Gal in the Garden Series No Time to Waste

Posted on March 9, 2026 by Just another day on the farm

The events globally over the past week will be felt in ever widening ripples and one of them will be food costs, last year i was able to pick up a good load of smaller straw bales, the mini kind perfect for the porches for Halloween in town and the standard kind for the farm use. I was thrilled to find a new supplier that is just up the road a bit, close enough for him to swing by and drop the wagon off and leave it overnight for us to unload etc. I knew that with the new land we turned last year being as poorly as it was that I needed extra straw for the garden, as well as having double load’s of wood mulch dropped off

Weather got a touch wonky, and has decided to give us a week of false spring, sap is running hard and it rained, a lot.. we didn’t get the worse of it but we still got a good amount and our best house side micro climate was fully melted out when we woke this morning.. there are four plus feet of snow still covering all the kitchen garden beds and areas.

While i am not a big clean up the yard in the spring to early as i know that lots of things can be overwintering, everything that was raked up was moved to a area to the side so it still has a chance at least of hatching etc., the space got raked out and we made temp straw bale walled microclimates Straw bales used in wall insulation have a R value of 30 to 35 but this will be less do to the way they are being used but they are still going to be very helpful!

What we are calling Block #2 will have a u shaped pea vine climber on the back wall and two bale sides, i will add in fresh garden soil around 4 to 6 inches to start the earliest of peas, a row of radish will be placed in front of the peas in a u shape as well, the front row of this bed will be filled with Winter Sow jugs to help grow spring seedlings for transplanting, giving us both a head start on those transplants and saving room in our indoor growing sets ups The ground still needs to thaw some to get the tines fully down but we have a couple days coming of plus 10c and i am sure by the end of it they will be down where we want them, we will NOT be planting these out till after the next cold snap

Block #1 will have a cover made to place over to trap the heat in much more then Block #2 This block will have soil blend added at a depth of 6 inches and will be planted into radish, salad micro greens and beets and depending on what the night time temps look like, some of our started smaller lettuce greens might be possible or will be certainly added by the end of march. This set up will allow us to plant and grow March/April and depending even into early may while we get the kitchen garden prepped and ready for cool season planting and growing.

As you can see we have a rain barrel set up at the end and so ideally i will be able to use rain water when possible. These will be very tightly planted and as things get taken out for fresh eating,

Pipsqueak was watching carefully and ready to give a helping paw lol, i expect these warm bales will be a purr pride magnet for naps when the weather is fine, but we will see as they do love sleeping on the hay.

Hubby and i are still in talks about what will be placed over the top, I expect it will be a sheet of plastic stapled to either 2 by 2 or larger branches cut from norway maples that have been coppiced and have very nice long poles ready to be cut and used in the garden in multiple ways this year to create a lighter weight plastic top but if the cats are going to like it enough, then maybe we will use one of our sheets of plexiglass instead so its quite solid

Once these are done, we will be able to pull them apart easily and use the straw in the gardens as it was intended for mulch this year.

Do you have a heat sink that warms faster? Consider looking around to see what you might be able to find to create a faster producing micro zone for your kitchen and your plate, grow for speed, grow for calories and grow for micro nutrients. When it comes to super early spring production like this, you are growing for micro greens, eat your thinning’s for the beets and radishes, roast the radish as well as eat them fresh an spring sweet, eat your beets as tiny wee ones , remember everything other then roots are edible on your peas, greens, flowers and of course the pods.

This is very much grow what your family will eat, do not try new things in these spaces, grow for your plate and crowd those spaces, you are not going to grow these to full size, you do not need full size spacing, look to square foot garden spacing, I will share details on the plantings, what it cost me in seed, and what i got in harvest vs what that would cost me in my local stores.. right now a small bag of radish, that has around 8 average size radish is $6 dollars.. I just stood there and stared, shook my head and walked away and that was last week price points.

Farmgal Tip, get your fertilizer now! maybe get a big bag or two enough for say two or three or five years, put it in a safe dry space.

