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About me



Suburban quasi-homesteader, I've started gardening in the northern hemisphere in 2015, passionate about flowers. But my heart was really sold one year later, once I planted my first patch of carrots, onion sets and beets, a mere 3 feet by 4 feet in-ground bed.

Since then we expanded to a few hundred square feet of raised beds and even smart pots. Plants are inside and outside the house. My husband is my sidekick, helping me from building the infra, clearing space and caring for the plants.

We live in the beautiful province of Quebec, in Canada and our growing zone is 5A, with short and humid spring and fall seasons and long-ish humid and hot summers. Our winter is cold and deep buried in snow. That is when nature sleeps.

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Waiting for Spring - In Memoriam of Pierre

 his was not a cold winter, but it wad definitely a snowy one. I am happy that starting in January my garden could rest beautifully protected by the a thick carpet of snow. It took a while, but the s now came. Snow is the healthy insulation that protects northern gardens from the damaging winds and harsh temperatures of winter. I celebrate snow.       2020 was a bountiful year and we were able to preserve a lot of food. As of today we still have stored, canned, dehydrated or frozen: peppers, tomatoes, pumpkin, onion, greens, pesto, green beans, cucumbers. Basically I need to tweak just a few items to have the perfect pantry. I need more carrots, beets and potatoes (it is NEVER enough) and I want to start celleri and corn because... why not? And I garden in just 329 square feet of raised beds and pot! Anyone can have a beautiful harvest.   I guess I can say in five years I learned what we need and how much to plant. That is probably the best lesson you can take f...

Final summer harvest

September 2020 experienced 3 days of frost! That really does signal fall, together with those lovely days of sunny 14 degrees and a cold wind that can chill our hearts. The inevitable conclusion is to start closing for summer crops, because choices have to be made and I am so bad at that. I should have cut my bean plants much earlier to give some carrots more light and space, but the plants were so vigorous! I cannot just kill them... Hopefully the hidden carrots will pick up fast It took me a full day to go around the garden to harvest and remove plants, pile them in the compost. And I am glad I did it since the very next day, a new frost advisory came and it was a true frost, as per crystal tips on top of o my brussels sprouts. It never gets old to take a stroll into my yard and come back with fresh produce! A great summer mix to eat fresh!   The front yard is now the spot that receives most hours of sunlight and unsurprisingly the production continues. Fall crops are in full p...

2020 - A great year for potato

I have been growing potatoes for 3 years now and 2020 was just off the charts with production. These boxes of potato were 1/4th of what we harvested this year: Kennebec, French fingerling and Lindtzer. Delicious, home-bred potatoes!   As usual I sourced a lot of different breeds of potatoes from Eagle Creek Farm . They have a ridiculously wide selection and you are just spoiled for choice. As I am learning, I keep ordering different types, but I can confidently say I have a few favorites.  The packages with the precious load in them! Kennebec stores well and tastes great. It also yields me huge tubers. Kennebec and Norland give me the best yield, one seed potato being able to produce sometimes 10 tubers on its own. But Norland does not store well, so it is a delight to eat and in 3 months it is trying to sprout everywhere in your kitchen and pantry! Better eat it fresh. In second place comes the fingerlings. Fingerling potatoes are usually waxy, a great type for salads, soups ...