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 ...
Planting
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 ...
All About Starting a Garden
Here at Northern Homestead, we write about gardening a lot, general, and also especially about cold climate and short-growing season gardening. We have so much information here that it can be hard for a newbie to find it. So today we merge as much information as possible about starting a garden in ...
Spring Indoor Seed-Starting Schedule
There are different ideas about when to start seeds indoors. Some gardeners like to start very early, and others like ourselves follow a later indoor seed-starting schedule. In this post, we want to take a look when and why we start seeds following this schedule. The Seed Starting Schedule Plants ...
Starting Seeds Indoors
Winter in our area isn't over yet. The last frost day is still more than two months away. But spring is coming and with it the next growing season! Starting seeds indoors is the start for a new garden season. Why start seeds indoors? Why we do things depends on what we want to achieve. What is the ...
Getting Seeds for the New Growing Season
It's winter, it's snowy, it's cold here - a great time to snuggle up in a blanket and dream about the summer garden. Now is a good time for organizing seeds and getting seeds for the new growing season, to be ready for spring planting. Getting seeds for the new growing season is best by saving ...
Dry Spring Challenge in the Garden
Planting seeds into something that feels more like dust than soil, is a common thing here in Alberta. With over 300 days of sunshine a year we do not get much of rain at any time. Spring, however, often feels especially dry. Here we share how we deal with the dry spring weather challenge in the ...
When to Plant What – And Why Not To Follow the General Rule
When to plant what? - The answer to that question in our area seems to be very simple: on the May long weekend. This has to do with our last frost day, which is around May 25, and the Canadian Victoria day, a holiday that happens to be around the last frost day. Many gardeners here have followed ...