Posted in Climate Change, Eat what you grow, Gal in the Garden Series, Garden, Hard times | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Healing Soup Microgreens

Posted on March 7, 2026 by Just another day on the farm

Green Healing Soup Recipe with Microgreens

  • 4 cups broth of your choice, i used veggie broth but this could easily be made with bone broth of your choice
  • 1 large potato, peeled and cubed
  • 1 large carrot, peeled and cubed (this carrot could be replaced with celery, or turnip or squash or sweet potato, pick a root veggie you like the flavor on and it will work, use what you have in your pantry and fridge here folks)
  • 2 cups of fresh microgreens, if using homegrown and ideally for cost savings you should
  • Salt, Pepper to taste, i also used a seasoning salt I like, you are wanting to balance out the flavor but not really add to it, just enhance.
  • large heaping tablespoon of greek yogurt or sour cream or at least a swirl of heavy cream
  • Extra ideas, a sprinkle of chili flakes on top, add in some crunch with some croutons if desired

In a med sized pot on med heat, add in your broth, diced veggies, seasonings and cook till they are fork tender, allow to cool just slightly, while cooling, give your sprouts a rough chop and add to the soup, allow the heat to wilt them as you stir them in, then using either a stick blender or a heat proof blender, blend your soup till smooth.  Taste, and adjust your salt and cracked black pepper as required.

Add a large heaping tablespoon of your best thick Greek yogurt, a sprinkle of chili flakes if desired. 

Serve sizes, two main meal portions or four small portions to serve with side salad and bread etc

Posted in Health, Soups and Stews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Community Supported Gardens Peach Program

Posted on March 4, 2026 by Just another day on the farm

Here in Ottawa valley in Ontario, garden zone 5a it is the month where ideally we will be pruning hard fruit trees of all kinds. Long time readers know that i have been and continue to be active with other amazing fellow local gardeners to creating local food sheds.

These photos are used with permission given as they were taken at one of my “gifted” out placement spots.. this is a wind zone, the wind blows from the open farm fields all the time, unlimited water and this owner has been excellent about having me out to help her in terms of pruning the tree, what you are looking at is one trees fruit.

One of these ripple effect programs is Sib C peaches, a number of years ago a lovely women in ottawa grew the “mother tree” with great success and she shared saved peach pits wide and far across the community, i got a small bag of pits myself and in the end also was gifted someone’s pits as well, in total i raised 15 peach seedlings, I split them out among friends, some had different soil types, some had shelter belts, others wide open wind swept placements, other still were one zone warmed and I also grew my own here on the farm in different placements.

Those first peach trees have come full circle and are now the proud producers of bushels of peaches, with the best pits from different trees being selected, shared out and in some cases grown out, last year i hand selected, grew out and sold into my local community another 100 plus peach trees.

I am uncertain given the drought on how many of my young peach trees will be alive come this spring, and my oldest need some heavy pruning this year as it was missed last year. I look forward to hearing how it goes with different farms and gardens and i will be excited to collect peach pits this fall from the biggest, most perfect fruits for saving, sharing and some limited growing out.

There is something wonderful knowing that currently dozens of families and soon enough hundreds of families are enjoying locally grown fruit that however briefly came though my world and onward in hopefully ripple effects for years to come. The idea that a child when i am long gone will be reaching up and picking sun warmed ripe peaches in sept or early oct and biting in with juice running down their arm makes me smile.

I am happy to say that many places now offer Sib C peaches for sale online across canada, some are even doing as i am, selectively breeding for size, texture and taste. I am hopeful that will continue to see a impact in the future as we all work towards bringing these amazing hardy white fleshed peaches into the gardens and kitchens across canada and beyond.

I am looking forward to donating one or more of these to our towns new community garden that is working with our local middle and high school, they have a greenhouse, a garden and are working on a small orchard, with the culinary class making food from the fresh offerings, i see peach cobbler and pies and more in their future!

If you would like to add a tree or three to your own garden or homestead, I will be offering peach pits late fall for those that would like to try growing themselves and we will have limited peach seedlings available for sale spring of 2027

Posted in 100 mile diet, Eat what you grow, farm sales, Fruit Trees, Garden | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Gal in the Garden : Gardening in Hard Times Series

Posted on March 3, 2026 by Just another day on the farm

Good Afternoon to my fine fellows, what a time we find ourselves in right now. I do understand that here in Canada, and i expect in many other counties that we are very much seeing the K economy happening in daily life. While those in the upper part of the K can afford their current lifestyle, they are not immune to inflation.

