230 Davidson's Side Road Permaculture Food Forest Project
Project Objective
To use the land around the Root Cellar as an educational and research space to explore practices that restore and enhance the productivity of the land. Our ultimate goal is to create a resilient, sustainable food forest that produces nutrient dense foods with minimal human intervention.
Permaculture principles: original by David Holmgren, co-originator of the Permaculture Concept with Bill Mollison
Background
Researchers now understand many of the reasons why it is essential to work with nature to produce sustainable nutritious food and why chemical approaches have damaged the soil and increased crop susceptibility to pests and diseases. It is all about the health of your soil food web and biodiversity. As growers, our role is to take care of the soil so it can take care of our plants. As individuals, we have the ability to adopt growing practices that protect and restore the soil; we need to adopt more resilient, sustainable growing practices if we want to reliably produce nutritious foods. Moreover, as our soil quality improves so will total crop yields; in many cases yield and quality of produce are enhanced when growers simply move away from monocultures towards polycultures that support biodiversity. That is where a food forest shines.
Our Approach
To engage youth volunteers in soil restoration and site development activities to provide them with a hands-on learning experience and an opportunity to gain an appreciation of the practices that impact the availability and quality of the food we eat. We are using permaculture principals to guide our journey.
Year 3
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In 2025, JoJo’s community garden and Groupo Bimbo donated a full truck load of organic mushroom compost from Greely Sand and Gravel. This was very helpful in rebuilding the soil in the annual and perennial beds this summer.
Stittsville Tree Service continued to support our project with free wood chip for our paths and composting. Shirley Bryan continued to provide cardboard, leaves and donated plant materials. Adam Lecuyer designed and built a telescopic birdhouse mounting system for the birdhouses donated last year by Woodroffe High school students. This year we also made some great permaculture connections, namely: Robert Cordy from the Eco Odyssey Adventure park in Wakefield Qc. Robert originates from Toronto and has decades of experience in designing and creating gardens/food forests as well as working with schools on nature projects. He is now collaborating with Eco Odyssey to regenerate their land and demonstrate permaculture practices. He is also an artist and is working with an organic grower’s organization as their videographer. Robert dropped by several times over the summer to help at 230D, and is an enthusiastic supporter of the project. Kyle Oppenheimer, a local food forest enthusiast, who is working with Robert as well as Capital Forests and the Enviro Center (to build tiny forests). Kyle is also an enthusiastic supporter of our project. Graham Calder, owner of P3 Permaculture (workshops and permaculture certification training) in St. Cecile du Masham, QC. Graham is also collaborating with Robert. I recently attended one of his workshops, and look forward to future collaborations during 2026. |
2025 Lessons Learned |
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Student Volunteer Activities |
A few students from Earl of March (and their friends) returned to volunteer at 230D, but most had completed high school and were on their way to university in the fall. Many had summer jobs which limited their availability. A few new student volunteers from Woodroffe High School joined us.
Annual Potato Planting The primary activity was planting rescued potatoes (no input cost; discards from others) using the Ruth Stout method (potatoes laid on the surface of the soil, and covered with mulch) as a way to regenerate the underlying soil while still obtaining a yield. Potatoes were planted June-July and harvested in September-October. Due to the limited access to water this summer, the potato beds were only watered at the time of planting and on one other occasion. Mulch used to cover potatoes included: dried leaves (dark color, good organic matter), hay (nitrogen and other nutrients), and straw (mainly carbon). Weeds like grass, goldenrod, and milkweed that popped up in the beds were not removed. Some beds still contained potato plants that had overwintered from last year. Lessons Learned
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Community Collaborations |
You may know that Beetbox Farms is a worker Co-op that leases the NCC land and then sublets to DRFH on 230 Davidson side road. Beetbox underwent a significant change in management in the spring of 2025. Now, their board is largely comprised of a group of established business owners and not for profits collaborating to grow food and build community.
