Garden - More Info

Vision: To design a model that wll help provide enough food to feed the world. 

Moto: Raising our standards for a better life.

Problem: the world has many starving people and they live in places that can grow enough food to sustain them. E.g. Africa – most of Africa can grow food 12 months per year. The vision is to help them create sustainable gardens using their own seed (they grow their own seed) and the grow their own fertilizer (i.e. compost – the secret is in growing good soil so that growing soil will grow food) 

In Canada, we also have poor people, and enough land to sustain every person in Canada. Our goal is to create community gardens that will demonstrate how people can grow their own food. 

We have a community centre which helps the poor through a homeless shelter and a soup kitchen. We have a few sustainable gardens that have worked really well this year. 

We have 25 raised beds set up at our church that range from 10’x 5’ to 16’x5’

We would like to expand this to include other garden complexes on separate vacant lots in our city. These plots are to demonstrate, give vision, and encourage others in the community to expand to participate in growing neighbourhood food. 

The concept is that the neighbourhood brings their kitchen scraps (no meat due to a different enzymes) and garden waste (e.g. leaves and grass clippings) to a community garden composting site. There will be a few champions who will mix the waste and keep the beds turned. This is crucial for creating fertilizer for the gardens. The added benefit is that we are recycling waste in the purest form without need for collection, sorting, and other costs normally associated with recycling. 

Need to water the gardens – We have ground water, in our area and want to install a well point, to be truly sustainable. Solar powered. Drip irrigation. 

The beds will be double dug down 2 feet and will not need a roto-tiller. Everything will be done by hand. One 5’x25’ bed will take an experienced person about 1 hour to double dig. A garden need only be double dug once every few years. They are only 5’ wide so that no one will walk on them and compress the soil. For each new project, we will need some good soil to help kick off these gardens. 

It would be nice to have a college coop student who could manage the starting and training of new garden projects. Part of the job description will be to create a franchise manual so that other communities can follow the manual and create their own sustainable gardens. 

Benefits to having a Raised bed garden

1. Less waste – more recycling. 
2. Better more nutritious food which results in better health. 
3. Teach people to be self sustaining and not dependent on government for assistance. 
4. Encourage community cooperation and caring for each other. 
5. Rich and poor need good nutritious food so this project is for everyone. 
6. There is something very healthy about touching the soil and plants and getting in touch with nature.