The Gal in the Garden Series is coming back in full force this year but it will also have a few different sub groups added to it, you will be able to tell in a glance which ones it is. so let me introduce

Gardening in Hard Times

Like so many people, we are currently waiting to see what and how the next round of layoff’s will or won’t effect Dear Hubby, what we do know is that with the new back to office mandate means that he will be needing to commute more days of the week. I would like to say that Dear Hubby had been working a hybrid home/office successfully for 15 plus years before it was made a “thing”

This does effect the bottom line in terms of direct costs and somewhere those costs need to be made up in terms of savings and lets face it straight up, when it comes to certain things you have little say or control on the costs of things, those bills are going to come in and they will need to be paid.

However there are ways to save money if you have the time and willingness to work on it, i am going to be coming at it from the homestead, garden, forage, local sourced and store sales (limited though they may be) Some of it will be old hat, others will be odd out of the box thinking!

I am gardening in a northern climate, zone 5a, which used to be a three season climate and is now a two season zone at best and with the past few years, its been as unpredictable as possible with flood years, drought years, wild weather events and more which has lead it to be a one harvest season on plantings that should be at least two per our frost free average dates.

There is a be as much focus on fodder for any and all household and homestead and farm animals, just like inflation is hitting us and what we put on our plates, so it is effecting feed costs and just like us, what we feed is reflected back in health and productivity

I will do my best to include a good amount of hard data for my local area, i am well aware that it will only be my part of canada, may places would have much higher prices and few might have lower, i would always be interested in hearing how it matches up in your own neck of the woods.

I have upgraded the website and that means i will be adding in video’s at times along with my photography and like always unless noted, all photography on the site is taken by me, its the real deal, not some random photo selected to match the subject matter.

For recipes, i will do my best to keep things short for those that just want the recipe and go, but you can expect a mix of longer, shorter and in some cases photo heavy posts, like always there is really no way to know what i will talk about!

Cheers to spring!

Posted in CanadianEh, frugal, Gal in the Garden Series, Garden, Hard times | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Feeding out Crushed Eggs Shells to Chickadees and more

Posted on February 24, 2026 by Just another day on the farm

Log into any chicken group or homesteading group and folks will talk about saving their egg shells, baking them and crushing and feeding them back to their flocks

I have done a detailed post on it myself and its good practice

Head over to your local gardening group and they are going to talk about egg shells and there is going to be split thoughts on this, some will dry/crush and use directly in the gardens, others will just crush or toss them into the compost bin/worm bins or in trench composting, others will dry and crush them, soak them in vinegar water to create a type of compost tea.

All work in their own way, i have used crushed egg shells as slug rings, all those super tiny sharp cutting edges are awesome at giving a helping hand. That’s about where i crush to for laying hens, or garden use or compost and so on

Today however i would like to talk about offering dried finely crushed egg shells to a different bird or birds then we would normally think of and its layered effects. I would say that i crush these at least to half the size i do normally, i hope you can see the difference between the two sizes?

These ones will go out to both the ground feeders and the hanging feeders for all the little wild birds, this is for the females and i started feeding this out in early fob and will continue to do so until the spring is well underway.

While this little Chickdee is very fun in winter, it and so many other of the year round smaller yard/farm birds are so important in our food forests, and kitchen gardens and even into our big homestead gardens.

Trying to stay away from chemicals, then you need to be doing everything you can to be supporting your feathered garden helpers.

When it come to Chickadee’s and around 90 plus percent of small birds, they feed their babies insects and a lot of them! I mean A LOT!

Bugs are for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and multiple snacks per day in baby bird world. In fact, a group of scientists from the University of Delaware conducting research on chickadee feeding patterns determined that it took between 5,000 to 9,000 insects to raise one brood of baby chickadees.

That’s right getting one or two sets of breeding/hatching parents can mean that you as a gardener can have up to 10 to 20,000 less issues in your gardens and fruit canes, bushes, and trees etc and each breeding pair tends to do this twice a summer!

In the wild, snails and their shells make up a massive part of making sure those momma birds have enough Calcium in their diets to make strong egg shells, otherwise, they will pull from their own bones leading to weak bones, thinner egg shells and lower hatch rates.

In Zone 5a an in large parts of canada, as well as other counties in the same temp zones, we are in that odd time of false spring, temps are going up, longer sun hours are here, sugar snow is happening, and sap is starting or is running for the first of the maple syrup harvests, and that means that the birds are starting to preen, find their mate, and so on.

We want the best health of our mother birds, we want strong egg shells to help create higher hatch rates because for every healthy chick that hatches, that is a thousand or more worms, bugs and so on that is going to hunted out of your yard, garden and orchard or food forest! NO spending money on tapes, or bags, or sprays..