Digging garlic with Blake The DRFH students volunteered to help Blake, our garlic and mushroom growing neighbor, harvest his garlic. His field is even more compacted and thistle covered than ours, so this was a good workout for everyone on a very hot day. But we all had a lot of fun! Out to Play Forest school (owner, Lara Purvis) The 10 to14 year old students, and a teacher, from the school joined us for potato harvesting from the tower pails and the Ruth Stout beds. It is clear how connected to nature that this group is; some of their questions showed an understanding well beyond the norm. Each student got to choose a potato to take back to cook over the fire for lunch. Best quote of the day, “I am going to look at potatoes differently; I didn’t really like them until now”. A special thanks to Elina for helping with the students, at the last minute. Other Other members of the Beetbox Co-op Farm, such as Harry Fischer at Ottawa Community Gardens and Arslan at Mahjabeen garden center (greenhouses on-site) routinely dropped by for a chat to share knowledge and resources. 
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Growing Vegetables Vertically in a Small Footprint
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We also had a fun collaboration with Mark Grace, who is experimenting with growing food vertically in towers using soil filled 5-gallon pails.
36 pails were stacked on a 4 ft. x 4 ft. pallet. With 9 pails per layer. Struts were placed in between, and stacked 4 pails high. In 2025 experiments included a total of 10 pallets, using a total of 360 pails. The pail towers were located along the road on the west side of the 230D property. Mark planted an assortment of potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, beans, cucumbers, zucchini, garlic, onions, greens, and radishes, and used a mix of mushroom compost, triple mix, Gaia organic fertilizer and worm castings in the pails. The long term vision for this project is to provide growers with an easily source-able growing system for locations with limited land/space to grow food. Mark is using a small area at 230D to do his background experimentation to identify the critical factors in getting a good yield. 2025 Lessons Learned A very effective way to get publicity is to place something unusual along a road where people park when they pick up their children from the school. We talked with endless visitors when we were on site, and did a few cellar tours as well. A reliable water source is critical for this method. Soil in the pails needs to have high water retention capability; the pails containing lots of organic matter produced better. Potatoes, carrots, greens and radishes appeared to be the best suited to this system, as it stands. Some modifications are indicated for other plants. When their water supply is limited, Deer will eat anything. Something to keep in mind for 2026.
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Year 2 |
We started year 2 with a better understanding of our land characteristics (weed covered, somewhat compacted clay with anaerobic areas, and some wonderful native plants). We also learned that the area where we had built the lasagna beds had significantly improved soil characteristics and all of the cardboard and kitchen wastes had already become soil.
We began exploring more ambitious activities in the Summer of 2024. Food Forest Begins - In May 2024, JoJo’s Community Garden (Stittsville) Facebook and Bimbo Canada (Stittsville) (#goodneighbourproject) Homepage | Bimbo Canada generously donated funds and organized the purchase of tree seedlings (fruit, nut, berry) and an assortment of berry shrubs and perennial plants to help build some basic features of our Permaculture Food Forest (e.g. an assortment of nut trees and berry shrubs to form a windbreak on the northside of the land, flowering crab apple trees as a perimeter for the future Mandala garden, as well as fruit trees, berry bushes, and perennials to support an assortment of Guild Beds). A team of DRFH board members, our student volunteers from Earl of March High School, along with Adam and Mark (volunteers) spent days planting, mulching, and caring for our new plants. This exercise showed us just how different the soil is in various areas around the property, and it gave us a lot of exercise! Linda donated many trays of small perennial flowers that she grew herself from seed to plant in our infant Guild beds. JoJo’s and Bimbo Canada also donated a wheelbarrow, watering cans and an assorted useful garden tools which made our growing activities much easier. What a great community we have! We are keeping our fingers crossed that our little plants make it through the winter. Student Lead Research Project - Jeffrey Xia, Senior Student at Earl of March High School, led a team of his peers in a Potato Research Project. Over the winter, this amazing student research team identified parameters they were interested in evaluating, such as the impact of companion plants on potato health and