Gardening is all about playing and “experts” like Elliot Coleman, in his book “The Winter Harvest Handbook” stress plants won’t actually grow when there is less than 10 hours of sun per day (this happens at different latitudes but in Calgary and in most of Canada we are probably down to eight hours of sun a day right now and I am not sure when we crossed the 10 hour threshold.)
My recent farm field trip in Southern Alberta, courtesy Rudy Knitel, Galimax Trading Inc. was an amazing journey into my own back yard. I found out how difficult it is to farm organically in Southern Alberta. The carrots, for instance, are on a 16 year rotation at Leffers’ Organic farm where the cost to raise a carrot is ten times that of conventional farming.
It is early days yet but the tomato competition is heating up as fruits ripen early in the greenhouse. The same varieties planted outdoors are no where near ready but that’s why I built the greenhouse. Okay if you get technical my husband built it – but why be so picky? The early birds come from the greenhouse, not from the sunny, south facing back yard right up against the house.
This season I am bragging about my bigger than yours pumpkin patch. The patch is in the front yard where a view-blocking hedge was ripped out this spring. The “patch” is now spilling over the bank and threatening to cross the road. And just to set the record straight it is not all pumpkins. There are butternut squash, spaghetti squash, watermelons and zucchini as well as pumpkins in one giant – by town standards – patch.
In the past, when SAIT instructors asked chef apprentices to get fresh vegetables from the school’s large walk-in coolers, they sometimes received blank stares. Names and appearances of vegetables were a mystery to many new apprentices. “The main reason we put so much extra time into the garden is to simply connect our students to the food. It’s one thing to teach them the skills of how to cook but a whole other thing to teach them about FOOD…”
In the end we came up with a short list of plants to try in my straw bale, deer exposed garden. I crowd sourced the answer and together with over 100 people we decided if you are thinking ahead to spring and wonder what might grow in an area likely to be visited by deer, these vegetables are worth a try:
