Come Grow With Us
The tell-tale signs of spring are in the air with the warmer temperatures, sprouting snowdrops, and longer days and you had better believe we are excited for the upcoming months. For those who say that this is only the “Spring of Deception”... la la la we can’t hear you.
One of the upcoming activities for people to participate in this spring at The Brown Homestead is our Victory Garden program, which was a resounding success in 2022. This year we decided to grow seedlings for the garden in-house, and would like to share our progress with you. Hopefully this taste of gardening will entice you to come and join us in May when we start planting!
What is the Victory Garden at TBH?
The Victory Garden at The Brown Homestead is a heritage-based community garden that encourages sustainable gardening, education, and outdoor recreation through the planting and maintenance of a replica Victory Garden, with the harvests donated to our local food bank. Through a series of free workshops and guest speaker appearances, the Victory Garden is an inclusive, sustainable, and fun weekend activity for the Niagara community! We invite folks of all ages to participate. You will find the line-up of incredible speakers for the 2023 program here on our website.
Victory Gardens, also known as war gardens, were fruit, herb, and vegetable gardens grown by Canadians who remained on the homefront during the First and Second World Wars to help supplement food rations and improve community morale. They hold an important place in Canadian history in times of crisis, and the 2020’s have brought ample incentive for the resurgence of victory gardens here at The Brown Homestead and in your own backyard! You can learn more about Victory Gardens by listening to our Season 2 Episode 2 of our podcast with domestic historian Meg Grimsmo.
Our Seedling Journey
To make the experience more authentic, we used heirloom varieties of vegetables in our garden. This includes a couple different varieties of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, onions, leeks, spinach, lettuce, brussel sprouts, cabbage, pumpkin, watermelon, corn, peas, beans, and carrots. In addition, we’ve also planted herbs like basil, oregano, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme (admit it, you just sang that part).
We purchased the heirloom varieties through Heritage Harvest Seeds. If you’re looking to do the same, you can check them out online, or take a look at Seeds of Diversity Canada and Seed Savers Exchange who also offer a variety of heirloom seeds and growing information.
One of our values here is Holistic Education, meaning that we aim to include an educational component in every aspect of our work. Therefore, we thought it would be a fun idea to create a series of videos explaining the process of growing seedlings at home. For some of our staff, growing seedlings was a new experience, and we all learned a thing or two along the way.
Sonia and Jess filming content for the Seedling Video Series
What is the Seedling Video Series?
This video series takes viewers through the steps of planting, growing and caring for seedlings, and how to finally plant them in the garden. The first video encourages you to think about the why and where of growing seedlings.
Why do I want to grow seedlings?
Where is the best place to grow and plant them?
What are frost dates, hardiness zones and ecoregions, and why do they matter?
The second video teaches all about the when and how of growing seedlings. Be sure you have all the basics of life including heat, water, light, and air circulation.
• When should I start my seedlings indoors?
• What materials do I need?
• How on earth do I do this?
The third video is a seedling check-in to help you identify and rectify some potential issues you may encounter. This video, titled “What’s Growin’ On?”, will be posted early next week!
Why is there mold on my seedling trays?
Am I giving them enough water?
What are the signs of pest damage?
The fourth video will be filmed in early May and will teach viewers how to prepare their outdoor gardens for planting. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel, or follow us on social media in order to see when we post these new videos. Once the seedlings are planted in May, we encourage you to come out to the Victory Garden to learn more about how to help your vegetables flourish!
Click to watch “Grow With Intention: The Why and Where”
Of course, we couldn’t do this without a gardening expert at the helm. Enter Sonia Oliveira.
Meet Sonia Oliveira
We met Sonia last year in our 2022 Victory Garden program. She saw the program advertisement on Facebook and came out as one of our most regular, and as we came to find out, knowledgeable, participants. She decided to come back and help us run the program this year as a volunteer, and we are so grateful for her commitment, gardening wisdom, and all-around fun personality.
It’s a goal of ours to retain current volunteers while gaining new ones each year. If you have a specific skill or interest that you think could be useful to the organization, we’d love to hear about it.
“I like to say my education is Field to Table. I started with an interest in growing for self sufficiency, working on farms as a seasonal labourer, working in food retail, going to culinary school, taking the organic master gardener training and passing the certification examination for the Society for Organic Urban Landcare (SOUL), and working in the food service and hospitality industry. Now my focus has evolved to include food security, mental health and regenerative agriculture.”
We asked Sonia a couple of questions about her involvement with the 2023 Victory Garden program, which we’ll share with you.
Why did you choose to become involved in the seedling video series at TBH?
Sonia sharing her knowledge in the 2022 Victory Garden
“My involvement in the seeding project grew from the fact that I'm a recent transplant to the area. I was looking for an activity that matched my passion and skill set to a like minded community. I saw the call for Victory Garden volunteers and the lightbulb went off that this could be a good fit. The clincher for me was that the food would be donated to the local food bank. Getting involved to give back is a great way to build community around yourself.”
What is your favourite part of coming out to TBH?
“The garden puttering is enjoyable and rewarding in itself but the conversations that come up are the juicy bits. I love sharing what I know. I love swapping tips, tricks and hacks and learning from other people. I like the idea that this exchange is the building of an oral history and the continuity of a valuable life skill.”
Free Seedlings? Yes Please!
As often happens with this sort of thing, we’ve got an abundance of seedlings and not enough room in our gardens. Well, sharing is caring so please, if you’d like any, let us know by filling out this Order Form, and we’ll set up a time for you to come by and pick them up.
So, have we gotten your attention? We’d love it if you came along and joined our Victory Garden program this year. We are offering workshops and presentations with a variety of speakers from different community groups throughout the area. As you may have seen on our website, our partners currently include organizations such as the Niagara Parks School of Horticulture, the Bruce Trail Conservancy, the Niagara Community Garden Network, Brock University, Dundurn Castle Historic Gardens, and more.
For more information about what is going on in the Niagara gardening world, check out a few of these other local groups and the amazing work they’re doing in the community. As always, happy gardening!
Niagara Community Garden Network
Friends of the Richmond Street Forest
Garden City Gardeners