Innovative program stretches growing season

The calendar says October, but to ACC’s Food Security students, it looks a little more like May.

Photo: ACC Food Security student Renee Melanson (in front) checks out some freshly sprouted greens in a 'hoop house' on a warm October day. Instructor Nancy Chiupka is in back.

Despite having just started their classes this fall, students in the innovative new program are still busy tending outdoor garden boxes. With optimism and preparation, they planted seeds in September and are just about ready for their first harvest.

That’s right — even as the days count down to Halloween, students in Brandon are enjoying fresh-sprouted lettuce, spinach and beet leaves, with radishes and kale on the way.

“The spinach is growing best, but the beets are doing very well,” says student Renee Melanson. “We’ve been lucky so far, it’s a little bit of trial and error.”

Melanson and her fellow students have built hoop houses as part of their curriculum. They’re essentially miniature greenhouses bowed overtop of public garden boxes, and they keep plants warm and wet enough that they’re not just surviving, they’re thriving.

“Peek inside and you can feel the moisture and the heat,” Melanson says. “My glasses always fog.”

And even though they know it can’t last forever, with a long, warm fall predicted thanks to El Nino, they’re hoping to stretch their growing season into December.

Food Security students study at ACC’s downtown Adult Collegiate, but there are public garden boxes just a 10-minute walk away, over the Eighth Street Bridge just off of Stickney Avenue. In three boxes, students are experimenting with two different heights of hoop houses and comparing them to tarp and straw insulation. They’re logging germination rates and yield alongside the daily temperature highs and lows.

After a couple of years, says instructor Nancy Chiupka, they’ll have enough data to make pretty good predictions about what types of plants can grow in an extended Brandon season, as well as what techniques get the best results.

In the spring, Chiupka says, they could also use the hoop houses to start growing earlier.

“They were easy to put together, easy to disassemble; they’ll be reused,” she says.

Built from flexible PVC pipe that arches over top of the raised wooden garden boxes, then draped with thick, clear plastic, the hoop houses are both easy and affordable to make, says Drew Kinsmen, coordinator of the Park Community Centre garden.

“We could do these hoop houses again,” says Kinsmen, who joined Food Security students in building some before building one on his own garden. “They’re quite cheap, they’re quite accessible, easy — people just didn’t know.”

He says they’ve been featured on television, including on the reality show Alaska: The Last Frontier, where they sparked his interest.

“It’s a neat opportunity,” he says, adding that he’s using his to extend his lettuce season while also keeping his herbs alive. “I want to foster more of the ‘community’ part of community gardens.”

Food Security students have the same drive. Not only do they hope that they can inspire other people to copy their fall growing ideas — “We have many people asking what we’re doing,” Melanson says — but the greens they harvest will be used in salads for cafeteria lunches at the ACC Adult Collegiate.

And even when winter gets too cold for any outdoor growing (seeds will be lying under the hoop houses, waiting for spring to shoot up), Food Security students will still be growing.

Between classes, they’re busy installing cedar window boxes behind plate glass along Rosser Avenue. Next will be the installation of grow lights, and they expect good harvests all year round.

“It’s rewarding,” says Melanson. “You start with a seed and it becomes your baby.”

Food Security is a new certificate program at ACC this year. It allows adult students to learn essential skills around food and nutrition while also completing or upgrading high school courses. At the same time, they’re earning advanced credit towards ACC’s Horticulture Production program.

That’s where Melanson sees herself going next. A Quebec City native who recently left military administration, she’s eyeballing a possible career in crop inspection while also running her kennel business just outside of Brandon, Renee’s Den.

“If school had been this fun [the first time], I would’ve stayed around,” she laughs.