Spring 2023, a fresh start!

A new beginning, a fresh start, and a positive outlook – that’s what spring symbolizes.

Over the past couple of years, people all around the world have undergone significant changes. During this time, I retired from work and became a caregiver for my partially disabled gardening partner. This experience has inspired us to utilize our garden as an experiment in healing and ability while simultaneously reducing our grocery bill.

This gardening season, I plan on doing more fermenting, drying, and setting up the root cellar for fall storage, as well as learning how to pressure can. I am excited to get started as it’s going to be a busy season.

Although I have not yet started my early seeds, I may purchase some vegetable plants this year. As the snow melts, I took a little garden tour and was thrilled to see that the four small blackcurrant clones I planted last fall have beautiful buds getting ready to open. In addition, I planted a dozen blackcurrant clones in a nearby field and will check on their progress when it’s a bit dryer. It’s always nice to have extra berries to forage!

I also started more blackberry canes, but it’s still early to tell if they survived the winter. I’m hoping for a berry-good season!

Learning to Cook the WFPB Way

I’m not a bad cook. I’ve had my share of wins and losses in the kitchen and my family still looks forward to coming over for a holiday feast, so I’ll take that as a good sign.

I did learn to cook during the industrial revolution though, which means convenience foods were a regular part, if not a staple in our daily meals. Instant rice, canned sauces and processed foods designed for long shelf life. Fast forward XX years and it’s not surprising our generation has so many health problems.

WFPB = Whole Foods, Plant-Based

I realized when I started to cook WFPB, that I lacked skills to make this transition work the way I wanted. I really wanted to make as much from scratch as I could. I tried numerous times to make hummus from my home cooked chickpeas, but the texture just wasnt as nice as the store bought product. So many recipes fell short of my expectations, and it was not due to the recipe. I just had no experience cooking this way.

I found the SWICH site quite by accident. When I read it was a project created by ROUXBE, I knew it had to be good. Rouxbe is an online educational platform, training professional chefs and associates all over the world. Some of the biggest names in hospitality depend on Roube for training.

Swich is FREE to all and was created to develop cooking skills and can be customized to assist health goals, skill level, and food preferences. While it is a 100% plant-based, you don’t have to be plant-based to use it. You just have to be interested to learn and experiment with plant-based cuisine. While I follow a plant-based diet, my hubby does not. We can both enjoy what I prepare, he just adds a ‘meat’ side to his meal.

I have learned so many great tips such as the addition of a bit of baking soda when you cook your chickpeas. It helps soften the outer skins, resulting in a silky smooth hummus!! That was just one out of dozens and dozens of helpful tricks shared.

You’ll have a wide range of flavors and cuisine types to inspire you. This cookie recipe is a solid favorite with us!

Rouxbe started Swich to inspire a global health movement, and teach the world how to cook with confidence, and it’s their goal to teach 100 million people by 2023. 

If you are interested in learning too … here is the invitation link: https://thebigswich.com/?invite_code=iglyov

Free 2021 Customized Seed Starting & Planting Schedule

This planting schedule was originally created so that we could prioritize what we needed to do as we got ready for spring planting.

The chart was programmed to display planting dates based on our area’s frost free date. I made it printable and sortable, so that we could save copies that would prioritize our planting tasks – when to start indoors, and to plant outside.

I hope you find this helpful. Please let me know if you think there are other seeds we should consider adding to the list, or features that you think would be helpful.

5 Easy Ways to Increase Your Vegetable Garden Growing Space

Have you ever wished that there was a way to increase growing space automatically?  Quite possibly my husband thinks this every time we pass a garden centre.  When fall clean up time rolls around, I am eternally grateful we have a small garden.

So why is it in spring, this thought would pop into my head? Well, let me paint you a picture.  See if this scenario sounds familiar to you!

It’s the dead of winter, and the cold, gray dullness of February has you in its clutches.  Just when you begin to think the winter will never end, you get a package in the mail.  Why yes! The post office comes to the rescue by delivering your annual, coveted spring seed catalogue!  Watching me shop for seeds, is a bit like watching a kid make out his Christmas wish list.  I have records that are refined several times over, that catalogue is dog-eared and highlighted as I decide what to order.

Limited vegetable beds - solutions to increase growing space

If you peeked at my notes, you might think I was running a CSA project (community-supported agriculture), but no.  It’s my husband, Don and I and about 48 square ft of garden bed space.  As I write this, it sounds like a lot of space, but it is so much less when you have plants started and no space to put them.

We’ve done this for years.  We start LOTS of seedlings, plant what we can and then supply family and friends with the leftovers.  We usually hold a few back in pots, just in case one of the transplants don’t make it.  Historically, we have always planted lots of peppers and tomatoes, but the past few years we’ve cut back in favour of other vegetables.

