Cold Climate Abundance - Establishing Our Farm, Garden, & Orchard in Canadian Hardiness Zone 3
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How To Plant Fruits & Veggies In Marvelous Straw Mulch

June 1, 2021 by Dave Trenholm No Comments

I’ve long been convinced that growing in mulch is the best way to garden. After all, it just makes sense. Mulch suppresses weeds, holds in moisture, and provides abundant food for all the worms and other little creatures in the dirt that provide nutrients for your plants! But honestly, even with all that knowledge, I’ve been slow to change over from the ‘traditional’ method of gardening. You know… roto-tilling the entire garden before planting – then tilling in between the rows a few times throughout the year…. keeping the garden soil bare and black so that it looks like a neat and tidy garden. (And I do tend to be a neat & tidy, straight-rows, kinda guy…) But this year as we start a new garden space on the farm, I’ve made the decision to cover the entire garden with a thick layer of straw mulch.

Now, I have played around a little bit with growing in straw previously. If you followed my old blog, you’ll remember that one year (back in 2008) I grew potatoes on top of the dirt, buried in straw. (See Growing Potatoes in Straw) And that worked really well! In fact, I experimented on a small scale with potatoes, corn, peas, sunflowers, and carrots all mulched with straw.

  • My experimental garden grown in straw in 2008

So this isn’t the first time I’ve experimented with this. But this will be the first time I fully take the plunge and plant the whole garden under straw.

The first step was to acquire some straw. As it happened, the farmer down the road had a stack of old round straw bales that had been sitting in his field for the last couple of years, so we offered to take them off his hands. He invited us to take whatever we wanted for free – which was an incredible blessing! We happily took them all.

My garden space is on the west end of my orchard – which is fully enclosed by an 8ft fence so my garden doesn’t become a salad bar for the deer. The site has been a traditionally farmed field for the last decade or so – previously planted to barley, wheat, or canola – so I’m thankful I don’t have to deal with sod or an enormous amount of weeds. However, it is a very large site (at least compared to anything I’ve gardened before). It’s about 80′ x 190′. To cover that area with 6-8 inches of straw would be a mammoth undertaking!

Thankfully, another neighbour had a bale shredder (used to feed or provide bedding for cattle) that he offered to loan us. This would make the job of spreading the straw WAY quicker and easier! (As it was, it still took the bulk of an afternoon spreading out nine round bales of straw over the roughly 15,000 sq ft of garden space.) Praise the Lord for neighbors! Farming has a long history of community cooperation and it’s no wonder! We couldn’t do this without the help of friends, family, and neighbors!

  • Using the bale shredder to cover the garden with straw

Well, one very windy afternoon later, we had roughly 8 inches of straw all over the garden area. I left the straw to settle for about a week before we began planting.

Potatoes were first to plant and they were fairly simple. I employed a little help from yet another friend and we pulled back pockets of straw with a pitchfork, dug a hole for the seed potato, and then covered it up again with dirt and the straw. For most other veggies, I would leave the straw to the side until the plant had emerged, but I knew the potatoes would have no trouble pushing through the straw, so I completely re-covered the area with several inches of straw.

For peas, I started by putting in my pea fence posts. Then, with the help of my kids, I pulled back about a 1 ft strip of straw with either a rake or pitchfork. Then I hoed two furrows side-by-side so I could have a row on either side of the fence.

  • Planting peas in a double row. We’ll pull the straw up to the plants once they’ve sprouted a few inches.

For other seeds, like beans for example, I pulled aside just a narrow strip of straw with a triangle-shaped hoe. Then, using that same hoe, dug a small furrow.

*As a little note, I found that although the tractor pulling the bale shredder sure spread the straw quickly, it also resulted in the ground becoming very compacted! In the places where the tractor tires went, it was very difficult to dig the furrow. Other places were much easier! I think once the straw begins to decomposed and the worms do their thing – the soil should become much easier to work with!

  • Growing beans in straw mulch

Finally, after seeding in the furrow, I covered the seeds with soil, but not with straw. I’ll wait until there are some well-visible sprouts before I move the straw back around them – since I don’t want to smother them.

And that’s about it! At the time of this post (May 31), I have all of my seeds planted, but still a few seedlings to transplant into the garden. I’ll likely do that in the next week or so.

