My older daughter were both up late again, chatting about the frigid temperatures we’ve been having. She joked about a comment she read on her phone’s weather app, so I just had to check mine.
This was screen capped at just past 1:30am. -32C wit the wind chill bringing it down to -40C.
Also known as -25.6F/-40F
My daughter had been chatting with an international group of people and the temperatures had come up. After she told them what we were at, someone from the US responded with a “oh, for a minute there, I thought you mean Fahrenheit!” They were rather shocked to find out that -40 is the same for both. :-D
That whole “potentially life threatening” warning, though. Yikes!
As I am writing this, The Weather Network app has us at -31C/-45C (-23.8F/-49F), while my Accuweather app on my phone has us warmed up to -30C/-42C (-22F/-43.6F).
Our expected high of -27C isn’t supposed to happen until late this afternoon, so it was bundle up time to do the morning rounds.
I made sure to have nice, warm water for the kitties!
I am concerned about Creamsicle Jr.
I noticed something wrong with is left eye a few days ago. He won’t let me near him, though, so zooming in with my phone’s camera is the best I can do to get a better look.
I can’t tell if it’s a scratch over his eye, or if his eye is leaking.
Unfortunately, there’s not much we can do about it. We can’t catch him to even get a closer look, never mind putting him in a carrier and driving him to a vet.
Poor thing. As if putting up with these temperatures wasn’t bad enough on its own. :-(
I was once again up way too late, and took this screen shot just before 1:30am.
We had reached -27F with a wind chill of -42C.
For my visitors in the US, that’s -16.6F and -43.6F
I think this is the first time I’ve seen the “dust & dander” part not say “extreme”. LOL
Of course, before heading outside to do my rounds, I checked the temperatures again.
This was screen capped just after 8am.
“Extreme Cold Warning” Yeah. No s***, Sherlock! LOL
At -30C and a wind chill of -46C (-22F/-50.8F), I waited a couple of hours before heading out.
The windchill had dropped to -45C by then. That was it.
This was a day to layer up – and skip most of my rounds, including switching out the memory cards on the trail cams. I fed the critters and that was basically it.
When I opened the door, I found a very friendly face waiting for me!
My brother’s dog just loves these temperatures!
He was also really, really hoping the kitties would come out to play!
They did not. :-D
This old doghouse was built for dogs as big as him – and even bigger – so he could go inside, if he really wanted to. Thankfully, he’s done no more than sniff at the entry and pine over the cats through the windows, tail wagging furiously! If he tried to go in, I think the cats would explode! :-D
As I write this, we’ve “warmed up” to -29C/-44C (-20.2F/-47.2F). Our high of the day is forecast to be only a few degrees warmer.
We’re supposed to stay cold like this for about a week. Two days from now is supposed to be the coldest day before it starts warming up again, but the warm up is going to be very slow.
Thankfully, we are stocked up well enough, even though we haven’t done our monthly shop. The only thing we’re going to run out of is wet cat food for the inside cats, and they can make do with dry kibble for a few days!
I have to add, I’m not really complaining. We’re warm inside, the hot water tank is still working, as are the well and septic pumps. Our internet may be ridiculously unstable, but we’ve got electricity. When I was a child growing up here, we didn’t have running water or an indoor bathroom until the mid 1970’s, which is when the new part of the house was added on, so there was 7 of us squeezed into the original part of the house. We had electricity, but power outages were common until about the 80’s. Even in winter, we used the outhouse by the garage (though my parents did set up a bucket in the basement to use at night) and a bathtub in the pump shack, where there was a wood burning cook stove to heat the water (and the uninsulated shack!).
When I headed out this morning, we were at -21C/-5.8F with a windchill of -33C/-27.4F
We’ll be getting colder over the next week, before we start going back to normal temperatures again.
It’s going to be a good time to stay indoors, drink lots of tea, and catch up on my crochet… :-D
Who am I kidding? The girls and I will probably be putting our heads together to figure out a gardening map. We’re dedicating a lot of planning for what will be temporary locations for almost everything, but we’re using our garden plots this year to help prepare the soil for when we plant fruit and nut trees in some of these areas.
This morning, I was off to the garage to get the EGR valve replaced. I dropped it off for 10 and had thought it might take an hour or so. He told me it would take two hours, which is a lot of time to fill, when there is nowhere to go to just sit. I ended up walking across town towards the lake – with high winds and blowing snow, I wasn’t going to go right to the beach! – and back again. Then I very, very slowly did some grocery shopping. We have yet to do our big monthly shop in the city, but with having to buy locally so often, it’s messed our budget up quite a bit. :-( Ah, well.
