8 years have passed since we started our adventure of building a four-season greenhouse/growing room at the back of our garage, and it's time for an honest review. If you are new here, welcome! Northern Homestead is in Alberta Canada, growing zone 3, 51 latitude parallel north. The ...
Winter Growing
Preparing the Garden for Winter
Preparing the garden for winter is important for the garden soil and the perennial plants. We are in Zone 3 meaning winter temperature can drop to -40 degrees. In our particular area, this does not happen very often, but it might happen after a warm spell, where most of the snow melts. Protecting ...
Winter Sowing in Zone 3
Winter sowing is a way to start seeds outdoors in a small container greenhouse while it is still winter. Since the most common containers are used milk jugs, it also sometimes is referred to as milk jug sowing. It was first invented by Trudi Davidoff. It sounds so good that one wonders if it can be ...
Growing Cucumbers Indoors
Cucumbers are a really fun plant to grow. They are so quick that one can almost see the growth. Growing cucumbers indoors allows us to grow them in the off-season and also during a cooler summer. A win-win in a cold climate. Indoor cucumbers in our experience grow fast and expire fast. It's ...
Temperature for an indoor edible garden
Temperature for an indoor edible garden is just as important as for an outdoor garden. Neither will you grow successfully cool weather crops during the hot summer months nor heat-loving plants during the cool season. Indoor edible plants also need to be planted according to room temperature. The ...
Additional light for an indoor edible window garden
To grow edible plants successfully you need around 12 hours of daylight (except for sprouts and microgreens). It does not have to be all sunshine, but it has to be a bright light. A plant will not die if it does not get the light needed, but it will not grow much either. Additional light for an ...
What to Grow in an Indoor Edible Garden
What to grow in an indoor edible garden? That's a great question. The answer depends on two things: What are the growing conditions? What do you want to grow? If your indoor growing conditions are on the cooler side, and the light conditions present a cloudy day, grow leafy greens. With ...
Growing an indoor edible garden in soil
In this post, we talk about growing an indoor edible garden in soil. In our outdoor garden, growing in good organic soil is our very first choice. In an indoor garden, however, it is not our first choice. Why is that? Success and failure in growing great plants depend mostly on the ...
Where does our Homegrown Food come from in the Winter
Where does our homegrown food come from in the winter? As you know we grow a garden year-round, so do we have a greenhouse big enough and suitable to grow what we eat during the winter months? These are good questions, let's take a closer look. The year-round garden Growing food year-round ...
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 ...
