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HASKAP BERRIES

Haskap is an amazingly hardy, fast growing, high yielding, great tasting berry
that grows great in the Prairies. More »


EVANS CHERRIES

Cherries are just one of the many fruits that you can grow in Alberta. Read on
for 17 hardy fruits you can grow on the Prairies. More »


DELICIOUS RASPBERRIES

Raspberries are probably my all-time favorite fruit! But there are many
runners-up... More »


LADYBUGS

These little fellows are in abundance around here - but they don\\\'t bother me
much. Read on for the REAL pests! More »


SQUARE FOOT GARDENING

Get growing! Learn how to make your own square foot garden here. More »


 12345


A BRAND NEW START

February 7, 2022   Commentary, General   No comments

I have to admit that it has been a very long time since my last update! But no,
I haven’t fallen off the face of the planet. But a lot has changed in the past…
[gulp] nearly a decade! Even though I haven’t posted anything here recently,
I’ve been gardening like crazy – and in fact, I’ve returned to our original
homestead, planted a two acre garden/orchard, and plan to expand it all greatly
in the years to come!

Anyway, I just wanted to invite you to check out my new blog – Cold Climate
Abundance. It’s got all of our recent activity, my latest experiments, and more!

Check it out and see what I’ve been up to! coldclimateabundance.ca

You can also visit the website for our farm – Good Roots Orchard.

www.goodrootsorchard.com
Read More


BUGS & CRAWLY CREATURES IN MY BACKYARD

December 29, 2013   Just Photos   3 Comments

In addition to all the wonderful fruits and vegetables that fill my garden, I
have also found that I have a backyard full of interesting crawly creatures.
I’ve shown you the swarms of ladybugs, clumps of boxelder bugs, bumble bees and
honey bees, moths and ants, and even a salamander on occasion. Well, not many
weeks ago I found a new bug that I had never seen before. It had actually made
it’s way into my bathroom and was climbing up the wall. It was just a tiny
creature – not more than a quarter inch from top to bottom – but I tell you, it
was rather intimidating.



To get a good view of this fierce little fellow, click the picture to see a
larger version. Remember, he’s less than a 1/4 inch! But he looks like a
scorpion. In fact, after I did a little research, I found that he is actually a
“pseudoscorpion” or a ‘fake scorpion’.He’s in the spider family and despite his
fierce looks, is completely harmless to people and their gardens! He is actually
good for your garden – he eats other harmful bugs. So if you see this guy or one
of his relatives – just wish him well and let him go on his way!

And while I’m showcasing some of the “Bugs of my Garden” – here are a couple
more!



This giant beetle was crawling around my garden this summer. I think he’s one of
the biggest I’ve seen here – he was about the size of a loonie.



I wish you could see this tiny snail in real life. My 5 year old son picked him
up (along with his two friends) and was watching them in his hand.  You can see
how small they are by the lines in the palm of my hand. The one with his head
out is about 3/8 of an inch.



This snail without a shell (also known as a slug) was personally responsible for
putting holes in my bell peppers. I never did like slugs much – but they are
interesting to watch!

And finally to wrap it all up, here’s a cabbageworm I found. Again, interesting
to watch, but it sure makes a mess of your cabbage and other green things!



Read More


ENJOYING THE “FRUITS” OF MY LABOUR

September 14, 2013   Growing, Just Photos   11 Comments

For years I’ve been obsessed with growing fabulous, fresh fruit right here in
Central Alberta. Not just saskatoons and strawberries – but grapes, plums,
cherries, watermelons – yes, even kiwis and apricots. And I want to grow it all
in my own backyard. Well, I can’t say I’ve got all those things checked off the
list yet, but this year I’ve gotten closer than ever before.

This has been a fantastic season for growing fruit. After starting from scratch
5 years ago, my backyard is now producing all kinds of different delicious
fruit. One of my personal favorites has been my Pembina Plums. We had about 5
gallons of these amazing plums this year. So juicy and sweet! I don’t think
there is a fruit I enjoy more!