By the time I was in line to pay, I’d only managed to kill 1 hour. Thankfully, the line was slow, but I still ended up done very early. I was able to leave the cart by the exit and walking over to the garage to see how things where, stayed there a while (they let me wait in the office, alone, even though they’re not really supposed to do that anymore. I didn’t stay long, though, went back to claim my cart of groceries, then waited in one of the corners the grocery store has with picnic tables.
It was only somewhat sheltered from the wind. :-/
I went back and forth a couple of times before finally moving the cart to a different corner around the entry, where it was slightly more sheltered from the wind. I knew the garage was close to done with the van, so I walked into the parking lot every now and then to see if it was outside yet.
Two hours passed, and still no van!
After walking out to the parking lot to check again, I came back to a cashier coming outside to talk to me. She could see me through the window and was worried about me being in the cold! She told me I could take my cart inside the vestibule. There isn’t a lot of space there, with how traffic is blocked and redirected now, but she told me it was okay. So I got to be indoors for the last 25 minutes or so! The only downside was that I had to wear my Mingle Mask, which would fog up while I was inside, then when I stepped out to see if the van was outside, the condensation would freeze! LOL
Of course, I could have just waited for the garage to call me on my cell phone, but the last time they did that, I never heard my phone ringing in my pocket. I happened to have it in my hand this time, though. :-D
It turns out the van was not very co-operative for them! I can’t say I’m surprised to hear that. ;-) As I was paying, he made sure to tell me to not buy gas at the co-op from now one. I told him I’d already stopped! He also warned me that, while he cleaned the lines out as far as he could, I might still feel some stutters or hiccups as bits of carbon breaks loose. He recommended that, when the opportunity arises, such as when leaving a stop sign, to floor it. That is something I normally avoid! LOL It’ll help clear the carbon out faster, though. So I’ll do it. Just not today! It was just too icy out there.
Once the van was paid for, I drove to the grocery store. The staff in the vestibule, there to sanitize the carts, recognized me as I drove up. By the time I stopped at the doors, she had the cart out and helped me load it into the van!
We had issues with this place when we first moved out here, but since then, they have really improved, and these days have been going above and beyond. It is much appreciated!
Once at home, I pulled into the yard to unload. The girls very carefully opened the main door and propped it up, so it was all ready and waiting to be finished while the girls put away the groceries.
Drilling the pilot holes was a pain. I’d hoped not to need to, with the lilac wood I used already having soft spots in the middle; I could easily push a nail through the middles. I was only able to get one of the original screws in, though. Even with using the Dremel and a carving tip to enlarge the pilot holes, the last 2 screws would go only so far before I found myself stripping the heads instead of going further. The lilac is a surprisingly hard wood.
In the end, I replaced the original screws.
So now I have two Robbies and and Phillips. :-D I really should have replaced the third one, but the new screws are slightly shorter, so I left the longer screw in place. The new screws were still pretty hard to get all the way in, but the square tips handle the strain a lot better than star tips.
Then came the litmus test: removing the supports under the door and seeing if the hinge would hold!
It held. :-)
The door now opens and closes smoothly! I was going to say “again”, but honestly, it’s been a problem since before we moved here. Which makes me wonder, how many years was the door just getting noisier and noisier, and being more and more of a problem to open and close, and no one thought to look at the hinges? There are other problems with the door that we identified since moving here – which is why the goal is to replace the doors and frame completely – and I even remember checking the hinges in the frame myself, but somehow, no one thought to squeeze their heads in to see the hinges on the door side.
The centre hinge has not been done, and with the weather forecasts right now, it’s going to wait until things warm up again. If we even bother to do it at all. Not being able to open the door any wider makes getting into the space a real pain!
There are other things that are a much higher priority!
It looks like we’re being hit by the edge of a storm passing to the south of us, so we wanted to make sure we could close the inner door overnight.
All I wanted to do was trim the pegs and get them flush to the surface, first.
You’d think that would be easy, right? Ha! Of course not!
I first tried using a small cutting wheel on the Dremel.
I went through two of them before I gave up. The space was just too tight, and the cutting wheels shattered!
I did have a small saw that I brought, just in case. I just couldn’t cut flush to the surface (may apologies for the crappy photos; the light sucked, too!
Unfortunately, that left me with quite a bit of wood to get rid of. For this, I switched to small sanding disks.
