After much discussion with my daughters, we have made our “seed budget” purchase for this month, and it is trees.
We’ve been going through a number of websites for nurseries that supply cold hardy trees. Among the ones we want to get is a nut orchard collection, and the nursery that sells the one we’re looking at has scaled down the package deal, making it much more affordable. The collection, if planted spaced out as recommended, would cover 1 acre. However, some of the trees in the collection have the potential to reach 100 ft tall. That’s almost 40 feet taller than the tallest trees in our spruce grove! Which means we have to plant them in the outer yard, or even beyond, where the renter’s cows pasture, and we are just not going to be ready for that this year.
Beyond that, some of the sources we have been looking at just don’t have new stock listed yet. Among the things we are eyeballing are fruit trees, such as apple trees to replace the diseased crab apple trees we will have to cut down, pears, plums, Saskatoons, highbush cranberry, as well as different types of raspberries, etc. There’s only so much we can do in a year, though, and only so much space we are ready to plant into.
For this year, then, we settled on buying from Tree Time. They do a lot of shelterbelt trees, but also have fruit, nuts, berries, etc. They also come highly recommended. They are a reforestation nursery, which you can read about in their “how to order” page. Right from the start, they say:
We are a reforestation nursery that makes it easy for Canadians to purchase large quantities of tree, shrub, and berry seedlings at low prices.
Shop with us if you want convenience, selection, low prices, outstanding service, a guaranteed ship date, and high quality stock. Our customers tend to enjoy doing things themselves and watching their trees grow.
We grow our trees for maximum survival, not height or aesthetics. We mostly grow 1-2 year old trees because they have the best survival rates and are easier to ship in the mail.
We decided to focus on two areas. First, creating our privacy barrier/living fence, and second, our first nut trees. Because of how they bundle their trees, the numbers we are getting are quite different than they would have been, elsewhere.
This is what we are getting (all images belong to Tree Time nursery).
When talking about what to get as barrier trees, we were thinking of setting these aside for another year, but the way various things have changed since then, we’re going for it.
This is a zone 2b tree, so well suited to our zone 3. They are good in poor soil, are nitrogen fixers, and their berries are edible and healthy. They can grow up to 15 ft in height, with a 12 foot spread, and should be planted at 3-4 ft spacing, so they will do very well as a living fence/privacy screen, as well as a deer barrier, once they grow big enough. Plus, they will provide food for birds.
These will come as year old, bare root trees. We will be getting their smallest bundle, which is five trees. Sea buckthorn requires 1 male tree to 4 females to produce berries, but at only 1 year old, there is no way to know what sex the trees are. It may be a few years before we can tell! The males do not produce berries, but hopefully, there will be at least one male in the bundle.
Where we plant these will be partially dependent on how far we go with this next batch.
This is one that disappeared from other sites we were looking at, so we were very happy to find them at Tree Time.
These are a super hardy, Zone 2a tree. Like the Sea Buckthorn, they can also handle poor soil and are excellent for attracting birds. They can grow to 18 ft in height, with a 10 ft spread, and should be planted 3-4 ft apart, so they should also make a good barrier and privacy screen. These will come as 1 yr old bare root stock.
We also got them in the smallest bundle of 30.
Which is triple what we expected to buy, when we first found these.
The area we planted the corn and sunflower blocks is where we intend to plant these. Right at the corner, along the north fence, the lilac hedge my mother slowly extended over many years, peters out. There is a gap there that the deer jump through. I am thinking that section would be a good place to plant the 5 Sea Buckthorn. Then, the Silver Buffalo Berry can be planted all along the east line, leaving a “lane” behind them to access the trees along the fence line itself, and also leaving a gap where the telephone line is buried.
With 30 of them, planted 3-4 feet apart, however, we will have WAY more than will fit in a row in that area. Since we will be slowly planting more food trees further west, we will be planting just the one row of them. Which means we’ll need to find another location to plant the remaining trees! I am thinking of the area we had originally considered planting the Sea Buckthorn later on, which is in along the north fence line in the outer yard. Or even filling in gaps west of the lilac hedge. This would go a long way to help reduce the road dust that drifts into our yard in those areas, every time a vehicle drives past on the gravel road.
Before the trees arrive, we will have to measure and mark out where we want to plant in that north east corner. Once we know how many we can fit into there, we’ll know how many we have to plant somewhere else. That is a lot of trees for how we want to use the spaces.
Now that I think of it, we could also gift some to my older brother, for the forest he’s been working on for the past couple of decades. :-)
Then there are our first nut trees. Pine nuts, to be more specific!
In other sources, we have seen these as being a Zone 2 tree, and some listing them as reaching up to 100 feet in height. !!! Considering where we intended to plant them, that was just not good.
These, however, are listed as Zone 3a, and reach “only” 60 ft in height – about as high as the spruces in the spruce grove. Which is about where we intend to plant these.
These also have a spread of up to 30 feet, but the website doesn’t list how far apart to plant them. We’ll get that information later.
We ordered two bundles of three, 2 yr old seedlings as plugs, not bare root. They have special requirements. For the first five years, they grow very slowly and need to be kept shaded, because their bark can be easily burned by the sun. This is why we want to plant them along the north side of the spruce grove, between the grove and the row of crab apple trees, where it is shaded for most of the day. At 5 years, they suddenly shoot up in height, and no longer need to be protected with shade. Since we’ll be getting 2 yr old seedlings, that should happen in three years.
I have some concerns.
