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Hello My Friend Gardener!
As I’ve mentioned, we love gardening! If you are like us and can’t wait to get your hands dirty, you probably have already started the new gardening season 🙂 Since we were not born on a farm and farming is not in our blood, we do learn a lot from books, youtube videos and other bloggers too. Here is a list of our favourite go-to gardening resources to help you get the most of your gardening season!
Youtube channels:
- Patrick @OneYardRevolution, grows food in his Zone 5 little backyard garden year-round. His approach is to grow a lot of food on a small lot using sustainable organic and “lazy gardening” methods. His videos are informative and comprehensive and watching his little helper (cat Oscar) in the garden is always fun! He also has a few tutorials on how to build hoops and a greenhouse.
- Steven @Alberta Urban Garden Simple Organic and Sustainable – is a biologist by profession who grows a lot of veggies and fruit on his urban lot in Edmonton, Alberta, in gardening Zone 3! area. He breaks quite a few gardening myths by investigating the science behind gardening and provides a lot of information on various gardening methods. Check out his garden soil series playlist.
- Curtis @Urban Farmer Curtis Stone – another Canadian fellow who is promoting urban commercial farming and brings it up to a completely different level. He is breaking stereotypes of commercial farming (along with many rules that governments try to set up). According to Curtis, you don’t need to own a huge farm to farm. Your own and your neighbours’ backyards can work too!
- Valeriy Medvedev @Валерий Медведев– for my Russian-speaking readers. In my opinion, he is the best source providing information on organic gardening and showing plant’s full cycle from the moment of starting the seeds to the moment of harvesting in a video! (Для моих русскоязычных читателей. По-моему мнению, он лучший источник информации по органическому земледелию, показывая полный цикл растения с момента высадки семян и до сбора урожая!)
And it has all started with this video of Jules Dervaes and his Urban Homestead. It is very powerful and extremely inspirational! A word of warning though: this gardening bug might be contagious! 🙂
Gardening websites and blogs:
Many of the following sites contain information on gardening and homesteading. I will also be updating and adding more website as I find more useful and interesting information.
Mother Earth News
Attainable Sustainable
Preparedness Mama
Family Food Garden
Grow a Good Life
Tenth Acre Farm
Gardening Books:
The Beginner’s Guide to Starting a Garden – Don’t let the words “beginner’s guide” misguide you! If you are not into a vegetable gardening, but still want a beautiful garden, this is the book for you! Sally will walk you step-by-step towards a paradise creation.
Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture
The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener – the author shares her experience of growing food year-round and is proving it is possible to grow veggies year-round even in the cold climate of Nova Scotia, Canada!
I found this book especially helpful for us taking into consideration our common gardening zone and similar challenges both the author and us are dealing with in our rainy climate.
The Kid’s Guide to Exploring Nature – This is less about the gardening, but is a great read with kids! Alan was so eager to read it and to share the stories with us 🙂
If you believe in the balanced and no-chemicals approach and want to learn more about growing flowers and vegetables, this book is your best friend!
Pest Control
If you grow microgreens or your own seedlings inside the house, you might find out that fruit flies like your “little babies” not less than you do. Yikes! We have tried so many homemade recipes (apple cider vinegar, wine and what not) to get rid of the fruit flies, but that did not help much. Or better say did not help at all. So we found these sticky window trap and sticky stiks work awesome! Just look at the picture below! WARNING: it looks gross, I know. But these things work! We don’t use these in our greenhouse though, as we don’t want to accidentally catch a bee or a wasp and kill it. We like our hard-working garden helpers!
Seeds companies:
Our two favourite are:
West Coast Seeds and McKenzie Seeds – both these companies offer a huge selection of non-GMO seeds and tons of organic seeds. It is really hard to control myself when I go to a nursery and see all those stands with cool seeds and try to not buy them all 🙂
We like the Johny’s Selected Seeds videos and educational resources page, but we haven’t ordered their seeds yet. They have cool microgreens supplies, and we hope one day to visit their store and get some 🙂
And another Canadian company selling very affordable sprouting and microgreen seeds.
Community Gardeners
We have found dozens of enthusiastic gardeners who are willing to share their knowledge with other gardeners! If you are on Facebook, simply search for gardening groups in your area.
If you are interested in a specific plant or service, simply search by the plant name and your geographic area. Trust me, you will be amazed by the number of backyard gardeners who grow vegetables, fruit, and flowers in their backyard gardens! We have been swapping seeds and plants with each other which is a great opportunity to both expand your collection and to save some money 😉
And all the gardening tips we learn from each other! This is simply priceless!
So, don’t be shy. Join the groups and start the next beautiful chapter in your gardening life 🙂
I will be updating the list from time to time, so please feel free to leave a comment with your go-to resources for information and gardening inspiration. Please share your gardening wisdom below too 🙂