I don’t know how I would have done this without my Dremel tool. We probably would have had to take the door off completely, which would haven us a whole new set of problems!
It’s really hard to see, but the wood plugs are now flush with the surface.
This was enough to let us close the door, and that was the main thing!
Tomorrow, I’m taking the van in to the garage earlier in the morning, so we’ll finish the rest after I get home. We’re expecting snow all day tomorrow, and through to Friday morning, but the temperatures aren’t expected to take another deep dive until the weekend. That gives us time to get it done, without getting things too cold in the entry.
I’m glad we have a storm door, of this would be waiting until spring!
Well, for better or for worse, I’ve started working on the door hinges.
This is intended to be a temporary fix, until we can replace the door and frame completely, but I have no idea when we’ll be able to do that, so this patch job may need to last a while.
The first thing to do was to open the door as wide as possible (with a built in closet in the way, that isn’t as far as I’d like!) and place supports under it to hold the weight.
One of the things we’ve been finding lots of, while cleaning this place up, is laminate floor tiles. It’s amazing, how handy these have become. A couple of pieces of wood under the door made up most of the height, then it took 3 of these tiles to get it fully supported where it needed to be. We’ve also used them to put under bench legs and wooden shelves in the basement, to get them off the damp concrete, and so on. I’ve found a couple of cases of these tiles, just in the basement – there are more in the barn. Definitely things to keep, even though they’ll never be used as flooring! :-D
Once propped up, I could remove the screws which, I’m happy to say, were not damaged as I had thought they were. I do not have to replace the screws. I was able to remove 2 of them with just my fingers, and the only reason I had to use a screwdriver for the 3rd one was because it was the offset middle one, where the hinge wasn’t pulling away from the door as much.
The hinge still needed to be pried loose before I could take a good look at the damage. It fits perfectly in that recess.
Because of how close this is to the frame and storm door , I actually got a better look by taking a picture, then with my own eyes!
The damage isn’t actually as bad as I feared it would be.
The next step was to bring out the Dremel to clean out and enlarge the screw holes.
The Dremel just barely fit in the space available, but it worked. I used a couple of grinding and engraving tips; first a small cone shaped one to clear out the holes, then a metal tip to clean out further into the openings than the cone could go.
The wood is so dry, there was smoke coming out of the holes from the friction!
For the wood plugs, I ended up choosing some pieces of lilac branches I’ve still got hanging around. They were already the size and shape I needed; I only had to strip bark off the pieces, then make one end slightly narrower. Also, I will need to pre-drill holes before putting the screws back in, to prevent cracking, and the core of the lilac is already little more than sawdust that can easily be removed. They’re basically already pre-drilled. :-D
I was going to use wood glue to put the pegs in, only to discover it had dried out, so I went with all-purpose glue that I happened to have.
After making sure the pegs fit into the holes, I applied a bit of glue to their ends, then gently tapped them into place with a little bitty hammer I happened to have. With a normal sized hammer, I wouldn’t have had the space to swing, without hitting the window of the storm door.
The pegs will now sit for a few hours before I check the glue and decide to cut the pegs flush tonight, or wait until tomorrow morning. If I can cut the pegs, we’ll be able to close the door most of the way as the glue finishes setting overnight. If not, we’ll be stuck with this all night…
These are the pieces of insulation we’d cut last year, to fit over the inner door, held in place with Velcro strips, to keep frost from forming on the bottom of the door, and ice on the windows. It worked well, but there were some issues with the strips, and we haven’t found a workable alternative, yet. Thankfully, this winter has had only a few days cold enough for the ice and frost to form.
The arm bar is coming handy for holding the pieces in place!
If this works out, we’ll do it again for the middle hinge. That should tide us over until we can replace it all with an insulated steel door and a steel frame.
While doing my rounds this morning, I was joined by Nosey and the Spice boys.
Usually, I am joined by Potato Beetle, but I didn’t see him until I was going back to the inner yard.
Up in a tree.
Waaaaaaayyyy up in a tree.
Something seemed off about it, so I went around to the power pole nearby to see what was going on. Once I got around my late father’s car, I found the problem.
There was Nicky the Nose, on one of the bottom branches!
Gosh, he’s a big, burly cat!!
Looks like he’s been trying to assert dominance again, and it was a standoff. Nicky is too big and heavy to go any higher, but Potato couldn’t get down without getting too close to Nicky.
We’re not having that! I dug out one of the pruned tree branches from the nearby pile and waved it around at him, and he took a flying leap from the tree, into the snow and ran off.