I’ll admit I got a little crazy with this year’s seed purchases.  I came across a Twitter post from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds that grabbed my interest.  I mentioned the Glass Gem Corn that I had ordered in a previous post. Well, I placed another two orders for various seeds after that.  Luckily, Don is thrilled to have more to do, so we are planning out the beds this weekend.  Quite honestly, even though we will only plant a few of this, and a few of that, there still won’t be room for everything in our three vegetable beds.

So, time for a side note.  In previous years, we have planted as a hobby, which meant that our expectation were some exercise, fresh air and hopefully some fresh food.

This year, our focus has shifted to becoming more self-reliant.  Our goal is to grow as much homegrown produce year-round as possible.  We want to avoid purchasing foods that are all too commonly recalled. Additionally, we’re going to experiment growing varieties that are not commonly grown in our region.

increase growing space with containers

Easy Ways to Increase Growing Space

So, when you run out of garden space, you get creative.  While not all of these are original ideas, many are new to us, so we will report back on the benefits and challenges that we run across as well as providing a report at harvest time.

Container Gardening

Container gardening is probably the first method one thinks of to increase growing space.  Certainly one can use large pots for this purpose, but there are other containers that you might consider as well.  Over the past few years, we have been growing sweet potatoes with limited success.  Sweet potatoes like the heat, but they also require regular moisture when the potatoes are forming. They also need a longer growing season.

unusual containers can provide a solutions to increase growing space

Our second year testing them we lined a compost unit with landscape cloth and filled it with a mix of soil, manure and peat and planted our slips,  We had a 4.5 lb harvest that year of small fingerling sweet potatoes. The next year, I lined and filled a recycling bin and planted the potatoes.  There were two reasons I changed to this container.  I learned that the potatoes all formed within the top 12 inches of the soil, so we didn’t need a deep pot, but more importantly – I could move this one into the greenhouse to extend the season when the nights got cooler.

I’ve seen people using old milk crates, storage bins with holes drilled for drainage, even a small hard-sided kiddie pool could come in handy if needed.  I’m sure looking around your garden shed, you’ll come up with more ideas.

Straw Bale Gardening

Another method to easily increase growing space, without digging a garden bed is through the use of straw bales.  A neighbour told me about this method a few years back and until this year, and although I thought about giving it a try, I didn’t need more bed space until this year.

The concept is this: stand the stray (not hay) bales so that the cut side of the straw is facing up.  You add a measure of fertilizer and soak the bales, and over a period of a couple of weeks, the fertilizer begins to compost the straw.  It will heat up during this process, so you must wait until the process has advanced enough and the internal temp cools down. Then you can plant.

I purchased ‘Straw Bale Gardens’ by J. Karsten last season to learn more about the method.  Karsten outlines the full process as well as the range of  fruits and vegetables that can be grown.  I love the idea of planting potatoes and then cutting the bale open to retrieve them.  At the end of the season – the finished straw could be used to benefit the other beds.  Alternately, if you plant crops that won’t disrupt the bale when harvesting, squash, for example, that bale could be used for another year.  We will let you know!

Vertical Gardening – they upward way to increase growing space

I located some great demonstrations of vertical gardening on Pinterest.  Very imaginative uses of wood skids, eavestrough and ABS plumbing, all inventive methods to increase growing space.  The examples vary from free-standing or wall-mounted to solutions that elevate the plants in the existing garden beds.  I’ll fill you in later as to the method we’ll use as we are still exploring our options.

big yellow bag with BONUS soft sided container

Soft Sided Beds

We placed an order for triple mix soil again this year from Big Yellow Bag and are excited to make use of the bags as well as the earth!  Why spend 89$ for a 4×4 Smart Pot bag when you have virtually the same item delivered to your home with the soil!  Ideally, you want the bag dropped where it will lay as a garden bed.  While it’s not likely to happen, one can dream!

I’ll be folding the sides down over some 1×6 board lengths to firm up the sides before I add the soil, and I’ll make sure to leave a generous rim height.  The rim will help prevent soil spills during the rain storms.

A thought: if you happen to have a friend with an empty bag, you could also make arrangements to borrow it, fill it as a bed and return you bag to them when empty.

Increase Growing Space Through Inter-planting

We will always have the odd plant that we don’t have room for, but don’t want to waste.  Inter-planting is a great way to increase growing space without having to create additional space.  Just tuck a veggie or two in your flower beds.  The surrounding flowers might even boost productivity, providing a bountiful harvest.  Some plants do not play well with others, so companion gardening knowledge is beneficial.  I’ll follow up with details soon.

