Gardening That Grows With Me
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 »
Having lived with my Hartley greenhouse through two winters in Southern Ontario I’ve gained a little experience with how my electric heaters work in extreme cold. Two 17,000 BTU electric fan heaters set at 15C can keep the greenhouse at 10C inside when the temperature drops to -6C. Once we reach -12C the greenhouse temperature… Read more »
I am more than bored with winter and needed a garden-related activity so we decided to try our hand at making maple syrup. We’ve never tapped maples before and our sugar maple is too small. So rather than wait, we’re tapping some other maple trees. Unfortunately, our biggest sugar maple is only 7 inches in… Read more »
In past years I’ve done all my seed starts from February through May in a small setup in my basement. Now with a new greenhouse, I have room to grow, quite literally. The question is, how early will I want to turn on the heat in the greenhouse? We live in Zone 5 Ontario and… Read more »
One of the decisions I had to make when building our Hartley greenhouse was how it would be heated. Ultimately I decided to go with electric heaters. While not as efficient as gas, I was way more comfortable with the idea of having two electric fan heaters than I was installing gas heaters. The setup… Read more »
Let me start off by saying I love my new Hartley Greenhouse. It’s a dream to have something this beautiful and yet, for me, functional. I still have some finishing details – brickwork which could not be completed before winter arrived and landscaping – but the main structure is up and it’s lovely. So how… Read more »