It took a while, but I stayed outside long enough for Potato Beetle to get himself down from the tree, so I could cuddle him while bringing him over to the kibble house.
I don’t know how to feel about Nicky. I don’t want to turn away any stray cat that’s hungry. Nicky, however, does what dominant toms do; goes after the males to drive them way, to keep the harem for himself. The other toms that used to visit back when Nicky first showed up are gone. No idea what’s happened to them, but he’s the only one left. Even Creamsicle seems to be gone completely, now. Moved on to another farm, or dead, we have no way of knowing. As the kittens get older, he’ll be after them, too. So while I am more than happy to feed and care for any stray that shows up, Nicky isn’t just any stray. He’s causing issues with the colony. I don’t know if we should be driving him away, or if we should be trying to socialize him more, to put a stop to it!
Ah, well. We’ll figure it out.
Today is supposed to be another warm one, and then temperatures are supposed to plummet again on the weekend. We didn’t start working on the door yesterday. It may have been warmer, but we had some wicked winds from the south, and that door faces south. The winds were a bit much to have just a storm door, should we have needed to leave the inner door open for any length of time. In fact, the entire house was shuddering and whistling for much of the day. Today seems to be a lot calmer. We shall see how it goes!
Today, I was finally able to continue setting up cat proof greenhouses in our unused fish tanks, to start seeds.
What I wanted to do was line the tanks with rigid insulation where they were near walls. Since there is no way to lower the lights to be closer to the seed starts, I was going to line the insides with foil for reflective light.
I may not need to do that.
Here is the big tank.
I got photo bombed by a Susan.
I had three boxes with identical dimensions, which allow me to raise the rigid insulation floor high. As the seedlings get bigger, I can change the positions of the boxes to get different heights. I’ve got 3 boxes in there, but I might try to squeeze a 4th one in, to stabilize the floor better.
Because of how the top of the tank is designed, to hold glass covers that broke long ago, I had to cut the insulation to fit the opening, rather than the space I wanted them in. That meant the floor piece has quite a gap around it. The sheet of insulation I cut to size for the long, back wall had to be cut into thirds to get it in. Plus, there is a sheet at the end. The wall in the back of the picture is one of the original log walls. The wall at the left is an exterior wall. Yes, it has more modern (almost 50 years old) insulation, but it’s still pretty cold!
The insulation on the sides helps to fill the gaps around the floor piece, which stabilizes it as well.
At these dimensions, I can only fit two seed trays in here, which means there is a fair amount of space around them to add more containers with seed starts. I just have to figure out what waterproof surface I can fit in there to put them on.
I think I can get away with not adding foil, though. What do you think?
The second tank was much easier and faster.
Once again, I had to cut pieces smaller, to be able to fit them through the top. I only needed to add insulation to the back, which is against the exterior wall, but I added more to the sides to help fill in gaps around the floor piece.
I’m going to have to find something better to raise the floor. The orange box is a bit too small.
Photo bomb, courtesy of Saffron!
As you can tell by the dusty footprints, the cats like the lid of this tank!
At this point, I should be ready to start seeds in here. According to the package instructions, I don’t need to start my onion seeds – the ones that need to be started the earliest – until the end of March, but experienced zone 3 gardeners in groups that I’m on have already started theirs, and say they should be started now. The seed trays I have are too big to fit into the smaller tank, so I will have to find something else waterproof to hold seed starts in the little tank. I want to buy more seed trays, anyhow; I’ll have to take a good look at what dimensions are available.
There is only so much I’ll be able to fit in these, even if I’ll later be able to move the onions into the sun room and make room for something else. I did find something that I might be able to use, for when I’m starting the squash and gourd seeds.
The squash and gourds need more space to grow, and they are the things that need to be started soonest, after the onions. I’ll be using these cups, with drainage holes punched into their bottoms, as pots. The storage container is designed to fit under a bed, but the hinge on the lid is broken, so it has been languishing in the basement until now. I have a second one. Once I figure out what to do with the stuff stored inside it, I’ll be using that as well.
We have so many varieties of summer and winter squash, as well as gourds, to try. Depending on how many seeds are in each package, I may not plant them all. Some are packed by weight rather than number of seeds. I figure, at most, I’ll start 10 seeds each of the summer and winter squash. Whatever the germination rate turns out to be, that’s what I’ll be planting. If I get just a 50% germination rate, we will still have lots of each variety, and with the number of varieties, we should have plenty for both fresh eating, and preserving and storage. For the gourds, I’ve decided to start 5 seeds of each, and see how they do. One of them is an eating variety, but the others are to dry and use for crafting purposes. Curing them takes about a year, so the sooner I can get some grown, the sooner I’ll have materials to work with! If space in an issue, though, I’ll drop the gourds for this year.
