When you have a large backyard garden, you can easily plant whatever crops, vegetables or herbs you like. When your garden is small, you will need to be more creative if you want to get the most out of your garden. Small garden spaces can still be utilized to maximize the output you can derive from them. Here are some tips on how to do that effectively. 1. Practice companion … [Read more...]
How to Grow Carrots
If you want to grow Carrots, you need to make sure that the ground they are going into is rock free. If there are rocks, your carrots will find a way to grow around them and you will end up with some funky looking carrots. Carrots like loose soil, so if you have a spot with loose soil to about a foot deep, put your Carrots in there. Aside from rock free soil, they are pretty easy to grow and … [Read more...]
Growing Garlic – Part 4 Knowing Which Cloves to Replant
Here's the fourth (and last) installment in the How to Plant Garlic series and this one focuses on choosing cloves for planting. The first article can be found here; Part 2 here; Part 3 here. Here in Canada, we plant garlic in the Fall before the ground freezes. This lets the garlic cloves settle in and even grow a few roots. Then when the cold weather comes, the cloves go dormant for the … [Read more...]
Planning Your Food Garden
This is the perfect time of year to finalize plans for the gardens. Planning a vegetable garden is an important part of being able to ensure having enough food in the cold room for the winter. This planning is just one of the things I love about Winter. There's very little work to be done outside and no one minds if we get up late and linger over coffee. Garden … [Read more...]
Putting the Garden to Bed for Winter
It's Fall and things are finally winding down in the garden. Everything has been dug up and dealt with. Now it's time to start putting the garden to bed for winter. Here's what we've done so far this season with our garden harvests. Root crops are being stored in our cold room. The canning is almost finished for the season and we're happy to see jars full of home canned goodness on our … [Read more...]
How to Grow Cabbage
Cabbage is not a difficult plant to grow, especially in the Northern areas. It loves cooler weather and is quite hardy. Here's how to grow Cabbage. Cabbage is a heavy feeder though, so that means there will need to be a good layer of composted manure in the garden for it. Cabbage is such a good Cold Room staple for over Winter. It is really worth it to set aside some room in your garden for … [Read more...]
How to Make Pickled Garlic Scapes
In this second installment on Growing Garlic, I'm going to share a fantastic Pickled Garlic Scapes recipe. In the first post, I gave an overview about the process involved with growing Garlic. Garlic is one of the easiest garden vegetables to grow! Here in the Cariboo, the Garlic Scapes come on hot and heavy in early July. Since we have almost 300 garlic plants in the garden, we basically … [Read more...]
How to Transplant Tomatoes
I always start my tomatoes under lights in our seedling room, plenty of time before transplanting them into the greenhouse. I start seedlings in recycled styrofoam coffee cups (or any other free container I can find). Check out all the strange containers I start our seeds in. They get a great start and they stay in that container until they are root bound. How to Transplant … [Read more...]
How to Grow Zucchini
A little Zucchini goes a long way! You only need to plant a few zucchinis in your garden to enjoy a large harvest. They just keep on setting more and more zucchinis. Here is how to grow zucchini. Zucchini is a heat loving plant - I don't put my Zucchini plants into the garden until the weather warms up. Usually this means, they don't put in the Garden until early June here in the … [Read more...]