Getting the Season Started

Well, as you can imagine, we have work ahead of us!  When I mentioned easy methods, I was referring to no deep digging or stone lifting.  Moving soil is is tiresome, so we will work in stages.  The goal is to enjoy the journey, not dread it.  We’re starting early enough in the season that we should have the beds ready in plenty of time.  We got a little dusting of snow this morning, but we should be ready to start work soon.

Wishing you all a great spring and happy planting!


Resources:

Karsten, J. (2013). Straw bale gardens: Breakthrough method for growing vegetables anywhere with no weeding. London: Cool Springs.

5 Easy Ways to Increase Your Vegetable Garden Growing Space

The Vegetable Garden

It’s been years since we planted our first vegetable garden.  In our first home, which was a new build, we had the opportunity to plant on a ‘blank canvas’ of a yard, and it was terrific.  As our family grew, we moved north, out of Scarborough in favour of an out-of-town property with lots of trees and yard.  That home included a massive vegetable garden all tilled and waiting for us, and it taught us many lessons including the benefit of scaling the garden to match our workloads.

Garden – location, location, location

Actually, location is a very important factor when considering a vegetable garden.  In many cases, I expect the vegetable garden is an afterthought when the landscaping is being done.  When we moved to our home in Elora, there was no vegetable garden space.  In fact, where our vegetable beds are now – there were bushes, flagstone and a whole lot of pea gravel.  I’m sure many would have looked at the flagstone and reconsidered the location of the garden, we were committed to remaking that spot to a usable space.  It was close to water sources (both the downspout and the outdoor tap, close to electricity, to the driveway (for soil delivery) to the side door and consequently the bathroom, for reasons you can imagine).  It was also conveniently located close to the kitchen so that I could zip out a select some ripe vegetables and herbs for dinner.

We took the sun’s position into account.  This spot gets morning sun, and while there is a bit of shade during mid-day, it also gets afternoon sun.  We also looked at the slope of the property to make sure it wasn’t at the lowest part, creating a boggy existence.  The soil quality wasn’t the best, but we knew that we could amend the soil as we developed the beds.  All in all, it was the best location in the yard.

a small reclaimed sidebed

Our vegetable garden – in the beginning

Through my day job, I have learned the importance of testing, and through our gardening experience, we have learned that we have to pace ourselves and our expectations. So, the plan was to start slow and see how the garden did.  The first year’s task list was exhausting as we removed the flagstone, gravel and bushes, replacing it with a single vegetable bed.

In year two we removed the flower clematis from the narrow bed opposite to the vegetable garden and built it up so that we could plant peas, mint and beans there.  I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this … the beds were about to multiply like rabbits!

Creating a vegetable garden – a phased approach

In the years following this, we added raised framing so that we could quickly amend the soil and added small additional beds at the rate of one a year.   We have incorporated perennial plants into many of these beds including berries, rhubarb, asparagus, sorrel, grape vines and a couple of small multi-variety apple and cherry trees.

Last year we added a little edible garden to the front lawn.  As we have a smallish yard, we now find ourselves seeking creative methods to increase our growing space without eliminating the small “green space” we have left.

So where does that leave us this year?

Well, stay tuned!  This season we’ll be experimenting with straw-bale gardening, containers and vertical gardening methods, all geared to expanding our garden space, where no garden exists.  We have some exciting varieties started along with plants that one might not have seen in a neighbourhood garden.

HOT TIP:  When planning a vegetable bed, consider your arms reach and physical condition when deciding on the width of the bed.  When we were younger, we spent many sore nights after a day of weeding.  Now I opt for beds that are no wider than twice my arms reach, which ensures that I can weed the centre of the bed without over-reaching.

3 Colourful Additions For Your Spring Veggie Garden

The Anticipation of Spring Planting Season

When I was a child, a big highlight of the year was the arrival the Sear’s Christmas catalogue.  When I grew up, I exchanged that excitement for a spring highlight – the annual seed catalogue!   In the cold, gray days of winter, there is nothing more uplifting than spending time with the latest seed catalogues!  When I first started gardening, I believe our family received a single brochure from Stokes Seeds.  With internet sales blossoming, we now have access to a broader range of suppliers.

The Annual Spring Quest for Seeds

Since relocating to the Elora region several years ago, I have been a regular attendee at the Guelph Organic Conference tradeshow, my yearly prelude to spring.  The conference takes place at the Guelph University Centre at the end of January, and the tradeshow is a great time to review new products and resources, but also a perfect time to get your hands on fresh seeds and varieties, early in the season. There are usually at least a half dozen organic seed suppliers, and I always find new and exciting variations to try.  Sadly, I missed the conference this year, so I decided to explore online options.

I came across Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds (www.rareseeds.com).  While I usually look locally first, and then regionally, I was drawn in by the story of how Baker Creek Seeds started.  The owner, Jere Gettle began his business at the age of 17 and over the past 20 years has grown the business to offer 1800 heirloom varieties with seeds from over 100 countries.  I wasn’t looking for anything exotic, but I did find some great selections to test out this year.

