of plants that are easy to grow in our climate that are also dependable and fun to work with. Some, like chives, may seem boring, but often they are under-appreciated and under-used, except by professional chefs who are wise to the wonder they contain.
Chives are high in vitamins, minerals and antioxidants, and are easy to grow. A clump of chives is like a pot of green gold. When your mom said ‘Eat your greens, or no dessert,’ she meant eat your chives. The flowers are pretty and tasty too.
We are cheating a bit here because dill is actually an annual, but it self-seeds so readily you can be guaranteed it will pop-up the following spring. And what a wonderful opportunist it is—dill on salmon, dill in potato salad, dill seed in cucumber pickles, dill butter, dill and beets.
Giant Hyssop: (Agastache foeniculum)
Tasting of anise and mild mint, hyssop can be used in everything from salads to dessert and is often dried as a tea. Beautiful in the garden, it also makes a lovely cut flower; but leave some for our native bees, who just love, love, love this native plant.
Lovage: (Levisticum officinale)
Lovage is challenging, in part because it is not well known in our gardening and culinary culture. It is an herb well worth discovering. Just wait until you try a leaf in a Bloody Mary; bruised, not muddled. It makes a great pesto and puts even more zip in a chimichurri.
Caution: mint is invasive, it will spread everywhere, between patio stones, under the fence and down the lane. It can be used in cucumber salad or in sauces, like tzatziki. Also in teas, or in soups, like pea, or in a mohito. Use fresh, dried or frozen.
Rhubarb: (Rheum × hybridum)
Have you heard, rhubarb is going steady with sugar, they’re more than an item, they’re inseparable. The two of them show up in pies, crumbles and compotes, in Italian amari such as Sfumato and Zucca Rabarbaro. In many parts of the world, rhubarb is still used for medicinal purposes. Don’t eat the leaves though, with their high levels of oxalic acid and anthrone glycosides.
Sorrel: (Rumex scutatus)
Its tangy and lemony flavour is much appreciated in French cuisine, and most European countries cook with it. Sorrel soup is a classic European dish. It often accompanies eggs, adds zest to a salad or a fish sauce. It can be started from seed, but once established it will need care, as in weekly watering and weeding.