Then there are my “Chums” – my Cherry Plums. This is the first year that they
have produced, and they are quite a nice little treat.

This variety is the “Manor Chum”. They are greenish-purple on the outside, and
deep purple on the inside. Very tasty.

Another highlight for me this year has been my raspberries. My Wyoming Black
Raspberry grew like crazy – so much so that I think I’ll have to cut them right
down to the ground this fall! They have almost overgrown the north side of my
greenhouse! But they sure produce a lot of raspberries! And they are the perfect
compliment to my “Fall Gold” Raspberries. These yellow raspberries are so mild!
It’s all the flavor of a raspberry without the ‘raspy-ness’!

Of course, my haskaps really started to produce this year. I was amazed at how
densely these little berries covered the branches of my little bushes. The kids
loved picking these for a little snack. (And I’m excited for when my wife bakes
up a batch of haskap berries muffins this winter!

My grapes continue to ripen – I expect to harvest them in a couple of weeks. (My
grape syrup from last year has just about run out.)

My muskmelons are getting to be a good size too. (Never heard of muskmelons?
Think cantaloupe.) They got a late start, but I think they’ll be big enough for
a tasty dessert or breakfast in the next days.

And finally, another fruit that I’ve highly enjoyed has been my cherries. I
believe I had three varieties produce this year – hoping for another two to be
mature by next year.

So it’s been a pretty great year for fruit. And hopefully next year will be even
better! My kiwis have grown like never before (their vines have reached my
garage roof), my apricots are coming along nicely, my blueberries are surviving
(though not exactly thriving), and my hazelnut tree is slowly making progress.
So we shall see what next year brings…

















Read More


AN INTERVIEW WITH ANNA: HER INEXPENSIVE GEODOME GREENHOUSE

March 18, 2013   Commentary   5 Comments

Some time ago I was introduced to Anna from northernhomestead.com – a fellow
gardening enthusiast from central Alberta. She writes a very interesting blog –
and has a most interesting geodome greenhouse. If you’ve never seen a geodome
greenhouse before – you’ve got to check this out!

Pretty cool, huh? I recently interviewed Anna (via email) about her garden & her
greenhouse, so I thought I’d share our conversation with all of you. It went
kinda like this:

Dave: First of all, tell me a little bit about yourself.

Anna: We are Jakob and Anna, passionate suburban home gardeners in Alberta,
Canada. We grow lots and lots of food in our square foot garden, in the
greenhouse, and at our friend’s farm. Truth is we do not even own a single
square foot of land, but we do what we can and call it Northern Home Garden.

Dave: What’s the most unique feature of your garden?

Anna: It sure is our Geodome Greenhouse.

Dave: Why did you choose the geodome style for your greenhouse?

When we started to plan to build a greenhouse, our expectations were very high.
In an northern garden we are dealing with frost, nasty winds and hail and also
loads of snow in the winter. Our days in spring and fall are short of direct
sunlight, so we need to catch every sunbeam we can. Plus, we live in town and
the greenhouse in our small back yard needed to be somehow catchy. 😉 In our
research we came across the GeoDome greenhouse:

 * Very unique, lightweight structure
 * Stable in wind and under snow
 * Optimal light absorption
 * Has the most growing ground space
 * A unique hang-out place
 * An eye catcher

The GeoDome greenhouse is just what we were looking for.

Dave: How difficult/expensive was it to build?

The most difficult part was to figure out how to build a Geodome, what kind of
joints to use, what frequency is right for the size. We looked at dozens of
How-To instructions and even bought an E-Book (with very little value). But all
together it helped to build the GeoDome we have and love.



For the structure we used untreated spruce lumber, and stained it before
assembling. For covering we used greenhouse plastic that was given to us from an
commercial greenhouse. So the expenses were not very high, about $200, and it
took us about a month to build it. All in all a very good experience, something
we would recommend. We do share our experiences ‘How to build a GeoDome
greenhouse’ here:
https://northernhomestead.com/how-to-build-a-geodome-greenhouse/

Dave: Do you have any future projects in mind?

