Our Vegetable Garden

Nearly all of our daily diet comes from our land, from wild mushrooms and maple syrup to venison and wild turkey, but the bulk of the food we eat year round comes from our bountiful vegetable garden. We have our go-to staples that we plant every year, like potatoes, tomatoes, beans, peas, squash and spinach (see the full list of 25+ vegetables below) but every year we like to add a couple of new things to try out. Last year (2020) we added bok choy, which we absolutely loved and was a much appreciated leafy green that grew well into early winter when almost everything else was dying out. We also added a couple of strawberry patches and a herb garden which included rosemary, sage, parsley and marjoram. This years new additions include artichokes and eggplants and we are excited to see how they will do!

Our vegetable garden lies just below the house on a SE facing slope that gets a lot of sun, drains well and is protected from the toughest winds. It also needs protection from the foraging wildlife so is surrounded but two metre high fence. Heaped beds have been created with fertile soil, which is enriched every year from our compost pile. Before the 2020 growing season we spent many days and weeks expanding our growing space by joining several beds together to create bigger growing areas, adding an extra bed along the north fence, building a couple of boxes for the herbs and strawberries and building two vertical gardens for the climbing vegetables. We now have about 2,500 sq feet of growing space, divided into 14 beds. We practice rotational gardening to keep the soil nutrients at its best and to lessen the chance of any diseases ravaging our crops, so we grow a different vegetable in each bed, or part of the bed, on a 3-4 year rotation.

Planting and maintenance

Our growing routine begins in January when the seed catalogues start arriving in the mail, always an exciting time! Our preferred supplier is Johnny’s Seeds from Maine, we pay a little more for the seeds but it is well worth it as the quality and variety available is impressive. We buy our onion sets from Dixondale Farms and also have a lot of success with certain vegetables (cucumbers, butternut squash and zucchini) and all our herbs from Bentley seeds which we can buy relatively cheaply at the local hardware store.

In mid-March the planting begins, indoors at least! We pull out our tiered grow lights and plant the first of our seeds in small pots or seedling flats to germinate under the lights. Once they’ve germinated and the seedlings have grown big enough to transplant we move them to larger pots and place them in front of our east and south facing windows to give them the full advantage of natural sunlight to really get them growing fast and strong. Lastly, a few days before they will get planted out in the garden we harden them in front of the windows in the carport. This acclimatises them to the cooler nights and occasional wind to make sure they will survive the final transplant to the outdoor plots.

Our transplanted vegetables and herbs, that we start inside under grow lights, include:

• Tomatoes

• Bell peppers

• Jalepeños

• Beetroot

• Cucumber

• Zucchini

• Winter squash

• Cauliflower

• Broccoli

• Cabbage

• Brussel Sprouts

• Celery

• Artichoke

• Eggplant

• Marjoram

• Sage

• Rosemary

• Basil

• Parsley

• Dill

• Cilantro

Mid-March is also when we put our onion sets into the ground, we plant a mixture of yellow, white and red, about 150 onions in total. Our garlic would have been planted late the year before and would be starting to sprout around this time. We usually put about 60-75 cloves in the ground to give us the same number of beautiful large bulbs in late summer. The garlic is always the first thing to sprout in the garden in early spring and is a welcome sight after a long cold, winter!

In April we start with the direct seeding, planting the seeds directly into the beds outside. First to go in are the carrots and the hardy leafy greens, like kale and spinach, which can withstand a bit of frost. Once the danger of frost has passed we put in the peas, followed by the radishes, beans, corn and lettuce. Our staple direct seeding plants include:

• Carrots

• Kale

• Spinach

• Swiss chard

• Radish

• Peas

• Beans

• Corn

• Lettuce

• Beetroot

• Bok choy

• Radichio

• Rutabega

• Potatoes (from seed potatoes)

• Sweet potatoes (from slips)

And on top of all the transplanted and direct seeding vegetables we put in each year we also have a couple of perennial types growing in our garden that pop up by themselves every year: asparagus and rhubarb. They are two of our favourites to grow as they are both absolutely delicious and require very little effort, just some minor weeding.

At the end of April it’s time for the seedlings to get transplanted into the garden and over the next month they will all go in, starting with the hardy beetroot, followed by the brassicas (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbages and brussel spouts) and lastly the super sensitive cucumbers, squashes, tomatoes and peppers are planted. The sweet potato slips are the last to go in and by the last week of May the garden has been planted and the maintenance work starts. Personally I like an organised and tidy garden so am an almost obsessive weeder and also a big believer in providing lots of water. In 2020 we set up an efficient irrigation system with leaker hoses and sprinklers. The hoses worked great around the bigger plants like the tomatoes, brassicas and corn but we soon discarded the sprinklers on the top bed and hand watered the leafy greens, radishes and beets instead. We find the weeding and watering very zen work and will happily spend a couple of hours a day tending to all the plants and pampering them with some TLC.

Over the next few months we get great pleasure in watching the garden grow and reaping the bounty. As the summer rolls on the baby plants drink in the hot sun, thirstily soak up all the water and nutrients and explode into beautiful, huge, vegetable laden adult plants. It’s always amazing to see nature at work and the absolute miracle of all of this growing out of the tiniest of seeds…

Harvesting the bounty

The harvesting is the most fun of all! During the summer months and well into late autumn, we have a steady stream of delicious food coming out of the garden. Too much to eat for just us so we give lots away to family and friends, freeze and can a tonne more and eat it fresh in delicious home-cooked meals every day. It is an amazingly satisfying experience to pop into your own garden to pick your food for the day. Not only is it organic and healthy but it really does taste better when it’s that fresh and it’s also appreciated that much more when you’ve worked so hard to grow it!

Cooking and preserving

We like to enjoy the food we harvest all year round so we spend quite a bit of time canning and freezing. One of our go-to, easy meals comes from a delicious pasta sauce that we make in bulk towards the end of summer when the tomatoes, peppers and onions are ready for the picking. It becomes a family affair and Steve’s parents will come up for the week to help us make many batches. The recipe comes from an old neighbour and is honestly the tastiest pasta sauce I’ve ever had! We also pickle the cucumbers and beans, make spicy relishes out of them, make sauerkraut, sun-dried tomatoes, rhubarb and freeze a variety of blanched vegetables including kale, spinach, brussel sprouts and beetroot. By the end of autumn the freezer and pantry are packed with goodies to enjoy all winter long!

Recipes:

Below are some of the recipes we use for preserving our bounty, from sun-dried tomatoes and pickles to pasta sauce, pesto and sauerkraut.

Spicy Cucumber Relish

Sun-dried Tomatoes

Cucumber Pickles

Sauerkraut

Basil Pesto

Spicy Bean Pickles