Have you heard of sowing carrots in cornstarch? It is said to be a way of planting lots of carrots quickly and easily for great germination no thinning needed and preventing seed waste. Wow, that's a lot to ask from a planting method, especially if it comes to something as finicky as ...
Planting
Growing Fruit trees in cold climate Part 2
Growing fruit trees is one of our favorite things to do. We love fruit, and growing our own is the best way to have them. In fact, one of the reasons we wanted to have more space to grow was the desire to plant more fruit trees. In growing fruit trees in cold climate part 1, we cover what ...
How to transplant seedlings into the garden
This blog article was inspired by a question from a reader who asked: Do you have some information about the best way to transplant seedlings to the garden? Especially cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, celery, and lettuce. We love reader questions and try to answer them as well as we can. And ...
All About Starting a Garden
All about starting a garden is a collection of blog articles that are relevant to a new gardener. There is so much information on the blog that it can be hard for a beginner to find it. Today we are merging as much information as possible about starting a garden in this one blog post with ...
Starting Seeds Indoors
Winter in our area isn't over yet. The last frost day is still a few months away. But spring is coming and with it the next growing season! Starting seeds indoors is the start of a new garden season. For a schedule when to start seeds go here, there is also a free printable that you can use to ...
Spring Indoor Seed-Starting Schedule – Free Printable
After using this spring indoor seed-starting schedule for several years now, do we still recommend it, or is it time for a new plan? The schedule comes from the All New Square Foot Gardening book. Mel Bartholomew, the author, is known for simplifying things. That attracted me to his work in 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. In this blog post, we cover getting annual vegetable seeds for the new growing season. Personally, we start with organizing seeds that we already have and then getting seeds for ...
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 ...
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 rain at any time. Spring, however, often feels especially dry. Here we share how we deal with the dry spring weather challenge in the ...
Hardening off Plants the Easy Way
Hardening off plants that you started indoors 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 ...