I still have the mini greenhouse that my daughter bought for me last year, which can hold three of the trays that are in the big tank. The cats still managed to get into the closed plastic cover, and it gets knocked over easily, so anything we start in there will be done later in the season, and in the sun room!
With the trays I have now, all I need to figure out is what to use in the small tank, and I should be able to start the onion seeds very soon!
We’ve got some lovely mild weather right now. It’s kind of deceiving, to look out the window during our cold snap and see bright blue skies and brilliant sunshine when it’s bitterly cold, but now that we’re warmer, it’s overcast and deary looking. Those insulating clouds, however, are part of the reason we can enjoy these milder temperature.
The outside cats like the warm spot on the roof of their shelter, above the terrarium bulb! They were quite active when I came out to do their food and water.
Note in the background, a certain Nicky the Nose, tucked under the lilac by the storage house. He shelters under the building, when he’s not sneaking into the cat shelter to visit the ladies. :-(
Inside, we have tiny little bursts of sunshine of another sort!
This is the first time we’ve seen this succulent blooming! When we got it, it was one of 3 succulents in one pot that they soon outgrew. The other two varieties are still struggling along, but this one seems to finally be thriving! We’ve had to move it a few times because, apparently, it is delicious. The cats kept trying to eat it! Even when it was hanging in the dining room window, they would manage to clamber up and reach it. We finally seem to have found a spot where they haven’t been able to reach it. At the rate it’s growing now, we’ll have to keep an eye on how low it starts to hang, or they’re try eating it again!
Meanwhile, we have these lovely little busts of sunshine in our window to help us thing of warmer, sunny days!
The next couple of days will be even warmer, which means we’ll finally be able to start working on the main door that’s falling off its hinges, and see what we can do to fix it until we can replace the door and frame. Until then, we’ve been using the door as little as possible; mostly, just when we have to unload the van or something, which we do assembly line style. That way, only the storm door gets opened and closed frequently.
It should be interesting to see how damaged the door is, once the hinge plate is moved away. That will determine what we end up doing to get it usable again.
I have to admit that, right now, I’m rather obsessed with gardening! Mostly, I’m just glad we’ve reached a point, since moving here, where we even can garden at all, even if we really aren’t all that ready for it.
One thing I want to clarify when I talk about gardening. Growing up here, my mother maintained a HUGE garden, and in my mind “gardening” means “growing food.” There was gardening, and then there was flower gardening. They were always two different things in my mind. I still remember how startled I was, the first time I was talking to someone about gardening after I’d moved off the farm. I was so confused to hear her talking about planting flowers. Not a single vegetable! I eventually clued in that, when a lot of people talk about “gardening”, they mean growing flowers, and that very few of the people I met over the years grew any kind of food at all, except maybe some herbs.
It was the strangest of revelations for me! :-D
So I just wanted to make I don’t confuse anyone reading my posts here. Gardening, to me, is generic for growing food. My brain puts flowers, and even berry bushes and fruit trees, into completely different categories! :-D
With all the crazy going on right now, a lot of people are looking to grow their own food. On the one hand, I think that’s awesome, and it’s something I have always felt more people should be doing, if they are able. On the other hand, it means a lot of seed companies are running out of stock and are having a hard time meeting the demand!
Though I have already ordered what we’ll be planting this year, that hasn’t stopped me from researching, or just enjoying going through websites and thinking further into the future.
Researching is something I do for fun, which is handy, because I’m been spending a lot of time researching cold climate gardening and looking for seed, plant and tree sources. Unfortunately, most of the sources I’m finding that talk about “cold climate” tend to be US based, which means the coldest they talk about is zone 4. Mostly, zone 5. We’re zone 3 (or 2b, according to my Veseys catalogue label!).
So I have been making a point of bookmarking anything I find that is aimed at Canadians, where I know I’ll have more choices for things that will grow in our zone.
I will be including some of the sources I’ve found, here. My focus here is on Canadian companies, with items hardy to our zone, and I’ll talk a little about each one.
I will be including sources, in alphabetical order, that I’ve found for hardy fruit and nut trees, berry bushes and grape vines, as well as vegetables and herbs. I hope that these will be useful for anyone else who is trying to grow their own food in colder, short season zones.
