Skip to main content

It's Time to Get Ready For Ladner Seedy Saturday & Garden Expo 2016

Ladner Seedy Saturday

Its been a while since I posted but watering took way more time than I would have liked this year. It was a great year for growing vegetables with everyone having huge harvests of crops such as cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers and herbs. They loved our warm temperatures. Now that our community garden beds have been put to bed, its time to plan for next year. Its time to cozy up with a few seed catalogues and a cup of tea and plan our gardens. While it rains outside we can only hope the rain is fuelling the trees and shrubs that had a hard time this past summer.

Ladner Seedy Saturday

So what is new at the community garden? We had a lot of new gardeners this year and everyone had a great time meeting each other over a meal during our garden potluck. With our busy lives it was nice to slow down and share a meal. Our last meeting was last month when we shared a harvest dinner together. Its interesting how food brings people together. Whether it be in a garden trading gardening secrets or over a meal, its a wonderful way to connect.
As we leave 2015 behind I hope our allotment holders decide to stay another year. The first year can be a real learning experience but its all about learning as we go along. We like to help you if you are a newbie and let you revel in your success. Many of us are seasoned gardeners wanting to lend a hand. Never be afraid to ask a question as we have all been new gardeners at one point.
We are starting to plan our big event, Ladner Seedy Saturday and Garden Expo 2016. This is a fundraiser for the Ladner Community Garden. Last year was so successful we decided to donate a large portion of the profits from our event to some local projects. We donated towards four school gardens in Ladner and  helped out a student studying at university in a field related to growing food or flowers. All of this would not have been possible without the support from the community and our sponsors.
I would like to announce the date for Ladner Seedy Saturday and Garden Expo 2016 is February 20, 2016. The event will be held at the Harris barn, 4140 Arthur drive in Ladner from 10:00am-4:00pm.
If you would like to be a vendor at this event please email me at deltagardener at dccnet.com. Thats really not 'at' but @ but I need to fool the spammers.
Last year we had 900 people attend our event over a two day period. In order to not wear out our volunteers we decided to hold a one day event once again so come early. Doors will be open at 9:30am so you can get a seat for the first presentation. Oh wait, I didn't tell you did I?
We have four new garden speakers this year.

10:00am-David Catzel- Seed saving 101
11:30am-Conway Lum- Fruit Trees and Their Quirks
1:00pm-Egan Davis- Secrets of Becoming a Successful Gardener
2:30pm-Randy Shore- Grow What You eat, Eat What You Grow

We hope to see you there. It is the kickoff to the new garden season. I think we will have an early spring. Lets hope so.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Its Official!

Its official. We finally received our incorporation papers. I know, what does that have to do with a community garden? Well you just don't start planting as we found out very quickly. You have to apply for a name for your society through the provincial government. First you apply for a name by checking trademarks and copyrights. Luckily Ladner Community Garden Society wasn't taken. You pay a fee for the name right away. The next step is applying for incorporation. You want to form a society and have directors as you can't lease public space without going through this process. Okay, another fee, a hundred dollars to be exact. Applying for incorporation is writing bylaws which can be painful at best if you want to write your own. Thank you Mark for doing such a wonderful job writing our bylaws. If you don't write your own, there are easier ways such as following out set bylaws as given in the Society Act. Our hard work as paid off as we received our red seal of approval

Growing Your Own Food

     Carrot harvest   Growing your own food just became even more important than ever. As prices increased this fall we saw lettuce and cauliflower go up in price. Reasons for that are many but the drought we had could be one of the reasons. Overall the transportation costs of everything are up due to the high cost of fuel and that's being passed on to the consumer. Of course, many of us are not earning any more than we did before. I predict that 2023 will see another resurgence of food growing like we did at the beginning of the pandemic. Some of us may be doing it with less space than we had before so that creates more challenges. Just to let you know how popular gardening has become, our community garden has a waitlist of over twenty people. They may not get a spot in the garden for several years. It's probably time for a new community garden to be set up in the community.       To save money in the winter think about growing crops that store well like carrots, potatoes, win

Ladner Seedy Saturday is Only a Few Weeks Away!

Yes, it's time for Ladner Seedy Saturday and Garden Expo 2018. Our organizing committee is busy behind the scenes registering new and returning vendors, booking speakers and organizing the seed swap for the event. Are you a vendor wanting to come to Seedy Saturday? We still have a few tables left for lease. I am excited about our two speakers coming this year. Janis Matson is a well known garden speaker and owns Shoreline Landscape Design. Janis is an instructor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Langley and also teaches classes at VanDusen Botanical Garden. Janis will be teaching us how to use ornamental grasses in the home garden. Our next speaker is Randal Atkinson. Known as West Coast Garden' s Plant Expert Extraordinaire, Randal is the go to person for design, plant selection, growing and care of plants. Randal is passionate about gardening and loves sharing his knowledge with the public. You can often see him teaching classes at West Coast Garden centre