Tuesday July 1, 2025 | LANGFORD, BC
by Mary P Brooke, B.Sc., Executive Lead, UFRIS
Happy Canada Day, fellow gardeners!
Urban Food Resilience Initiatives Society (UFRIS) is happy about the warm weather which helps our gardens grow!
Watering gardens on a regular basis is so important in hot dry weather.
South Vancouver Island has experienced drought for the past few years. Soil dries up quickly, even in raised garden beds.
Gardens with edible plants have no watering restrictions in the Greater Victoria (CRD) area. You can water with a hand-held contain, hose with nozzles or timed irrigation system.
In Canada our food security issues are on many levels. The huge farming enterprises in the prairies are dealing with foreign tariffs. The big farm operations in BC’s Fraser Valley are under the load of debt from the past few years (due to crop loss in heat, drought and floods). Local farmers on Vancouver Island are supplying local farmers’ markets. Your own backyard is a mini farm even if you’re growing in raised beds or containers.
UFRIS follows a primary mission of promoting the capacity to grow natural food in urban spaces. Developers that are holding onto land for a few years before development are invited to contact UFRIS at 250-588-7091 or info@urbanfoodresilience.ca … if you have land available for the placement of raised garden beds as a temporary community garden, we’re all ears.
UFRIS is also working on storage of fresh produce in solar-powered freezers for use during disaster response.
On Canada Day we are grateful that we live in a country where food growing in urban spaces is an option, especially as food prices are so high and food quality is sometimes less than desirable (preservatives, pesticides, etc).
Keep growing, friends!
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