Category: Garden

• Garden Seed Saving

  

  Gardeners have been saving seeds for centuries. Pioneers were some of our first seed savers, guaranteeing they could grow the same beans, corn and squash year after year. You may recall watching a grandparent save seed such as sweet peas. Entire books are written about seed saving as it can get rather technical. If you…

• The Cabbage Butterfly Woes

  

  You don’t have to garden long before you will come up against garden pests that can quickly destroy a garden crop. With the good comes the bad. Years ago a gardener may have been inclined to have a cupboard of various insecticides for each type of pest. I remember watching my grandmother and my mother…

• Zinnias: The Workhorse of Our Garden

  

  When we started growing all our own plants from seed, we found so many choices of zinnias available to us. Each year we would try another variety of this annual and each year we have another “favourite “. Not only do we love them, but they are appreciated by the bees, butterflies and hummingbirds. Zinnias…

• Gardener’s Birds and Bees Story

  Ok, so we aren’t going to tell “the story”, just a story. A story about pollination. Pollination is an essential part of fruit production. Pollen from a flower’s anthers (the male part of the plant) sticks to a pollinator. The pollinator then takes this pollen to another flower, where the pollen sticks to the stigma…

• Easy Cut Flower Garden

  

  I love flowers. I love to grow them and I love to share them. From spring with the arrival of the daffodils to fall with the final sunflowers I want weekly bouquets in the house. During Covid lock down when I suppose we all went a bit stir crazy I decided to add a cutting…

• Growing Tomatoes on the Canadian Prairies

  

  We garden in a zone 3b urban setting. Our gardening season can be quite short. Some years we can still have frost occur as late as the 6th of June, and can have a fall frost as early as September 7th. This gives us about 92 days to our growing season. This means we need…

• Growing Ranunculus on the Canadian Prairies

  

  Certain flowers seem to be a must for us. Ranunculus is one of them. The multiple petals of the blooms are truly like nothing else. The only downside is they don’t last all summer. Many years ago I tried growing ranunculus. I followed the back of the package which essentially told one how deep to…

• Organically Treat Seedlings From Damping Off

  

  Have you ever had a flat of new seedlings look great then all of a sudden they seem to fall over at the soil level? The tender seedling’s stem at the soil level seem shrivelled and almost hair like in size. You are not alone. What is happening is referred to as damping off. This…

• Growing and Using Chives and Chive Blossoms

  

  Growing Chives  Chives are a very easy plant to grow.  We garden in zone 3 on the Canadian prairies. Chives are unique in our urban garden as it seems to be the hardiest plant we have.  Ours is planted in a garden on the south side of our house.  Without fail every year as the…

• Self Sufficient Gardening: No Greenhouse Required

  

  Gardening can be an expensive endeavour.  According to Stats Canada in 2020 Canadians spent over 1.7 billion on gardening.   Potted plants were almost 900 million. The trend is expected to continue to grow, no pun intended. Perhaps you are considering catching the wave.  There are ways that you can save yourself from emptying your…