The nursery we first found these at sells them with their roots in a plastic wrapped ball of soil – the only tree they don’t sell as bare roots – because they require a particular fungi at their roots for optimum growth. We may be able to buy the fungi to inoculate the soil, though. At least that’s what I learned from this other nursery. According to the Tree Time website, however, there is no mention of the fungi needs, plus it says they should be planted in full sun, not shade.
We’ll have to do more research on them, because this might be due to differences in varieties. We might end up having to plant these somewhere else. They would make a good shelter belt tree, and at 60 feet high, that would mean either along the north property line, or further out in the south, where we get hit with winds because there is a gap in the sheltering trees. Since we intend to plant permanent garden beds in the outer yard, anything we plant there has to be carefully placed so as not to create the very shade we are trying to get away from!
It’ll take about 7 years before these start producing pine nut containing cones. I don’t think I’ve ever bought pine nuts before, as much as I’d like to be able to use them for making pesto, etc. I enjoy them, but they are just too expensive. These trees have the potential to be a cash crop.
When placing our order, I chose a shipping date of May 30. Since our last frost date is June 2, I thought that would make the most sense. It also means that, in the week or so before they are shipped, we can get out and measure where they will be planted, and even pre-dig the holes (the ground should be thawed out enough), as well as making sure we have everything we need for planting, then protecting, the 41 seedlings we will be getting!
There we have it. After 4 years of living here, we are finally at the stage where we are starting to plant trees and shrubs in bulk. The first stage of a multi-year plan in planting food trees and reach our self-sufficiency goals. Given how long it takes for trees to start producing fruits or nuts, it would have been better if we’d started this years ago, but when we first moved here, we didn’t even know what we wanted, or how to get them. There is a big difference between planning for things that will live for decades, and can potentially become very large, and planning vegetable beds!
Placing this order really feels like a milestone for us!
Yes!!! I now have the maize morado corn I thought I was getting from Baker Creek, based on the description and video they had at the time. Their name for the corn even changed at some point. It took quite a bit of searching, and I was very happy to find a source for these seeds. Since there were only 25 seeds per pack, I ordered four of them. For our purposes, planting only 25 seeds seems almost pointless. ;-) Plus, it was the only thing I was ordering from them, and with the cost of shipping, adding a few extra packets made it more worthwhile. Especially with ordering from the US and the dollar difference. I’m trying to focus more on Canadian sources, but none of them carry these seeds.
Last year, we started the Montana Morado/Mountain Morado corn indoors, then transplanting, and that ended up working very well. We will be doing that again. This year, however, we will work in making sure they are protected from critters, as much as we can, right from the start! I hope to be able to save seeds and, over time, acclimate them to our growing zone. This might take a few years, but I am determined! :-D
The corn was not the only thing in the package, though.
They also included some free seeds! :-) Dill Dukat. It’s not a variety I’ve heard of before. We’ve got dill seeds from plants my SIL gave us, but I’m more than happy to have another variety! From the description, these look like a good variety for harvesting more greens than the flowers or seeds, and I love dill greens!
I also really appreciate that they included the information insert for starting seeds. That was going the extra mile. :-)
While I am working towards ordering seeds from within Canada more, if I do need to order from the US for something, this company is definitely staying at the top of my list. I’m quite happy with them!
The US postal service, on the other hand, seemed to be having difficulties. :-D
When we decided to go ahead and cancel our old satellite service outright, instead of waiting until the end of the month, after finding how excellently the Starlink system was working, I was working on the assumption that we’d have all sorts of cancellation fees. So, just in case, I budgeted more than what we would normally expected the bill to be, on top of adding on the new Starlink bill.
We were in for a pleasant surprise. We’re actually going to get a couple hundred dollars for a credit. We do still have to send back their transceivers (not the entire dishes, as I was mistakenly told) and their modems/routers/whatever they’re properly called. The packaging should be here when the post office is open again starting tomorrow. I figure we’ll get our credit once they get their items back. Until then, it still freed up a large chunk of our budget.
What a wonderful sense of relief that gives us!
While we did try to stock up as much as we could, the outside cats are going through the kibble a lot faster than usual. Which makes sense. There isn’t much for them to hunt these days, and they will be burning a lot more calories in the cold we’ve been having. Tomorrow was expected to be a warmer day, so I was going to make an extra trip into the smaller city to stock up on more cat food.
Today, however, turned out to be warmer than forecast, and already we’ve reached the high that we were supposed to hit tomorrow. So I decided to make the trip today. At -17C/1F, it feels like summer! Even with the -26C/-15F wind chill, which is coming from the north, so we are well sheltered from it.
The outside cats were practically having a party!
I had a surprise this morning, too. As I was coming back from leaving kibble in the tray under the shrine, I was startled by deer running through the gate in the chain link fence at the south side of the yard! This is the first time I’ve seen the deer going through, while I was outside. Then, when I came around the house with seeds for the feeding station, the doe and her little one were there. They hung back near the compost ring, before finally running off into the spruce grove, but they stopped and looked back repeatedly.
When I was finally ready to head out, I took a peek around the corner of the house and, sure enough, they were back and eating the seeds! They saw me and watched for a while, but didn’t run off until I crossed the yard to the garage.
I’m okay with them being used to finding food at the feeding station. I want them to associate that spot with food, not our garden beds!
Speaking of which, the new wiggle room in our budget meant I could get a few extras along with the cat kibble. Though I didn’t get as much kibble as I intended. They were almost entirely out of stock of the affordable big bags. I only got three. If I’d bought the six I’d intended, there would have been maybe one bag left, and I wanted to leave more for others.
