Growing peppers in a cold climate is in many ways similar to growing tomatoes, but still different. Tomatoes are more popular, more forgiving, and a bit easier to grow. Overall though if you are successful in growing tomatoes, peppers can be your next thing to conquer. We love to grow peppers. ...
Gardening
Growing and Preserving Basil
Basil is a great culinary and medicinal herb. Fresh and preserved (dry, or frozen) basil is great to use. Not just the taste, but also the scent of basil is unique. Fresh basil adds a summer fragrance and taste to a dish or salad. Basil is also great for teas and oral health. The basil herb is ...
Growing Food – Cucumbers
Growing food is important to us, and we have covered many edible plants already. Today it's all about growing food - cucumbers. Growing cucumbers in the northern climate, using cucumbers in yummy recipes, and preserving them for winter. Now, I have to admit that I have not been able just yet to ...
What To Do if Plants Fail to Grow
If you have been gardening for a while, you know things do not always go well. Usually, we don't talk much about it, and that might give the impression that it does not happen to experienced gardeners. Well, it does, and here we share what to do if plants fail to grow. We have had a lot of practice ...
Planting a Fall Garden in a Northern Climate
Our growing season is short, just over 100 days. It seems that with most plants we have just one shot. However, to use succession planting for a fall garden has been a goal of ours for many years. We started experimenting with it pushing the boundaries for planting a second crop, aka a fall garden ...
How to Deal with Garden Weeds
Weeds are plants that grow where we do not want them to grow. Any plant can be a weed, in fact in our garden we have chive weeds, delphinium weeds as well as dandelion weeds. "It grows like a weed" is a saying to describe what is thriving. Weeds always seem to be there. How to deal with garden weeds ...
Cold Spring Challenge in the Garden
Living in a cold climate cold is a constant challenge in the garden. We share many methods about how we survive blizzards and protect plants from early frost. In this blog post, we wanted to especially address the cold spring challenge in the garden. We find if we get en early healthy start to ...
Transplanting Tomato Plants into the Ground
It is always a very exciting day when my tomato plants can finally go into the ground! I start all the seeds indoors. We grow mainly heirloom tomato varieties. Here we share how we do the transplanting tomato plants into the ground. When to plant tomatoes out Tomatoes are a warm-weather crop. ...
Hardening off Plants the Easy Way
Hardening off plants the easy ways is different from the traditional method where you bring plants out on a nice and sunny day for 2 hours, then bring them back in, repeat that the next day for 4 hours and bring them in again. Adding a couple of hours each day it takes 7 -10 days till plants are ...
Rainwater Harvesting for Use in the Garden
Water is an essential need in the garden. Rainwater harvesting for use in the garden helps us to use water that would otherwise go to waste. Plants prefer to be watered with stagnant water that had the chance to warm up. Having rainwater around the garden is very convenient, during a dry spring it's ...