Blazing Star Wildflower Seed Company. This company, in Aberdeen, Saskatchewan, specializes in Canadian wildflower seeds, specifically for the prairies. They also have a small selection of heirloom vegetable seeds. Mostly tomatoes. Their wildflowers are in many categories, including those that attract bees, butterflies, birds in general, or hummingbirds specifically. They also have categories for flowers that are deer resistant, flowers that prefer different types of lighting, and even a category of plants for tea. While my own focus is on food gardening, attracting native pollinators is really important, since our local pollinators come out at different times than in other zones. For us, we have to be careful where we plant flowers, due to my husband’s allergies to bees, but as we continue to expand our cleanup, wildflowers are going to be an important part of the ecosystem we will be building. More flowers -> more pollinators -> more food!
Green Barn Farm. Green Barn is a Quebec based nursery that specializes in hardy fruit, nut and berries that can survive our extreme winters. Their selections include nut trees, apples and crabapples, apricots, peaches and nectarines (!!!), berries and wild native species, cherries, pears, plums, grapes, passion fruit and kiwi (!!!), and permaculture plants. They even have coffee trees! Their varieties are amazing.
One of the things I like about their website is how easy they make it for you to see what’s already sold out – which, as I write this, is a lot! I find their prices are unusually high, but considering what they carry, and their efforts in genetics and agroforestry, I can see the prices are warranted for what you’re getting! They also have things like grafting workshops, seminars and consultations available. They do have a section for products for the US, but it seems to be down at the time I am writing this. They also have a YouTube channel. The last video was posted 8 years ago, but the videos that are there are very topical and useful.
Hardy Fruit Tree Nursery. When I started looking for food trees that would grow in our climate, this is the first place I found, and it’s still the one that inspires me! I really look forward to when we are ready to order from here!
This is another Quebec based company, and their specialty is fruit trees that can grow in our climate, but they also include a wonderful range of nut trees. They have quite a selection of trees hardy even to zone 2! They also carry plums, cherries, berry bushes, and more. Along with food trees, they also carry forest trees to reestablish and rehabilitate different regions. Their package deals include various collections at bulk prices, including a nut orchard, which I am pining for!
Harmonic Herbs. Unfortunately, this company will not be able to supply seeds for 2021, due to a combination of weather related crop failures, deer damage and the whole Covid thing. Hopefully, they will be up and running soon. This company is in Barrhead, Alberta, and provides vegetable, flower, grain, herb and other seeds. They don’t have a large selection, compared to other sites out there, but they do have things I haven’t seen anywhere else.
2022 update: sadly, another poor seed harvest has meant this company is retiring from their current format. They are changing focus, though, so keep checking on them.
Heritage Harvest Seed. This company is based out of Fisher Branch, Manitoba and… oh, my goodness… what an amazing resource! I’ll just cut and paste this blurb from the website.
All of our heirloom seed varieties are natural, untreated, non hybrid, open pollinated, non GMO seeds. We have over 800 varieties of rare and endangered heirloom vegetable, flower, herb and ancient grain seeds. Heritage Harvest Seed is a Canadian seed company with the largest selection of heirloom seeds in Canada.
I have spent waaayyyy too much time on this website, which was recommended in one of the cold climate gardening groups I’m on, and I’ve still only looked at their vegetables! They include all sorts of interesting information about the items, including historical background and even personal experiences with them, that I absolutely love. I’ve lost count of the number of items I’ve looked at and, after reading the info, wanted to order them just to be able to save seeds and help preserve the species!
Unfortunately, like so many other seed sources, they are overwhelmed with orders right now. Many items are sold out, and they’ve had to limit orders. I am really excited about ordering from here in the future!
2022 update: I was able to order seeds from Heritage Harvest for this year’s garden, and while it’s too early to say much about the resulting crops themselves, I can say that they have an excellent response time and great customer service. They have also revamped and updated their website, and it looks great!
Incredible Seeds. This Nova Scotia based company is run by an off-grid family. A small company with a remarkable selection of vegetable, herb, flower, fruit and tree seeds. Yes, tree seeds, not saplings. Which means they are much more affordable, but will take longer to reach food production stage. Nova Scotia has a warmer climate zone than ours, but they even have items that are hardy to zone 1! All their plants are heirloom and open pollinated, and they encourage seed saving.
