Just Food delivers an annual workshop series that parallels the growing season. All workshops are $5.00 or pay-what-you-can and are free to all community garden members.

Starting in the spring with Beginner Level Organic Vegetable Gardening Workshop, this workshop teaches the basics in growing, without the use of pesticides or herbicides, common variety vegetables in the Ottawa region. This workshop is offered between mid-April to late-May at various locations around the City. For information on Spring 2012 workshops, please click here.

Typically held in the month of July, we offer a Natural Pest Control Workshop to help the novice gardener deal with garden pests, rodents and viruses – all without the use of chemicals.

A Seed Saving Workshop is offered in late-summer. This workshop teaches you how to save seeds from your favourite vegetable varieties from year-to-year.

Please call Terri at 613-699-6850 x12 or e-mail to get more information on any of these workshops.

How to Start a Community Garden Workshop

It can take up to a year (or more) to get a Community Garden started in a neighbourhood. If you are interested in starting a garden in your community, be sure to attend one of our free "How to Start a Community Garden" workshop where you will learn about the steps involved in starting a community garden, how to search for land, what is essential when starting a community garden, the supports that are available, tips for organizing the garden, and much more.

Tuesday, June 5th (6:15 - 8:15 p.m.)

Centretown Community Health Centre
420 Cooper Street (between Kent and Bank Streets)

* Registration is required

Contact Emily at cgnintern@justfood.ca

or call (613) 699-6850 x12 to reserve your spot

Food Preservation Workshops

Once you have purchased food from the markets and farms listed in our Buy Local Food Guide, or harvested your own food from your home, community garden or farm, how do you make it last into the winter?

Each year we offer food preservation workshops to introduce a range of topics including canning, freezing, drying and storing. So many of us have lost the skills that our parents and grandparents might once have had to preserve food into the winter months. Preserving food allows us to extend the season for eating local, fresh foods.

Workshops are located throughout the city in either the spring (Making Jam) and/or autumn (Canning Salsa).

If you would like to:

• participate in a workshop
• help organize a workshop in your neighbourhood or workplace
• train to become a workshop facilitator (training provided for free)

Contact Terri at or call 613-699-6850 x12.

We would like to thank Bernardin, who has partnered with Just Food over the year around the food preservation workshops, for supporting us by donating canning tool kits and recipe books to this community initiative.

Plant a Row, Grow a Row, Donate a Row

A program that was created to direct more fresh produce to local food banks and food cupboards, the Plant a Row, Grow a Row, Donate a Row program encourages every citizen with a food-growing garden, including members of community gardens, to plant an extra row of vegetables in their gardens for donation to local food cupboards.

To find out more about the Plant a Row program, please contact Terri at or call 613-699-6850 x12.