Quick Bookmarks: How to Chit Potatoes What does it mean to ‘Chit’ your potatoes? Chitting is a very easy step you can take to give your seed potatoes a leg up for our short growing season. While not absolutely necessary to see success in growing your potatoes, we do recommend it – Here is how […]
Why do we need to fertilize? Plants growing wild in nature will receive nutrients from the breaking down of organic material in the areas in which they grow. These materials disintegrate over time releasing nutrition back into the soil. When it rains, those components soak into the water and become available for plants to uptake. […]
Looking for Plants to Grow for Bees? Bringing bees, butterflies and other pollinators to our garden strengthens our local eco-systems and is just a down right enjoyable experience later in the season! Watching bees hum around our garden is like receiving a compliment on our work from Mother Nature herself. If you’d like to grow […]
A backyard garden space can be elevated to the next level with hardy perennials for Alberta and it’s difficult climate. Perennials are plants that come back year after year. While annual flowering baskets and planters can bring instant colour and pizzaz – perennials build structure and interest in the shoulder seasons as well. The two […]
Once the spring gardening fervor is over and we ease into summer, it’s easy to feel like we missed out if we didn’t get as much done as we wanted in May or June. Not to worry because late season gardening is a thing and we think it’s a thing worth doing! Lettuce – Approx […]
Many fruit trees will self pollinate, or receive cross pollination from neighbourhood bees doing their good work. Those trees will bear fruit even if we do nothing. But if we put a bit of attention towards ensuring our trees have a suitable pollination partner nearby (within 150m) we can increase our yields and often the […]
About Peony Plants Peonies are iconic garden plants that have been in cultivation since the time of Confucius. There are approximately 33 known species of this favored garden staple! Peonies were originally cultivated for medicinal purposes and for flavouring foods like tea or salads but modern gardeners are growing peonies for their outrageously stunning and […]
Every spring, there are a few of those early days when the sun peeks out, the air warms up, and the snow melts. Gardeners begin to stir and wrestle with the temptation to get gardening, despite their better judgement – after all, the widely touted “False Spring” is an Albertan specialty! Though the ground may […]
Deer – one of the most challenging garden pests to control. While some gardener’s have found success using deterrents like PlantSkydd or Bobbex, those solutions require diligence, and they come with their own downside (um, no one loves the smell). For a more ‘natural’ approach, many gardener’s choose to design their yards with trees and […]
Spring is here, and many of us are hovering over our yards, waiting to see what survived the prairie winter, and what didn’t. Our chinook-y winters and dry summers can make it challenging to have the yard of your dreams, but with the right plants, and a few easy steps, it’s very possible to have […]
