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 ...
Planting
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 ...
When to Plant What – Northern Planting Schedule
When to plant what in a vegetable garden? This is an important question. The northern planting schedule answers this question in a nontraditional way. The general rule in our area seems to be very simple: plant everything on the May long weekend. This has to do with our last frost day, ...
Planning the Vegetable Garden
Planning a vegetable garden is for those, who love making plans and lists, a welcomed exercise, but a struggle for not-natural planners. We are more in the latter category. You know how it goes, you make a plan, at least sort of, then change it and then lose it. Oh, the struggle! If you know what ...
Growing Food – Potatoes
If you want to grow food that you eat, grow potatoes. It is a high-yield plant, easy to grow. Plus, potatoes store well for months. A must-have in the garden. Since potatoes are on the dirty dozen list, it is worth it to grow them at home. To write up a how-to guide on growing potatoes is almost ...
Planting a Hydroponic Garden
All growing starts with planting. Planting a hydroponic garden is no different from conventional soil planting. We love to start our plants from seeds, it is part of the gardening fun. With discovering hydroponics and indoor gardening a whole new gardening world opened up to us. Now planting a ...
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 ...
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 ...
Growing Overwintering Spinach in Cold Climate
Spinach is one of my favourite greens to grow in the garden, for so many reasons. It is the first crop to plant and to harvest in spring, it stays alive over the winter, and it needs no extra space in the garden. In this post we share with you a video that I made in the course of a year. There ...