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Sustainable gardening for beginners
There’s something wonderful about starting a garden in the spring. It’s that feeling of reconnecting with nature, welcoming a new year, and knowing that warmer days are just around the corner — along with fresh, delicious fruits and veggies (without the grocery store price tag!). If you’ve ever felt intimidated by the idea of gardening or assumed you’d need a backyard, fancy tools, or a big budget, good news: you don’t. Gardening can be simple, accessible, and surprisingly affordable. In this post, I want to inspire you to start a small, sustainable garden on a budget – easy, low-maintenance plants that thrive in containers and give you the biggest return…
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Gardening While Renting: The Beginning of the End
I haven’t had a chance to write up a balcony garden update for this season yet and now I am faced with dismantling it all and bringing an end to my balcony garden. I have mixed feelings about this, but when you are gardening while renting, sometimes you just don’t have a choice in the matter! Balcony Garden Update: Faced with taking it all apart Gardening while renting has come with a lot of challenges and this latest one seems like the final straw. I live in an older wood framed building where the property managers have become concerned with the stability of our balconies. Because of this, there have…
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My 2023 Balcony Garden Update
I mentioned earlier this year that I hadn’t been planning on having a garden this year, but I’m so glad I changed my mind and went ahead with planting a few things. My garden isn’t very elaborate or productive, but it’s so satisfying to see things grow. You can check out how I started my garden in my 2023 Balcony Garden Post. What I’ve been growing in my balcony garden This year I went simple with my garden and tried to use up the seeds that I had from last year. I didn’t want to make a huge investment of money this year because last year’s garden didn’t produce enough…
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How I’m Starting my Balcony Garden this Year
I wasn’t planning on gardening this year because of how poorly my balcony garden grew last year, but since I had a large number of seeds left over, I decided to give it another go. This year, I’m setting my expectations lower and am simply going to hope for the best. Troublemaking Stellar Jays My gardening journey started out with a bit of an obstacle to overcome. Last year I had these super sweet and cute Stellar Jays visiting my balcony, so I was excited to see some jays come back this year. Having birds come and visit my balcony garden has been a huge source of joy this last…
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Winter garden update and seeds to start now
Its garden time! Today I’m sharing how my winter garden plants did and what seeds I’m starting now. I’ve also been watching helpful videos and tracking down some items I’ll need for the year, so will share those with you to help start your garden planning! A great place to start is finding out when you can sow or start the plants you’d like for your garden. Get inspired by reviewing the Westcoast Seeds planting chart by region here! For more inspiration, check out past garden posts shared by Alison and I: Backyard garden Gardening while renting Progress of winter garden seeds started last fall I was hoping to have…
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Gardening While Renting: What I’m Harvesting from my Balcony Garden
This year’s been an exciting one for me as I’ve had a new balcony to enjoy and create a garden space in. It has been a lot of fun to experiment with growing tons of different plants to see what works and what doesn’t. As Krista mentioned in her backyard garden update, the weather this year has been hard to keep up with, so my gardening learning curve has been steep this year! What I’ve been Harvesting from my Balcony Garden Challenging weather and my lack of gardening know-how has led to some interesting growing experiences. I’ve been told by a friend that I’m really good at growing leaves because…
