Local Food in Burnaby – Farm Fresh, Picked Daily

Local Food in Burnaby – Farm Fresh, Picked Daily

Fresh vegetables that are picked the day you buy them? Hallelujah! Why eat lettuce and potatoes from 1,500 km away when you can eat them fresh from local farms?

The more we buy local food, the more we support local farmers, and that ensures we will have an ongoing food supply close to home. Because climate change may mean that imported food is not available in the future, it’s important that we have local food sources. Plus, shorter shipping distances cut down on greenhouse gasses.

And when you can talk to the farmers and see herbs and vegetables growing in the rich fields, shopping changes from a chore to a pleasure. In Burnaby, we can buy local produce direct from two market gardens that are open 7 days a week and at a third farm that is open on summer weekends.

The Sun Tai Sang Farm at 4886 Marine Drive has been a family run business since 1935. From May to the end of September, you can buy fresh-picked produce grown in the fields behind the store. The store is open seven days a week from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Sun Tai Sang Farm also carries produce from the Fraser Valley and fruit and tomatoes from the Okanagan. They bring in some fruit, such as oranges and bananas, but they promote BC grown produce as much as possible. The farm’s homegrown items are identified with a ‘Sun Tai Song’ sticker above the bin.

Sun Tai Sang also offers a wide variety of bedding plants for your flower garden and seedlings for your veggie patch. Take a look behind the retail building and you can see the covered gardens with people growing rows of vegetables in the dark, rich soil.

If you want to order produce in bulk for canning, freezing or drying, give them a call at 604-434-3663.

Hop On Farms at 5624 Marine Drive is open from 9:30 to 6:00 pm every day of the week. The farm has been family run since 1953. Come by for the fresh produce they grow, like sweet carrots, dark green chard, and herbs. They also sell produce from the Fraser Valley and Okanagan.

Treat yourself to a walk along the field to the creek, smell the rows of mint and see the lush fields of growing veggies. You can wander through the covered tables of bedding plants and vegetable seedlings and select some for your own garden.

You can order in bulk by calling ahead. Cases of basil, anyone, for your own fabulous pesto?

Hop On Farms

Watch for Common Ground Community Farm’s ‘Open’ sign during the summer months. The farm is located at 7354 North Fraser Way. Common Grounds farmers grow vegetables from their own seeds. The farm relies on crop rotation and beneficial insects – no pesticides or herbicides.

Common Grounds is a great place to come to get your veggies and show the kids what a small farm is like. The produce stall will usually be open on weekends. Check the website for dates and times.

Article Written By: Burnaby Food First Member Joyce Cameron

Container Food Gardening Workshop! Saturday June 2 / 1:30 - 3:00pm

Container Food Gardening

Saturday, June 2
1:30 - 3:00pm

Burnaby Village Museum (6501 Deer Lake Ave)

Meeting Spot: In the Meadow

Looking for a quieter alternative to Hats Off Day? Join local educator and gardening enthusiast Jaclyn for a demonstration-style workshop on how to grow food in containers! 

This is a great workshop for everyone, especially those who live in apartments or smaller spaces. Free and drop-in. Rain or shine. Please dress for the weather and bring your questions!

Bee Smarts for Food Security

In recent years, there’s been a lot of news about bees dying and the threat to global food crops. Is this a real threat in Canada?

A whopping 90%  of plants that produce food need to be pollinated. Who are the pollinators? Any insect or animal that carries pollen from one plant to another. That includes bees, wasps, flies and, yes, even mosquitoes. Bats and hummingbirds are pollinators too.

William Husby is a BC entomologist – an insect expert to the lay person. He says that in Canada, like other countries, there has been a drastic decrease in the number of pollinators. A recent study in Germany reported a 75% decline in flying insects. Husby says this is likely the case in Canada as whole, too, although in more natural areas with a greater variety of plants, the decline can be much less.

According to Husby, biodiversity is key. Natural environments with  many types of plants are the best ones to support pollinators. The lack of plants in cities is one challenge to keeping pollinators alive and doing their good work. Another problem is large-scale agriculture because it depends on pesticides, particularly bee-killing neonicotinoids.

Copyright W.Husby

What can each of us do to help pollinators? Well, the good news is that you don’t have to have a bee hive in your back yard. In fact, you don’t even need to have a yard. There are about 450 different types of bees that are native to BC, and they don’t live in hives.

Native bees fly alone and will find your blooms wherever they are. And native bees are more efficient pollinators than honey bees, which are not native. A single native bee can pollinate as much as half an entire honeybee hive, according to Husby. “When it’s raining, native bees keep pollinating while honeybees are back at the hive with their feet up, sitting in front of the fire.”

Tips to help bees and other pollinators

·   Keep it natural. Don’t plant lawns. Instead, use the space to create beauty and attract pollinators.

·    Use your balcony. You don’t need a lot of space. Bees and other pollinators will find your balcony blooms.

·    Plant for early and late blooms. Free seed catalogues online or in print will tell you when flowers bloom. You can have colour and attract insects and hummingbirds from early spring to late fall and even into winter. One good source is West Coast Seeds. If you plant vegetables, let some go to flower. Insects love kale flowers!

·   Plant native varieties.Many plants labelled “nativars” have been altered from the original, wild plant, so they may produce less nectar. As well, changes like double flowers may keep pollinators from reaching the nectar. 

     Linda Gilkeson, BC gardener, author and speaker, encourages us to plant “the least  

   manipulated flowers.” (To receive Linda’s email with great gardening tips, email her at info@lindagilkeson.ca.)

·   Avoid pesticides and never use neonicotinoids. Learn about and use plants that act as natural pest controls. Husby extols the benefits of cilantro. It attracts helpful insects like wasps that control caterpillars. West Coast Seeds has a good page on helpfulinsects and what to plant to attract them.

   Create resting places for pollinators. Native bees make homes in stems of plants and under rotten wood. They hibernate in winter and use the nests for baby bees in warmer weather. Other insect pollinators do the same.

·   Buy locally grown food. Local farms are smaller, and so they aren’t as likely to use the quantity of pesticides used in large-scale agriculture. Visit your local farmers’ market or check the supermarket produce stickers.

    Note: Many grocery stores have taken to putting up large signs that boast local produce. You may find that there is, in fact, no local produce under the sign!)

Copyright W.Husby

If we want to eat in the future, we need pollinators! Taking care of them takes care of our food supply.

Article Written By: Burnaby Food First Member Joyce Cameron