The Coldprairie Chronicles: Adventures in Dirt

Meadowwood Garden is excited to introduce this guest post by Tatiana, which is the beginning of a series of articles that will follow the highs and lows of her very first vegetable gardening season.  Tatiana lives in a very challenging climate for vegetable growing as you will read about shortly.  Will her dreams of fresh, great tasting produce be realized?  Be sure to read the Coldprairie Chronicles every two weeks to find out!

Hello Meadowwood Garden readers!

I’m very excited to meet you, and tell you a bit about gardening in a vastly different climate than most of you are in. I won’t say we’re hugging polar bears up here in Calgary, Alberta, but with flurries forecast for tomorrow – we’re not far off.

I came to gardening by way of eating with my main motivation being to discover just what fresh picked produce tastes like. Like many others I am uninspired by out of season offerings at the supermarket with its woody strawberries and grassy tomatoes. Farmers markets fare a bit better with a greater variety and tastier produce but I was still seduced by the desire to taste a real vine-ripened tomato, to pick and shell fresh peas fresh off the vine, to eat something warmed by the sun and harvested at the height of flavor. Not to mention the fact that all the best varieties for eating are not the greatest at shipping. A commercial decision where taste often loses.

After reading about small farmers and gardeners for years but not really feeling motivated to start one, something finally clicked last winter when I realized that suddenly I very much want to plant a small garden, of my favorite veggies, right now. I’m not sure why the time felt so right all of a sudden. Perhaps it was the deep November dusk that prompted me to pick up the gardening book I ordered the summer before. Maybe it was the realization that there are no rules – you can plant what you will eat and are not obligated to plant chard for instance, (sorry chard – just don’t know much about you), just because that’s what every gardening book says to plant. Or maybe it was simply the fact that for the first time I felt capable of caring for a garden – not feeling burdened by its routine needs and maintenance rituals, but looking forward to the time set aside to enjoy nature right in my backyard.

This is my very first garden, so I had a heap to learning to do. I’m not surrounded by green thumbed relatives, with only my aunt and uncle having a small lettuce and herb patch, so I had to rely on some good books to guide me on my way. Calgary has some pretty tough challenges when it comes to gardening – we have clay soil that would make excellent bricks, we have a very short growing season, we’re guaranteed snow or hail at least once every summer, and we are surrounded by hungry wildlife that makes itself at home on our lawns and in our parks.

Despite all the obstacles I forged bravely ahead with visions of summer bounty and a piece of paper which quickly filled out with a small list of my favorite things to eat: tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, zucchini, carrots, radishes, and lettuce. I threw in some strawberries as an afterthought.  I figured I’d better start slow with just a few plants rather than kill my fledgling enthusiasm with biting off more than I can handle and giving up on the project later.

Given our late frost date – May 23 by the calendar, but June 1 by common experience, my seedlings would not need to get started until about April. Which gave me just enough time to procure all the supplies necessary to get started – seeds, a starting container, peat pods, and a T5 fluorescent grow light – an absolute necessity this far north.

Coming soon — the Coldprairie Chronicles Part 2 — the starting of the seeds!

Tatiana also writes about gardening and many other interesting topics over at Coldprairie.  Be sure to visit and check it out!  Want to offer Tatiana some advice or words of encouragement?  Leave her a comment below — she will be thrilled you did!