Northern Gardeners Almanac

Erratum

2016-04-16T11:50:00.001-07:00

UPDATE I've deleted all the links that pointed to photos of my garden and the plants I grew. Those photos were on my now defunct flickr site. I've updated all the links with the new blogspot.com suffix. I have no control over links to pages that are not on this website.

I'm no longer paying for my domain northerngardenersalmanac.com thus: when you click on a link that refers to another page in this blog you are directed towards a page that is a place name for my domain. It contains nothing useful and I apologize for the confusion.
Instead of dot com my blog has reverted back to the generic blogspot.com.

All my pages are grouped together by labels. To find information on a topic click on the box called "Label" at the top of the page. Thus, for example, you will see there are seven posts under the label Annuals.
If you have any questions then leave me a comment and I will get back to you.

Container Planting- Choosing flowers for scent and colour

2015-04-29T09:03:00.000-07:00

I live in a house with a huge garden area but I still like to have pots of plants around, they give another dimension to the garden.

In northern gardens potted plants are: Transitional- houseplants or tender perennials you over winter inside the house or they are temporary- annual plants you leave outside until repeated frosts kill them.

Choosing pots.

The bigger the pot the better, although if it is not frost proof it will crack. I learned this through bitter experience. I now bring all my clay pots, full of soil, inside every fall and store them in the basement. I abhor plastic pots. I do have one half whiskey barrel which I happily leave outside all winter. I just wish I could find more. Big pots are easier to take care of because they do not dry out as fast in the hot summer sun.There is room to have more than one plant per pot so you can get creative with different shapes, textures and colours of plants.

Choosing plants

I think of scent and colour when I choose plants to grow together in one pot.

I plant my red pom pom Dahlia in the middle of my half barrel and scatter Matthiola longipetala (evening scented stocks) seeds on the rest of the surface. The Dahlia leaves are big, and its bright red flowers effectively camouflage the rather drab looking flowers and weedy foliage of the Matthiola. However, as soon as the sun goes down the Matthiola perks up, its flowers open widely and in the half light of dusk it’s now luminescent flowers, as Gertrude Jekyll wrote more than a century ago, “pour out upon the still night air a lavish gift of sweetest fragrance." The best spot for this pot is by an open window so you can enjoy the scent indoors or place it on a patio or deck. In the above photo the Matthiola are the tall nondescript flowers to the left of the red Dahlia.

Tagetes tenuifolia (Orange gem or Lemon gem marigolds) form a low mound of lovely green ferny foliage covered in tiny yellow or orange blooms. Their flowers have a lemony scent and best of all they are edible. Toss them into salads or use to decorate a cake. Plants are easily grown from seed.

I like to plant these with another scented flower Heliotropium arborescens. Its lilac coloured flowers contrast nicely with the orange and yellow Tagetes. I buy this one already grown since it takes longer than 3 months to flower from seed, and in northern gardens that is not practical. I like to save my limited indoor seeding space for tomatoes, peppers and other edibles. Unlike some of the gigantic Heliotrope plants I have seen in some southern gardens it remains small, during the short summers in my northern garden, so it does not overpower the tiny Tagetes. The other reason I picked Heliotrope is, of course, because of its smell. Some gardeners liken it to the sugary aroma of cherry pie while others swear it smells like baby powder. No matter, I can’t imagine not having it in my garden. In the big photo above, the pot on the left contains Heliotrope and Tagetes in flower.

Other annual flowers to plant in pots, that I have grown from seed include-

Schizanthus pinnatus (butterfly flower) resembles a tiny orchid and comes in a variety of colours.

Cladanthus arabicus the plants ferny foliage, when pinched, emits an unusual spicy fragrance. Its bright yellow daisy like flowers will brighten anyone’s day.

Brachycome iberidifolia (swan river daisy) has tiny daisy like flowers, mostly blue but also white, pink and violet.

Convolvulus tricolor (dwarf morning glory) rewards you with gorgeous flowers. The outside edge of each flower is the most beautiful shade of blue, tapering to a white star shaped middle surrounding a yellow throat. Be sure to get seeds of the cultivar ‘Royal Ensign’. This compact plant grows only 2 feet tall making it ideal for pots.

Plant a convolvulus in the middle of a large pot. Surround it with several Cladanthus plants and one each of Brachycome and Schizanthus for a colourful display, or, as the periodicals are fond of telling, us a riot of colour.

Chionodoxa : Early Spring Bulb, AKA glory of the snow

2015-04-24T11:07:00.000-07:00

The best thing about spring is seeing early blooming bulbs erupt out of the ground and bloom before even the grass starts to grow or leaves have appeared on bushes and trees. It means spring has really, truly started, no matter if it is mid April or mid May. Up here in northern BC it sometimes seems as if spring will never come.

Chionodoxa, are tiny bulbs that grow clusters of small, clear blue, star shaped flowers.

Their Greek name translates literally into glory of the snow. A few bulbs do not make much of an impact but if you allow the flowers to go to seed, Chionodoxa will increase in numbers, so from a distance their intense blue flowers seem to merge becoming a solid carpet of blueness. Look for tiny green stems growing in clusters a few inches away from the parent bulb in early spring. Leave these alone to develop into bulbs and you will soon have your own patch of blue.

