To the Editor,
Re: Healthy farming solution takes time, Opinion, April 2.
There’s no reason to reinvent the wheel here, Lantzville.
Walk through Kitsilano and see and smell the growing movement of front and backyard urban gardens there. Walk along the Arbutus rail corridor where a revitalization of the Second World War Victory gardens has been underway for a over a decade.
Italian and Greek immigrants who moved into Kits in the 1960s have been growing frontyard tomatoes, beans, greens, and potatoes ever since (as well as kiwis and figs).
Grass, (the non-smokable kind) doesn’t make any sense – it’s a holdover to an old British luxury – lawn grass that is.
Do some newer urban farmers need help learning how to keep compost odours down? Yes, and they get it fairly quickly from neighbouring plot urban farmers. Healthy organic techniques are readily pointed out to them – reduction of moisture, intermixing and regular turning with additional straw/hay grasses and dry fall leaves.
Urban farmers in Vancouver have also been learning to deal with chicken manure from recently added city promoted coops.
Most people will tell you that chicken manure is far worse than any relatively sweet smelling horse, sheep, cow or even pig manure and if we can learn how to deal with that you can too. Simply ask someone who knows how.
Lance Read
Vancouver
