About My Garden
My market garden is in Garden Hill, Ontario, Canada.I grow a huge variety of seasonal fruits, vegetables, herbs and flower bouquets that can't be found in the grocery stores.Everything is grown using sustainable growing practices with an emphasis on the 'no-till' method. All seedlings are planted by hand into fertile compost that cover my no-till gardens. This eliminates the need to disturb soil and therefore the soil structure is not damaged, carbon is sequestered, water is held with no runoff, fungal and microbial life is protected, and annual weed life cycles are broken resulting in fewer weeds. Because of all these advantages that the no-till approach provides, I am able to grow my garden profitably without using chemical fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides of any kind. An added benefit of no poison being sprayed on the produce is also that the plants are left to grow at a natural pace without artificial fertilizers, which studies have shown increases the nutritional value of fruits and vegetables.You can find my produce when in season at the Oshawa Centre Farmers' Market, The Peterborough Farmers' Market, and at my farm by arranging an order for pickup or by signing up for my weekly summer CSA program.Please follow me on Youtube, Instagram, and Facebook to learn more about my work and to stay up to date on what's in season!
My Mission
My name is Connor and I'm a forever nature boy trying to make the world a greener place to live. My entire world view is based around what living sustainably on this planet really means. Basically, from my perspective it comes down to three important fundamentals.Firstly, food! If people are going to give a damn about the natural world, they need to have their basic needs met and maybe the most important need of all is a belly full of sustainably grown, nutritious, local, real, food. Since I started growing food full time back in 2018, that is what I have been trying to achieve in my community. As of this writing, the dream needs funds to stay alive and so the food has a price tag on it but, in an ideal world the food will be available at no cost. Maybe one day!Second, education! Since I started doing this full time I have learned so much and it's easy to forget how little I knew when I first started out. But why did I not know anything at the start of my career? School. It might sound ironic to blame school for not knowing anything but the public school system doesn't teach students how to grow their own food, prepare food or even the environmental impact of the food we eat. This is why I believe it is so important to pass on this information to future generations through online content and hands-on practical experience. I hope to do this by making my garden available to folks who want to learn about sustainable food production, continuing to post content to social media/Youtube and by creating teaching gardens at local public schools.Lastly, conservation! I firmly believe that if our food is grown in a place of great biodiversity, we will thrive. So often it seems that feeding the world and what's best for the environment are topics at odds with one another but there is huge potential to have the two meld together. I want to demonstrate how having wildlife areas of rich biodiversity overflowing into the spaces we grow food is beneficial in so many ways. Using the same processes as when I plant my garden, I can also make wildlife plantings. Hedgerows, wildflower meadows, grasslands and other wild areas that can all easily be planted using no-till growing methods, just as a vegetable garden is planted. I plan to further develop a system for these wildlife plantings on the land surrounding my garden and eventually work with local (public and/or private) lands to achieve this on a larger scale.If you think this sounds like a worthy cause, come buy some veg. I'm happy to take your money and put it towards my mission!
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