Chionodoxa need sun for most of the day although I find that bright afternoon sun seems to wash out their blue color. Plant the bulbs in autumn, 3 inches deep. They grow in almost any soil that drains freely.

Buy My Book

2014-12-12T14:22:00.001-08:00

Get my book wherever books are sold online or bricks and mortar. If they don't have it then ask them to get it for you.
If you are local get it from Books And Company, 1685 3rd Ave Prince George BC Canada.

The combination of short summers and long hours of daylight presents a unique challenge for northern gardeners who hope to harvest crops before the autumn killing frosts arrive.

Author and master gardener Melanie J Watts shares her wealth of knowledge in her book, Growing Food In A Short Season :Sustainable Organic Cold Climate Gardening.

The book is a comprehensive guide to growing vegetables, herbs and fruit. Much of her advice is pertinent for every gardener no matter where they live. Long before Organic and Sustainability had become part of our awareness Melanie believed that healthy soil, water and sunlight were the ingredients for producing abundant harvests of tasty food. She shows the gardener how to work with nature by paying attention to frost dates, microclimates and crop maturity dates. She explains how to manipulate mother nature with the judicious use of crop covers, cold frames and green houses to extend the season for tender crops.

Melanie offers advice on planting, harvesting and preserving produce for the long winter. Her book contains 40 recipes, features photographs and detailed instructions for a DIY cold frames and crop covers.
I've been a freelance writer since 1995 and an organic gardener since 1986. For more information Take a look through the posts of this blog.

GO Sunshine! -Autumn Planting & Collecting Seeds

2014-11-11T15:55:00.000-08:00

One day it's 3 degrees above zero, pouring with rain and depressing as hell. Today it's 16 degrees below zero and sunny. Sunshine makes me happy. Except these Autumn crocus (Colchicum) haven't opened yet. This morning when I went outside wearing my down coat, toque, mittens and insulated boots I found them lying flat on the ground, I'm thinking their flowers won't be opening this year.

Now that Winter has arrived, I'm checking out the local ski & skate ski areas for snow reports. I'm not sad that gardening is over, I'm just moving on to winter life in northern BC.

My freezer and cold room are full of vegetables and strawberries from my garden. Mnnnn, what to make with frozen strawberries?

Things To Plant In Autumn

Three weeks ago I planted potatoes and peas following the advice of old timers. Usually I plant these in the spring. I know the potatoes will sprout next year but what about the peas? I've also planted garlic, plus there is the perennial plants- asparagus, strawberries, raspberries arugula, chives and other herbs just waiting for a tweet from mother nature to so they can start growing again next spring. I've also covered up the kale to keep the marauding, hares from eating it when it starts growing again next spring. I'm excited to see everything coming up next spring, especially the kale since I want to flower and go to seed!

Collecting Seeds

This year I collected seeds from the peas. It was easy since they mature quickly from an early spring planting. Beans were a bit harder since they are not planted till mid June. But I did manage to harvest a couple of mature pods although I had to finish drying them inside.

The carrots were a huge dissappointment. Because carrots are biennial I left some roots in the ground over winter. Unfortunately many of them were eaten by mice. However due to a stroke of genius I had planted carrots in more than one spot so the unscrupulous mice didn't find them all. Luckily because of an oversight during harvesting, 1 carrot planted in the other spot started growing the following spring. It put up an impressive flower stalk but even though it flowered massively the seeds did not mature. I even brought some of the flowers inside hoping they would dry and somehow turn into seed. Maybe summer in zone 3 is just not long enough to harvest carrot seeds?

This year I didn't leave any carrots in the garden. I harvested them all. I'm hoping at least one of them, a big one, survives winter in the cold room so I can replant it and maybe try collecting carrot seeds again next year.

Killing Frost

2014-09-11T20:22:00.002-07:00

Sometimes Autumn frosts barely dip below zero, usually they graze the tops of tender plants blackening only a few leaves. Frosts like these happen repetedly over the course of at least a few weeks before one final hard frost puts an end to any hope that one might be able to ripen that last tomato in the garden.

Two nights ago was our first frost and last night we had another one. Rather than teasing us with little nips, Mother Nature just let the temperature plunge, blackening the leaves of annuals and perennials alike, reducing others to mush, squelching any hope of a reprive and reminding us that we do live in Northern Canada.

When frosts are minus 4C (29F) and lower the chances of most of my garden plants being able to survive even when covered are slim. At this time of year I keep an eye on the weather forecast so I can prepare.
This time I picked every snow pea, every bean and every zucchini out of the garden no matter what size they were. It's better to have a bowl of miniscute beans, peas and zucchini rather than a bowl of nothing.

Even though the potato tops are blackenned the potatoes are fine under the soil even if the top inch or so of soil freezes, ditto for the carrots and beets.
Of course the kale, collard greens, mustard and even the swiss chard and beet tops are still alive, crunchy and fresh.

The bolted lettuce I was hopping to collect seed from was a goner, instead I ate it for supper. Once lettuce has been touched by frost it tastes bitter. The plants salad days may be over but you can still eat it.

Bolted Lettuce Stir Fry

I usually make this recipe with radicchio but this time I used bolted lettuce. You can also use radish leaves.

