How Local is Localeaf?

Every plant we sell is grown locally, from seed, by us, on our own property, here in Aylmer.

Most of our seeds are ethically harvested from our own extensive gardens, in Aylmer, or from our cottage in Blue Sea. These are the plants we can claim are truly 100% Localeaf.

We distribute free native seed mix packs locally, to encourage our community to plant pollinator-friendly gardens. This year our kids packaged and gave out over 500 packs of seeds, and we hope to see these pop up around Aylmer and beyond this spring. 

If you got a pack from us, let us know how yours are doing, and if you sowed them in the snow. If life got in the way and you forgot to plant them, now is a perfect time to get them started, indoors or even in a container outside. Send us pictures as they start to sprout. The kids (and I) would really appreciate it.

We started a few of our seed packs indoors, and they are thriving.

These packs are also 100% Localeaf, as all the seeds included in them were collected from our own garden in Aylmer this fall.

We also collect, buy or trade seeds from a wide array of local, near-local and further Canadian seed saving organizations and initiatives, and we nurture and grow these in our nursery.

We love and appreciate the small Canadian companies we buy seeds from, and you can see the full list here. If you are still looking for seeds, consider supporting them over the ones on box-store racks.

For soil, we are currently using giant bags of Promix BX with mycorrhizae, purchased from Ritchie’s Feed and Seed, in Ottawa. Once the grown thaws and  Bio-Merisme opens for the season, our bulk soil and any extra compost that we need to grow more plants will come from them.

We have been amending the soil of our seedlings with worm castings, pooped by our own worms also here in our home, in Aylmer. We are also adding some wool pellets from Leystone Farm, made from sheep sheared in the greater Pontiac region. It’s my first year using them but so far they seem amazing at retaining moisture in the soil of my little plugs.

This will be our first year operating as a micro-nursery, and we are still sorting out exactly how that will work and what it means. We will have a wide variety of heirloom vegetable and herb seedlings available for a short period this spring, but our focus is on growing native plants and edible perennials, shrubs and trees, which we will make available throughout the season.

We’ve recently published a full list of the seeds we are growing (or attempting to grow) this year. Many are snoozing under a blanket of snow, some are growing and sprouting under lights on our shelves in a room in our new home, and some are waiting for me to finish the inside of our greenhouse and setup some sort of shelving.

🦋 Do you have a small space in an expansive lawn you want to gift the bees, birds and butterflies, and the creatures you don’t see?

🫐 Do you want to grow fresh produce and food for your family?

🤷 Not sure how to go about it?

Come visit us this spring. It takes much less work than you think to turn your lawn into this:

Come visit us this spring, and support more than just local.

100% Localeaf