Free Salad & Open Yard July 31 from 4.30-8pm

Come to a fun, informational evening at our urban farm and pick your salad for your dinner too!

Want to know:
why our backyard looks so different from most yards
what a food forest is
ways to support native pollinators
different hives to keep honeybees in
what a food forest is
what plants are growing in our yard
how to construct an herb spiral
what a swale is
how to make self-watering planters for less than $2
what a wicking bed is
what the most unique plant we have growing
why plant cover crops
how to make and maintain a worm composting bin
why we grow nearly all edible plants


If you feel inspired to make some changes to your landscaping to include edible plants, permaculture designer Ted Bahr, owner of Prairie Sage Permaculture will be available for questions or to set up a consultation with him.  

Bring your kids, friends, container or bag for salad, and something to take notes on.  


Hope to see you July 31 anytime between 4.30-8pm!

Our address: 4503-37 ST. SW, Calgary

New bed for 2012 planted with potatoes--determined we will get a better crop this year than last.  Here they are already coming up

 Thanks to the honey and bumblebees for helping to pollinate our crops this year.  Here is one of the honeybees.

Greenhouse emptied of seedlings but still have basil, tomatoes, peppers and okra in global buckets.

Planter in front of the greenhouse with sweet peas, nasturtium & lily bulb.  Remember that nasturtium flowers and leaves are edible and spicy.   

 Our cover crop this year is field peas.  The reason for cover crop is to reduce water loss due to evaporation, add biomass to the soil (like direct composting on the ground), and add nutrients to the soil.  Our peas will add nitrogen and give us tasty pea tendrils to add to salads.

Our other cover crop is white clover (sold as Eco Lawn at Sunnyside Greenhouse) will also add nitrogen to the soil, add stability to steep slopes, are great bee food, and slug food.  Hopefully they will get full on the plants that I was planning on cutting down before they get to the tomatoes and squash!

June garden growth

Who's ready for some wine??  In a few years we hope that these newly planted grapes will produce some tasty fruit.  

 Newly planted food forest with blueberry, honeyberry, gooseberry, evans & juliet cherry, strawberry, mint, & bulbs

We have over 40 tomato plants in various beds and global buckets, which are interplanted with lots of different edible plants to aid with slug and insect control.   A polyculture is a very resilient and more natural way of growing food on a large or small scale.

Check back to see the growth in the next month of rain, warm weather, and long summer days!

2012 Seedlings

Tim and I learned to garden in Oregon 5 years ago.   When we started I did all the seed ordering, planting, and directed what we did in the garden every year--except this year.  Having several jobs, including being the owner of Apple Tree Sustainables and co-founding Puzzle Permaculture, Inc. with my business partner Chrissy,  I was unable to even think about planning the garden.

With pride, Tim took on buying, planting, and tending the seeds.  As you can see, he did a GREAT job of raising them this year:

He *only* planted 42 tomato plants, beans, chard, kale, peas, squash, cucumbers, peppers, okra, thyme, sorrel, parsley, hollyhock, sweet pea, marigold, borage and likely others that I have not even noticed.  

If you need some cucumbers or tomatoes for your garden, bring something by to trade us for them.  None of our zucchini seeds sprouted, so we would love some of those!   All plants have been organically raised, some are saved seeds and most are heirloom varieties.  

5,000+ new pets

Since learning about beekeeping from our friend in Oregon, we have been fascinated with them and fanatics about using honey in every way we can.  When my friend Chrissy gave me the opportunity to bee-sit her hive this season, I jumped at the chance.  But first we had to move it off an office building rooftop...

This is the point at which you hope the duct tape is on securely!

 Here they are in their new location in our yard.  

A few days after the move they were bringing in lots of pollen as you can see on their legs.  

It took the bees a couple of days before they calmed down from the traumatic move, but now they are calm and happy.  We like to enjoy our coffee next to our beehive in the morning to watch them take their first flights of the day.

The benefits of ripping apart our old, unsightly deck continues to have benefits...like the raised beds that we were able to build last weekend with the wood that we saved.  Here I am sitting on the edge of our new 3x10' bed along the north side of our property.  In this space

The bed was lined with mattress protector as a barrier to the treated wood, then lined with landscape fabric to hold the soil in and wick up water that typically settles near that section of the fence.  

 In the space in front of our shed, we had a difficult time getting anything to grow there in the past 2 years perhaps from the spruce tree roots.  We built another raised bed here, lined with mattress protector, added compost, sprouted potatoes from a friend, and topped it off with leaves that we rescued from a neighbours trash pile.

The finished product as of May 19, 2012

                        There is Juliet cherry tree to the left and strawberries in front of the planter.

DIY Free mini greenhouses

If you have walked by, looked over the fence, or driven past you have likely noticed the large plastic sheets over 2 of our 4 beds.  What you were seeing is thick clear mattress protector that we got free from a nearby mattress store stretched over the beds held up from the inside by tomato cages and on the bottom edge with scrap wood.

The 2 beds were covered over in late February and were completely thawed before the other 2 showed any signs of thawing.  They were planted with spinich, chard, garlic, lettuce and various other seeds by the first week of March and within 2 weeks of planting, here is what it looked like inside the tunnels:

Even though many days have not been too warm this season yet, our greenhouse regularly gets over 35 degrees C by 10am.  With proper ventilation early in the day, we prevent the plants from getting stressed.  There are TONS of seedlings of all types from beans to okra in there just waiting for another 2-3 weeks to be planted!