-I melted a heaped tabelspoon and a tablespoon of olive oil in a frying pan.
-Slice a heaping mound of the lettuce leaves cross ways into roughly 1/2 inch pieces to make 4 cups or more.
-When the butter has melted and is sizzling add the lettuce to the pan.
-Stir fry it until it's soft.
-Pile cooked leaves on a plate and sprinkled them with a tsp of lemon juice.
-Eat.

Tomatoes: The Tastiest Cultivars To Grow In Northern Gardens

2014-09-03T18:46:00.003-07:00

Even though this year I lost some potential tomatoes to obnoxious, flower killing heat inside my greenhouse I’m still harvesting 2 or 3 ripe tomatoes everyday.

I’ve been growing heirloom tomatoes for 8 years. I grow the humongous, vine like indeterminates inside the greenhouse and the smaller, shrub like determinates in pots.

I start my tomato plants indoors under lights in March

What To Do About Excessive Heat
I place the tomato pots on the deck on the south side of the house, moving them away from the wall as the summer progresses and the hot summer, sunlight intensifies. At midday the hot sun beating down on my wooden deck can raise the temperature above 40C, 104F. Temperatures this hot kill tomato flowers.
To keep the temperature in my greenhouse at a reasonable level I open the door and window. I’m toying with the notion of peeling back the plastic roof or maybe getting a shade cloth.

Why Grow Heirloom Tomatoes
I decided if I was going to grow heirloom tomatoes that I may as well grow the coolest and tastiest (although I’ve never met an heirloom tomato that wasn’t tasty) ones I could find. There is no point in slaving away to grow something I could buy in the grocery store or farmers market.

Determinate Tomato Cultivars

Whippersnapper is always the first tomato plant to give me a ripe tomato. It’s a small plant producing masses of delicious cherry tomatoes.
Silvery Fir is a pretty plant with beautiful fernlike foliage. It produces a moderate harvest of delicious, red fruit.
Starfire was developed in Manitoba in 1963. It produces tasty, moderate sized fruit. Supposedly ‘Starfire’ tomato seeds are hard to find. I got my seeds from an internet friend.
Indeterminate Tomato Cultivars

Emerald green is ripe when it is still green. You know it is ready to eat when it feels soft, you can imagine it’s yummy juiciness and your mouth starts to water.
Black Krim has brown/ red fruit, is soft and juicy and has meaty, delicious tasting flesh.
Purple Calabash tomatoes are large, multi-pleated, dark purple red, juicy and delicious.
Burrackers favourite produces enormous, beefsteak like, yellow red, tasty fruit.
Red Currant vines are impossible to prune. Their numerous side branches and branchlets produce hundreds of sweet, tasty, currant like red fruits.
Brandy wine fruit is enormous, deeply segmented, pale red, juicy and delicious.

What To Make With Your Heirloom Tomatoes
You will need:
tomatoes,
fresh basil leaves, balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper.

1) Choose three or four, colourful, ripe, heirloom tomatoes, warm from the sun.

2) Cut each one into 5mm (1/4 inch) thick slices.

3) Arrange slices attractively on a plate.

4) Drizzle with a teaspoon or two of balsamic vinegar, sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste.

5) Arrange chopped basil on top.

6) Eat.

Avoiding The Heat: keeping your tomato plants cool

2014-08-26T16:24:00.000-07:00

I always thought tomatoes loved hot sunlight the more the better. But this year when the numbers of dead tomato flowers seem to outweigh the numbers of actual tomatoes I began to realize it was the extreme heat, not some weird disease, that was killing the flowers.

When temperatures get up above 40C, (104 F) tomato flowers start dying. It was easy enough to move my pot grown tomatoes away from their sheltered microclimate, on my south facing deck, into a cooler spot but what to do about the tomato plants inside the greenhouse?
Meanwhile the peppers cucumbers and even the beans were working overtime lapping up the heat, putting out twice as many flowers and fruit than they usually do.

This is a new problem for me. Despite leaving the door and the window at the back of the greenhouse wide open, by midday the mercury was soaring. I had heard about using a shade cloth to keep tempeartures down but was suspicious about it actually working. One friend said she covered her greenhouse with a tarp to keep temperatures from getting to high.

So I got out my ancient orange tarp and a tall ladder. It took me 3 minutes to climb up the ladder and realize that the tarp was too small to drape over the roof. Investing in something bigger is one option but not cost effective.

Then I read this article.
Suddenly it made sense to somehow string the tarp up inside the greenhouse above the tomato plants. I thought I could staple it to the bottom of the joists that hold up the roof. Problem solved.

However I won’t get to set it up till next year because nowadays daytime temperatures have dropped dramatically. If I open the greenhouse door at all it is only for a few hours.

Last week our night time temperatures were as low as 3C (37.4F) Luckily there was no frost yet in my garden.

What To Do With Comfrey, Symphytum officinale

2014-07-29T09:47:00.000-07:00

When I choose plants for my garden I think about what else besides the obvious things like scent, colourful flowers, edible leaves, stalks or fruit does the plant have to offer. The more attributes I can list the more valuable the plant is as a citizen in my garden community.