Lindenberg Seeds. This site is a bit different, in that you have to look at their catalog as a pdf (or you can request a print catalogue). It’s 104 pages, so there is lots to look at! You can also print off their order form and fax it in, mail it to their Brandon, Manitoba address, or place an order by email. They’ve got vegetables, flowers, ferns, roots, bulbs, tubers, and more. Their selection is massive! They also carry growing mixes and pellets, plant pots and heat mats, fertilizers, row covers, and other useful things. I do wish they had a website you could view items on and order from, but I’m just spoiled that way. :-D
McKenzie Seeds. This is a company that’s been around since 1896, and in Canada, you can find their seeds all over. Like Lindenberg Seeds, they are also based in Brandon, Manitoba, and their selections of vegetable, herb and flower seeds, bulbs, crowns and tubers are massive.
Ontario Seed Company. This company is based in Kitchener, Ontario, and bills itself as the largest wholly Canadian owned and operated company. They started in Waterloo, Ontario, in the late 1800’s, and still have a presence there! They carry vegetables, herbs, flowers, lawn seed, ground covers, legume and forage crops, trees and ornamental grasses, as well as garden accessories and supplies.
Prairie Hardy Nursery. “An Artisan Nursery of Edible and Unique Trees on the Canadian Prairie. Cold hardy grown trees suited for cold climate growing.” Prairie Hardy Nursery is based on a third generation family farm north of Edmonton, Alberta, in operation since 1942. Their selections include apple, plum, pear, nut and apricot trees, as well as grape vines. Alas, for 2021, they seem to be almost completely sold out!
Stokes Seeds. This is a company that is in both Canada (Thorold, Ontario), and the US (Buffalo, NY). They also have a research farm in St. Catharines, Ontario. They supply a wide selection of vegetables, flowers, herbs and accessories. The accessories include everything from seed starting mixes and supplies, to decorations. They also have collections available, including herbal teas, sunflowers, stir fry, butterfly gardens, and more.
Saskatoon Farm. No, this is not a farm near Saskatoon, Saskatewan, but a farm that grows Saskatoons! They are a family farm in Alberta (their website gives directions from either Calgary or Okotoks) that includes a restaurant, bakery, outdoor Christmas Market, market garden, u-pick, gift shop, etc., and hosts events like weddings, private parties, cooking classes and other events. At least they did, until Covid happened. Some things are still open to the public, though closed for the season, and they do still have a catalogue, though only the 2020 one is on the website at the time I write this.
Silver Creek Nursery. This nursery is in Wellesly, Ontario, and ships bare root fruit trees. Their categories include apple trees, including a separate cider apple tree category, pear, quince, peach, plum, cherry, and apricot trees. They also have berries and vines (haskap, blackberries, grapes, kiwi, etc), nut trees, native and nitrogen fixing plants, and orchard supplies. They also have a lot of information on the site for each product (the most I’ve seen anywhere), a section on how to grow fruit trees, and they offer courses, including how to choose the right fruit trees.
T&T Seeds. I have to say, I was pretty excited to find this website. I remember spending many hours flipping through their catalogue as a child! I don’t know why we were on their mailing list, since my mother refused to spend money on seeds, but I sure was glad to get it!
T&T Seeds is a Winnipeg, Manitoba based company, where they also have a retail store. They have been around since 1946, and continue to be a family business. They claim to have the most extensive refrigeration facilities in Canada, to store dormant plants. On their website, you can shop by category: vegetable, flower, perennials, bulbs, sets & potatoes, fruit plants, shrubs and trees, garden accessories, home accessories, pest control, fertilizers and health products. You can also shop by catalog pages. Some of the more unusual items they carry (at least for Canadian suppliers) are things like lingonberry, jostaberry, figs, hops, wisteria, and sand cherry.
New:Tree Time. This nursery specializes in windbreak and shelterbelt trees, with a focus on a large selection of trees, shrubs and berries with a high survival rate and affordability. This is the place to buy in bulk! For 2022, we placed our first major tree order from here, which will be shipped when ready to be planted in our zone. They came highly recommended by people on several different cold climate gardening groups I’m on.
Veseys. Of course, I have to include Veseys! This is where I’ve ordered most of our items for this year’s garden, and the only place I ordered from, last year. Veseys is based in York, Prince Edward Island, where they have a garden shop and trial gardens. Their website has both Canadian and US versions. Their categories include vegetables, flowers and bulbs, herbs, fruits and berries, tools and accessories, plus a Gardening 101 section. They used to have a fundraising program, but that is currently on hold due to Covid. I can say from personal experience that they have excellent quality products, and their customer service is also excellent. I have been very happy with my orders from them.