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds - Glass Gem Corn

Glass Gem Corn

The variety I’m most excited about is Glass Gem Corn.  I may never see a cob as beautiful as this one, but the colours in this photo got me excited about the possibility of using the harvest as Christmas presents.  The picture of this corn makes me think of Christmas tree decorations.  What a fantastic gift it would make – homegrown popcorn!

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds - Orach, Aurora Mixed

Aurora Mixed Orach

I guess you can see a trend here.  I was looking for colour, which at the beginning of the year, is always lacking.  In Ontario, this is the season of gray skies and snow covered yards.  In past summers, our garden relied on the Rainbow Chard, marigolds and nasturtiums for colour.  This year, we’ll have a colour boost from Aurora Mixed Orach.   Orach, also called mountain spinach, is a native of Europe and Siberia. The flavour is reminiscent of spinach.  It’s is packed with vitamins and minerals such as calcium, magnesium, anthocyanins, phosphorous, iron, protein, zinc, selenium, tryptophan, vitamin C, vitamin K, carotenes and dietary fibre.  A beautiful and healthy ‘green.’

Okra - Orange Jing, photo courtesy: Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds

Jing Orange Okra

I also added two varieties of okra to this year’s order and chose this variety for its colour!  Jing Orange Okra has a beautiful hibiscus-like blossom.  It’s incredibly showy against the dark green foliage and red-orange stems and pods.  Okra, as well, is loaded with beneficial nutrients as well as soluble fibre.

I have only eaten okra in soup, so it will be interesting to see how well it produces and how well we can keep up with the bounty it provides!

I sit here now, waiting for my seed order, excited to get my fingers in the warm moist soil … bring on spring planting!

Start with Chocolate …

I bet you’re confused right now.  The blog’s focus is on health so it might seem strange that the first article I write is about chocolate.  I can understand that, but read on, and you’ll find out why I say … “start with chocolate.”

Chocolate was my obsession when I was younger.  Jersey Milk, Dairy Milk, Malted Milk, Oh Henry, Butterfinger, WigWag, Snickers, Eat-more and my favourite Nestle Chunk that I would dip in a cup of hot chocolate at the local ice skating rink.  Yikes, just writing this gives me a headache.  I had a severe sugar addiction and consequently, several bouts of an illness my doctor could not identify during those years.

The gut microbiome

A few years ago I came across research about our microbiome.  The gut microbiome, in a nutshell, is your digestive system, but it includes a whole world of microscopic bacteria.  I learned that these colonies of beneficial bacteria are responsible for a variety of health-promoting functions, like regulating our immune system, balancing our blood sugar, helping us absorb nutrients, and even calming our emotions.  Sugar is one of the biggest disrupters of this system.  It’s not surprising then that an unbalanced digestive system influences many of the chronic health conditions experienced today.

Why start with chocolate?

The reason I suggested to start with chocolate is this: almost any lifestyle/dietary change begins with the elimination of foods that are causing issues.  As previously stated, sugar was a significant factor for me.  The problem is – what is the likelihood that I will maintain this new lifestyle.  Would I continue avoiding chocolate, probably not!  To answer this honestly, I imagine I would pick up a bar the next time I was at the grocery store checkout.

So to be strategic, I need to replace the sugary candy bar with a healthy substitute.  Enter Giddy Yoyo!  Imagine a chocolate bar that is good for you! The people at Giddy Yoyo goes to great lengths to source foods nourished by mineral-rich soil & fresh water and grown in healthy remote environments. They include health enhancing superfoods in their recipes, such as Maca, my fav!!    Maca provides a bit of an energy boost and a mellow, malty, caramel type flavour that isn’t sweet, but ever-so-satisfying.  According to the Giddy Yoyo website, maca may be a natural aphrodisiac, energy enhancer, libido booster, hormone balancer (and so much more) for men and women.   The body knows what it needs I guess!  A square or two and you’ll have your chocolate fix, with benefits and no sugar backlash.

I also am happy to report that Giddy Yoyo is made locally in Orangeville, Ontario!  Right in my backyard, so to speak (100-mile feasting).

If you try a bar (or two) let me know what flavours you like!

Also – if you want to try another chocolate treat – check out this recipe: Raw Chocolate Avocado Pudding.

Want to learn more about your microbiome?

REFERENCES

  • Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (2017, August 16). The Microbiome. Retrieved from https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/microbiome/
  • Singh, R. K., Chang, H., Yan, D., Lee, K. M., Ucmak, D., Wong, K., . . . Liao, W. (2017, April 08). Influence of diet on the gut microbiome and implications for human health. Retrieved February 28, 2018, from https://translational-medicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12967-017-1175-y