Ottawa has a growing supply of cheap, public garden space that may change how some\u00a0residents source their produce this year.<\/p>\n
Eating local won’t satisfy a pineapple addiction, but common vegetables like tomatoes\u00a0and cucumbers can be grown easily and at a cost similar to buying them at the grocery\u00a0store.<\/p>\n
Room to grow<\/strong><\/p>\n Ottawa has seen a proliferation of community gardens led in part by the city, which\u00a0created an official plan for the spaces in 2004. A revamped plan in 2009 set aside an\u00a0annual $75,000 to expand and create new gardens.<\/p>\n In 2009 there were 19 community gardens and today there are 36, according to the\u00a0sustainable food advocacy group, Just Food.<\/p>\n The price to use a garden for a year can be less than a trip to the grocery store. For\u00a0instance, a garden plot on the roof of a reclaimed heating plant, at the Sweet Willow\u00a0community garden, costs $10 for about 40 square feet.<\/p>\n Serious gardeners can pay more: to garden 1,000 square feet at the Riverside South\u00a0community garden will cost $120 for the year.<\/p>\n For the budget-conscious, a plot at the Carleton University garden, run by the graduate\u00a0student union, is free.<\/p>\n That garden\u2019s co-ordinator, Chris Bisson, said there used to be wait times to get a plot at a\u00a0community garden.<\/p>\n According to a report by the city\u2019s operations department to council, in 2009 there were\u00a0waitlists of up to two years at 80 per cent of Ottawa\u2019s community gardens.<\/p>\n Now, Bisson said the increasing number of plots in Ottawa has reduced wait list times\u00a0across the city.<\/p>\n Save green<\/strong><\/p>\n Bisson said having a garden can also supplement your grocery supply throughout the\u00a0year and take strain off your wallet. That is if you’re prepared to work hard, store your\u00a0squash and turnips, preserve your tomatoes and pickle your cucumbers.<\/p>\n “You don’t have to worry about the management or capital,” he said, because most\u00a0gardens provide soil, water, and tools to get started.<\/p>\n All you buy are seeds\u2014about $3 a pack, he said.<\/p>\n “You couldn’t squeeze more than $20 of seeds into a community garden, and that would\u00a0be pushing it,” he said.<\/p>\n Bisson said for cost-conscious gardeners, the best thing to grow is produce that is the\u00a0most expensive to buy.<\/p>\n “You don’t want to grow potatoes, or wheat,” he said.<\/p>\n Squash and cucumbers are grown often, he said, but tomatoes are leading the way.\u00a0Gerry Labelle, produce manager at Herb & Spice Shop, said the price of tomatoes and\u00a0cucumbers fluctuate over the year.<\/p>\n Right now vine-ripened tomatoes are most popular and go for about $5 a pound, which\u00a0is their most expensive, Labelle estimates, but later in the year will be down to around\u00a0$2 a pound. Cucumbers will be about the same.<\/p>\n “If it’s a really good tomato season and everyone has tomatoes, that drives down the\u00a0cost,” he said.<\/p>\n Labelle said local and organic produce has seen a decline in price as more products\u00a0enter the market, and he expects the trend to continue.<\/p>\n But he said with most estimates pegging the average tomato plant at yielding between\u00a010 and 15 pounds, the cheapest option, only considering money spend, seems to be\u00a0growing it yourself.<\/p>\n Extra costs<\/strong><\/p>\n The catch to gardening, Bisson said, is the extra time it takes to grow your own fruits\u00a0and vegetables.<\/p>\n A diligent gardener will devote about an hour a day to his plot, while someone less diligent could work about three to four hours a week and get by, he estimated.<\/p>\n But he said the garden has value to offer besides produce, and may yield long-term\u00a0benefits.<\/p>\n “Your time spent at a community garden with knowledgeable people around you could\u00a0be seen as training,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ottawa has a growing supply of cheap, public garden space that may change how some\u00a0residents source their produce this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":89,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[300],"tags":[302,301],"class_list":["post-3831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal-finance-2014","tag-chris-bisson","tag-jakob-kuzyk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/89"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3831"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4551,"href":"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3831\/revisions\/4551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/ottawainsight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}