Garden Planning 2020!

Welcome to the next decade, friends and farmers! We are so stoked to be headed into the new year and new decade for a number of reasons.

Probably the number one reason is these two farmers are going to be getting hitched this June! Ben popped the question while we hunted for a Christmas tree over the holiday break up in Kananaskis and I of course, said yes! So on top of planning our big garden for the 4th season of Uprooted, we are also planning a small wedding in Ontario! So there are a great deal of things to be excited for this spring, including a rise in mercury.

As we are in the middle of what feels like an arctic tundra in Calgary, we decided to plan out the garden and order all of seeds for the season! Because what else can you do while being cooped up inside in the bleak of winter in minus 20+ weather. It has been downright frigid here, and wont be letting up for an entire week. We purchased a much wider variety of seeds this year and will be experimenting with new plants to help give some variety in our market. We loved our colourful array of beets and carrots and potatoes, but that was about the depth of our table, so we are hoping to be able to bring a few more interesting veggies to the market this year! We have included some asian vegetables, shallots, and squash (for the very first time!). We are also trying out growing some heritage wheat, as we recently found an antique grain grinder, and have reached the next level of hipster.. potentially grinding our own flour! We discovered that our lovely seed provider, Heritage Harvest Seeds, carries Red Fife wheat seeds, which came from my neck of the woods, outside of Peterborough Ontario. My family actually know some Fife's from the area, so this is a super cool connection for me!

We have a few more surprises among our list of seeds purchased, and we hope that this year we will be able to really crack down on our grass/weeds in the remainder of our new garden. Last season we had expanded our garden a great deal, with bout 6 new rows, but still fought off grass through most of the season in these rows. This year, with some heavy tilling before hand, we hope that we can control the newer portion of our garden and see more production for our efforts, as last season we did have a number of produce choked out by grass/weeds, mainly our potato crop (german butterball and candy cane). Again, we are also extending our garden a little bit north to make our rows that much longer, but we are not going to extend too far this season, and focus more on production/weed management within the acre sized garden plot we have created. We were able to grow a couple hundred pounds of food this year with all of the carrots, beets, potatoes and garlic, so we feel like we are getting close to the size of garden we are looking for for sustainable production, selling to friends and family as well as stocking our pantries for the winter.

If you can believe it, I still ordered a new variety of corn. Ben won't give up his dream on growing corn, so we are trying another variety called Cafe corn from Veseys seeds, which has a short growing season. So fingers crossed! I might never win the battle to stop trying to grow corn, but if it makes him happy! We also purchased broom corn from Veseys, which I am more excited about than regular corn. Stay tuned for details on this potential product!

Here is a glimpse of our 2020 plot in plans. Of course it always looks planned until we start digging! By keeping tabs of our plot and seed purchases we can keep a good idea of plant rotations and what seeds worked well, what didn't. It certainly has been easier planning for each season this way and highly recommended. We just use excel, but I'm sure there are far more advanced programs out there to track.

We are looking forward to this spring.. and January is spent day-dreaming about warm soil and green grass. But until then, we have a few more planning sessions to attend to, and more importantly the nuptials in June! However it will be May before we know it, and the best workout regime to look great in our wedding attire is to be ankle deep in some mud, planting seeds for a fruitful fall!

So hunker in there, Albertans! Hopefully this is the only major cold week we have to handle before we reach deeper into 2020 and embrace the fun chaos that will no doubt assume as the snow melts and the busy begins!

Have a great January everyone! And hopefully our groundhog doesn't find it's shadow!

Cheers,

K