SUSTAINABLE VEGETABLE GARDENS FOR AN INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY

From 2021 to 2022, the Edmonton Filipino Seventh-day Adventist Church has been working on plans to build raised vegetable garden wicking beds for the Paul Bond First Nation Reserve. In partnership with Sulads Canada, the Alberta Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and ADRA Canada, the church worked to create a sustainable food security solution for this indigenous community.

A wicking bed is an agricultural irrigation system that helps to grow plants with minimal water usage. By capturing evaporating water reserves from underground before they escape into the atmosphere, these raised wicking beds can be essentially self-watering. This makes for a low-maintenance and high-yield gardening tool.

The local community helped to pick the location for four large wicking beds, while also contributing to the actual manpower on the construction date and supplying gravel and topsoil for the gardens. During the actual construction, a curious local homeless man decided to also get involved as a volunteer and contributed to the building efforts. He later received money as a “thank you” from the church volunteers and the new garden bed owners. While somewhat unexpected, the project participants now believe that more projects of this nature may prove helpful to the homeless community in Edmonton. In the meantime, some of the volunteers have also committed to following up and checking in with the recipients of the wicking beds in order to look after the project. albertaadventist.ca/enews

With these new gardening systems built, the Paul First Nation Reserve has a powerful new resource for growing their own food. While the initial cost for constructing these wicking beds is fairly high, the low-maintenance nature of gardening with this technology means great food production with minimal maintenance effort. With a reasonably simple daily routine, the local community will continue to produce carrots, turnips, beets, onions, garlic, and other leafy or fruit-bearing vegetables.

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