Hot In Gardens Right Now: Perennial Vege, Chickens & Compost

People are talking about perennial vegetables, backyard fowl and compost as rich as a Middle East despot.

GROW YOUR OWN | Though it may feel a bit premature given the weather recently, March is when all good backyard farmers gear up for the growing season, deciding what they’ll sow, starting seeds and enriching the soil for the nourishing work they’re going to need it to do.

Producing at least some of your own food is the fashionable thing to do right now, though the gardeners we know who toil in earnest care more about the environment, the provenance of their food and the fresh taste of fruits and vegetables than they do about being trendy. Still, it’s nice to know that of all the gardening stories we featured on Frugalbits this past year, the three highlighted below are trending topics when the subject of urban farming rolls around.

3 Gardening Trends That Sizzle

Perennial Vegetables—Anyone who has tended a vegetable garden knows it can be hard work. That said, are there easy-grow edible crops that offer an exceptional return for a minimum amount of labour? That’s the question I put to Mark Johnston, an amazing gardener dedicated to growing as much of his family’s food supply as he can on a highly productive organic farm-style plot he tends in the wilds of West Vancouver. “First of all, the vegetables should be perennials …. the ones I’m going to tell about do well in almost any light and don’t need a lot of maintenance, so it’s crazy not to grow them,” he says (CLICK HERE for the whole story).

Backyard Chickens—If you are considering raising backyard chickens for eggs, put them in a chicken tractor rather than a conventional coop and let them fertilize your vegetable beds. Chicken tractors are pens that can be moved from place to place and often have wheels on one end, which is why they are called tractors. The pens protect the chickens but have no bottom so the occupants can forage for plants and insects directly on the ground while depositing manure at the same time (CLICK HERE for the whole story).

DIY Compost— The best deal on earth, literally, may be compost. You throw in garbage and get back rich, black humus to use in the garden. Throwing something in the compost is no more difficult than dumping it in a trash bin—and you don’t have to wait until garbage day to get rid of it. Life handed you a lemon? After making lemonade, compost the rind. Birthday bouquet seen better days? Add it to the compost so one day it can nourish more flowers. Bread gone mouldy? Toss it in the compost. Green within reason columnist Felicity Stone provides her simple, easy recipe for making “black gold” (CLICK HERE for the whole story).