Comfrey, Symphytum officinale, is one of those herbal giants (it's the plant on the left of the photo) although like other herbs it is not edible. My comfrey plants easily attain statuesque proportions of 152 cm (5 ft) high and 91cm (3 ft) wide competing with the lovage and horseradish for biggest garden herb.

Hardy Perennial

I used to grow comfrey in my zone 2 garden in the BC Peace. Like all perennials, during their first year, it needs a reliable source of infrequent but adequate water to encourage it to establish deep roots. A deep watering about once a week is sufficient. After the first year I stop watering. Mulching keeps the soil cool and slows evaporation.

Nutrient accumulator

Comfreys deep roots help it search out deep pockets of water as well as minerals and other nutrients that it concentrates in its soft, lush green leaves and thick stems. Comfreys ability to gather nutrients and its exuberant growth make it one of natures stellar mulch makers. I have comfrey plants all over my gardens. I cut them down periodically throughout the summer, to throw on my compost bin but more likely to use as a nutrient filled mulch in my vegetable gardens. I cut the stalks into approximately 4 inch segments and lay the pieces around my plants. The aim is to cover the soil and give the soil organisms something to munch on. Keeping soil organisms well fed increases their interaction with plant roots and fosters nutrient exchange helping my plants grow strong and happy.

Root Buster

Apart from distilling nutrients comfreys deep roots are great at breaking up hardpan and clay soil. It's a boon in my garden since the soil is hard, unyielding clay.
Propagating comfrey is easy, some say too easy since a whole plant will grow from even the tiniest bit of root. This was great when I was first establishing my garden.

Comfrey’s lovely purple blossoms attract insect pollinators and predators. I usually admire the flowers for a week or two before chopping the plant down to use as mulch.

Bone Healer

Comfrey makes a substance called allantoin in its roots. Allantoin promotes wound healing and moisturizes the skin. Knitbone, bruisewort, boneset and healing herb are popular names for comfrey in old herbal medical books. These books advise mashing comfrey leaves into a poultice and applying it to external cuts and scrapes to help heal them. I’ve never taken their advice, maybe one day I will.

What To Harvest From The Garden In July

2014-07-11T20:53:00.000-07:00

The peas and potatoes are flowering, I've got green tomatoes but meanwhile I'm eating :

Garlic Scapes

A garlic scape is an immature flower stalk, it curls around itself in a distinctive way , you won’t be able to miss it.
I like to leave a couple of garlic scapes to develop into bulbils. Each flower head matures into loads of tiny garlic seeds called bulbils. I plant these in the garden, leaving them in the ground for two or three years until they have grown into a decent sized head of garlic.
Planting bubils is admittingly a slow way to increase my garlic crop but it’s satisfying to see the thin green garlic leaves push their way out of the soil after the snow melts, fatten up all summer beneath a deep layer of mulch and return the next year fatter still.
I harvest most of the scapes to eat, they have a mild garlic flavour when cooked. This year my favourite way to eat them is to first brush them with olive oil and while my steak or burger finishes cooking, the last 3-4 minutes on the BBQ, heat them till they are brown on the outside and get soft (al dente) on the inside. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and eat.

Strawberries

Every morning I pick a bowl full of sweet, red strawberries for breakfast. I'm definititely planting another strawberry bed in September when the weather is cooler and the runners will be easier to establish. I currently have 2 raised beds full of strawberry plants but why not have another. The more strawberries I have the more I can pack away into the freezer for that other time when I have to wear more than a loose sleeveless dress and bare feet to go outside.

Greens

You know what I'm talking about, things like cos or romaine lettuce, mustard greens, arugula, swiss chard, spinach, spicy pepper greens, collard greens and kale. My favourite kale cultivar is known by many names -Tuscan kale, lacinato kale, black kale, or cavolo nero- to me it has the best flavour. In northern, short season gardens kale may not survive winter. It's worth leaving your kale plants in the ground as an experiment. Kale is biennial meaning it goes to seed the second year. I want my kale plants to survive winter so I can collect the seed.

My favourite way to eat garden greens is to eat the young leaves in a salad. I eat the older leaves stir fried alongside eggs or meat dishes.

Onions

I've been eating chives since he snow melted. I chop up the purple flowers to add colour as well as taste to my salads.
Egyptian walking onions are perennial. The mother plant not only comes back every year but propagates itself by falling over and rooting its seed tops. Sometimes I facilitate the process by planting the tops in different part of the garden.
Chopping the root and the green stem, marinating it in butter and using it as a base for spicy curry, egg dishes, and stir fries is the way I eat egyptian onions all summer.

What are you eating from your garden?

Plants I Know: the generosity of gardeners

2014-06-30T17:12:00.003-07:00

When the forget-me-nots, (Myosotis), in my garden bloom I think of Ivy. She arrived at my house one long ago day with three boxes of seed potatoes and 3 pots of forget-me-nots. I knew her from the weekly parent run preschool I had started attending with my baby and 2 year old the previous winter. Even though we lived ten killometres apart we were both members of the small community of Tomslake

Margaret, a friend I made while living in residence at UBC ended up living in Dawson Creek the same time I was living up there. As a long time gardener she bought with her cuttings of all her favourite plants. When I moved into my new house she had some extras to give away. She bought me a spade full of mint roots. I was intrigued by the blue and white flower poking out between the green stems. She told me it was not a mint flower, it was called a johnney jump up, (Viola). I found out later they self seed voraciously and they cross with pansies producing millions more flowers with exciting colour combinations.

