Authored by Jules Muirhead. Photography by Julia Nemfield.
Elevate your outdoor space by taking on a new project next spring and start dreaming about your edible garden design with us. The spike in interest around re-introducing edible gardens back into urban spaces has our green thumbs jittery!
Reconnecting the community with local food systems through an outdoor living design approach is a major passion for the crew at THE SHE SHED. We believe that city dwellers can connect with nature in their own backyards, and one of the most entertaining ways to do so is with an edible garden. Planting edibles in your space, whether an orchard full of fruiting trees or a mosaic of containers stacked with colourful veggies.
No space is too small! From the backyard to the windowsill, stewardship has many benefits for the undertaker and the environment.
Edible Gardens in Our Eyes
An edible garden can take on an array of shapes and sizes. It is where we can be most creative with our designs. We offer knowledge, creativity and expertise in the edible gardening world and have expanded our work to include fruit orchards, potager-style gardens, cut flowers, u-pick farms, terraced landscapes, and anything else we - or our clients - can dream of.
P.S. edible gardening doesn’t just need to be for human consumption. A favourite approach at THE SHE SHED is to mix native wildflowers into the design with edibles. Pollinators are responsible for the majority of the food we consume at every meal. We plant pollinator-attracting blooms as a thank you to pollinators, and also as a way to encourage the success of neighbouring edible plants. This adds colour and vibrancy to the space and allows you to be playful with your approach.
Our Design and Build Approach
Our approach suggests that building out your garden design in late fall, or early spring ensures you optimize the entire growing season while managing your budget. THE SHE SHED is always playful with our designs, no two gardens ever look the same. The most important elements we consider include, sun exposure, water consumption, soil quality and ethically sourced materials. Selectively isolate the sunniest area of your property, where the sun will provide the most energy and warmth to fruits and vegetables. A rain barrel thoughtfully incorporated into the design is a great way to save on water consumption. We have found great success in the use of galvanized steel containers used for growing edibles. Not only do they provide a unique aesthetic to any container styled garden, but they also provide many benefits to the final outcome of the design.
Canadian sourced galvanized steel is a durable and decades-lasting material. Galvanized steel is steel that’s been coated in a layer of zinc to prevent rusting. This ensures no harmful elements will enter your soil or food. When planting in containers make sure you have proper drainage. Each plant has its own watering preference and watering directly influences your growing success.
The galvanized steel containers we use for edibles are bottomless, we sit them on a clear stone base for optimal drainage. The galvanized steel holds the heat from the sun and therefore increases your growing season. It holds heat for longer, meaning you can get your seeds and transplants in the dirt earlier in the spring, and harvest later into the fall. In the heat of mid-summer, you can plant trailing plants along the edges of the container to provide shade to ensure the roots do not overheat themselves which is both functional and beautiful. Some trailing edibles include pumpkins and watermelons. If you choose another material for your planters the plants may require insulation of the containers to maintain the soil viability and plant health in colder temperatures. An ethical alternative to styrofoam insulation is newspapers or used scrap paper lining the inside of your container.
Keeping the Environment in Mind
Reduce your environmental impact through investing in an edible garden. Planting fruiting trees provides habitat and a source of food for native wildlife. By omitting the use harmful chemicals, the concentration of these elements from the natural water cycle in your area decreases. Selecting a diverse variety of plants is critical for high soil quality. Limiting the use of monoculture, ie. grass lawns, ensures that the microbial activity in soil is preserved. This microbial activity is essential for plant growth, and responsible for the nutrients we eat. Additionally, food grown locally saves on the use of limited resources such as fuel used for transport and excess water and electrical consumption from commercial farming practices
Keeping the Undertaker in Mind
Discover the true flavours, shapes and colours of vegetables when they are given an abundance of nutrients under the correct growing conditions. Experience the delight of eating fresh fruit or raw vegetables directly from your garden. Most vegetables can be preserved and made to consume throughout the year. We love turning basil into pesto, eggplants into baba ghanoush, and strawberries into jam.
You can be confident that your food is nutrient-rich when you are in control of the source. The nutrients in your food begin with soil quality. Locally sourcing compost-rich soil for your edible beds will ensure you are maximizing the nutrients and minerals in your diet. You can sustain these nutrients by a) adding household compost to your beds b) adding leaf litter and garden debris from your property to your beds, and c) limiting soil disturbance by only harvesting when needed. Once installed, the soil in your edible beds only needs to be amended every 5-10 years if you continue to amend with your own household compost.
Overall health is also benefitted through growing under conditions free of toxic chemicals. There are natural and healthy ways to promote plant growth without the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. We like to use natural fertilizers such as bone meal to encourage root growth when planting, and fertilizers made from nutrient-rich natural resources like seaweed. Research shows that edibles grown in household gardens have higher vitamin and mineral concentrations when harmful chemicals are eliminated from the process.
Stay active and keep healthy in the garden! Plant seeds, admire the growth, water frequently, and harvest your crops. Gardening can be a gentle and simple way to move and keep active while engaging in your edible garden space.
THE SHE SHEDS Favourite Edibles to Grow in 2021
Cucamelon for its unique variegated pattern and refreshing taste.
Pumpkins for one of the last crops to harvest from the fall garden.
Snackabelle peppers for a quick grab and go snack on your way out the door.
Eggplant for its beautiful deep purple colour contrast against an abundance of green foliage.
Runner beans for their bright red bloom loved by energetic hummingbirds
Blueberries as a staple native Nova Scotia plant.