Urban Farmer
131 Woodridge Pl SW T2W 3R4 Calgary, AB, Canada

Really excited for these Chinese 5 Colour peppers. Their flowers look more like those of an eggplant with their unique violet petals. These little guys are purple at first, and as they ripen, turn to cream, yellow, orange and then red. Apparently they’re screaming hot as well #Chinese5ColourPepper #HotPeppers #Chilis #YYCGardening #GrowYourOwn

IT’S BERRY SEASON! The strawberries are almost ripe, and it looks like a bumper crop of raspberries is on the way. #Strawberries #Berries #GrowYourOwn #YYCGardening

Every season, I try to beat the light with spinach, and every season, I get one salad before this happens: it bolts! Spinach has a long-day photoperiod, meaning it flowers when the days get longer. It does best in the early spring in the cool temperatures and when the day is shorter. Our northern latitude and very long days make it hard to get spinach in my tummy before it goes to seed. I’m going to leave one to see if I can’t get it to self-sow and see how early seeds will germinate. The rest will come out and be replaced with rainbow chard, which is similar in taste and nutrition, and is less likely to bolt. #Spinach #LongDayPhotoperiod #YYCGardening #GrowYourOwn

Purslane! It can be tricky to find seeds for this tasty and nutritious succulent. But I highly recommend! The small, juicy leaves are tangy and great in salads. And purslane contains high levels of beneficial fatty acids, much higher levels than found in other salad greens. It’s also a good source of vitamins A and E, and contains ever-beneficial antioxidants. It’s unlikely you’ll find this green in supermarkets, so you’ll have to #GrowYourOwn to try it! #YYCGardening #Purslane #Omega3 #Portulacaoleracea

Happy summer! Wow, my garden is a mess. This spring was crazy busy; I don’t even have my tomatoes in the ground yet! I’ve finally finished up my current projects so hope to get out in my own garden ASAP. But for now, here are some gorgeous wild roses. These appeared three years ago in the tiny line of dirt behind the culvert running along my back fence. Now the bushes are the size of a smart car! #YYCGardening #GrowYourOwn #WildRoses

CHIVES! I am so behind in the garden right now, but at least I have chives. They’re a perennial, so they start coming up as soon as the snow melts and have pretty purple blooms, so they are a great addition to any edible or ornamental garden. #GrowYourOwn #YYCGardening #Chives

Doing a bit of garden recon the other day, and what is that fluffy purple stuff in a big patch of soil in the main garden?? Ohhhh, it’s purple orach! I let one grow wild last season. It got to over five feet tall with bazillions of seeds. But then, before I could harvest the seeds...a wind storm! So I suspect it’s going to be a bumper year for purple orach! #YYCGardening #GrowYourOwn #PurpleOrach

This might be my favourite part of growing things; that moment right before a seedling sheds its seed coat and pops up from the dirt. This tiny goji seedling is glowing green in the morning light. Also, there’s cat hair in the Nanodome. Regarding goji berries, I kept killing the plants and it FINALLY occurred to me that I was growing the wrong variety. One is hardy to roughly -20C, and the other is hardy to -40C. In any case, I had purchased seeds of the less hardy variety. So this season I made sure to get the right kind of seeds! #YYCGardening #GrowYourOwn #GojiBerry #CatHair

Fantastic germination on the tomatoes! Almost all the cherries, paste, and regular tomatoes have all popped up; took less than a week! I’ve been starting seeds this season in the Nanodome, which is a mini table-top greenhouse with UV lights. The tomato seedlings are a smidge leggy, but only because I forgot to turn the lights on for a couple days in a row, oops. Overall, I highly recommend the Nanodome. I had been considering buying a heat mat for some of the hot hot peppers that like really warm soil, but the dome and lights did the trick. Almost all the peppers germinated within two weeks (has taken up to 6 weeks in the past)! #GrowYourOwn #YYCGardening #CherryTomatoes #HotPeppers #Nanodome

Spent some time clearing leaves out of the garden and was pleasantly surprised to find these guys underneath the leaf litter. I had presumed they had been crushed under the weight of the snow. And yes, there were a few damaged outer leaves, but very few were unsalvageable. As you can see, lettuce can tolerate some pretty cold temps! So don’t be nervous about sowing a fall crop for some tasty fall salads. Even the tender butterheads are just fine! #YYCGardening #GrowYourOwn #FallLettuce

For the past several months, I have been ever so carefully curating my bokashi compost pile with only the choicest garbage. Bokashi composting uses fermentation to break down food and yard waste. In the fall, you bury the partially fermented mess, and in the spring it will be luscious, beautiful compost. Anyway, yesterday was a perfect day for compost planting. However, this morning, I look outside to see that my skunk (she lives under my deck) had a garbage smorgasbord last night. She has dug down and gobbled up all my compost, and now I have vast empty pits and a smattering of eggshells remaining. Oh well, battling with nature is half the fun of gardening anyway #YYCGardening #GrowYourOwn #BokashiCompost #HungrySkunk

Smoothie mix! Yesterday’s glorious weather was the perfect time to clean out some of the last goodies in the garden. The giant snow pile melted to reveal the chard and a few remaining dinky beets. I chopped those all up with the last of the parsley and a nice hefty chunk of the #KalePile. Then it all gets frozen in containers to throw in with berries and other fruit in the blender! #YYCGardening #GrowYourOwn #SmoothieMix #RedRussianKale #RainbowChard

Some more ripening peppers in my office. I love how they don’t ripen all at once. Instead, their colour comes in patchy, as though they are blushing because you caught them doing something embarrassing. Over a period of days or weeks the colour will slowly spread until the pepper is fully ripe. Tonight, it’s salsa time for some of these guys. #YYCGardening #GrowYourOwn #Peppers