is one of Community First: Impacts of Community Engagement’s (CFICE) community partners in the Community Environmental Sustainability Hub.

A map of Old Ottawa East.

Since 2007, SLOE has been working to make a difference in the community of Old Ottawa East. A network of like-minded people living in the area, some with career experience in environmental sustainability, dedicate their time and efforts towards planning, developing, networking and fundraising for projects that support greater community sustainability in the area.

Rebecca Aird, founding chair of SLOE, says SLOE was created to solve a need in the community.

“Sustainability obviously needs to be addressed at all levels – from the personal through to the global,” Aird says.

“SLOE really was a response by a number of individuals who came together and just really wanted to see that action at the local level.”

Aird says she joined SLOE because of positive impact people could have on the community.

“I’ve never gotten so deeply involved in very local stuff before SLOE but it’s like many things – you begin to lift the lid on what’s going on in a certain community, or in a certain sector, and you just discover all sorts of wonderful people doing wonderful things.”

SLOE focuses on four main themes: food, energy, transportation, and green spaces and ecology. Aird also stresses the importance of open communication between the organization and the community members, and considers it the catchall element.

Currently, SLOE is working on a number of projects within the community, including restoring and ecologically enhancing the shoreline in Old Ottawa East, and ensuring a sustainable and green development of the Oblate Lands by Greystone Village.

Aird says the community of Old Ottawa East was pleased by the work SLOE did to ensure the developers build with sustainability in mind, which CFICE helped produce.

“We got a lot of support around the work we did with CFICE and ĐÓ°ÉÔ­ŽŽ University to engage the regional group on Greystone and make sure the regional group really knew that we were serious about trying to make a difference in their development,” she says.

“I think the community felt proud about that.”

In the past, SLOE initiated a farmers market pilot program that grew to be so successful, it returned the next year. In addition, SLOE started a community and children’s garden, and created more civic spaces within the community.

A group gathers for the season opening of Old Ottawa East’s Main Farmers Market in May 2014. ©SLOE

“There’s more places where people actually come together and interact with each other. That’s been one of the main social achievements of SLOE, I think, and all of the other projects really brought the community together; people actually come out,” Aird says.

In all of the projects, Aird says, research played an important role in moving forward.

“You need research to be able to make the right choices about where to focus your energy, how to go about projects, engage and convince others, and to really establish yourself as a credible player and a credible force,” she says.

SLOE’s contributions to Old Ottawa East have made it a more sustainable community by adding to the quality of life in the neighbourhood.

“Even that in itself, to some extent, is an environmentally sustainable thing because the happier people are locally and the more they stick around locally, the less they’ll travel in their cars and the more they will feel themselves like contributing to their own community,” Aird says.

“It’s a virtuous circle and has had a broader impact for sure. A lot of other people in other communities have looked at what’s happened and worked on similar things or at least just been inspired by what’s possible.”

We have to part ways with the warm weather at some point. Usually by November at the latest, plants will die off and we will have to wait until April to start growing our favorite fruits, vegetables, and herbs outside again. But just because our crops aren’t growing outdoors during the winter doesn’t mean we can’t continue to enjoy the fruits of our labour. Through some careful planning and effort, you can try out some of these food preservation and indoor growing techniques to continue enjoying your favourite food throughout the winter months.

Using Your Harvest

Baby tomatoes begin to grow in an outdoor community garden. ©Jeffrey Horopw

If you have too much produce come harvest season and you’re afraid it will go to waste, consider canning it. I usually collect my excess tomatoes at the end of harvest season and turn them into salsa to be canned. This summer, I’ll be learning to can dill pickles! Canning is fairly easy to learn, however, it’s recommended you learn from a professional because a bad canning job can lead to botulism, a particularly nasty form of food poisoning. Often, food co-ops and community centers will offer canning workshops. In Ottawa, offers canning workshops, and in Toronto, the hosts a number of different workshops on storing food for the winter. Your community probably offers them too. Just try Googling “canning workshop” and some results are sure to pop up.

Don’t want to can your excess produce? Why not donate it instead? Some food banks will accept fresh produce donations, but be sure to call and ask ahead of time. You could also share your produce with friends and family, and potentially partake in the delicious delicacies they create. If you have some fruit or nut trees and aren’t particularly interested in the work of harvesting all your excess produce, consider calling up an organization like . During the summer and fall, they organize harvest events where they send volunteers to collect your excess bounty. They then divide the harvest four ways, with 1/4 each going to the nearest food agency, the homeowner, the volunteer harvesters, and Hidden Harvest Ottawa.

Extending the Growing Season

Tomatoes thriving under a grow light during the winter months. ©Etienne Lefebvre 2015

The most common and easiest technique for extending the growing season into the winter is to simply move your plants, or start new plants, indoors in big pots. The key to success for indoor planting is to choose plants that do not need much space, sunlight, or high temperatures to grow. “Windowsill” tomatoes are ones that can grow indoors and typically do not need as much sunlight. Some herbs also do really well indoors. Due to the short days in winter, it is recommended that you purchase a grow light for best results. Make sure to get an energy efficient grow light since sometimes they use a lot of energy, which isn’t exactly environmentally friendly. If used excessively or incorrectly, grow lights could also increase your energy bill to the point where growing your own vegetables to save money on groceries is no longer economically sustainable.