My first Thymus pseudolanuginosus plant came as a cutting, growing in the pot of another perennial I was buying from Mrs Knobler who once owned the nursery in Dawson Creek. Sadly she is no longer with us but her memory lives on. Over the years I've increased my stock by dividing the main plant and replanting the divisions to different areas of the garden.

The Alberta spruce,( Picea glauca 'Conica') in my ornamental bed is now four times its original size. My son bought it for me for a long ago mothers day present with money he made from his first part time job when he was still going to school. It was a no brainer to carefully dig it up and transfer it to its new home in my log house garden.

The “London Pride’ Saxifraga sp. is flowering right now. My hiking friend Barb bought me a box of rosettes the first year after we built our new log house. They have mutiplied steadily so now the plants form a dense ring of leaves around my spring garden.

A few years ago with a large garden to fill I answered a posting on our local Prince George Freecycle group to accept a bag of Narcissus bulbs. I was surprised when I discovered the person giving them away was Anne a women I knew from book club. When she saw it was me who wanted the bulbs she threw in another bag full of Iris roots. The Narcissus have lovely, big, white flowers that smell faintly of flowery honey. I planted them in my spring garden bed and beneath the apple trees. The've steadily grown forming large naturalized clumps. The Iris plants have grown forming a pretty meadow of purple and white flowers between my roses.

Several cultivars of Heuchera, AKA coral bells have made homes for themselves on the shadier side of my garden. One of them is an unnamed variety I bought from Wendy, the first year she had her garden plant sale. Every spring as I watch its leaves unfurl I think of the fun we have and the work we do as members of the 'Land Army', the informal title our group call ourselves. We get together three times a month to help maintain the David Douglas Botanical Gardens at the University of Northern BC, UNBC, here in Prince George.

Dianthus are one of my favourite plant genera. I have many cultivars I grew from seed that have traveled to all my gardens, still others I bought at plant sales and one plant I got last year from Grace. It was a present for spending a long hot day shuttling plants from garden to vehicle and into the university parking lot for our annual David Douglas Botanical Garden Society plant sale.

This is not all. I have many more bulbs, roots, tubers and seeds given to me from neigbours I barely know, internet friends I’ve never met in real life and random strangers whose gardens I’d admired in previous neigbourhoods.

Do your garden plants have stories and memories attached to them? Let me know in the comments.

Spring: Edible Perennials Wild And Domestic

2014-06-16T16:51:00.000-07:00

Spring is when the lawn turns green over night. The colony of aspen trees behind the house, has a new outfit of small circlular leaves that tremble every time the wind blows. The brassicas, beets and chard seeds, I planted two weeks ago, sprout and grow three inches high in a week. The peas put out tendrils and start climbing the fence. Even though the mercury drops into the low single digits every night, by noon the next day the species tulips that just broke bud a few hours ago, droop, shrivel and fade beneath the soaring hot subshine. Other early, cold loving spring flowers suffer the same fate.

Dependable Perennial Domestic Food
While the annual food plants are still in babyhood and nowhere near big enough to start eating my perennial rhubarb is entering middle age and the garlic, asparagus, arugula and sorrel are gangly adolescents. We've been eating the perennials daily for more than a month. Perennial vegetable plants grow quickly providing me with food before the annual seeds have even been planted. Once established these plants are an easy source of early spring food. I have a master list of perennial food plants, hardy in short season gardens over here. I've updated the list to include the perennial Arugula I wrote about in this post

Wild Food
The other day I found out, via a link on twitter, that the new shoots of spruce, pine and fir trees are edible. After reading the article I realized they are not consumed like a vegetable as I assumed but used as a flavouring like one would use herbs.

Other common native plants that I eat include fiddleheads AKA Ostrich Fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris), saskatoon berries (Amelanchier alnifolia), wild strawberries (Fragaria virginiana), blueberries (Vaccinium myrilloides) and huckleberries, (Vaccinium membranaceum).

Do you eat any native plants?

Building the Soil: Growing Food Without Chemicals

2014-06-04T06:53:00.000-07:00

Below is the presentation I made for The Food and Creativity Pecha Kucha here in Prince George BC. My presentation documents my discovery that soil is the most important part of the garden.

I show you that no matter what kind of soil you have the way to condition it for growing food is the same. Good soil is a thriving community of worms, insects, algae, fungi and microbes; keeping them happy is the way to grow healthy, productive plants.

Self Seeding Plants Are Like unexpected Presents

2014-05-30T14:05:00.001-07:00

You only need to plant borage once. It’ll self seed all over the place and you’ll be weeding it out all spring. But I couldn’t have a garden without its beautiful, edible, tiny, blue lowers that add colour and the flavour of cucumber to food. Its hairy leaves have the same flavour. Chop them finely before adding to food.
As well as food, borage flowers attract insects, most of them beneficial. Like parasitic wasps that eat aphids and bees that pollinate most of the food plants we eat.