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Gardening Principles

Four Guiding Principles For Our Farm

December 30, 2020 by Dave Trenholm No Comments

As you read the articles on this website – or as you tour our farm and see what we are doing – you’ll likely notice that some of my methods might seem a bit odd. For example, as I mentioned in my last post (Orchard Planting Plan 2020), I plan to grow caraganas throughout my orchard – and caraganas don’t really even produce fruit. In fact, many people around here consider caraganas a weed! So this is definitely not a “normal practice” in most orchards.

And that’s just one example. Frankly, I think several of my ideas about how I will manage and care for my orchard & garden would strike you as being a bit backwards… or at the very least, unorthodox.

But I’m ok with that. I don’t mind being a bit odd.

When it comes to growing food, I’ve always been inclined towards the odd and unusual. I love growing fruits and veggies that are uncommon or even a bit weird. I get excited about growing haskap and hazelberts – while most ‘normal’ people have never even heard of them! And this oddness isn’t reserved only for growing things – my oddness kinda flows into other areas of life too! (Just ask me about my aspirations to become a yak rancher!)

So being odd is kinda normal for me.

At the same time, I’m always looking for new ways to grow better & more diverse fruits and vegetables as well as finding easier & more effective ways to grow them. I’m eager to push the limits of my zone 3 Canadian climate. This means I’m willing to experiment and try new things – even if they seem odd, backwards, or unorthodox.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that, yes, I may do some unusual things… Yes, I may have some odd practices and unorthodox methods – BUT I do those odd things for a reason!

Actually, I do those odd things for FOUR reasons. I have four basic principles that guide my gardening/farming/orcharding and those principles inform every decision I make.

Four Guiding Principles for our Farm

  1. I’m the care-taker, not the owner.
  2. Work with nature – not against it.
  3. People are the priority
  4. Pursue joy

Over the next few posts, I’ll dig into these principles a bit more and explain what I mean. But here’s just a quick summary:

#1. I’m the care-taker, not the owner.

I believe that God created and owns everything, but He has given me the privilege and responsibility to care for some of His property for a short period of time. I want to be a good manager with what He has entrusted to me. This includes using resources wisely, being generous with what I have, and leaving my part of the world better than I found it.

#2. Work with nature – not against it.

God has designed the natural world to work really well! I’ve found that by mimicking what we see in nature, we save ourselves a ton of work. This is why I love mulch and companion planting! This is also why I choose no-till gardening and aim to minimize (and hopefully eliminate) the use of chemical fertilizer and herbicides. I whole-heartedly encourage plant and animal diversity for this same reason. This is what we see in nature – so let’s take a hint!

#3. People are the Priority.

The success of our farm is not based on whether or not we make a profit, but rather our success is based on how we’ve impacted people. We want this farm to be a blessing to all kinds of people – for our own family certainly… but also for our friends and neighbors who visit, perhaps one day for some employees who might work for us, and for those who enjoy the fruits of our labors. People will always be the priority of this farm.

#4. Pursue Joy.

My goal in life is to experience and share joy. (I believe this happens primarily through a personal relationship with God – but with that in place, there are so many ways to find joy in life!) Personally, I find great joy in eating delicious fruit! It’s a joy for me to grow strange and unusual fruits and vegetables – especially ones that you don’t expect to grow in zone 3! I’m filled with joy when I can share some of our abundance with others! It’s a joy for me to walk around our beautiful property with my beautiful wife and see our kids happy and content and flourishing. There’s a lot of joy to be had – so I’m going to pursue joy!

Ok, that got a little longer than I originally anticipated, but hopefully it gives you a little insight as to why I do what I do. And as I mentioned early, I’ll revisit these principles again in future posts with more detail.

And just to leave you with a question, why do you do what YOU do? What are your guiding principles? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!

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About Me

Hi there! My name’s Dave. I’ve dabbled in landscaping & gardening since I was kid, and I’ve been blogging about my experiences since 2007. I've lived most of my life in zone 3 (central Alberta not too far from Red Deer). I love growing all kinds of fruits & veggies (the more unusual the better), creating beautiful spaces, and making people feel at home! I enjoy writing (thus, this blog!) and teaching others what I have learned. I have been abundantly blessed by God and want to honor Him by sharing that abundance with others. I have the joy of sharing my adventures with my delightful wife and my four fantastic kids.

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