If you haven’t noticed yet, I like to record everything. While this is largely a lot of fun, and mainly for my own interest, there is a practical need to keep yearly vegetable garden records. There is a mountain of information on vegetable gardening out there but even with only a few years under our… Read more »
Spinach Is Not A Warm Weather Plant
We almost made it — just a half a degree shy of a record today. While still not official, the temperature reached a spring like 16C today, albeit with 60km per hour winds. Now this was great for me, I really enjoyed walking around the garden in just a light jacket today. And who needs… Read more »
Time To Start Onions From Seed
Luckily for me it’s a leap year. My 2012 vegetable garden schedule called for me to start my first indoor seeds, onions, at the end of February. And they just made it in the nick of time — thanks to a leap day today. This year I’ve decided to turn a little more professional for… Read more »
2012 Vegetable Planting Schedule
The garden layout is finished, the seeds have arrived. It’s almost time to begin spring seed sowing. This year we are putting in over 50 different varieties of vegetables. Some are old favourites, many are new. Growing so many types and varieties of vegetables is a bit overwhelming so I once again created a detailed… Read more »
2012 Vegetable Garden Plan
This is the fourth year that I have sat down and actually planned out our yearly vegetable garden on paper. Our 2012 vegetable garden layout takes into account crop rotation, the fact that we have some new garden space thanks to an expansion last fall and some new, hopefully fun, crops we want to try.… Read more »
Harvested Winter Kale And Spinach
While I’m not sure what is happening to winter here in Ontario as we still have no snow on the ground, we have had some cold nights over the past few weeks with several nights down below -15C. But today was a lovely sunny day, enough to entice me out to the vegetable garden to… Read more »
Last Winter Lettuce
I went outside today and picked what will likely be the last of the mesclun mix lettuce still growing under cover in our mini greenhouse or cold frame. While the lettuce has survived several nights of below zero temperatures (including one -5C night) it is not growing. I was expecting to harvest lettuce further into… Read more »
Potato Storage Rack
Here is our new potato rack, sometimes called an orchard rack, put to good use this weekend. Historically racks like these were used to store “keeper” crops such as apples, winter squash, onions and potatoes. The drawers are slatted to ensure good air circulation, and they slide out for easy access. We made room in… Read more »
Extending the Harvest #1
Last April I posted about my new mini-greenhouse that we purchased to use as a cold frame to extend the harvest as far into winter as we could. While we planted some lettuce in the greenhouse this past spring, I wouldn’t really consider that pushing the harvest envelope as April is not that early to… Read more »
Growing Pulses aka Soup Beans
Anyone following this blog knows I always have something new on the go. This year we are experimenting with growing pulses or soup beans. Unfortunately, our bean garden has had a tough go of it. A late start this spring (due to an unusually cold and wet spring) followed by stunted growth as a result… Read more »