yield, differences in behavior between potato varieties, and the impact of amendments that support the soil (e.g. food for Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi). This background research also sparked interest in the impact of light wavelengths on growing potatoes indoors…hopefully that study will happen in summer of 2025. The student researchers then designed a planting plan, planted the potatoes and companions, did weekly maintenance, tested leaf health using BRIX measurements, harvested and sorted the crop to keep seed for 2025, collected yield data and performed data analysis (report pending). While some of the results were not as good as they had hoped, many important observations were made that will inform our activities in 2025 Growing “Waste” - Mark, Adam and his family, and I did some experimenting of our own using “waste” potatoes from several sources (small, sprouted, too green to eat). We planted these potatoes in soil filled pails, in a large soil filled vertical bin, and in weed covered ground protected by a thick layer hay mulch. At the end of the season, we harvested around 20 kilos of potatoes from “waste”. Special thanks to Aron for helping us harvest and prepare the ground for 2025. Local community as a resource - Over the summer, Shirley spent hours collecting donated perennial plants, waste cardboard, fall leaves, and unused garden tools from friends, family and neighbors in support of our Food Forest project. Jeffrey collected used food containers from local restaurants to be used at the site (they can be used in so many different ways). Elina arranged for a donation of load of woodchips from Stittsville Tree Service. The student volunteers collected cardboard and food wastes from their homes. Composting - In the autumn of 2024, Elina and I started our first Johnson-Su style bioreactor to produce fungal dominant compost using woodchips and other green plant wastes collected on-site. We hope to set up a second reactor in the Spring 2025 using leaves and local food waste products. Unfortunately, the bird boxes built by Woodroffe High School Students last year did not get installed due to lack of funding for the EMT conduit posts that they were designed to be mounted on. This is on the plan for 2025. I can’t wait to see what we can accomplish in 2025! |
Year 1
Summer 2023
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“Observe and Interact” - Students, some parents and siblings, and a guidance counselor from the Earl of March High School volunteered to help kick off our education/restoration project. We observed and documented many of the plant, insect, bird, and mammal species that are present on-site in the summer. We also learned that the soil is mostly compacted heavy clay (lacking calcium and likely other minerals in the annual crop root zone), and some areas on the property are very anaerobic due to water saturation in the spring. The weeds growing on site gave us clues about the quality of the soil and what it might be missing. We also found some interesting wild plants to incorporate in our future gardens. We learned that when the soil is not too dry, there are lots earthworms present to help aerate the soil and increase fertility…some good news!
In keeping with the permaculture principles of “Use Small Slow Solutions” we created a few test lasagna bed gardens using waste cardboard, kitchen wastes and other materials found on-site. Even though we started late in the growing season, some edible produce was grown and visible improvements in soil quality were apparent by the fall. ”Obtain a Yield”. But we also learned that our soil food web needs more help to establish plant pest and disease resistance. |
Volunteers building and planting test lasagna beds
Fall 2023
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Armed with new insights, we made some modifications to our original food forest design “Creatively Use & Respond to Change”, and started building a Hugelkulture mound to separate the raw material drop-off area and the envisioned site for our Mandala gardens. The Hugelkulture mound used mainly on-site materials, e.g. dead wood and plant waste, local kitchen/garden wastes, as well as old hay/straw. Our friends at Beetbox Co-op Farm helped out with some of their greenhouse/garden wastes. “Use local resources and produce no waste.”
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Winter 2023
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Looking ahead to summer 2024 students from the Earl of March Dandelion Club hand-painted cotton tote bags using natural dyes and sold them to raise funds.
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2024 |
Students from Woodrooffe High School have built some birdboxes to be installed in the Summer of 2024.
One of our senior student volunteers from the Earl of March is leading a research team to plan and perform experiments under the 2024 Potato Research Project. We are just starting our learning journey so stay tuned for Year 2 insights and accomplishments. |