Along with a couple of bags of seed starting mix, I got a heat mat. One of the big problems we had with starting seeds inside the aquarium greenhouses (besides the cats constantly trying to get at them!) is that the house is just plain too cold. Using things like heated rice bags or small water bottles filled with hot water helped, but some things just never germinated. I’m pretty sure that’s the main reason the Hopi Black Dye sunflowers didn’t germinate until so much later.
I went through our seeds to look at what needs to be started indoors and when. Actually, there’s two ways we can look at it. Most seed packets go by number of weeks before the last frost date. The other way is to look at how long until harvest, then count backwards from the first frost date in the fall.
Our first frost date, on average, is Sept. 10. For anything that requires more than 100 days to harvest, the latest we should have germination is about May 4. If we want to give up to 150 days, we’d need to have germination by April 30. I would calculate when to start the seeds from there, using the days to germination information on the seed packages.
Which isn’t too bad.
If we go by the package instructions using our average last frost date of June 2, we have several dates to go by. Four weeks puts us at May 5, six weeks at April 21, eight weeks at April 7, and ten weeks at March 24.
Having worked that out, however, there are still going to be things I plan to start earlier. Some of these, people on my Zone 3 gardening groups have already started!
The main one will be onions and shallots. With so many varieties and so many onions we want to plant, space would be the biggest issue… except maybe not. I found this, from MI Gardener.
Based on that method, we should have no problem planting all our varieties in just the big aquarium greenhouse.
The problem with that is, it’s currently housing several aloe vera plants to protect them from the cats, plus my daughter’s two remaining orchids. She’d had them safely hanging in front of the living room window, only to discover it was too cold for them there, and a couple of them died.
There is still the small aquarium greenhouse. Depending on what I have for growing trays, I could fit all the onions in there.
There are a few other things that need to be started very early, too. Among the things that can be started at 10 weeks are the eggplants and peppers (we will be starting just a few of those, since only 2 people in our household like them), the Sophie’s Choice tomato (just a few of those), the Cup of Moldova tomato (lots of those, since they are for processing), the Wonderberry (just a few of those) and the luffa (probably all the seeds we have left of those). All of these are things I’m seriously considering starting much earlier. Especially the luffa.
With those, we might be able to fit them all in the big tank, and still keep the orchids with them, but I have no idea where we can put the aloe vera pots that will be safe from the cats!
Among the things we can start at 8 weeks are the rest of the tomatoes, ground cherries, Crespo squash, Tennessee Dancing Gourds, and the Ozark Nest Egg gourds.
I think at 6 weeks is when I will start the kulli corn seeds which, according the the tracking information, has arrived in the city and should arrive at our post office in the next couple of days.
At 4 weeks, we need to start the cucumber, all the squash and melons, the rest of any gourds we will be trying this year, and the hulless pumpkins. It would also be the time for me to start the kohlrabi, if I decide I will try those again this year, since direct sowing them has been a complete fail for the past two years.
Everything else we’ve got can be direct sown, some as soon as the ground can be worked, and others after the last frost date.
I’m going to need more soil, but that’s something we can pick up little by little, as we need it.
I have to admit, I’m really torn right now about starting things too early. I know there are people in our zone that do it every year and have no problem, and others have started winter sowing outdoors, using this method. We don’t have a lot of milk jugs, but I’ve been keeping jugs from the distilled water for my husband’s CPAP, which would do. They are that blue, transparent plastic. Theoretically, we could set this up in the sun room, which does get below freezing, but still stays a lot warmer than outside. That would actually be a good experiment for the kohlrabi, now that I think about it. With so many yard cats, plus the deer, I’m not sure putting the containers outside would be wise, unless we can put some sort of protection over them. In theory, we could drag over the covers we made for the raised beds. They’re covered in snow right now, and probably frozen to the ground! :-D
For any experienced cold-climate gardeners reading this, what do you think? Would I be severely jumping the gun if I start our onions seeds this early? Or some of the tomatoes, the eggplant and peppers? What do you think?
For at least a decade, there has been an increase in people who have decided to move out of the cities, get themselves an acreage, and live as self-sufficiently as possible.
Which is basically, how I grew up.
Things have really changed, though, and modern homesteaders have a lot more resources, options and choices than was available when I was a kid, 50 years ago, never mind what our pioneers had. I found this very encouraging to see.
A couple of decades ago, while part of an online homeschooling support group – pre-social media, when everything was by email (and dinosaurs roamed the earth) – I often saw people waxing poetic about how we all need to go “back to the land”, and live these organic, subsistence lives, and all our food would be free and we would barter for everything else, and so on. It had a lot more to do with ideology than anything else. Going back to the farm was a dream of mine since I moved away in my late teens, so I could appreciate many of the sentiments they expressed. Unfortunately, this romanticized view was wildly unrealistic, and I found myself trying to remind people that there are reasons people, including farmers, moved away from that life.
Most of them didn’t get it.
Once we moved to the farm, 4 years ago, in a caretaker role, how things were done when I was a kid just wasn’t an option, and I’m quite okay with that. Most of the land is rented out, so we just have our corner to work on. My mother had a massive garden that had been slowly neglected for many years, as my parents retired from farming and age reduced their mobility, no matter how much my siblings tried to help. We can finally work on our dream to be as self-sufficient as possible, but we have to do a lot of things differently than how we did it when I was a kid.
It was in researching this that I found this dynamic and growing homesteading community. These were people who may have gone in starry eyed, but were also realistic and determined, and they were making it work. The aging hippies I couldn’t get through to all those years ago, with their ideological blinders, could never have done what these awesome people were doing. It was very exciting!
Then, the last couple of years happened.
As people saw their jobs disappearing, their livelihoods destroyed, prices skyrocketing, and government restrictions stifling people’s ability to do some of the most basic things, a lot of people are suddenly having real concerns about being able to feed themselves and their families.
