Cold frame gardening is an easy way to extend the homegrown harvest into late fall and winter. A cold frame is just a box with a clear top. It’s unheated, but captures solar energy and shelters crops from the elements – cold temperatures, frost, wind, ice, and snow. You don’t need a large garden to accommodate a cold frame. Even a small, urban garden will benefit from this simple structure and allow you to extend the growing season. In my books, The Year Round Vegetable Gardener and Growing Under Cover, I offer a lot of tips and ideas for gardening with cold frames. Here are a few of my favourites…
A simple compost how-to guide where science reigns supreme
Millions of gardeners compost. They save their kitchen scraps, pile up their leaves, collect their grass clippings, and hoard their coffee grounds. Then, they put all this “stuff” into a pile or a bin, and they wait. They wait for the process of decomposition to turn it into “black gold.” Maybe they turn the pile from time to time. Or maybe they don’t, because they know that eventually, they’ll get compost. But, do all of those gardeners really know what they’re doing? Do they understand the science behind composting? Do YOU? Many gardeners are surprised to discover how excitingly complex composting really is. To help demystify the composting process, I’d like to present this compost how to guide based on the science behind creating the “black gold” all gardeners covet.
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3 tough garden tools to help with fall to-dos
When the temperatures start to dip, I know it’s time to think about putting the garden to bed for the winter. And while I subscribe to Jessica Walliser’s reasons NOT to clean up the garden in the fall, there are still a few items on my list that I need to accomplish before the snow flies, from pruning and planting bulbs, to emptying and putting pots away so they don’t crack over the winter.
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Growing rice in my backyard vegetable garden
Backyard vegetable gardening has come a long way since the days when gardeners only planted tomatoes, cucumbers, and beans. Today, I grow a variety of unique and global crops in my raised beds, including a new-to-me crop for 2016, rice.
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Container gardening trends for your garden: 6 cool concepts
That’s it. I’m making an executive decision and officially declaring it The Decade of the Container Garden. With so many great container gardening ideas sprouting up on Pinterest and various gardening websites (including Savvy Gardening, of course!), I’ve come across more creative container gardens in the past few years than I’ve seen in my whole life. Gone are the days of sticking a begonia a clay pot and calling it a day. Gardeners everywhere are now relying on creative container gardening trends to design unique planters to embellish their homes, gardens, and lives. And, they’re doing it beautifully!
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Build a DIY cold frame using an old window
One of the projects that I knew I wanted to include in my book, Raised Bed Revolution, was a cold frame. I had seen some neat DIY cold frame examples through garden visits over the years, great cold frame kits through various retailers and innovative cold frames that used old windows as the lid. I was also inspired by Niki, who gardens 365 days a year (you can find some of her cold frame tips here).
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