Established 2021
This week Bluegrass Garden Centre donated and delivered a truck load of compost, a truck load of garden soil, and all the seed potatoes we need for this year! This is a HUGE deal for us, as we would never be able to afford this …
In 2023 the Airdrie Urban Farm Collective donated over 300lbs (just under 400!) of fresh produce to the Airdrie Food Bank to help food insecure families in Airdrie, Alberta. In 2024 we hope to double that and more, plus send our volunteers home with fresh …
We’re proud to show off our brand new logo!
Special thanks to Airdrie local graphic designer Emma Flemming for designing the logo for us. We were looking for something simple we can use in all sorts of different ways. She gave us tons of options, helped us narrow down what we really liked, and custom made graphics from the logo for our social media pages. We highly recommend her work!
Contact her at seriouslybean@gmail.com for any of your graphic design needs.
The Airdrie Urban Farm Collective is a diverse collective growing the wellness of people and the land for our community. Our 2022 season was a huge success, bringing in more volunteers than ever, fresh food to our tables, and an abundance of learning through trial …
This week I’m listening to an amazing podcast about soil health, vermiculture, microbes, fungi, and more with Nicole Masters on the “No Till Market Garden Podcast”. Excellent info in an easy to listen format! Click below to listen to the podcast, or look up the …
This week I read a timely blog (as fall is beginning) about transitioning a garden to a no-till system. That means no more turning your beds! This has some huge advantages (and some pitfalls to be aware of). However it requires a mindset shift and information to back it. This blog post from “Tenth Acre Farm” goes over the why’s and how’s, the positive and negatives in a clear and concise way. Enjoy!
“Sustainable”, “Organic”, “Regenerative”, “Chemical Free”; all have become buzzwords in the last years, but what do they mean exactly? There’s a lot of information out there, and many of it is questionable, much of it is counterproductive, and yet there’s almost always something to be …
If you’ve been by the farm recently, it’s hard to miss the big black wire mesh barrel over by the compost pile. Everyone who sees it seems to stop, scrunch up their face, and wonders out loud what’s going on! The contraption is a Johnson-Su …
Welcome to the Airdrie Urban Farm Collective! We started in the spring of 2021 on about one acre of land in Airdrie that Daybreak Church graciously “donated” long term. The land was previously a soccer field, and hasn’t been used for quite some time, so it’s in pretty rough shape.
The land is seriously compacted with gravel and clay just underneath what little grass will grow on it’s own. Gopher’s have moved in the last few years and, as they do, multiplied quickly!
The farm started with creating rows of “lasagna beds”, where we layered new topsoil, unused grass sod, and manure compost from Highline Mushrooms. The idea has multiple purposes.
First, the raised bed heats up sooner in the springtime which allows a longer growing season which, in Airdrie where we sometimes only have 80 days of growing, is a big deal!
Second, it layers organic material into the garden beds to create an in-situ compost, feeding the plants as the material breaks down.
Third, the mushroom/manure compost is FULL of various kinds of fungi and bacteria, which is essential for proper plant growth. More on that in a future blog post!
If you want more detailed info on this type of gardening bed, check out the step by step at Instructables.com (image on the blog courtesy of Instructables!)
The hope is that the beds allow us to get a small first year yield, and begin to setup the land to grow more going forward!