Another technique for indoor gardening that is rising in popularity is hydroponics. Hydroponic systems are systems that rely only on water, nutrients, and light (usually artificial light in winter) instead of using soil. Hydroponic systems are great when you are planning to grow a large amount of plants. A growing trend nowadays is for people to convert their basements into a space that houses hydroponic systems.  provides a great step by step guide on starting a hydroponic system. IKEA has also put out on indoor hydroponics.

Whether you’re planning to make the most of your summer gardening efforts, or hoping to extend your growing season, garden supplies are easiest to find in the spring. So be sure to purchase all the equipment you’ll need now to save yourself the stress and expense of trying to find the proper equipment in the fall.

Happy gardening!

This piece is part of CFICE’s 4-part series on community gardening.

Additional Resources:

A Video on Canning Salsa

A wiki on growing tomatoes indoors

Homegrown carrots straight from the garden. ©Carly Foubert

You’ve planted your garden, now what?
Gardening is an excellent and rewarding hands-on learning experience. It’s also a great way to contribute to environmental sustainability and will help save money along the way. Whether it’s a community garden or one in your own backyard, gardening is also a fantastic way to get involved and spend some quality time with your friends and family.

Gardening season is just underway, but it’s always a good idea to think ahead and make a plan. As discussed in the last community gardening blog post, there are a lot of tips and tricks to think about while starting your garden, including soil composition and companion planting.

Once your garden is underway, don’t stop there! There are still plenty of things you can do throughout the gardening season to maintain your garden in a sustainable and environmental way. For example, you could from materials you have around your home, such as coffee grinds or egg shells.

Throughout the season, every few days if possible, you should weed the garden to make sure that it doesn’t experience a hostage takeover and perish at the hands of the weeds. Don’t neglect your garden and don’t be afraid to get dirty!

Fresh vegetables picked from the garden. ©Carly Foubert

It’s likely that many of the vegetables planted will harvest at different times of the growing season. Be sure to keep an eye on the harvesting season with this helpful to make sure that don’t pick something that isn’t ripe or let anything over ripen. For example, strawberries are in season during June and July, while asparagus is best between May and June.

After ensuring to pick your fruits and vegetables during their season, its time to enjoy the fruits of your labour. Start up the BBQ, invite some friends over and prepare a few sustainable dishes to celebrate!

Grilled vegetables are a great summer dish to prepare and are super easy too! You can use pretty much any vegetable that’s in season so it’s also a great side dish to prepare when you’re trying to use up the veggies from your garden before they go bad, which makes this dish a super sustainable meal.

Fresh leeks waiting to be picked. ©Carly Foubert

Just slice up your vegetables, toss them in a balsamic marinade and throw them on the grill on medium heat for a couple minutes. If you’re looking for a great recipe tells you how to make a marinade and offers some suggestions on great grilling vegetables.

is another delicious sustainable meal to make that’s full of flavour too! Not to mention, its leek season so you can find locally grown leeks almost anywhere (even on a hike in nature). It’s an easy recipe and a great way to use ingredients that are available as well as in season.

Don’t forget to compost the unused parts of the vegetables or you can use them to make soup stock.

If you’re using fresh vegetables from your garden, the dish will always be changing and you’ll never get bored. There’s also the personal satisfaction in knowing that you planted and nurtured the food you’re eating. Congratulations!

This piece is part of CFICE’s 4-part series on community gardening.

People planting rows od vegetables at an Ottawa community garden.
©Omar Elsharkawy

As explored in the , gardening has many benefits. Gardening and growing your own food increases community food security, contributes to environmental sustainability, and will help you save money. In addition, community gardening contributes to a greater sense of community for the people involved. It also provides an opportunity for those who aren’t engaged in their community to become involved, and possibly opens doors for collaboration with other communities.

Starting a community garden isn’t a walk in the park so folks should be very aware of the commitment required for starting one. Community gardens require a lot of time and resources, especially at the beginning, but it’s usually worth it in the end. Getting people on board and gauging interest before starting is essential to ensure that there are enough resources available to accommodate the community. Community resources such as funds and staff time can also be scarce sometimes, so a brief study should be completed before committing resources towards a garden.

Vibrant green herbs fresh from the garden.
©Thomas RehehÀuser

A soil assessment is also important. In big cities, some pieces of land might have . A soil assessment is necessary to ensure the health and safety of the community. To complete an assessment, access to a lab, and assistance from an expert, might be needed, therefore I would recommend that communities reach out to post-secondary institutions for assistance. Universities and colleges often have community engagement offices, and if not, departments or certain faculty members can be contacted to get the process started. Many students are often looking for off-campus experience too. With the assistance of faculty, a project that would include a full ecosystem assessment for a garden is possible.

