How you can start your own 'victory garden'

A farmer in Cape Breton is teaching others how to grow their own vegetables, while taking inspiration from the First and Second World wars.

Estelle Levangie, who runs Thyme For Ewe Farm in Millville, N.S., is offering online courses for people who want to start their own "victory garden."

Victory gardens are gardens grown by civilians during times of widespread food insecurity. The gardens were encouraged by the Canadian government during the world wars, as a way to feed both civilians and troops.

"I'm going to show you how you can get started growing your own food … so that people can get started when they don't really know how, where, when to start all the vegetables," Levangie told CBC Radio's Information Morning Cape Breton.

CBC Radio's Brittany Wentzell stopped by Levangie's farm to learn more.

Their conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

What is a victory garden?

A victory garden is, what's been called a war effort during the First and Second World War, that really any citizen who had a yard were asked to participate in the war effort by growing their own food but also being able to send food out to the troops.

Why do you think that's still relevant today?

As we all know, we're in a tricky kind of world situation where we don't really know what's going to be happening in the future. So being able to have food security and food sovereignty, which is not just having food to eat, but doing it yourself, so that we don't really depend on export, especially with extreme weather conditions we're seeing right now.

We can see food shortages being more common, and so having food production more localized is definitely making the future look a little bit better, and we can all participate in that. 

We can all feel like we're doing something. We're not completely powerless. We do have the power to participate into making the world a better place.

What sort of things did Canadians grow in their victory gardens back in the day?

Everything, but mostly vegetables, like carrots, beets, potatoes, all the vegetables. You can pretty much grow most of the regular vegetables you eat on a regular basis. You can grow them all, even in Cape Breton. It's possible.

Do we need a greenhouse to do that?

A lot of people think that it's necessary to have a greenhouse in this colder climate, and there is a little bit of a shorter growing season, but there's still a lot of vegetables that you can grow. 

Things like tomatoes, you have to start them early in the year, so you have to start them in your house when they're tiny, tiny. They don't take that much room, so you can have them on a windowsill or under grow lights until it's warm enough to put them outside. 

But there are a lot of vegetables that grow very quickly so there's absolutely no need for a greenhouse, like peas, beans, lettuce, radishes. There's tons of vegetables that do not require you to have a greenhouse and I would never grow them in my greenhouse because it's absolutely not necessary.

If someone lives in a basement apartment or rents their space, what are some ways they can have their own little victory garden?

I lived in a basement apartment for a bit too, and it's obviously a little bit trickier, especially if your windows don't get very much sun, but if you have access to a yard, it's really easy to start, even if your soil is not great and usually when you're in town, the soil can be a little bit not so good to grow stuff in, so it's better to build up. 

If you have permission from your landlord to build little raised beds that you could take apart easily and put some soil in it, which then you can actually know what's in your soil so that you can control and know that it's going to grow because you want to add compost into your soil.

But you can grow in pots as well and that's super easy. It requires a little more watering because the pots dry out quicker. It's a really quick and easy way to get started. There's things that grow better in pots, like lettuce, for example, does perfectly fine in pots and it grows really quickly and then you have your fresh salad right outside of your door.

During the war efforts as well, the government also recommended having three chickens per household to help with egg production and keep commercial eggs free for the soldiers. Do you also have any insight into how people can maybe have something like that or a micro hobby farm?

Yes, that's really good, any kind of food production. So the easy one is to start with vegetables because obviously, you can forget about them and if they die, it's OK. Having animals gets a little more in depth of food production.

But it's also very easy to get into it with a couple of hens. What we've seen this year is there's a lot more people even wanting to raise their own pigs, so we're bringing in piglets because they're hard to find. So we bring in piglets for our own production, but we booked some extra for other people who want to raise their own pigs. 

So it's not just chickens, but chicken is definitely the easy step up from plants to animal food production.

So you really are seeing a bit of a drive in people locally to grow their own food, including animals and plants?

Definitely. It's on the rise and it's understandable when you can raise better food for about the same cost. It's not necessarily cheaper to grow and raise your own food, but at least it's better quality and you usually can have extra to share as well.