During WWII, governments actively encouraged families to grow Victory Gardens, and even gave out information and resources to help people do it. That sort of thing isn’t happening now. Instead, we are having to rely on each other to figure out how to grow what, for too many people, are literally survival gardens.
Whatever your reasons for wanting to start growing as much food for yourself as you can, I heartily encourage you! You won’t get any sermons or lectures from me. I do hope that I can, at the very least, provide some information and inspiration.
Start where you’re at
Your circumstances are going to be unique to you. If you’re already on an acreage, great. If all you’ve got to work with is a hall closet and some makeshift grow lights, great. You can start where you’re at, even if it’s just poking some holes in a bag of potting soil to grow some greens in a sunny window. Little by little, it’ll get done!
What I will be sharing here is going to be geared mostly to people living in colder climates – and by that, I meant Zone 2 or 3 (depending on what Canadian zone maps are being used, we live in either 3a or 2b).
I will add one thing I’ve heard quite a number of very experienced, prolific gardeners say. If they had to depend on their gardens for survival, they’d starve! It takes a lot to grow enough food to actually provide enough for even one person to last from preservation to the next year’s harvest, and it will still need to be supplemented with other things. I’m still somewhat amused and perplexed by my mother trying to lure us out here by saying we could grow a garden and not have to buy groceries anymore. Even as big as her garden was, plus having chickens and cows, sometimes pigs, turkeys and geese, a root cellar and lots of canning and freezing, we still had to buy groceries.
So you’re still going to need to buy stuff. Hopefully, just a lot less!
With that in mind, as you plan what to grow in your own personal survival garden, here are some things to consider when making decisions.
Grow what you will eat.
I’ve looked at so many lists out there, for things like what to grow to feed a family for a year, or what to grow in your climate, and so on, and frankly, a lot of stuff on those lists are foods I just don’t like. Others, I can’t eat. There are four of us in our household, and we have very different tastes. Which means that our focus will be more on growing things all of us enjoy eating, then including smaller amounts of things only one or two of us like to eat. As wonderful and appetizing as I find tomatoes and bell peppers, they both make gag, but two people in our household enjoy eating them, and all of us can eat processed tomatoes. Now, those two people REALLY like their tomatoes, so growing more of those than peppers for fresh eating makes sense, as well as growing a lot of tomatoes that are good for making tomato paste to last us for months. It’s a sort of juggling game.
Try new things
What we find in the grocery stores is there because those varieties can handle large scale growing and transportation. When you’re growing your own, you can have a lot more choices. This is a time to grow new varieties of things you know you like, and if you have the space and resources for it, grow something you’ve always wanted to try, but couldn’t for one reason or another. Which kinda ties in with my next point to consider.
Grow at least one thing for fun
Yes, growing food to ensure your family has something to eat when times are tough is serious business. The whole point of the list I’ll be presenting to you is to be able to get as much bang for your buck as you can. At the same time, growing something just for fun is a great morale booster. As you go through what various seed companies and nurseries have to offer, you’re bound to find something that just puts a smile on your face. If you have the space and resources for it, go for it!
Keep in mind your region, climate and particular circumstances.
While the zone maps are very handy, that doesn’t mean there aren’t exceptions. There are things my mother successfully grew in our Zone 3 that were rated at Zone 5. She didn’t even doing anything different for them, either! This is a good time to find and get involved with a community of people in your region and zone, online or off, to learn from. If you are growing outdoors, look at what is rated for your zone, but also consider whether you can create microclimates. If you have only a balcony or patio, there are lots of places where you can learn about container gardening or vertical gardening. If you are growing indoors, there are resources geared specifically for that.
Storage and preservation
If you’re growing food to feed your family, and trying to grow as much as possible in your space, it’s not going to be much good if you grow more than you can eat, but can’t preserve it! There are many options available; freezing, dehydrating, water bath canning, pressure canning and even freeze drying, if you can afford the machine! You might even be able to create a root cellar in some corner of your home. Refrigerator pickling and fermenting are options, if you don’t have canning equipment.
If you’re going to store and preserve food, you’ll need somewhere to put it. What methods you have available to save your food will help you decide what makes the most sense for you to grow.
Things will go wrong. Do it anyway
One thing that is going to happen is, there will be failures at some point. It’s inevitable. Sometimes, you’ll make a mistake. Sometimes, there will be circumstances completely out of your control. It happens. The beauty is, you can still fail “up”. Honestly, you’ll probably learn more from the failures than the successes! Of course, it’s always a good idea to learn from others as much as you can to avoid failures, but it’s still going to happen. Since being here at the farm for 4 years, and only gardening for 2, we knew we were trying to grow in far from ideal conditions, and had some setbacks, yet we still managed to have food from our own garden that we could enjoy.
When it came to making a list of things that might work well in a survival garden, I looked for things that could be grown in colder climates, had high yields, and could be stored or preserved, while also keeping time in mind. So let’s start with the fastest growing things, first!
There are quite a few things that can go from seed to plate in less than a month. Some in less than 10 days! Micro-greens and sprouts can be grown very quickly, can be grown indoors in trays or jars, continually throughout the year. Many seed companies now has sections for sprouts, and quite a variety of things can be grown for their sprouts. Many sprouts can be grown in jars – alfalfa, mung beans, lentils, radishes, and more. Gelatinous seeds, such as flax, chia, cress, arugula and psyllium, can be sprouted in trays. For microgreens, you can try beets, swiss chard, broccoli, cress, peas, radishes and sunflowers.
