Waterloo Region School Food Gardens

Need some zero waste, low cost home-made Christmas decor ideas? Here’s some DIYS using simple supplies like twine, dried fruit and pine cones! Check out this link: https://www.plantedinthewoods.com/blog/nature-ornaments #WRSFG #DIY #Zerowaste #holiday

Wishing everyone a safe, happy holiday from WRSFG. #WRSFG #KWawesome #Holiday #winter

5 benefits of school food gardens, according to Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO): 1. Taste and learn about healthy food 2. Learn how to grow vegetables and fruits 3. Develop team work skills... 4. Promote better nutrition 5. Learn to value the work of who grows our food What other benefits do school gardens bring? : Stewart Ave P.S.

Yesterday, we outlined the key to seed longevity: dry, cold, and dark. This cannot be overstated. Every 6C of lower temperature will double a seed's lifespan, and every 1% of moisture removed from a seed will double its lifespan (to a certain point; you can fatally overdry them, so don’t use heat). Working with these facts, can you guess where you should store your seeds once they’re tucked away inside their glass jars? -----------------------------------------------------...-------------------- #1: Basements are great as long as your seeds are in glass jars to keep the humidity out. They’re usually dark and cool. #2: Main floor closets are great, too, because they should be dry and dark. #3: Unheated garages or sheds are good if they’re in glass jars - the seeds can safely freeze that way! (But watch for rodents) See more

Once your seeds are well-dried, which will take at least a month, package them into airtight containers. Snap top mason jars and other glass jars are great for storing, though you can get away with plastic bags or envelopes if you’ll be using them quickly. Seeds are living things, each with a little baby plant sleeping inside and some stored food to feed that plant until it sprouts. That's the key to a seed's shelf life. So, to make your seeds last longer, you have to make t...hem consume their stored food more slowly. You want your seeds to be dormant. How? Dry, cold, and dark. Those three factors are what determine how long your seeds will last, with dry being the most important and dark being the least. We’ll get into more details on this tomorrow!

After cleaning your seeds, it’s important to dry them before storing them away for the season. Open-air drying is the best way, and you can just use regular household items. Good to use: Plates, wide bowls, baking sheets, and other flat, portable surfaces Even better to use: Sieves, strainers, frying baskets, and other screens ... You’ll want to consider how you lay the seeds out. The first option requires that you pile the seeds only a couple of layers thick. The second option allows for a few layers since the air can penetrate on all sides. See Seeds of Diversity Canada's page to learn how to test your seeds' readiness for storage: https://seeds.ca/sw8/web/drying-your-seeds

Selecting and harvesting your seeds is not the end of the process. Most seeds need to be cleaned, and there are three main categories of seeds when it comes time to do this: seeds that grow in wet fruit, seeds that grow in pods, and seeds that grow in seed heads. 1. Wet-fruited seeds: use water 2. Podded seeds: use air and/or screens 3. Seed heads: use air and/or seeds ... Keeping with our tomato and pea examples, can you guess which categories each would fall under? --------- Tomatoes are wet fruit, so you’ll want to rub off the pulp that encases each seed and then rinse the seeds under running water. Peas are podded, so you’ll want to crush the pods, then use a screen or light breeze (from an open window or fan) to gently blow off the bits and dust. Seeds that grow in seed heads, like lettuce, use the same screen and air technique. Seeds of Diversity Canada has a great new page dedicated to this topic: https://seeds.ca/sw8/web/cleaning-your-seeds

This week, we are taking a beginner-level look at how to save seeds! First up: seed selection. There are a few parts to this that we want to highlight, the first of which is deciding what types of seeds to save. If you’re a beginner, it’s recommended to try your hand at tomato, lettuce, pea, or bean seeds first. They tend to be the easiest. Another key part is choosing what plants or fruits to save seeds from. If you only have one plant, that choice is pretty easy. But if y...ou have a few to choose from, you’ll generally want to only save seed from your healthiest, most robust, tastiest plants. You can select for a certain characteristic, to - size, taste, time to ripeness, and the list goes on. This is technically what is meant by seed selection. Finally, you’ll want to be sure that your seeds are ready before you go ahead and harvest them. How to know depends on what kind of seeds you are saving. For example, tomato seeds are ready when the tomato is nice and ripe, and pea seeds are ready when the pod is brown and dry.

We are so excited to announce the winners of our 2020 Tower Garden contest! As you can see, we have decided to award a garden to FIVE schools throughout the region, instead of three. A huge congratulations to Alpine, Eastwood, Elmira District, Sheppard, and Silverheights school communities for the wonderful submissions. We are looking forward to seeing what 2021 brings. Stay tuned!

Check out our Youth Portal! New activity: DIY Concrete Planters DIY. It makes a great present during this season of giving! #WRSFG

The evidence to support #outdoorlearning is growing, but it's not easy to implement! Having appropriate outdoor space can help - does your school have a food garden yet? Our 2021 School Food Garden Grant application is now available: https://seeds.ca/schoolfoodgardens/grants-and-funding/

Why Save Seeds? What if we told you that recent studies indicate a significant decline in nutritional value of today’s produce versus what was being grown 100 years ago? Or that 86% of the apple varieties that existed a century ago have been lost? 95% of the cabbage, 91% of the field corn, 94% of the pea, and 81% of the tomato varieties?... Or that a third of the food diversity left today is likely to no longer exist by 2050? It’s not all bad news, though! We can restore and preserve what is left, halting this disturbing trend of biodiversity loss. And where does it start? Saving seeds.

Why Save Seeds? A century ago, millions of seed-saving gardeners and farmers kept our plant varieties alive. They maintained thousands of "heirloom" varieties as part of traditional agricultural practice. But in modern times, people stopped saving their own seeds, leaving the job up to seed companies and gene banks. Unfortunately, there are only about 250 seed companies in North America, and commercial crops only make up 10% of existing varieties because companies have selected the easiest and cheapest varieties to grow. We need more people saving seeds again.