Winter is certainly not the time to start gardening, but we’re itching to get out there as soon as this damn snow melts!! In anticipation of the spring, we made a trip to visit our local nursery/greenhouse: DenHaan’s Garden World

They didn’t have much in the way of seeds yet, in fact they were just tidying up the Christmas stuff and reopening after the holiday. We did however get a few things including a seed tray, some vermiculite, potting soil and kelp fertilizer for Mary’s wheat grass. We also bought a packet of every seed they had in stock - which should at least help get a head start on the herb garden! We’re going to start the seedlings this weekend, as well as place an order for seeds from Halifax Seed Company for all our garden veggies.

Although the snow is still here, it`s not too early to start planning the garden, so when it`s time, we`ll be ready!

It’s been quite a while since we’ve updated the site, we’ve been super busy lately… the last couple months have brought a lot of change our way.

It’s exciting to let you all know that we’ve moved to a new province and a more rural area of the country. It’s hard to think of the gardens we’re leaving - all the work we put into them, but thrilling to think about  future plans for bigger and better.
We’re renting a house on 4 acres of land with a huge backyard and permission to put in a garden, so I look at last season’s endeavors as a learning experience.

We made the mistake of over-planting, which caused the zucchini leaves to shade everything else in that bed -mainly carrots I believe. The 2 carrots we did get were short and stubby - a result of raised beds that weren’t dug deep enough, perhaps? The zucchinis we did pull must have weighed about 4-5 pounds easily and were the length of my entire forearm, we ended up with quite a few. The green and cayanne peppers also did well, as did the herbs, which are hopefully now being enjoyed by the new tenants.

I think our raspberry plant died, but I couldn’t tell because we didn’t stake or cage the tomatoes so they all ended up falling down and most rotted on the ground.

We’ll do things properly this time round, now that we know what not to do. It is getting cold here, and they’re expecting snow tonight so no outdoor garden yet, but the house we rented has a garage with a large picture window in it so I’m thinking of planting shelves of lettuce. I wonder if it can stand cold temperatures. I think the garage is insulated but it’s defiantly not heated. Herbs are another thing I’d like to grow over the winter - they’re too expensive to buy in the store.

If anyone has any other ideas, please share them, we’d love to hear what all our readers think

I heard somewhere you could eat the male flowers from the zucchini plant, so this had the wheels turning all morning, and I decided we’d try it… because what else would we do with those precious flowers? - and apparently picking them off could double our yield for zucchini… so off I went to look for a recipe!

After a long day of housework and thinning the over planted garden, I scurried off to the kitchen to whip up an experimental dinner with deep-fried zucchini blossoms over a bed of lettuce, asparagus - pancetta mozza with sundried tomato mayo on focaccia and fried zucchini with toasted pistachios, baked with parmigiano reggiano cheese.

I’m lucky that Marty is adventurous to some extent with what I make, because it’s not every guy (or girl for that matter) that will chow down, willingly, on flowers for dinner.
Nonetheless, everything was eaten… Marty didn’t really like the sundried tomato mayo used on the sandwich & I didn’t like the pancetta… once I removed it from my 2nd half, the sandwich became way less salty and therefore I could taste the flavors of the tomato mayo that much more.

I think next time I make this, I’ll try a roasted red pepper pesto instead - and leave out the salty pancetta. The zucchini we ate was picked from the garden that morning, as well as all the blossoms that were fried up.
I will defiantly make the blossoms when I come across flowers again, they were pretty cool. The sandwich just needs a little perfecting, but after all, it was an experimental dinner with some positives… glad I made lots - we have lunch for today too!