Gardening in Northern climates is always a challenge and after 50 years of growing I am still learning. Here is my report about this season of growing vegetables including old and new tomatoes in my zone 3/4 Calgary, Alberta garden.
“We give the best advice we can in terms of setting up a greenhouse, planning out the heat, planning out the cooling. The greenhouse gives you the medium – it’s like the canvas, and then you just have to add a few little things [like] a small heater and [maybe] cooling if the fans aren’t going to be enough, we give advice on that. And BC Greenhouses are sold around the world from Australia and Europe to South America and across North America. It’s a small BC company with a big reputation internationally. ” Read on to find out more about planning your greenhouse.
It is officially February and there are suddenly so many jobs a gardener can be tackling. But if you don’t have an apple tree, an orchid or sprouting lemons you are probably focussed on starting seeds this month. Growing from seed is one of the most rewarding tasks facing gardeners.
I saved leek seeds one year from my own plants and the plants grew like a cross between the sleek long leeks you buy and a fat bulbing onion. Ooops. I guess the leeks were hybrids so did not come true from seed. Or they may have crossed with an onion I had in bloom at the same time. Saving seed is not as easy as it seems. Read more about saving and ordering seeds here.
Green Beans are Tasty! But oh they love heat. And at this time of year, in December, it is just too cold to grow green beans outside or even in a greenhouse without a full blast of heat for three months.
For Leek and Potato soup I clean and slice leeks into 1 mm rounds and put in pot with butter or cooking oil heated on medium heat. I slice a lot more than just the white parts. I also use the light green parts but never the dark green coarse parts of the leaf. These are tossed into the compost. In oour kitchen, Leek and Potato soup is one of our very favourite ways to eat leeks.
