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| Home | My husband and I use very simple techniques in this garden and have been very successful in raising a productive garden on this acre for our family. We use various raised beds, cloches, cold frames, and fruit cages to change the climate somewhat. See Structures for details.We rarely need any pest control - the hundreds of birds that visit out garden take care of that for us - and we only occasionally have to spray water on an aphid or two. We have bird feeders and bird baths around the property, a pond and small waterfall, and have planted many plants to attract and feed the birds. I grow many plants - herbs, annuals and perennial flowers, which attract beneficial insects.
 Click here for a list of the birds in my garden
We have built and placed (wooden) blue orchard bee houses near all our fruit trees to help the pollination of our fruit. Blue mason (orchard) bees prefer orchards, will fly in cooler weather and rain. 
We use mostly our own compost for fertilizer, made with matured plant material, and we have a heavy duty chipper/shredder to aid in the making of the compost. We also have chickens and use the chicken manure which we compost for a year before using in our vegetable garden.  Barred Rock chickens  Comet Cross chickens and friend We use nasturtiums and other plants as trap plants. We plant nasturtiums around all our fruit trees to encourage the black aphids to stay on the nasturtiums. Most years we have no black aphids anymore, not even on the fava beans which everyone in the Lower Mainland seemed to have this year. I think the birds are doing their job.  1 part rock phosphate 
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