Listen to the "radio" Podcasts with Nikki Jabbour

It just occurred to me some of my followers will want to know where they can hear Nikki's interview with Steven and I. It is right here:
http://www.gardencoacheschat.com/year-round-vegetable-gardening/

Favourite Winter Veg Garden Book

Niki Jabbour fell into the winter gardening idea kinda by accident. She was all done for the year when she noticed some still edible Corn Salad in her November garden. She tossed a row cover on it and kept right on harvesting and eating. Winter gardening works for Nikki and now she has a new book out called "Year Round Vegetable Gardener" (Storey Publishing, $23.95 in Canada).

I told her I was a sceptic. She lives in a relatively warm zone 5-6. "How are all those poor zone 2-3 gardeners gonna do it I asked". That's when she told me it was Minus 28 Celcius in Halifax last week. Ouch. Obviously at those temperatures when she was out gathering Kale it is frozen solid. No problem, says Jabbour, who is known to crumble and put the frozen extras away in the freezer for later use in soups and stews or give it frozen to her kids and call it Kale-cicles" - kind of a mother approved version of the always popular popsicle.

Is Jabbour wildly creative? Yes. In her book she shares her Lebanese Mother-in-law's love of Endive (not the Belgium Endive - the real thing- page 142). She talks about not being handy but together with her husband she supported her row covers so they could support her plants after a heavy 2' deep wet Halifax snow (page 62). She is sympathetic with my woody dense carrots harvested yesterday - and suggests gently I should have tried Napoli carrots- a variety known to be sweet year round. Even with 30 years gardening experience I am always learning. I check my big supply of seeds just in from various suppliers. No Napoli's on order. Better order them before Steve beats me to it and orders them all.
Beautiful Book: check
Lovely descriptive full colour photos: check
Good guides to getting started and making it work: check

Buy Nikki's book if you want to stretch your season for vegetables beyond May 24-Sept 1. for more info check out her blog: http://yearroundveggiegardener.blogspot.com/ or check out our Garden Coaches Chat web page (button on the left) for the podcasts we taped this morning.

Why Plant a Pollinator Garden?

I love TED talks and gardening. This talk ends with a beautiful example of why we need to plant more pollen producing flowers this spring:

Just in- CBC Radio This Morning

I heard on CBC this morning about a seed more than 30,000 years old germinating!

This puts it in perspective for those of us trying to sprout things this spring... The article on NY Times is at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/science/new-life-from-an-arctic-flower-that-died-32000-years-ago.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print

(Sorry I can't figure out how to make this link active)

Fascinating? Why Not

My brain sends me madly off in all directions so when someone else sends me something to do I usually decline...

This time I thought to myself why not jump in? Consequewntly I have accepted a nomination for the Fascination Blog. Obviously one of my lesser followed posts was nominated - and it is probably because I wrote about a commercial product (Sarritor) but I plan to accept this small sign of recognition.

To be nominated a blog must:

Inspire your audience
Encourage discussion through comment posting
Contain genuinely fascinating content

Ha- I am not sure if this content is genuinely fascinating but please support my efforts and pass it along to your friends as well.

Growing Indoors or even on rooftops!

Thanks to Johanne for sharing this great video on growing in sub-irrigated containers. It is something we saw this savvy Art instructor do on her own rooftop and wrote about it in my new book No Guff Vegetable Gardening (Soon available in the States in a revised form as No Nonsense Vegetable Gardening).

Here is the video Johanne sent:

What not to plant in Calgary!

Harold wanted to know: Is there a list of plants that should have warnings attached to them? He gardens in the cold plains of Calgary. Between the mountains, wind and short frost free season he is hesitant to start vegetables. He had so much trouble with parsnips and carrots in particular I enlisted the help of Dawn, a friend and client in Calgary. But first I sent Harold the usual list of plants to avoid- warm season crops are "out"- such as eggplants, tomatillos, peppers, okra and artichokes (pictured left). Just simply too much work for a new gardener in a cold climate. In fact we give these crops a "red light" meaning difficult in my new book No Guff Vegetable Gardening.

I asked Dawn to comment on growing parsnips because his were so impressive last year (he left them in a little package on my front step last spring) I wrote a whole article about them - an article reprinted across the country.

Dawn wrote: We consider carrots, parsnips, potatoes, onions, beets,and the lettuce family as "What should be planted in Calgary". Parsnips,like carrots, can stand a hard frost.
Parsnips are very slow to germinate (2 weeks), but don't presoak(and never transplant tap root vegetables - the roots will go fibrous). I recommend you (Harold) try them again, normal seeding at the same time as carrots (as soon as the ground can be worked),and never let the seed bed dry out-just moist,not wet.

Create as deep a soil bed as you can, with lots of compost, and we give 3 foot row spacing to these heavy feeders. As Donna mentioned, we grow 2 rows x 40 ft of parsnips per year, rotating all these crops and with soil 2 to 3 ft deep. We dig 1 row in the fall and 1 in the spring, the overwinter frost gives them a slightly nutty flavour. The parsnips are 3 or 4 inches in diameter and up to 3 ft long, although most of the "meat" is in the top 18 inches. Try planting with a few radishes to mark the row - sow one seed at a time with 2 inch spacing and thin to 6 to 8 inches. We have had good results with both 'Arrow' or 'Albion' as varieties, from Veseys or Dominion seed houses. Good luck with this, and don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions - this is my 'passion' in outdoor living in Calgary.

okay I have to say I love it when clients help clients. What could be more fun. As Dawn was writing me this note and copying in Harold he was chipping up Christmas trees for use in his hen house. I love these people!

IF YOU LIKE MY APPROACH TO GARDENING, YOU’LL LOVE MY BOOK

Click the PayPal Add-to-Cart button below to purchase No Guff Vegetable Gardening through my fulfilment partner Alpine Book Peddlers.

 

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Forest Bathing?

We used to unroll the windows as we approached the cabin so our dog could "smell" the air. If we didn't do this she would get agitated and start pacing in the backseat. We could see we were getting close to our "forest getaway" but she could only smell it so we helped her out by unrolling the window. Once we arrived at the cabin and got out of the car we could smell the forest too. It seemed as if our blood pressure dropped and the smiles began.

Dr. Sarah Cimperman describes this phenomenon as Forest Bathing in her blog post ( http://adifferentkindofdoctor.blogspot.com/2010/10/forest-therapy.html ):

"Researchers have studied the psychological effects of forest bathing... Almost 500 Japanese adults were surveyed on days they spent time in a forest and also in their normal environment. Statistical analyzes revealed that, compared to their normal environments, inside a forest the participants reported significantly less depression and hostility, and felt significantly more lively. And the greater the level of stress individuals experienced, the greater the positive effects of forest bathing. Researchers concluded that forests are “therapeutic landscapes” and that forest bathing may decrease the risk of stress-related diseases.

I am currently preparing to speak about the "Magic of Gardens" and in my talk I will include all the health benefits gained from being in nature. Organizing a seminar for stressed out professionals? Want a fun and inspired talk? Think of all the health effects of gardening and spending time in nature and call me for your next seminar, workshop or speaker series.

Thanks to the CBC radio show The Current (http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2011/05/04/urban-by-nature-documentary/?dataPath=http://www.cbc.ca/photogallery/radio1/gallery_4475/xml/gallery_4475.xml&startImage=0) for first covering this topic last spring. It took me a while to process and pass along!

IF YOU LIKE MY APPROACH TO GARDENING, YOU’LL LOVE MY BOOK

Click the PayPal Add-to-Cart button below to purchase No Guff Vegetable Gardening through my fulfilment partner Alpine Book Peddlers.

 

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