Starting vegetables indoors is a rewarding experience. The vegetables get a solid and early start to their lives, and gardeners are able to reap the produce much faster than if they planted the tomato seeds directly into the ground. Tomatoes love heat and light, so in a shadier or cooler garden it is important to get a head start on growth by starting seedlings indoors when the ground is still too cold to plant tomato seeds. However, care needs to be taken to keep these tomato plants seedlings safe as they transition into the outdoors. Plants naturally reach for the … Continue reading →

It’s the season that gardeners love and loathe. We loathe it because in the Northern Hemisphere, it is the season of dark, cold, wet, and snow. Gardeners have to stay indoors, out of the garden. However, it is also the season of planning and organizing and buying and swapping seeds, and that is a good thing. If you plan to eat out of your garden this year, are you ready? I’m not entirely ready, but over the last few years I’ve developed a better understanding of what our family needs from our garden. Granted, we can’t eat entirely from our … Continue reading →

What to do with those leftovers from your garden? Make them into Thanksgiving dinner, of course! Thanksgiving is a wonderful time to use root vegetables that you may have in cold storage. Whether it’s your own garden produce or it’s from a local farm, here are some ideas for those delicious, carbohydrate-rich vegetables. Parsnips are the sweet surprise of the fall and winter season. They actually taste better after the days become frosty, so keep them in your garden until the last possible moment. Mash them up with some winter spices like nutmeg and add some butter to make them … Continue reading →

I aspire to be a neighbour who is beloved by the children in our townhouse complex. No, I don’t give out good Halloween candy, and we don’t have any particularly cool toys. Nope, I plan to be the neighbour with the berries. The front yard of our townhouse does not really deserve that moniker. It is a space that is about four metres long and a couple of meters wide. It boasts a lovely miniature maple tree that I can’t bear to get rid of, but the rest of it is covered in berry bushes. Now, I am quite happy … Continue reading →

The seeds in my fridge are aching to get out and into the ground. In fact, the swiss chard and beets that overwintered in my yard are already growing. It’s been an El Nino winter here on the Northwest coast of North America, and it’s fairly warm. If you’re aching to get into the garden already, what early spring crops can you start to plant in the next couple of months? Fava or broad beans are an excellent cover crop and they make a good early spring crop as well. They will thrive in the cool weather and falter in … Continue reading →

Do you mulch? Ah, the cocktail-party conversations of the gardener. What is mulch? Basically, it’s a layer of rough and useful material that you place on your garden. Mulch can be used to protect the soil, to enrich the soil, and to add air pockets to the soil. A green mulch or a green manure is the name for plants that not only provide winter cover for the garden, they also provide nutrients come spring. Clover, winter rye and legumes are excellent green mulches. Fava beans can be planted in the fall and then turned over into the garden in … Continue reading →