Just working with nature.. So might i highly recommend that bird feeder is idea but even if you don’t feed the birds, find a spot they go by, bird water, favorite sitting sunning and singing spot, and consider putting out some dried, finely crushed egg shells, sprinkled in the dish, stump or ground feeding area.

Yes, once spring truly gets going, you are welcome to let them harvest snails and snail shells but while there is snow on the ground, while its cold enough that they are not going to be able to find that naturally yet, lets give them a tiny simple helping hand from a by produce that we would tend to throw away or compost.

This is a great little kids project for those that live in town as well, helping nature, learning about life cycles, and helping them understand how little things can have great impacts down the road.

Posted in Birding, Critters, Gal in the Garden Series, Garden, Kitchen garden | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Lets talk about Garden Seed Prices, shall we!

Posted on February 10, 2026 by Just another day on the farm

While it is true that i personally ordered in my main seeds (from OSC) a company that has been in my province for 125 years. They have proven to be a good company to work with, including during the pandemic when things seed wise got wonky!

I do have a good amount of older seed and lots of homegrown and saved seeds, but the simple truth is that the cost of seeds in the seed catalogs coming in is shockingly high and the amount of seeds in per package has in some cases shockingly shrunk

Case in point, a new catalog came in, its a good company, its a Canadian Company that has been around for 75ish years, not small, not the biggest either, good seeds, good service.. I ordered these same seeds four years ago and that package of seeds was 3.95 for 50 seeds, which had risen from 2.99 for x weight in the package, not seeds at that time but by weight

Today when i went to order that same package, today it is a 5.85 for 8 to 10 seeds. Yes the seed package in the catalog clearly states 8 to 10 seeds.. I am in a bit of shock to be honest!

Now, i know that there is a rising pressure costs, i get that, overhead costs and rise of living costs but this kind of price point increase for home gardeners is just wild! wow!

I will admit i am not ordering it, i will be carefully starting the few remaining seeds i have, growing it only for seed saving and restocking both my own needs for the next three to five years and also having extra for offer at much better price points to my local community food shed!

Its not just the price point (which is huge) its the fact that climate change is such that things can be wiped out in a storm, new gardeners can struggle to get seedlings to grow, what if they are learning and damping off takes out that row in the tray, investment gone.. what if they are growing nicely and a mouse comes along, gone.. or they grow just lovely and you plant them out in the just right, its a mild day, they have been hardened off, they look amazing its a overcast day and you did everything right and the next morning the cutworms had a party and gone!

Do you know how easy it is for so many things that could cause losses of 8 to 10 plants in a big garden?

We used to talk about help cut costs and seed share packages, and that is an can be very helpful indeed, buy a package with 50 seeds and share it out with garden friends, they do the same an everyone has a year or two worth of seeds and can do seed saving and cost savings..

at three dollars for 4 to 5 seeds split only two ways its still just plain highway robbery! At a time when being able to tuck a bit of extra plants to help feed your family in a spare pot, flower garden, kitchen garden or main garden counts, this is very unwelcome.

So i can see this is happening across the seed catalogs arriving for Canadian company’s to different degrees. How will this be effecting your garden seed buying this year? How will seed cost effect your style of gardening? Will it effect your seed saving efforts?

If you live outside Canada, be it USA or EU or elsewhere in the world, i know from my daily stats that folks from many different countries around the world are reading here daily, what is it like your area? Are seed prices doubles or more, have the number of seeds in your packages had such bad reductions?

I would love to hear what you are seeing your local stores, your seed catalogs?

Ps, i also noticed that a couple catalogs that always offered free shipping if spend over $75 didn’t offer anything like that this year.. hmmm

Posted in At the kitchen table, Gal in the Garden Series, Garden, Seeds | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Beef on the Waddle, The Muscovy

Posted on January 22, 2026 by Just another day on the farm

I have had these amazing ducks on the farm since the first spring we arrived coming on 22 years now. The amount of ducks has come up and down but they are one of the main livestock we always have, the reasons are vast, they are sweet quiet birds, amazing layers, great mothers, taste mighty fine indeed and they also are outstanding fly control

Having said that with my health issues over the past years, the number of them in our keep year round flock has gone down in numbers, shifting from eggs/meat to more eggs/farm bug/small amount of meat, no one local will butcher them, which makes them a home butcher and i have been enjoying buying half or whole beef from down the road.