This year I was gratified when I noticed tiny dill seedlings that had popped up where it was growing last year. I moved them over to another spot happy to have free dill. Like borage dills huge flowers composed of hundreds of tiny floweretts attract beneficial insects to the garden.
Dill leaves and seeds are edible. I love chopped dill leaves in coleslaw and soup.

Peppergrass a green slender plant tastes peppery hot. I love it in green salads. When it self sowed in the garden this spring it took me a while to identify it. At first I thought it was cilantro. However it wasn’t long before I realized it looked exactly like the peppergrass sprouts I had planted elsewhere.

Collecting Seeds In Short Season Gardens

2014-05-27T16:36:00.000-07:00

I’m constantly on the lookout for perennial and biennial food crops that will survive the insanely long winter in my short season garden. Such crops are up and growing the minute the snow melts, meaning I can start eating from my garden before I’ve planted my annual seeds.

Biennials stay in place for two years and perennials survive ad infinitum. Plants that say in one place do not disturb the soil. They maintain their vital connection to the soil community. They grow bigger each year, giving me more food. Their undisturbed roots help the soil community stay healthy and in turn the soil community helps the plants. And since I don’t have to replant there is less work for me to do.

Looking For Carrots
I was preparing a garden bed for seeding when I noticed a feathery looking leaf poking out of the ground as I reached over to pluck it from the soil I saw it was connected to something orange, it was a carrot that had over wintered. Yay! So the mice hadn’t eaten all of them.

I plant the same vegetable in different parts of my garden following the notion that if pests or a disease befell a crop they may not find it all. It worked.

Every Autumn I leave part of my carrot crop in the ground to overwinter for a spring harvest of food and a summer collection of seeds. But this time some mice had set up home under the snow relying on my carrots to be their food supply all winter. I was dismayed when I discovered, after the snow melted, they had eaten everything except the very tips of the carrots. It meant no spring harvest and no seed collection for me.

However the carrot I found was growing in a different part of the garden and the mice hadn’t found it. So now I 'm able to collect seeds after all.

Unexpected Harvest Of Greens
I read about perennial Arugula sylvetta in one of Eric Toensmeier’s books. On the off chance it may be hardy in my garden I purchased a packet when I made my seed order. Later, when it came up, I realized it was the same plant as the Italian Arugula I had purchased the previous year from Bosa Foods In Vancouver. It has narrower leaves than regular arugula and a hotter more peppery taste that I love.

I left the plants in the ground over winter to see what would happen. Come spring it was one of the first things to start growing, although very slowly.

Kale Trials
I left the kale in the ground too. I know people who have had some cultivars come back in their zone 3 gardens.

When the snow melted it was already sprouting leaves that were immediately chomped off by the hungry bunnies, AKA Lepus americanus that have been terrorizing my garden lately.

I spent an entire day building a fence around the perimeter of the garden with wooden fence posts, rebar, chicken wire and staples to keep the bunnies out.

Three weeks later only one of the kale plants is alive and like the Arugula sylvetta growing very slowly. Now that I have the fence I'll try to over winter kale again.

Hit And Miss
Some plants require more days or more heat than a short season garden can provide to produce flowers and seeds that we may never see them.

One way to avoid this is too choose cultivars that take 65 days or less to mature.
However sometimes there is just not enough heat to get the plants to flower and seed. It doesn’t matter since greens can be eaten at any stage of growth although if you want seeds like I do you're SOL.

Leaving biennials in the ground doesn’t always work, even if they are not eaten by critters they may just rot away. Beets seem to be particularly susceptible to rotting.

Lastly growing beans to the point of over maturity so I can collect seed seems to be an unattainable goal. Perhaps if I planted them in my greenhouse …

My Book Is Here

2014-05-19T20:03:00.000-07:00

I took this photo while in the car right after I ripped the top off the box and pulled out the finished copy of the manuscript. I've been writing and editing and editing some more for the last sixteen months.
I still can't believe I did this. I wrote a whole book!

What's Inside

The first section, the most important one, explains how to get the most out of your garden by building up the soil to feed your plants and choosing a warm microclimate to ripen your crop faster. I clarify technical terms like winterkill, hardening off, biennial, annual and perennial. Proper watering techniques, dealing with pests and diseases and a detailed discussion on harvesting and storing your crop over the long winter

Section two is about the best way to grow each vegetable and fruit, what to do with it in the kitchen and recommended ways to store it.

Section 3 is a compilation of recipes to make with your garden produce every month of the year.

Included are detailed frost and zone maps, a section explaining how to make a cold frame to keep your produce alive at either end of the season and specific instructions on germinating seeds indoors so you can jump start the growing season.

For the most part the photos are mine. They were taken over the years in all three of my gardens.

You are invited to help me launch my book On Wednesday June 4th at 7PM at Books & Co,1685, 3rd Ave in Prince George. I look forward to meeting you

Plant Research In Southern BC

2014-04-24T17:38:00.001-07:00

It was winter all the way until we drove down the hill, south of Cache Creek, then it was if we had gone directly from winter into late spring.
There were native, white flowered saskatoon berry shrubs (Amelanchier alnifolia), and yellow daisy like flowering plants (Balsamorhiza sagittata) growing in the hedgerows on the side of the highway.