West Coast Seeds. This is a Vancouver, British Columbia based, 4th generation family owned company. Vancouver is temperate rainforest. I don’t expect to find a lot here that will grow in our zone! However, it is another one that was recommended on one of the cold climate growing groups I’m on. Their seed categories include vegetables, herbs, flowers, fruit, cover crops, microgreens, “lawn solutions”, ornamental grass seeds and plant stock, as well as garden supplies.
W. H. Perron. This company was founded in Quebec, in 1928, and “is the most important horticultural company in North America…” Their categories include garden accessories, annuals and indoor plants, herbs, fruits, sprouts and micro greens, vegetables, potatoes and bulbs, native seeds, perennials and biennials, organic or untreated and heirloom seeds. They also have sections for collections (patio collection, basil collection, cut flower mixes, easy pick green patio collection, etc.), urban gardeners and novelties, as well as top sellers. I admit, I haven’t spent a lot of time on this website, as I find it quite hard on the eyes. :-/
Whiffletree Farm & Nursery. This is a company based in Elora, Ontario and, compared to some of the others on this list, is just a baby company, having started in 2012. It is owned and operated by a family “of the Horse and Buggy Mennonite sect”. As such, they may take a bit longer to respond to calls, while using third party services for electronic communications.
On the website, you can scroll through an electronic version of their catalog, without having to download it separately. While in the catalog, you can click on individual item code lines to add them to your cart, though a lot of what I looked at had mouse-over notes saying they are not available this season. Among the unexpected items in the catalogue are things like persimmons, medlars, varieties of haskaps I’ve never seen before, and others plants I’ve never heard of before, like Schisandra Vine, and goumi. They also have items such as bee kits (for mason and leafcutter bees – bees included!), organic fertilizers and sprays, tools, orchard supplies and tree protectors. The catalogue also has a lot of very useful information included near the end. I do hope they are able to restock as the seasons allow, because there are some really awesome and unusual items here!
Update: Wiffletree has redone their website, and they did a fantastic job of it!
Wildrose Heritage Seed Company. This is another company recommended in one of the cold climate growing groups I’m on. They are based in Lethbridge, Alberta, family owned, and they grow, harvest, clean and package everything on site. Packaging is one of the more unique things about them: they use waterproof Mylar bags that are resealable and reusable, to encourage people to save seeds and still have all the packaging information. They offer bulbs (garlic and onions), vegetable, herb and flower (dwarf and giant sunflowers) seeds. At the time of this writing, they are shipping only within Canada.
William Dam Seeds. Another family run business, based in Dundas, Ontario, starting in 1959. They have a retail outlet, currently closed due to Covid restrictions. They offer a large variety of seeds for vegetables, herbs, flowers and green crops (including the largest selection of cover crops and nitrogen fixers I’ve seen, yet!), plus tools and supplies.
Younder Hill Farm. This company is based on a homestead in Nova Scotia, family run and commercially growing seed since 2009. They have farm stays and apprenticeships available. They offer vegetables, grains, culinary and medicinal herbs, flowers, live plants, willow whips, and even “basic apocalypse prep garden packs” in starter and deluxe! Both are out of stock, at the time I’m writing this, and from what I’m reading in the list of what’s included, I can see why. They are really well thought out collections.
Zappa Seeds. This company has store locations in North York, Brampton and Waterloo Ontario. You can even apply to become an affiliate or Zappa retailer. They offer a decent variety of vegetable seeds, as well as herbs and fruit (watermelon and tomatoes), but their most interesting offerings are their packs and collections. These include a beginners vegetable garden, a garden staples back, an East Asian international blend, easy seeds for kids, garden staples, and more. I think these packs and collections are a great idea, particularly for beginning gardeners. With so many varieties available, it can get pretty overwhelming to try and figure out which ones to try!
New: Eagle Creek Seed Potatoes. This Alberta company specializes in all things potatoes! It’s January, 2022 as I write this update, and I just finished ordering three varieties. The website provides all sorts of information, from maturity rates to storage capabilities to best cooking methods! I wish I’d found this company earlier, because they even have a list of what potatoes are good for grow towers – something that would have been handy when we tried to grow in bags!
There you have it! A selection of Canadian companies that supply seeds and trees suitable for colder climate and short season growing. I hope these are useful for anyone looking to grow their own food, even if you’re not in a cold climate zone! :-)
The Re-Farmer 