If you want to give things a bit more time, leafy greens such as pretty much any type of leaf lettuce, spinach, chard, kale, bok choi and radishes can be grown and harvested very quickly. Many of these don’t like heat much, so they can be planted outdoors early in the spring and sowed successively until the heat of summer, then sowed again for a fall crop.
These quick growing plants are nutritional power houses, but they don’t have a lot of calories. They’re not going to keep anyone going for long, so it’s good to think of these as a supplement, and something that can provide nutrition until other foods can be harvested.
Short term
By “short term”, I am talking about the things we typically think of in our annual vegetable gardens. These are things that can take a few months before you can start harvesting anything, and can potentially keep feeding you and your family throughout the winter, with proper storage and preservation.
Root vegetables: carrots, parsnips, beets, radish bulbs, turnips, rutabagas… there are many to choose from, and many varieties of each! Stored properly, they can last for months on their own, but they can also be pickled, pressure canned, frozen, and dehydrated. With these, they are one seed, one plant (except beets; their seeds are actually clusters of seeds), but they produce so many seeds, most packets will provide more than needed for a typical household.
Bulbs and tubers: potatoes, sunchokes/Jerusalem artichokes, sweet potatoes – yes, there is a cold hardy variety of sweet potatoes out there! – bulb fennel, celeriac and more.
There are many varieties of potatoes, some more prolific than others, and some better for storage than others. A good source of seed potatoes will give that information. Potatoes also come in determinate and indeterminate varieties. Indeterminates are good for potato bags and towers, while determinate are good for hilling or Ruth Stout growing methods. Sunchokes will grow in just about any type of soil, and can be so prolific, they are sometimes considered invasive.
Special mention: the alliums are excellent bulbs to grow, but tend to require a lot more time, unless you are starting onions and shallots from sets, or spring garlic. Hard neck garlic needs to be planted in the fall, while onions and shallots from seed – which gives a lot more choice in varieties – need to be started indoors very early. In my garden groups, I’ve found Zone 3 gardeners that start their onions from seed as early as January! Onions also come in long day and short day varieties. If you are in a northern Zone, look for long day varieties. Of course, some varieties store longer than others but, properly cured and stored, they can last a very long time! Onion greens can be eaten as the bulbs mature, and hard neck garlic produces scapes that need to be removed to produce bigger bulbs, and they are delicious, making them dual crops to grow.
Summer squash and zucchini: There are many varieties of summer squash, and they all tend to be quite prolific. Just a couple of plants can provide plenty of baby squash that mature fairly quickly, and if they are left to grow larger, some varieties can be stuffed and baked. Most summer squash start to get tough as they get larger, and are not a storage vegetable, but they can be pickled, canned, frozen and dehydrated. Zucchini is a bit of an exception, in that it can be used as both a summer squash while small, or a winter squash if allowed to grow to full size.
Winter squash and pumpkins: These are squash that can grow to sometimes colossal sizes, but there are also varieties that are small, fast maturing and very prolific. Once they reach maturity, the fruits are cured and can be stored for the winter months. Some varieties reach their best flavour after weeks or months in storage. They can also be frozen, canned, shredded and dehydrated.
Legumes: there are few vegetables out there that provide more bang for your buck than legumes! Especially beans. Bush beans can be grown for their pods, and when they’re done producing is about when pole beans are ready for harvesting, and of course there are shelling beans, which are grown for their fully mature and dry seeds. Peas, chick peas and lentils can also provide a lot of food from just a few plants. Dried legumes, stored properly, can last for years, making them one of the most efficient foods to grow.
We could fit about a hundred of these tiny Spoon tomatoes into a single Red Solo cup.
Tomatoes: tomatoes are a fruit that deserve their own category. The varieties available is staggering! However, if you are looking to get the most pounds per plant, look at growing a mid sized variety. Aside from fresh eating, they can be frozen, canned or dehydrated on their own, or be used as an ingredient for sauces and salsas, and so much more.
Cucumbers: As with tomatoes, there are a really amazing number of cucumber varieties available, but most fall into one of two categories; slicers, for fresh eating, and picklers, for preserving. They all tend to be fast growing and very prolific, too.
Peppers: I wasn’t sure about including peppers on this list. They are excellent producers, but growing them in our colder climate seems to be touch and go. I’ve heard from people who have had great success with them, while others have tried for many years, but have never had a harvest. Peppers can be canned, preserved in oil, frozen, dehydrated, pickled and made into relishes.
While being able to grow food quickly is important, it is also useful to consider the long haul. If you have the space for it, there are things that may take several years before they begin producing, but once they do, the harvests will be bounteous!
Asparagus: asparagus can be grown from seed or you can buy crowns to transplant into trenches. It can take three years before they can be harvested, and even then, for the first year or two, harvests should be minimal. Once they are established, however, asparagus will keep producing for up to 20 years!
Raspberries, currants, gooseberries and haskaps: Haskaps are the new berries on the block, and are exceptionally cold hardy. They require male and female plants to produce, and can potentially begin producing berries in their first year. Raspberries are available as regular cane (new canes produce berries in their second year, then die back) or primal cane (new canes produce berries in their first year). Choosing varieties that mature at different times can give you fresh berries for months. Currants and gooseberries, once established, can produce fruit for many years. Berry bushes can provide a great deal of fruit per plant. Along with being used fresh, frozen or dehydrated, as well as made into jams and jellies, they can be used to make vinegars, syrups and wines.
Grapes: yes, there are Zone 3 grape varieties. I’ve even seen a Zone 2 variety. Grape vines are very long lived, and have the potential to provide fresh and frozen fruit, jelly, and wines for many years.