Saskatoon berries are hardy into zone 2. Domestic varieties with bigger berries are available but transplanting native species into your garden, like I did when I lived on the farm, is easy and cheaper. I have happy memories of picking saskatoon berries with my young family. Saskatoon berries taste great made into jam or added to pancakes and cakes.

Balsamorhiza sagittata has similar flowers to the many species of Arnica, native to northern BC.
Although unlike Arnica Balsamorhiza sagittata grows in dry sandy soil and its leaves are bigger, silvery coloured on the underside and covered in fine hairs.

Every yard, along the highway, seemed to have a yellow Forsythia, growing like a beacon of sunshine in their garden. I love these shrubs. I finally got one for my garden, now I live in zone 3, it's the outside limit Forsythia will survive.

Most Wineries in the Okanagan don't open until 10:00 AM or even as late as 11:00 AM. To kill time we went for a hike in the hills behind the town of Oliver.

Other hikers, animals and cyclists had carved out a twisting maze of steep trails that wound up and over the hilly back country.
I was ecstatic when I discovered the first patch of cactus, (Opuntia fragilis). However, it wasn't long until the fleshy pads detached themselves from the plants embedding their long spines into our shoes, the hems of our pants and our ankles. It was a painful moment until we managed to pull them off. I collected some of the bigger pads, wrapping them in a handkerchief, to bring home for my garden succulent collection.

I already have an Opuntia fragilis plant, I purchased from a nursery, if only I had known it was so easy to get it from the wild, growing in my garden. It's hardy into zone 2.

I'm looking forward to seeing its yellow flowers, like the ones on these plants. I didn't know it flowered either.

At first glance I thought this familiar looking plant was a lily, something like Erythronium revolutum. After coming home and looking it up I realized its leaves were wrong and so was the habitat where it was growing. Eventually the knowledge in my brain sifted to the surface and in a lightbulb moment I thought of the shooting star (Dodecatheon) that I used to grow in my zone 2 garden on the farm.

Further research confirmed it was indeed Dodecatheon pulchellum.

Amazingly the grape vines had not yet started to grow.

It was depressing to come home to my still mostly snow filled garden.

Except, there was this lone, beautiful, tiny snow crocus blooming on a south facing slope where the snow had melted.

Signs Of Spring

2014-04-17T15:59:00.001-07:00

Over the years I've taken note of the places where the snow melts first in my garden. In these spots I've planted early bulbs. They start growing under the snow. By the time it melts their pale shoots, like the ones in the photo, are out of the ground. I suspect they will be flowering in a few days.

Edible plants for areas where the snow is first to melt are chives, sorrel and rhubarb. I can't wait to eat my first spring chive and sorrel salad or rhubarb crumble.

Meanwhile I'm starting to think that this year it might be June before all the snow melts away, the ground dries and I can start planting the earliest seeds. The earliest seeds to plant are cold weather crops like beets, kale, collards, peas, rutabagas, fava beans, potatoes, spinach, chard, fennel, chinese greens, turnips, cauliflower and broccoli.

Now that the growing season is almost here I'm getting excited.

Nothing Grows During The Brown Season so start your seedlings indoors

2014-04-10T09:10:00.000-07:00

Nowadays, I start tomatoes, hot peppers and annual flowers indoors under lights. I have no need for the pots and pots of perennial herbs, vegetables and flowers I used to start from seed. By their very nature I have all I need.

I start my plants from seed because its fun; its satisfying to know I nurtured my plants through their entire lifecycle. I get to choose exactly the species or cultivar I want. Many types of flowers, herbs and vegetables are not available in nurseries as seedlings. As a bonus, growing plants from seed is cheaper and I can have more of them for a fraction of the price.

Start looking for seeds to grow by checking out my list of catalogues on the Resources page above.

Read my posts under the Seeds label in the column on the left of this page for advice on how to start perennial and annual seeds indoors.

Are you growing any plants from seed this year? let me know in the comments.

A Glimpse Of Spring- tender plants and the Urban Heat Island Effect

2014-04-04T07:38:00.001-07:00

Last week I was in Vancouver it rained everyday but the temperature did not drop below zero and there was no snow.

In addition to soaking up liquid sunshine I spent my mornings editing almost finished pages of my book and approving gallery proofs. I spent the afternoons visiting the art gallery with my mother, tasting chocolate and walking around my favourite neigbourhoods. I'm sure I walked at least 10k everyday.

Most of the spring flowers that filled the Vancouver garden beds are the same ones we have up here albeit not until June.

This Magnolia was beautiful. The Hardiest Magnolias are rated for zone 4, M. stellata and M. x loebneri 'Merrill'. The flower buds are very sensitive and liable to frost damage You may have success by growing them in a protected spot especially if you live in town. Cities and towns are warmer than rural areas because of the urban heat island effect. I have no idea what species this Magnolia is. I'm assuming it is a much more tender variety.

Jasminum officinale, like the lovely vine below I found growing over someones garden gate, is not hardy in zone 2 or 3. I've considered growing it as a houseplant but moving to a warmer climate might be a better idea.

It's still going down below zero at night and we still have mountains of snow clogging up the landscape around our house...