Anna: We would really love to own some land to build up a real homestead, with
trees, and berries and some animals (dreaming aloud).



Got a unique or unusual greenhouse or garden? I’d love to hear about it. Go to
my contact page and tell me all about it!

 

Read More


HOW TO BUILD A GARDEN TRELLIS FOR GRAPES AND KIWIS

January 24, 2013   Projects   6 Comments

For years I’ve had great plans to build a garden trellis for my many varieties
of grapes & kiwis – and finally this summer I took the plunge. I built a simple,
but solid trellis for the vines I have growing along the south side of my
garage. It’s probably a little bit over-kill, but it’s certainly able to hold
the weight of all my grapes and kiwis (which is actually pretty significant – as
I have two grape vines and two kiwis and all those vines, leaves, and fruit can
get heavy!)

So if you’ve been looking to build a trellis in your own backyard, let me show
you my design:


FIRST OF ALL – MY MATERIALS LIST.

 * (3) 4 x 4 x 12′
 * (1) 4 x 4 x 8′ – (since my one section is under my garage window)
 * (17) 2 x 4 x 8′
 * (1) 2 x 4 x 12′

The first thing to do was to dig my post holes. I dug 6″ holes about 32″ deep –
spaced 4′ apart – about 1′ from my garage wall.

The 12′ posts were too tall to fit beneath my garage eaves (even when planted
32″ deep), so I had to trim a few inches off the tops to fit just under my
eaves. I had a window (as you can see in the picture below) that I didn’t want
to cover up, so I planned to build that section at half height. Once the posts
were in, I backfilled with gravel and tamped them in. You could use concrete if
you like, but I think gravel holds it just as well (if it’s well tamped) and it
allows the water to drain away from the post so it doesn’t rot.

Once the posts were all trimmed to the proper, level height, I simply attached
the 12′ 2 x 4 to the top of the taller sections, and a 4′ section of 2 x 4 for
the shorter one.

Next, I ripped the remaining 2x4s in half – giving me 2x2s. (The actual
dimensions were 1.5″ by 1.5″)

Read More


GRAPES: THEY CAN ACTUALLY GROW IN ALBERTA!

October 6, 2012   Growing   47 Comments

This week I experienced my first real grape harvest. Sure, I’d had managed to
grow a few small clusters before – just enough to get a taste. But this year was
the first year that I’ve been able to grow enough grapes to eat all I wanted
fresh, plus harvest enough to make up some delicious grape jelly for the winter.



I have four different varieties growing in my yard here in central Alberta, but
the two varieties that are mature enough to produce are my Valiant Grapes, and
my Marechael Foch Grapes. The valiant grapes are larger than the marechael
grapes (though still smaller than what you might find in the grocery store) and
are packed with flavour! In fact, they are very similar in flavour to the
Concord grapes that you buy in the store.

I have them growing on the south side of my garage on a trellis with my Kiwis.
(Yes, you heard right… with MY KIWIS.) I’ve found this location to work great
for three reasons!

Read More


MORE SPRING FLOWERS IN ALBERTA

May 22, 2012   Just Photos   4 Comments

Orange and yellow tulips, flowering crab, and pears flowers – Just
another fantastic show of color this spring in my backyard. I don’t have too
much to say about these pictures other than I think they are amazing! The
details blow my mind every time!



Read More


MY FRUIT TREES ARE BUDDING

May 13, 2012   Just Photos   2 Comments

Well folks, I took another photo stroll around the yard and snapped some of my
favorite pictures yet! I’ve got some beautiful pics of my plums in flower, as
well as a super cool close-up of my grape buds about to burst, plus a sweet pics
of my haskap, and a new-before-seen view of my Patmore Ash. Have a gander and
see what you think…

And make sure you click each picture for a larger view – I love the details of
the close-up!