Hedge bushes and trees: There are a number of larger berry bushes that can double as shelter belts and natural boarders. Some, like sea buckthorn and bison berry, do well in poor soils, and while they may be considered invasive in warmer climates, they tend not to be, in our Zone 3. The Rugosa rose produces large edible hips, and their flower petals are edible, too. Saskatoons are a more of a tree than a bush, and absolutely delicious. Chokecherries produce many berries, but are better used in syrups, vinegars, etc. than eaten fresh. Many of these will provide enough berries not only for your own use, but for birds as well!
Now we’re really going for the long haul! Here, we are looking at things that can take five or ten years before they start producing food – but once they do, they will continue for decades to come.
Fruit trees: there are a remarkable number of fruit trees that can grow in colder zones. Apples, pears, apricots, cherries and plums can all be grown here. While a single mature tree can provide enough fruit for the entire family, many need to be planted with a pollinator, which can be a different variety.
Nut trees: there are not a lot of nut trees that can grow in Zone 3, but some, like the Korean Pine, are hardy to Zone 2! Hazelberts and beaked hazelnuts are also very hardy. Others, such as the black walnut, can grow in Zone 3, but the nuts may not have enough for a growing season to fully mature.
Okay, so all this is a lot more than just a “survival” garden, but we all start somewhere, right? :-) Little by little, it’ll get done!
I hope you find these useful in working out what are the best things for you to start growing in your own particular situation.
For those who have already been doing this for a while, please feel free to leave a comment, sharing your own experiences. What worked best for you? What didn’t work? Is there anything you would tell someone who is just starting out now? Let us know!
With all but one order of seeds having arrived, I decided to do an inventory of what we have, including what we have left over from this past year’s garden.
I was a bit surprised by some of them.
One surprise was the Spoon tomatoes. We had two packets of those, and while I thought we had planted all the seeds, I found a surprising number of seeds at the bottom of each packet. So I combined them into one. There isn’t a huge amount, but it does mean we could start some indoors, if we felt like it. I don’t think we will, since we have so many other tomatoes. Plus, I wouldn’t be surprised if a bunch showed up on their own in the bed we grew them in this past summer!
I didn’t think we had any kohl rabi left, either. One of my daughters had done a second planting of those, and I thought she’d used the last of the seeds. The White Vienna is actually from the year before. We got two free packets of the Early Purple Vienne, and both got opened for some reason; my daughter probably missed the one I’d opened to do an early planting. We had no luck at all with kohl rabi this year and I plan on starting them indoors instead of direct sowing.
For the gourds, I want to do the Tennessee Dancing Gourds again. They did really well. I want to try the Ozark Nest Egg again; were it not for the drought delaying their development, we would have had lots of those. I also want to try the luffa again, because I’m a sucker for punishment, but will probably skip the Birdhouse and Thai Bottle gourds.
Though we still have seeds left from the summer squash collection, we also still have the other two collections I’d ordered by accident. I like having a good variety, and this year we’ll have green patty pan squash, too, so we’ll start just a few seeds of each. The Baby Pam pumpkin never germinated at all, but I think that had more to do with growing conditions. We have so many others, I don’t know that we’ll try them again. There are still Halona melon seeds left, but I also saved seeds from both the Halona and the Pixie, both of which did very well, plus some other seeds I saved from other melons we enjoyed.
I will happily grow more of the Teddy and Red Kuri (Little Gem) winter squash again, along with the new varieties we ordered. They may have had a hard time with the drought, but they were quite good, and they are much smaller varieties that – in more ideal conditions – are supposed to be prolific producers.
Not in the photo are the varieties of spinach and lettuce we still have lots of. They, and the chard, are for spring and fall planting, so we’ll have to plan those out – if we try growing chard again. We didn’t really eat them much. As for the radishes, I want to plant a just a few of each, much earlier, and leave them, as it’s the pods I’m after, not the root.
The carrots here are pelleted seeds, and there are still quite a lot. It’s easier to space the pelleted seeds when planting. With thinning not as much of a concern, I don’t think I used even half of each variety this past year. I will happily plant them again, along with the new varieties we got.
I was surprised to find the Merlin beets. I thought I’d mixed all the remaining beet seeds together to plant into the L shaped bed, but I guess I missed these. We were planning to plant only one variety next year, but it won’t hurt to have two. :-)
We have quite a bit of the green and gold bush beans left, but that packet of King Tut purple peas only has about 5 seeds in it, and those are seeds I’d saved myself. If I do plant those, they will be only for seed saving. I didn’t order any other peas this time, but those are something I can easily buy locally in the spring. As for the beans, we do have several varieties of pole beans, but bush beans tend to mature faster, so I might go ahead and do both.
These are all our new seeds, except for the Kulli corn that is still on the way. It seems like a lot, but for things like the squash and gourds in particular, we will only be starting a few seeds indoors for each. I would rather plant fewer of many varieties and see how they do, than have lots of one variety then discover it doesn’t like growing here. That, and it would get pretty boring eating the same variety of vegetable all year! For things like the onions… well, I’m finding we just can’t have too many of those!
The beginnings of our culinary herb garden is something I need to think about. We already have a mint that we found in the old kitchen garden, but I don’t know what kind they are. Not spearmint, is the most I can say for sure. Probably peppermint. I want to have permanent places for our culinary herbs, and the old kitchen garden makes the most sense, since it’s right at the house, but unless we start taking out the ornamental crab apple trees, and the double lilacs, roses and honeysuckles – which I have no intention of doing – there’s not a lot of well lit space left in there. I might try growing them in buried pots at first, so that as we build raised beds in there, they will be easy to transplant, and things like the mint will be contained.
