Gardening That Grows With Me
My garden landscape has evolved over the years. When I first started, I focused on designing a garden with shrubs and trees, thinking woody plants would be low maintenance for my big yard. I worked hard to add trees and shrubs that bloomed at different times during the season or offered interesting foliage. I supplemented… Read more »
This is my first winter with radiant floor heating in the greenhouse, and our first extreme cold front of 2024 is here. During my first winter with the Hartley, I had only electric heaters in the greenhouse. Unfortunately, when outside temperatures reached negative double-digits Celcius, the greenhouse temperature fell to 2°C. It was also expensive… Read more »
I’ve been reading Arthur Parkinson’s book “The Flower Yard: Growing Flamboyant Flowers in Containers”. I was intrigued by his use of a collage to plan out his seasonal colour schemes. Arthur calls them ‘mood boards’. The idea is you work out your garden colours using images cut out from magazines and garden catalogues. Since I’m… Read more »
As gardeners, we may feel we’re in tune with the weather, but our perceptions are often skewed by impressions of events that don’t always align with meteorological conditions. I recently pulled some historical weather data for our area, thinking that 2023 was colder than usual. I was very surprised to see that overall, we experienced… Read more »
Radiant heating significantly changes how a greenhouse is heated, and I’ve had to relearn plant placement. With forced air fans, the floor area was cooler as the cold came up through the ground. The middle was warm since that’s where the heaters were directed. And even though heat rises, it was coldest at the top… Read more »
In my working life I was an accountant so it’s no surprise that I use an Excel spreadsheet to calculate when to start seeds indoors. It’s similar to many automatic seed-starting charts across the web, although I’ve customized my spreadsheet for what works in my garden. My plan allows me to work off my expected… Read more »
I spruced up my greenhouse with four spiffy new germination stations for 2024. As I have a greenhouse and am only growing for home use, I didn’t think I needed much supplemental light initially. In 2023, I skipped grow lights during seed starting, and everything grew fine, if maybe a tad slow early in the… Read more »
I’ve tried keeping lists on Word, in a spreadsheet and on paper, but I am inconsistent at best. Digital copies (Word and Excel) are only convenient if I’m on my computer. Paper lists are good if I’m at my desk. So, going forward, I’m going to try curating my seed list on my blog. I… Read more »
I live on around 2.5 acres. While I’ve added a LOT of garden beds, I still have a little under one acre of lawn to cut. My boys have now grown and moved out, and since I don’t like cutting the lawn, I hired a lawn care company over the past few years. My lawn… Read more »
I installed my Hartley greenhouse in November 2021 but had to wait until the summer of 2023 to complete the landscaping around the greenhouse. Part of this was taking the time to think through what I wanted, part was finding someone to build what I wanted to achieve. One of my challenges was to marry… Read more »