Growing a green thumb: gardens seeing rise in local food cultivation.

AuthorKelly, Lindsay
PositionTIMMINS

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Five years ago, when Sylvia Stockill started cultivating fruit and vegetable gardens for her own interest, her produce was so plentiful and tasty, friends encouraged her to turn it into a business. Now, her thriving garden centre has become an integral part of Timmins' local food movement, teaching people to grow their own food, appreciate new tastes, and support local producers.

At Bulstock Acres in Connaught, just outside of Timmins, Stockill starts plants from seed, nurturing them through the early cold spring until she opens her doors in May. The variety of plants she sells combined with her extensive gardening knowledge have made her a local favourite amongst gardeners new and experienced.

"The interest is there and this year especially I've noticed a lot of younger people," Stockill said. "I've got my repeat customers that have been coming for years, but a lot of younger people this year have a community garden plot, or they've got a little garden in the backyard just to see, and they want to try a few things."

While older generations remember helping their parents or grandparents in the garden, many of the younger generations never had that opportunity and are unschooled in how to grow their own food.

"A lot of younger people have mentioned that they like coming here because they can ask me exactly how would I cut that, how deep do I plant it, how far apart do I put them," Stockill said.

She credits the rise in interest in growing to the local food movement, which has taken the Timmins area by storm. More and more people are interested in food security, wanting to know where their food comes from, eating non-genetically modified (GMO) varieties, and supporting local producers.

An initiative by the city to install community gardens has also resulted in more people trying their hand at growing, resulting in an expansion of their palettes to embrace new varieties and flavours. Each year, among the tomato and eggplant, rhubarb and cucumber plants, Stockill chooses a new variety or two to test out.

Last year, the ground cherry, a sweet berry that forms inside husks and falls from the plant when ripe, was so popular, people stopped her while grocery shopping to ensure she was bringing them back for an encore.

Another popular variety, the cucamelon, grows like a cucumber, but looks like a miniature watermelon. It tastes like a cucumber with...

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