I quite like having them be helpful working flock in smaller breeding numbers with less butcher but the cost of beef has made it clear that i will need to expand my duck breeding this year. In keeping with this, i am adding in four 2 year old proven unrelated hens that coming from one of the local 4-H, supporting a youth just adds the cherry on top.

I am not at all happy to be adding that much small stock butchering back onto my work load but i will be happy to have a small stock that can be raised on the farm in a great value way, the young ducklings are going to be used to help with bug/slug/snail issues in the gardens, I will be pulling all ducklings at a certain age to go with one hen and let the others go back to egg laying, setting and hatching.. While i know that sometimes i do get three sets per year, most of the time, i don’t let them set more then twice, this year i might go for three, we will see.

A select number of the males will be allowed to grow out for our Mock Beef use, but i expect most will be done at a younger age but time will confirm that. As the cost of feed goes up, there are choices to be made and many of them mean more work to keep the plates filled.

What is your plan to get access to a cheaper protein source, growing more beans to add to rice, more chicken, a pig, hunting, fishing, eggs? If you have space, time an the health to do so, its a good idea to raise, grow more of your own calories for your meals if you can.

I look forward to picking up the new females next week, as the sunlight grows, they will trigger the duck hens to start getting ready to lay again, the first hatches will be the right age to able to go out in the garden tractors.

Posted in Eat what you grow, Grow for your plate | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Bird Feeders -ways to beat the winter blues

Posted on January 15, 2026 by Just another day on the farm

While thanksgiving and christmas can for some, most bring extra everything, they do bring company, colorful lights and decor. January at least here in garden zone 5a, eastern ontario, canada its winter. The darkest days are now behind us, each day brings a little bit more light but it also brings cold temps, freezing rain and snow, lots and lots of snow

It also for the farm brings the bird feeders, sometimes i create little sets the one above that are temp for photography and if the offerings are good, the birds will pose for me just long enough.

Sometimes we head for our sunday drives and spot the bald eagles by the creek or the south nation river.. Sometimes we head into the forest and spot ravens, moose, deer and often doves and if we are very lucky indeed owls

However most of the time, the main bird photography happens in the yard at the different bird feeders, here the regulars join us on their preferred feeding stations, some like the wide open platform

Others love the stump feeder station, including our rare (should be way down south for the winter) Brown Thrasher

But most of the time its more common to our area birds, the Evening Grosbeaks are bright and colorful! The older males are so much brighter then the young males.

Rarely do you get a photo of a white breasted nuthatch not hanging upside down!

We are blessed with two types of woodpeckers and we have a mated pair of them always, some years the females will have two males in a three way bond, i have seen this in Gold Finches as well

What are you seeing at your feeders in your yard? Do you have certain birds that you enjoy seeing, we are keeping count of the birds daily to do a wee report to Ebird for our local area and we did a full recorded account for the winter bird count for our area and across the globe.

Do you enjoy bird watching? Bird Photography?

Posted in Birding | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Salad Greens and Seeds are starting to come in

Posted on January 13, 2026 by Just another day on the farm

As we have a large indoor seed starting setup area in the cellar (it was in the basement of the new part of the house) but has now moved to the Cellar which is the the basement of the old part of the house, they are same ground level but have a solid wall between then but for the narrow opening that brings in heating ducks/power and so on.

Given the price point of salad greens, i have leaf type lettuces in seeding rotations, some being used as leaf picking but more being transplanted up into larger sized but still smaller pots to grow to mid size an being cut and serve. Add to that we have started patio size cucumbers, zucchini and cherry tomato, along with green onions, radish and i think i am going to start some beets in a larger pot this week as well, just for wee baby whole with greens as a lovely change of a side dish.

The price of food along with all the rest of the “things” happening, i did a good top up on basics that while i might have a good amount of yet in my seed drawers, they were getting either close to or outdated and they will get used up but i wanted to make sure i had fresh seed with the highest possible germination rates on certain things. The drought last year was brutal and it meant that a few things got full seed out planted that are favorites that i had come to count on that always gave me seed saving at the end, I do still have saved seed on most but its older stock as sometimes i only grow certain things every three or even four years.. and i got caught on it last year, i expanded the garden massively, used a lot of seed and then had almost all of them die in the heat and lack of rain/drought

Thankfully at this time, we had the funds and the ability to restock the seeds from a local ontario seed company. Last year in some cases a single flower plant could cost up to a $1 each, including my favorite marigolds that are used and interplanted in my gardens in large amounts, i have always loved supporting my local greenhouse family five min up the road, they are a multi generational greenhouse family and they do have some of the best price points and i will buy my massive in bloom often with some fruit already three plus foot tall first tomato plants and a few other things, if you do not support your locals you will lose them.