This is a bud from my Marechael Grape. Notice the bits of fuzz… That’s awesome!
Who knew, right?



Haskap. Borealis, I believe this one is. Again – who knew flower buds were so
fuzzy?

Read More


A NEW INEXPENSIVE GREENHOUSE WITHIN A GREENHOUSE SOLUTION

May 4, 2012   Projects   10 Comments

Hoop-frame greenhouses are amazing! If you’ve been following my blog for long,
you know I love my greenhouse. But as good as it is, I wanted to make it even
better. I wanted to extended my growing season without adding a the cost of a
heater. In 2009 I tried using milk jugs full of water to hold the heat and
slowly release it through the cool of night. That worked pretty good. But what
else might I try?

Well, here is what I did this spring: Now this probably isn’t a brand new idea.
I’m sure someone has done it before, but its new for me. (And maybe for you
too.) I decided to make a mini-greenhouse WITHIN my greenhouse.

It was fantastically easy (it took all of ten minutes to build it) – and
completely inexpensive – I simply used materials that were leftover from other
projects. Here, let me show you…



I just took six planks (1x6s – about 30 inches long that were leftover from my
fence project last fall), and tucked the bottoms inside my planting bed frame.
Then I screwed the tops together and attached a long 1×2 (8 ft long) that served
as the peak of my greenhouse. It was absolutely simple. Then I just took and
threw over some plastic like this…



Then I ran some tests to see just how much of a difference it would make at
night. Remember this is with NO additional heat.

On the night of May 2, the overnight temperature got down to 3.1° celsius
outside in my garden. The greenhouse was a little warmer, going down only to
4.8° celsius. But inside my mini-greenhouse within my greenhouse, the
temperature stayed up at 7.4° celsius. That’s 4.3° warmer than outside with NO
extra heat. That might not seem like a large number, but that makes a
significant difference in your growing season. That little, inexpensive
“greenhouse within a greenhouse” project, according to the weather almanac,
could have just added 9 days to my growing season – for FREE!



And of course, if I had wanted to heat that little greenhouse, it would be much
cheaper to heat that little space than to heat the whole greenhouse. So maybe
I’m over-reacting, but I think this is way cool and will doing this project
again next year – nine days earlier!

Read More


THE BUDDING OF SPRING

April 30, 2012   Just Photos   2 Comments

One of my favorite types of photos are the macro photos of spring buds. There is
such detail and such a variety in all the new growth that appears on branches or
popping through the mulch or emerging from seed. So I took a bit of a stroll
around the yard this afternoon to capture a few moments of springtime budding –
I thought you might enjoy!






I love the “wooly-ness” of these!




Click for the full-size picture – but be aware – they are LARGE!

Read More
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 * RECENT POSTS
   
   * A Brand New Start
   * Bugs & Crawly Creatures in my Backyard
   * Enjoying the “Fruits” of my Labour
   * An Interview with Anna: Her Inexpensive Geodome Greenhouse
   * How to Build a Garden Trellis for Grapes and Kiwis

 * Updated July 2020


 * RECENT POSTS
   
   * A Brand New Start
   * Bugs & Crawly Creatures in my Backyard
   * Enjoying the “Fruits” of my Labour
   * An Interview with Anna: Her Inexpensive Geodome Greenhouse
   * How to Build a Garden Trellis for Grapes and Kiwis
   * Grapes: They can actually grow in Alberta!
   * More Spring Flowers in Alberta


 * TAGS
   
   alberta beans blueberries canada carrots cherries cold compost corn flowers
   fruit garden gardening gardens grape greenhouse Haskap honeyberries
   hoop-style inexpensive kiwi landscaping lettuce mulch peas planting plastic
   plum potatoes pumpkin pvc raspberries raspberry saskatoons seedlings seeds
   spring straw strawberries strawberry tomato tomatoes upick winter woven poly


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   * Dave on Introduction to Haskap Berries (aka Honeyberries)
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