One of the things about the squash is that, with their spreading habit, we can use them to reclaim more garden area. We’ll be growing potatoes using the Ruth Stout heavy mulching method again, for much the same reason. With so many climbers this year, we’ll need to build more trellises, too.
I’ve been talking to quite a few people who are looking to start gardening for the first time, out of necessity. There is a lot to consider. Especially in our Zone 3 growing zone. So if it seems like I’m spending an inordinate amount of time talking about gardening of late, that is partly way. I’ll be writing a post specifically for those who are suddenly finding themselves having to grow their own food, so if you have something specific you’d like me to include on that, or experiences you’d like to share, please feel free to mention it in the comments.
You can read about what we ordered from Baker Creek, and why, here.
The free seeds we got this time are an interesting addition! I was looking at them on the website, and had heard from people in local gardening groups that successfully grew them this past year. I decided against ordering them, since I was already ordering the Black Nebula carrots, and we still have seed left over from this year’s garden. However, now that we have them anyway, I’ll be happy to try them!
The delectable, lemon-yellow roots have a unique shape! These carrots have a fine-grained texture that is crispy and juicy with plenty of natural sugar. This variety hails from Uzbekistan and is popular across central Asia. Widely adaptable, this variety produced sweet roots even in the hot summer months during our Missouri greenhouse trials, but it is equally vigorous and tasty when grown in cool weather. Called “Mshak” in Uzbek, this variety is easy to grow in a range of soils and temperatures and the flavor is superb. We love this as a snacking or cooking carrot, and in Uzbekistan and Central Asia it is an essential ingredient in plov, or pilaf, a signature dish of that region.
Sounds like something that should grow all right in our region. The reviews for it are good, too.
At this point, we have only one more seed order still en route; the Kulli corn. Our next orders will be perishable stock, such as tubers, saplings and root stock. Those tend not to be shipped until ready for planting in our zone, but I still want to order them as early as I can!
It’s a good thing we’re planning to continually expand our garden over the years! We’re going to need more beds for everything we plan to grow this coming year, above taking into account the areas we grew in last summer will be used for planting berry hedges instead of vegetables next year. And we won’t even be planting everything I ordered this year! We still have a lot of work ahead of us before we reach our goal of growing sufficient vegetables and fruit to feed the four of us through the winter and spring, until the following year’s garden starts producing, with enough to share, too. I think we’re off to a pretty good start, though! As long as the weather co-operates. As much as I enjoy our relatively mild temperatures, we need more snow to help the water table recover in the spring, from this past summer’s drought!
We dropped from 0C/32F yesterday, to -16C/3F today – with a wind chill of -27C/-16F! I did NOT want to do a dump run today, that’s for sure, but we weren’t able to get it done on Saturday, since that’s when my awesome brother came over to mount our Starlink dish on the roof. So today, it was!
Since we were out anyhow, we swung by the post office. I am expecting my Baker Creek order in tomorrow, but I still got seeds, today! My second order from Heritage Seeds was in! That was really fast. :-D You can read about our first order, here, and our second order here.
There was an extra packet of seeds in there – and this time, I noticed the “free gift” sticker. I went back to our first order and, sure enough, the extra packet of seeds we’d found last time did have the sticker, too. I just missed it entirely!
Of course, I had to look up what it was they sent us! This is their description for “Gold Ball Turnip”.
Gold Ball Turnip (1854) (aka Orange Jelly)
Introduced around 1854, this wonderful heirloom turnip has yellow fine grained flesh and reaches peak flavor when harvested at 3” although the yellow globes will reach 4-5” at maturity. Great storage variety. One of the best tasting turnips. (45 days to maturity)
I had been considering turnips as a good storage vegetable. It’s not something we normally buy, but not because we don’t like it. We just like other things better, and I usually get rutabagas instead, because they tend to be smaller. However, no grocery store carries this turnip variety! I look forward to trying them. It certainly meets what we look for when deciding what to grow.
This order coming in was just the thing I needed to cheer me up on a chilly day!
Well, I just couldn’t resist. After looking over the Heritage Harvest site, then going over my budget, I went ahead and placed another seed order. We may not be able to plant them all, but we’ll at least have a good start on our own seed bank, if we don’t!
I am absolutely determined to grow gourds for crafting purposes. This company is in Fisher Branch, Manitoba, which is in the same zone, or colder, than we are, so we should be able to grow these here, too!
The first two, Apple and Canteen, were gourds I already had on my favorites list (a function the updated website doesn’t seem to have now), and had been out of stock, so I wanted to snag them while I could!
The third gourd, Yakteen, is a new variety for 2022. It is a type that can be eaten when young (which is supposed to be true of all varieties of gourds, but I don’t think they all taste good), or left to mature and be used for crafting, which is what I plan to use it for. It’s also listed as very rare, so saving seeds will be an important part of growing these.
The rest that I ordered are all on their new-for-22 list. It was really hard not to order more from my old favorites list! I already have other varieties of most of those, so I didn’t. The only exception is…
… the Red Noodle bean. I have two other varieties of pole beans, in different colours. None are as long as these get, though – they can reach 16-20 inches in length! There’s only 25 seeds in a packet, and I was already planning to get a third variety of pole bean, so this fits in.
These are Little Finger eggplants. We are not big eggplant eaters, but it’s not because we don’t like them. It’s just that, with X amount in the grocery budget, they tend to get passed over. I don’t know if we’ll be up to growing eggplants this year, but these are supposed to be good container plants, so they would be a nice thing to have tucked somewhere on the south side of the house. In the end, it will probably depend on how much space I have to start things indoors.