None the less, this year despite the lack of space inside for early flower starts, i need that room for veggie starts, i am going to do a good amount of winter sowing and i have my eye on a space in the croft barn that might have to be changed into a plant growing space for a while this spring and then it can be shifted back into more regular stall use.

I am going to try a few different ways to winter sow, the one thing i am going to do this year for sure, is go pick up a load of garden top soil and bring it back, while it might prove hard to keep it covered and dry compared to the bags, the cost price point and the fact that i want to make a new raised bed and need to top up all the beds in the kitchen garden means this is very much needed.. The kitchen garden beds are coming 6 years old this spring and while we have lightly dressed them and certainly feed them, they need a good top up of three or four inches of garden top soil added and this is a the year for it.

Are you already using your indoor seed starting equipment to grow a little extra for the kitchen, are you planning on trying to start your own garden starts from seed or are you buying at your favorite center, have your seen a price increase at your local centers? Will you be needing to make the investment into a top dressing of beds this year?

Posted in Garden, Seeds | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Rhubarb -Frugal Starts

Posted on December 17, 2025 by Just another day on the farm

I love rhubarb! In northern zones, this plant can be found tucked away on every old homestead, into a community gardens, tucked behind most churches back doors.

There is a solid reason for the love, its one of the first fresh spring “fruits” you will get, it is the spring filler plant, take the smaller fruits and stretch them out with our amazing rhubarb which grows in great abundance It also worked well on its own as you can see in this lovely stewed rhubarb with fresh dumpling.

Last year we opened up a new garden, a truly massive space, so big i hired someone to twice plow it, add in 18 tons of compost and have a machine build the rows..  WOW, i have never seen such bad soil on our farm.

What we did do very successfully was turn up the seed pack, o that seed bed was ready to go and go it did.. health in the family changed,  and then the drought came.. so much weeds, so much drought, thousands of dollars worth of trees, fruit bushes, whole flower meadows, grape vines and so much more where planted in good faith and i expect to find very little to almost nothing alive this coming spring of 2026..

Anything that did make it, will have had a stunted start and will need extra care, one of things ordered in was new rhubarb starts as we have active strawberry farm up the road from us and i wanted to start offering Rhubarb for sale on the same route or even perhaps picked and delivered daily for sales there.

They were ordered and they arrived in rough shape, I babied them along and planted them, i do not expect they will be alive and i am not putting out that kind of money to redo that row. I have lots of rhubarb for the farm personal use and so as i have the time, space and indoor equipment, i ordered in Canada Ruby Red #1 rhubarb seed.. now it won’t breed true in the same way taking a root will but its going to be very close.

My own rhubarb seeds are quite a bit more variable as i have five kinds of rhubarb in my gardens/food forest and there is just no way to know that they are not cross pollinating and my biggest rhubarbs are unnamed, i got them 21 years ago on the first spring we moved to the farm a women had bought a condo in Orleans and in the back yard the retired elder farmer grandma, had transplanted her families rhubarb with her and it was come and take it all. there were four massive plants, and its a good rhubarb but its more green then most folks are used to

So by buying seed from only a patch for Canada Ruby Red, it will give me a more standard results, two full trays of seeds are done and under lights in the cellar garden area.  They join a tray of lettuce, and the starting of patio cherry tomato’s, cucumbers and zucchini plants.  These will all be well ready to either harvest and eat or transplant into pots for late/winter and early spring eating in time to give their main spaces to garden starts for the spring and summer garden

If you don’t have a rhubarb plant or two yet and you live in a cold enough climate and you have a spot to offer it, its worth adding in..  They want 5.99 or more per pound at the store and i have seen it as high as 9 a pound..  while you can still find that friend that will gift you some for a pie, if you don’t grow your own, you can expect locally (Ottawa Valley) to pay between 4 to 5 dollars a pound for fresh picked good quality rhubarb stalks

What is the going rate in your neck of the woods!

Posted in Garden, Life moves on daily | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment