Oh, the weather!

 

There are days when I wonder how I became a gardener in Zone 3. How can I love something so much that is so dependent on the weather when I live where it is winter forever, it seems? I have been busy reading about how to diversify my greens in the kitchen garden, advancements in urban gardening and now, most importantly, how to protect my early flowers from frost. I have been doing all of this reading in preparation for the coming garden season and in anticipation of spring. Little did I know that winter is just arriving! We have had the most wonderful, mild winter in Saskatchewan this year. Last week the snow finally arrived and has not stopped since. The temperature is beautiful though so we have been in a cycle of melt, freeze, melt, freeze, melt, freeze.... which is great for ice photos of the trees but not so great for the spring flowers. I think they are likely getting confused. I hope I don't lose too many of them. The freeze/thaw cycle here can wipe out whole gardens if the temperature drops at just the right time. I am ready though. All of my sheets are steps away from the garden if I need them after the first buds pop out. This is a year when the Boy Scout motto is well advised - be prepared!

Always Learning

I am always learning about gardening. I consider myself an expert flower gardener, having been doing that for over 20 years now. I still find out new things about old plants that surprise me. I think that is part of what I love about gardening. I am always learning.

Vegetable gardening is relatively new to me. This year will only be my third year at trying them. I have grown previous crops in my flower garden, between the flowers and also in containers. This will be the first year for me to have a proper kitchen garden and the crops I am planning are much more than I have tried before. It is a lofty goal for a flower gardener.

Organic Gardening has a wonderful article on succession planting which is a concept I plan to try next year. This year, my kitchen garden is new and I am not yet certain where or what size it will be so making a plan for succession planting feels beyond what I can accomplish quickly. But there was a fantastic tip in the article that I plan to use:

• Vegetables that belong to the same plant family (such as cabbage, mustard, and kale) share pests and diseases. It's wise to keep in mind what family a vegetable belongs to and avoid planting one member, say tomatoes, in the same spot where a cousin—peppers, eggplants, potatoes, or tomatillos—grew in the previous 3 years.

This is a great tip for me because potatoes and tomatoes are among the crops I have grown in the past and my tomatoes were wiped out by blight. Now I know that no matter where I have my new kitchen garden dug, I want to plant the tomatoes in a different place than I grew them last year. I would love to be able to eat my crop this year!

Everything Cucumber

I have only grown cucumbers once, for a lot of reasons. First, they are a vine plant and need something to climb or somewhere to sprawl. Second, they take a lot of thought. You have to think about what you are going to do with them. Do you want to pickle or eat them fresh in a salad? If you are going to pickle, do you want big pickles or tiny ones, sweet or dill? There are so many kinds of cucumber and each of them, by claim, are best for each specific use. It seems so complicated when I am getting ready to plant.

This year, I am breaking out of that box. I have a kitchen garden chain link fence they can climb and all my years of flower gardening have taught me that it is really not necessary to do every single thing that is recommended to get a good yield. I have also decided that I will worry about how to deal with the harvest when it is harvest time. This year, I am not going to think myself out of cucumbers. If you want to join me in planting them, Mother Earth News has an article here on everything cucumbers.

Garden Time Saving

 
I came upon Organic Gardening's 11 Time Saving Tips and was going to post it here. Then, as I was reading, I realized that most of us have already heard we need to make a plan, pile on mulch and keep tools handy and close to the garden. The idea that was new for me was a good one though. It was wash your harvest in the garden. What a great idea! Saves bringing in all that dirt to the kitchen. They suggest you collect your harvest in an old laundry basket which will act as a strainer in your garden when you hose it down. This is definitely a great garden idea I am going to use. Thank you, Organic Gardening. It is always great to find new ideas I hadn't heard before - especially if they are going to save me time!

The other tip I found interesting was one I first discovered in Ruth Stout's Gardening Without Work. The tip was build soil in place. The idea is that you compost between rows all spring/summer and then dig in after harvest in the fall. Ruth advocated just planting in the between rows next year and build the soil where the vegetable rows were this year, next year. Ruth's garden philosophy, as advertised, was for the Aging, the Busy and the Indolent. I wish I would have met her. Her book is well worth the read and was published when she was 76 years old. She was a wealth of information and I have used many of her methods in my flower gardens. I must confess however, that I do not employ them all because I am rather fussy about the look of things in my flower gardens and no work does mean a bit of a messy looking garden. Beautiful, big, healthy flowers but messy overall with informal composted paths. This year, I plan to use all or most of her methods in my new kitchen garden. In my vegetable patch, paths are not required other than to walk on to weed and what it looks like is secondary to the harvest quality and size it is producing. Ruth and I are going to be great friends this season. I think I will go pull out her book now.

Kitchen Garden

Ever since we decided to move fencing this year, I have been planning my kitchen garden. Yesterday, I found all my seeds and pulled out the companion planting book so I could come up with a planting plan. So far, I have decided to plant the carrots, radish and onion together and the garlic with the roses. The roses are more important to me than the garlic but I will likely plant more garlic inside the fence for eating. January isn't over and they say February is going to get cold but I am feeling the excitement of spring!