Food Growing Success – Tips and Tricks to Get the Best Production, including Using Greenhouses and Direct Seeding vs Transplants

With Arzeena Hamir

Food growing is a time-honoured tradition and not a difficult task once many patterns are learned and systems in place.

Many vegetables especially benefit from being started ahead of time, ideally under lights or in a greenhouse, so that they can mature in our cool, short summers. Learn what vegetables benefit from starting indoors, which ones are best direct seeded outside, and which ones do well in greenhouses.

The basics of seed starting will be covered, including ideas of how to reuse containers from home wherever possible, the pros and cons of seed starting mixes, and how to give veggies the best start possible.

Risk and benefits of using a greenhouse will also be discussed, as well as what you need to do differently when gardening in a greenhouse.

Please bring your questions about how to get the best production out of your garden.

About Arzeena Hamir:

Arzeena is truly a renaissance woman! She is a teacher, a farmer, an agronomist, a food security activist, a politician, and a mom. As one of BC’s most popular garden club speakers, she discourses on a wide range of useful organic gardening and food security topics.

Arzeena earned her Bachelor’s degree in Crop Science from the University of Guelph and her Master’s degree in Sustainable Agriculture from the University of London, England. She worked abroad for many years as a CUSO volunteer in Thailand and as a researcher in Jamaica, India, and Bangladesh where she encouraged sustainable and integrated agriculture, composting and natural alternatives to pesticide use.

Arzeena became staff agrologist for West Coast Seeds in the late ’90s and then ran her own seed company, Terra Viva Organics. From 2008 to 2012 Arzeena was the Coordinator of the Richmond Food Security Society where she oversaw a number of community projects which included a proposal to the City of Richmond to declare itself a GMO-free Zone.

Arzeena’s family farm, Amara Farm, is one of the outstanding market gardens in the Comox Valley and their produce is sold at the Comox Valley Farmer’s Market.  She also teaches soil science at North Island College and is Founder and Chair of the Mid Island Farmer’s Institute and a Director of IAFBC (Investment Agriculture Foundation of BC), an industry-led, not-for-profit organization working to foster growth and innovation across BC’s agri-food industry.

Most recently, Arzeena won the 2018 election to become Area B Regional Director in Comox, BC.