Seedy Sunday Edmonton, Alberta 2016

This Sunday, March 20, 2016, my husband and I attended the Seedy Sunday event in Edmonton, Alberta, the city where our son and family live, and where we are visiting while the grandchildren are on their Spring breaks.

I feel so blessed since this is my second opportunity to attend a Seedy Sunday this year, actually, this March!!  If you look back to the previous blog post, you will see that I posted about going to the Seedy Sunday on March 6th at Nanaimo, Vancouver Island.  What is really fun is introducing my daughter-in-law to the Seedy Sunday concept.  She has done a masterful job of gardening in her backyard to the point that her freezer is full of produce through the entire winter.  How many people can say that about their urban kitchen garden?  She really enjoyed herself and came home with some new ideas.


We attended a couple of the lectures: the last half of the Food Security panel (with encouragement to not only focus on Food Security, but to also encourage schools to teach children to grow food and to cook it); the Saving Seeds lecture by commercial gardener, Kathleen Van Ihinger of Harmonic Herbs of Barrhead, Alberta-- she passed around a seedy lettuce us to take some seeds home) and the last part of Extending the Growing Season by Travis Kennedy of Edmonton's Lactuca Urban Farm,  who detailed their 5-part rotation for the growing greens that they supply local restaurants.)

Then, of course, it was time to hit the marketplace! The massive gym space that housed all of the Seedy Sunday booths is quite likely one of the locations for ballroom dancing, or maybe Pickleball, in the titanic Central Lions' Seniors Recreation Centre. 

I had an enjoyable time visiting the various seeds booths and buying the following seeds:

• Rainbow Chard
• Orca Beets
• Angelica
• Purple Tomatillo
• Midnight Lightening Zucchini
• Holy Basil- Kapoor Tulsi
• Bee's Friend Phacelia

I already have tomatoes (I think, or we did last year, in that very sweet friends give us starts). Our garden is an adequate source of various perennial herbs such as parsley, spring onions, various members of the mint family, sage, stinging nettles, and likely cilantro will pop up again this year.  We also have kale and other greens.  I have seeds for squash, scarlet runner beans, bush beans, and likely, lettuce.  While I love baby potatoes, our soil is originally layers of gravel with a deeper deposit of coal.  Yes, we live on a ridge on Central Vancouver Island, where a seam of coal runs deep through all the stories and ballads of the local country balladeers.  

I will likely put out another container of rainbow carrots.  

I picked up a card from a booth advertising Vegan Potlucks, Guest Speakers and Restaurant Nights.  The person organizing this is Mike Martin and you can contact him at martiel@telus.net if you are interested in any of those events.  

There were also people manning the Edmonton Horticultural Society Booth, and the Master Gardeners and Organic Master Gardener information tables.  Along with Seedy Sunday, there are so many opportunities in Edmonton and area to learn to grow stuff!