Fresh ripe red tomatoes.
©Deniz Altindas

Local gardening is generally sustainable from an environmental point of view, but one can go an extra step to make it more sustainable. Determining what grows in the garden can play a role in ensuring the sustainability of the garden. Growing what’s in season is an easy start. The province of Ontario has a great to help you determine what’s in season at any given time. Companion planting is also a great way of utilizing unused soil space and encouraging plant diversity in your garden. This potentially provides more habitat for bees should the right combination be planted. My personal favourite companion plants are tomatoes and basil as they go great together in a pasta dish. you can find a great local guide about companion planting.

Pests can be a pain for gardeners to deal with. Instead of using pesticides that are harmful to the plant and would eventually make their way into the consumer’s body, gardeners can use chicken wire, among other forms of fencing and natural methods, to keep pests out.  is a great online resource on choosing the appropriate method for your garden.

For more information on starting your own community garden, check out Food Banks Canada’s .

This piece is part of CFICE’s 4-part series on community gardening.

Summer is almost upon us. Time to stop worrying about shovelling your driveway and start thinking about gardening. What better way to start gardening than by joining (or starting your own) community garden with your neighbors and fellow community members?

Plants await their turn to be planted in a community garden. ©Omar Elsharkawy

For those who don’t know, community gardens are pieces of land gardened collectively by community members. People participate in community gardening for a variety of reasons. For example, some do so to improve their food security by increasing their access to sustainable and diverse food sources; others choose to garden as a more affordable way to get fresh vegetables; and some are motivated by the idea of contributing to environmental sustainability. With community gardening, you can help yourself, your community, and the earth in so many ways.

First, by joining a community garden you’re contributing to increasing your own food security. Food insecurity is the state of being without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food. By participating in community gardening, you are helping to ensure you have access to fresh, affordable vegetables (and fruits!) throughout the summer. You are also contributing to community food sovereignty. One of the goals of food sovereignty is making sure people can choose what to eat while being less dependent on remote and unaccountable food corporations. By growing your own food, you’re by-passing corporate involvement in the foods you are choosing to plant and eat. Through community gardening you can contribute to increasing your community’s food security as well. Often community gardens have a policy that a certain quota of harvested food must be donated to the local food bank. This policy increases a food bank’s capacity to provide fresh, healthy food to people in need.

Map of Ottawa’s community gardens. ©SLOE

In addition to increasing food security, growing your own food will help you save money, which can be especially beneficial for those of us struggling to make ends meet (students, I’m talking to you!). Community gardening is relatively inexpensive compared with buying fully-grown produce at the grocery store. All you need are some seeds, soil, and a plot and you’ll have enough of whatever fruits and vegetables you choose to grow for at least three months this year. You can even go further by canning your produce in order to enjoy the fruits of your labour during the winter.

For unemployed youth, community gardening can be a good way to fill the long summer days with meaningful work that can demonstrate to future employers your dedication and ability to take initiative. Think about it: If you plan, plant, cultivate, and harvest your own plot, you’re learning how to budget for, design, and complete a project from beginning to end. These are essential project management skills that can be transferred to other employment-related tasks.

Planting rows of vegetables in an Ottawa community garden. ©Omar Elsharkawy

Community gardening also provides an excellent opportunity to learn about food and farming. In a time when the number of farmers in Canada is decreasing, this is a valuable skill to learn. Growing one’s own food also teaches people to appreciate food more, because it shows the amount of hard work that goes into producing food. Knowing the labour costs of food production can help lead to a cultural shift when dealing with food waste.

By participating in community gardening, you’ll be directly, and inadvertently, contributing to environmental sustainability. Fewer trips to the grocery store equates to fewer gas miles, and relying on locally-grown produce can really put a dent in the amount of miles needed for transporting imported food. In 2014, , and all that food equates to food miles. For example, tomatoes imported from Mexico have to travel approximately 2,241 miles (3606km) to get to Canada, which results in hundreds of kilograms of carbon being released into the atmosphere. These food miles could potentially be cut by using community gardens to grow imported foods locally. As an added bonus, urban community gardens provide pollinators, like bees, with access to larger and more bountiful habitats. For anyone who has been following the bee crisis recently, you know that bees are essential participants in successful food production. Without them we wouldn’t have access to foods such as apples, tomatoes and several other foods we enjoy on a daily basis.

Finally, community gardening opens avenues for community engagement. It’s a great opportunity to meet new people and strengthen relations in the community. The relationships that get built can lead to conversations about other issues facing the community and can create opportunities for collaboration between community members to solve these issues collectively.

So what are you waiting for? Get out there and sign up for a community garden plot today!

This piece is part of CFICE’s 4-part series on community gardening.

Resources:

‘Buy Local’ Ottawa interactive guide, which includes a listing of community gardens: