Dear Editor,
I just heard a financial expert on the radio announce that the Canadian dollar would drop even lower this year.
Combine that gloomy prediction with the dire climate situation in California, the source of much of our fruit and vegetables, and soon prohibitive will seem too feeble a word to describe the price of produce.
The prospect of such a catastrophe is appalling, but perhaps it will suffice to push the decision-makers into facilitating and encouraging more local production of fruit and vegetables.
It may also persuade residents to attempt small-scale gardening for their own immediate needs. Anyone with a yard that gets some sunlight can quickly and cheaply install raised beds.
My yard is dotted with them, most made of 4 x 4 ft. untreated lumber bought at Rona’s, which I filled with soil, compost and leaf mulch. Another way of building raised beds is to use bricks or stones instead of wood.
If you don’t like the idea of raised beds, an alternative is to use the porous fabric containers called Geopots or Geoplanters, which come in sizes from 1/2 to 200 gallons capacity.
They’re available through Green Planet, whose head office is at 15374 103A Ave., Surrey (tel. 604-580-1287; toll free 1-866-913-4769).
Think of being able to eat garden-fresh, home-grown tomatoes from August through October, of eating beans to your heart’s content and freezing the surplus harvest (last summer I froze beans straight off the vine, without washing or blanching them, which conserved their sweetness and crunch).
Salad greens can be grown practically all year, although they’ll need mainly shade in the hot months.
You don’t need a green thumb to tend your own garden, just a desire for uncontaminated, fresh and nutritious food that won’t require you to take out a second mortgage.
Sabine Eiche
Richmond