These are Purple Beauty peppers. My husband and older daughter are the ones that like peppers, so having a few plants for them would be nice. And if we’re going to grow peppers, why not a variety that isn’t available in stores? :-)
Here we have the Kaho watermelon. They are an early variety that grow to only 2 – 4 pounds. Watermelons were not something I was planning to try, yet, but with an early variety, it might be worth starting a couple of plants indoors, if we can fit them.
Finally, we have the Wonderberry. Something I have never heard of before. These fall into the category of permanent plants, as they are supposed to self-seed prolifically. We will have to plan out where we grow them, but once we do, we should have berries, year after year. That makes them worth trying, in my view! Plus, they are drought tolerant. Bonus points on that one!
So this is my second order from Heritage Harvest Seed. I look forward to seeing how the seeds we get from them do in our zone, compared to ones we have ordered from other seed companies that are not as far north as this one.
Among the packages we got in the mail today was our seed order from Heritage Harvest!
I felt like a kid in a candy store, opening this up, even though I knew exactly what’s in there!
Or not!
I didn’t remember ordering two types of tomato.
I double checked my order, and the shipping notification and no, I did not order two types of tomato!
The extra packet is the Sophie’s Choice tomato, so of course I had to look it up.
The first thing I noticed is that the website has been redone, and it looks fabulous! The next thing I noticed that their new-for-22 items are now up – and then I saw that stuff I was interested in that were out of stock are now in stock!
Dangit. I’m going to have to make another order.
Oh, the tragedy… :-D
As for the mystery tomatoes, I found their listing. They are a determinate, short season variety and described as extremely rare! So I sent them an email mentioning the extra seeds, offering to pay for them, since I’m more than happy to plant a rare variety to help keep them going.
Now I’m going to have to go back there and do some shopping! :-D
I was really excited to find Heritage Harvest Seed. First because it is a company from Fisher Branch, Manitoba. They are even further north than we are. Which means we can be confident that anything we order from them will grow here!
Also, they specialize in rare and endangered seeds. I love going through the site and reading the descriptions, which include things like the history of a particular plant, or the efforts made to find seeds, and so on. Quite a few things ended up on my wish list the moment I saw “extremely rare” added to the description!
There’s no way we could possibly order everything on my wishlist! However, when I placed my order, I did include things we will not be able to plant this year, but which I hope to plant in the future.
It was so hard not to order more than I did!
Here is what I settled on. All photos belong to Heritage Harvest Seeds.
Here we have a very different corn than I’m used to; Tom Thumb Popcorn. It is a small variety, growing to about 2 feet high, that produces many cobs that are only 2 or 3 inches long. They make an excellent popcorn, and are a short season corn. Popcorn is one of our few regular snack foods, and we’re always running out, so if we can grow our own, that would be awesome. :-)
This is the one variety of tomato that we are growing, not as a snack food for my husband and older daughter, but as something to preserve in the larder. I’ve been looking for a paste tomato to try, and settled on Cup of Moldova. It is listed as extremely rare. It is an indeterminate variety that is good for making sauce, which means it should also be good for making tomato paste. That is what I am growing them for. As it is a rare variety, we will definitely be keeping seeds, too.
Here is another red onion I decided to try. Tropeana Lunga. The Baker Creek onion I ordered is similar to this, and this one is also an Italian variety.
This makes a total of five different varieties of onions we have seeds for, but I don’t mind. We use onions a LOT. The hard part will be finding the space needed to start them indoors.
We’ll figure something out!
Last time, I ordered these seeds from Baker Creek. They failed completely, and we don’t know why. Perhaps ordering Strawberry Spinach from a Canadian, zone 3, source might make a difference? I don’t know. We will do what we can to improve the bed we’ll be planting them in as well. I do hope they work out this time. I was really looking forward to them!
Though we’ve ordered pole beans, I wanted to have at least one variety for dry beans, rather than fresh eating. These are Blue Grey Speckled Tepary, and were once a staple food in parts of the US and in Mexico. They are also drought resistant and heat tolerant – which, after this past summer, is a big deal!
This is the third variety of hulless pumpkin seeds that I ordered; Styrian hulless. This variety was used to press for oil, and the fruit can reach up to 20 pounds in size! The description noted it as being very productive and dependable.
This is another one I picked when I saw it listed as extremely rare: Boston Marrow Squash. There is an interesting history behind it, but the real selling point was the description including “…makes the best pumpkin pie I have ever tasted!” It’s also a good storage squash. Even if we only grow a couple of plants, I want to make sure to save seeds from it, to keep the variety going.
Yes, I picked a wheat. The historical Marquis wheat, which is supposed to have excellent baking qualities.
We don’t have anywhere to grow wheat right now, but it is something we do want to do, so we can grind our own flour. Wheat seeds can last for a very long time, so I don’t mind getting some now, while we can, for future use.
This one is my wild and crazy purchase. The Zucca Melon; a variety that was saved from near extinction. I highly recommend clicking on the link and reading the story behind it.
These can get massive – anywhere from 60 – 120 pounds, and is described as …“a cross between a vegetable marrow and a hippopotamus”.
How can anyone resist that?
I’ll probably grow only one or two plants, and hopefully will be able to save seeds.
This makes the last of my seed orders for this month’s budget. I may still order things that won’t get shipped – or billed – until spring, but we shall see. For now, I’m done.
The garden will be expanding quite a bit again, and this time we should have more fruit trees and berry bushes. Hopefully, we will have a good growing season, too, and not have to deal with drought and heat waves again!
The Re-Farmer 