Gardening
-
Gardening While Renting: How My Balcony Garden Is Growing
I’m in love with my balcony garden! It has brought me so much joy this spring as I’ve been watching my plants grow–even though I’ve been making all sorts of gardening mistakes as I attempt to grow over 10 different types of plants. While I haven’t had any big harvests of veggies yet, I wanted to share the progress (and my excitement!) of my little balcony garden with you. 2022 Balcony Garden Planting Update Gardening mistakes are par for the course, and even with all of them, I’ve been having a lot of fun with my variety of plants. It is so satisfying to see the seeds sprout and then…
-
3 Ways to Preserve Fresh and Local Food this Summer
Why Preserve Food? This year Alison and I are hoping to produce more than in past years in our gardens though with the size of our plots, it’s unlikely we’ll need to preserve a lot of our produce. However, to take advantage of the abundant produce in the summer months, I’ve often purchased large quantities of fruit or vegetables in season as this is when produce is freshest (and cheapest) but in doing that it’s essential to have a plan to preserve it! With food prices going up, buying in-season and in large quantities is a great way to manage your budget as we go from the months of abundant…
-
Gardening While Renting: New Year, New Hope, New Balcony Garden
Last year I had an unexpected move, which happily landed me in a wonderful apartment with a beautiful balcony. Was I ever excited when I laid eyes on that balcony! All I could think about was what an amazing balcony garden I could have and all the vegetables I could grow. Gardening while renting can be a challenge, but this new space gives me hope for a thriving container garden. Why I’m excited for my Balcony Garden For the last couple of years I’ve been attempting to garden in my rental units in the smallest of spaces. With the challenges that came with small space gardening also came a lot…
-
Backyard Garden: Digging in to 2022
Backyard Garden Plan Late last year my husband and I decided we would not be doing a large vegetable garden in 2022 in order to focus on some of our projects, such as (finally) putting up our greenhouse. However, given another in a series of world events that may result in food scarcity and higher food prices we decided we should make our garden even bigger and more productive instead! Nothing like making plans and sticking to them 😉 See past posts about our garden here! In the past couple of years we had been experiencing reduced yields – for example in our first year we had way too many…
-
5 Gardening Tasks To Tackle in the Winter Months
You might think that after the spring and summer growing season are done, so is our work in the garden. However there are some important gardening tasks that are best done in the colder weather. See below for a few ideas on how to get ahead of your gardening to-do list this spring! Alison and I have both had gardens in past years and have documented some of our experiences on the blog. See the links below to follow along on our journey! Backyard Garden Journey Gardening While Renting 1. Pruning Many trees and bushes can benefit from pruning, which can serve to remove unproductive, diseased or damaged areas of…
-
How Your Garden Helps the Planet: Locally Sourced Food
We’re continuing our series on how your garden helps the planet this week by looking at the impact of growing your own food or purchasing locally sourced food. If you missed our first posts in this series, check them out here: Composting, Trees, Plants and Garden Design, Lawns. Obtaining sustenance is a major focus of every life form – it takes up a large part of our collective time and resources and so it makes sense that these activities would make an impact on our planet. In today’s post we will explore how much of an impact food production has on our planet, and how we can make changes for…