Haworthia Needs A Sunshade

2014-03-20T09:10:00.000-07:00

Unlike most succulents Haworthia species prefer to grow in semi shaded areas. This means they adapt readily to the mostly shaded conditions inside your house.

For me it mean't I didn't have to find a place for my new plant on my already crowded south facing windowsill.

I picked this plant up at the Montreal Botanical Garden last November. It was growing in a 1 inch (2.5cm) pot. I re-potted it right away into this 4 inch (10cm) pot and already it is looking bigger.

I always buy smaller plants, apart from being cheaper, I get to have the fun of watching them grow bigger.

The plant I have is either Haworthia attenuata, or Haworthia fasciata. Both of them have spiky leaves that grow in a rosette and white stripes that give them the common name zebra plant.

A couple of years ago, while visiting the greenhouse at the University of Northern British Columbia, I got a handful of rosettes of this unidentified plant. Later I found it was called Haworthia cymbiformis.

Haworthia species like more water than other succulents. I discovered this only a few months ago when I was attempting to identify this plant. Already it looks greener and has almost doubled in size since I took it off the sunny windowsill and started watering it more often.

Succulent Envy

2014-02-18T20:26:00.002-08:00

It wasn't until I went to Southern California that I became obsessed with succulents. My garden is now packed with hardy Sedums, Sempervivums and Opuntia. More than half my houseplant collection is succulents, the sort that wouldn't make it through a long northern winter alive.

Indoor Succulent Care
They love the sunshine on my south facing windowsill. I grow them in regular potting soil in clay pots, letting the soil dry out completely before watering them again. I fertilize them in summer along with the rest of my houseplants, about once a month, when I remember.

As much as I would love to live in a place with a warmer climate, where I could grow these tender succulents outdoors, I still have fun with them indoors. For instance I've-

Incorporated my Agave americana into a dish garden.
Repotting my Aloe vera, encouraging it to grow 3 feet high and wide.
Even got my hybrid Aloe to flower.

Whenever I look at my houseplant succulents I'm reminded of the Sunny, hot, dry desert like places they come from and I long to go back to the southern USA to explore further. It's such a change from the frozen, white and brown landscape that's outside my window for most of the year.

Do you grow succulents indoors? which plants are in your collection?

Leaf Scents:plants that imitate others

2014-02-07T16:15:00.000-08:00

Scented geraniums, Pelergonium sp. are like herbs in that their foliage is aromatic. Scented geraniums mimic scents of other plants. They copy the scents of fruit, flowers, leaves and seeds of other species, they smell like anise, lemon, coconut, peppermint, camphor, pine, musk, apple, cinnamon and many others.

In Victorian times, cooks took advantage of the plants ability to impersonate smells by adding their leaves to food and using them to make fragrant potpourris.

Pelargonium ‘Citriodorum' smells like lemons, supposedly its characteristic smell repels mosquitos although according to wikipedia and my experience this is false.

I got my lemon smelling geranium from a friend for this very reason. Even though it doesn’t live up to its reputation I still love it for its sweet smelling leaves.

Care Of Scented Geraniums

In northern gardens grow your scented geraniums in a pot. Like other geraniums they like dry soil and full sun. Pinch out the new growth to keep your plants bushy and attractive. Plant the pinched out pieces in soil to make new plants. watch the new plants carefully, giving them extra water untill they grow roots.

Where To Buy

Lemon smelling geraniums are easy to get since they’re mistakenly renowned to deter mosquitos. Scented geraniums with other smells are harder to come by . I ve come across some of them in botanical gardens. It may be worth asking or surreptitiously sneaking a tiny piece to bring home to start a new plant.

Have you ever grown scented geraniums? Where do you get your plants?

Sunny Sunday Sojourn

2014-02-02T14:20:00.001-08:00

Even though the outside temperature hovers around minus twenty degrees celsius glorious sunshine is pouring through my southern windows heating the air inside my house to a comfortable 20 celsius. We’ve turned off the baseboard heaters and let the fire die down.

I love winter when the sun shines, who cares how cold it gets outside.

I’ve been watching these videos from Growing Your Greens produced by John an organic gardener in northern California. I especially like the videos where he talks about growing food in the desert such as this one where he interviews Leslie Doyle who grows vegetables in Las Vegas.

It’s interesting that she too grows Kale. I’m surprised it grows, I’m sure even a winter garden in Las Vegas is much hotter than my summer garden in northern BC.

My Relationship With Books

2014-01-23T21:07:00.001-08:00

I used to read my books on the way home from school. Every so often I'd lift up my head, look around and step back onto the sidewalk. At home I laid on my bed to read. At bedtime I stayed up till I passed out with the book in my hand, straining my eyes to see the words on the page.

I still have some of my favourite books from my childhood, on my bookshelves. Nowadays, my books combined with my husbands, add up to hundreds and hundreds. I find myself rummaging through second hand bookstores, looking for childhood favourites I don't own anymore, to reread.

I've started a new page on Northern Gardeners Almanac called, My
Gardening Library, See the link in the sidebar. It's a list of books from my gardening book collection, many of them I refer to when writing this blog. Some of them I've reviewed and still others I've talked about over here.

Do you like to read? I would love to hear about books you are reading, books you want to read or books you have read.