Living rural in the city is great – you can do it, too.

Month: June 2015

June is not too late to start your native urban garden!

If you’ve had a frustrating spring with all this rain and insufficient heat, or just a lack of inspiration so far, don’t despair. You can still have a garden this summer. Here are some resources to help you — especially those of you in Montreal, Quebec, and eastern Ontario, where most of these resources can be reached.

If you’re francophone or able to read French, download the Guide potager urbain, written by the couple from Drummondville who were given a legal hassle in 2012 about having a front yard full of vegetables. This 240-page e-book is a handy guide to having a very attractive and productive garden. You might not be able to do so as extensively as they had it, but set yourself a goal of one small project.

This is the “offending” garden that won the Drummondville couple a victory regarding the use of their front yard for purposes other than lawn and parking

While deciding what it is you want in your garden, double-check your zone (Montrealers: we are in Zone 5). Look for vegetables that can be planted in the middle of June for a harvest in a short timeframe, up until October. 

Vegetables

Here are the next steps: Vegetable seedlings are now well past their prime at the greenhouses where they’re sold. You’ll be able to buy a few on sale. Get them into the ground or into wicking or standard pots as quickly as possible. Make sure that compost and peat are part of the soil mix, and water them every day if the rain doesn’t come.

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Gardening for Wildlife: Free Backyard Certification

What Rewilding is about is making your architecture and garden hospitable to nature. We want to help you do that – and so we’ll offer you a free backyard certification to make sure it is wildlife-friendly ($10 for the certification itself with the Canadian Wildlife Federation, free for the Espace pour la vie). Our service will help give you great ideas to make your back yard as zen as can be (such as the pond pictured here), while welcoming wildlife and beneficial insects. The CWF will, for a low ($15) cost, send you a sturdy outdoor sign that you can hang to show your guests and neighbours – a well-earned right to brag!

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