From the ground up

St. Vital

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This article was published 10/07/2024 (432 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Environmental change can grow from anywhere — even Manitoba’s wetlands.

On June 29, green-thumbed members of the community flocked to Sage Gardens Greenhouses (3410 St. Mary’s Rd.) for the formal introduction of a new soil product with an attractive environmental impact.

The soil, explained Dave Hanson, owner of Sage Gardens, uses typha — a component made up of cattails, harvested from Manitoba’s wetlands — as a way of reducing peat-based compost in soils by 15 per cent.

Alongside selling 300 bags of the product before its release, Hanson has begun to use it in the Sage Garden greenhouse itself, providing apt growing places for the crops costumers are in search of when they visit. It’s proven to be a suitable base for growing tomatoes and herbs such as mint and lemon balm, to name a few, all while helping limit the use of peat — the extraction of which is harmful to the environment — in home and community gardens.

“Usually, when we introduce something like this, people aren’t interested in the ‘why,’” explained Hanson. “But we’ve been finding that people have been asking some interesting questions and really engaging with this.”

The project is an extension of how Sage Gardens aims to operate its business, he said.

“That sense of being an early adopter of something cool, that feels good for sure. From our perspective, it feels really excellent to be sort of at the leading edge of things that are going to make a difference in the bigger picture,” Hanson added, noting the fact that Sage Gardens has moved on from using plastic containers for its plants.

“Other local garden centres noticed that we had actually eliminated plastic pots from our new production, and they were all like, ‘Oh my goodness, how can we catch up to that?’” he said.

“It was an incredible feeling to know that, as a smaller organization, we had the nimbleness and the sense of desire to try something really different and then run with it.”

The new, typha-enhanced soil goes “hand-in-hand” with the harvesting of cattails, as well.

Scientists at the International Institute of Sustainable Development Experimental Lakes Area have been harvesting cattails since 2010, said Richard Grosshans, bioremediation lead of IISD’s water program, who spoke at the Sage Gardens event.

Before they’re harvested at the end of the growing season, the cattails have been used to improve a number of conservational efforts in the country, most notably — locally — nutrient capture to reduce the amount of phosphorus loading to Lake Winnipeg, as well as encouraging commerical-scale agricultural equipment for wetland environments, according to the IISD website.

The idea for the soil, made up of the cattails harvested after that work is done, came from a finalist in IISD’s Hackathon event, which was then given the start-up funds to get the project off the ground.

“It’s such a new, innovative product,” Grosshans said.

“And over the last 15 years, we’ve researched and experimented with lots of products, explored lots of bugs … We’re a non-profit, non-government organization. So we help the industries grow and we help create the ideas and things like that. So, (here) we have a new end product that’s being used successfully. It’s had excellent feedback.”

Having a product like this, that uses typha from harvested cattails, encourages the work being done, Grosshans said, “because we know where it’s going to go.”

”The more demand there is for the material allows more of the land management and harvesting work to continue, because we know there’s a pathway for a new product, which is the exciting thing.”

For more information, visit sagegarden.ca or iisd.org