Strawberries - YUM.
Our local Galey's farms have perfected the art of growing healthy strawberries. However, they have masses of greenhouses and we at home don't. Here's the scoop on growing your own awesome strawberries at home, as researched from the huge tomb called Reader's Digest Practical Guide to Gardening in Canada.
I took out a cherry tree!
Sometimes, people wonder if I am up to the task at hand. Sometimes I do too! However, it's surprising what I CAN (and can't) do.
If you have a little space away from home windows and trees, a yard waste compost pile is the most environmentally friendly way to deal with yard waste (exclude kitchen waste). Not only does it recycle the garden specific nutrients your plants created for themselves, but it saves the air, water and greenhouse gas pollution of driving waste around. It is also free except for labour.
Japanese Gardening
A client of mine is both Japanese and Canadian. She has a Japanese style home and garden to match. She lent me a lovely hardcover book about Japanese Gardening. Here is a quote from the Forward by Teiji Ito in 1972.
Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Global Warming is a big concern, considering how much of our area would be flooded with 1 m of sea level rise, and the worsening of storms. In the garden, we can reduce our emissions from transport by using our own (or our neighbour's) leaves and grass clippings for mulch, and making our own compost. Compost is unhealthy for the garden if it smells bad. The smell comes from methane, which is 23 times worse than carbon dioxide for global warming.
Stinky compost is the result of compost being either too wet or having too much nitrogen. It is easy to fix by mixing in dry carbon material, like ripped up newsprint or dry yard waste, and perhaps adding sticks. The sticks break down much slower than the other compost material and help aerate the pile. Anearobic bacteria produce methane and will die when exposed to air.
Here is a carbon calculator for measuring how much carbon is released by vehicle transportation.