Plans & Preparations: Exploring My Zone 3 Garden

Come along for a walk around the garden! It’s the last day of March and while nothing is growing there is so much potential. We will go through my spring garden maintenance plans as well as what I am planning to grow where this year. I love this time of year when then garden is a blank slate! So much fun dreaming of the jungle that is only a few short months away 🙂

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well here we are the last day of March it’s plus 10° C outside beautiful day so it is time to get started on the Spring Garden maintenance today I want to bring you for a little walk around the garden I’m going to show you what things I planning to do because very shortly we’re going to be starting seeds right in the ground it’ll just be a little welcome back to the garden and if you’re new here my name is Kayla and this is 5 Canadian Acres where I’m just trying to show you guys my journey here in a cold climate up in Canada Zone 3 sometimes we have to bend or even break some of those Garden reels so we can get those big harvests but it is totally doable up here here at the gate here this is where I normally start my garden tour nothing has been planted yet this year all these beds you see need to be topped up these ones I actually filled two years ago and then the other ones down there I filled last year but we did the method where you put a whole bunch of sticks and packed it with straw and then the dirt on top so it will settle every year and every year you’re going to have to top it up again which I don’t mind doing because I’ll put some fresh compost on here and then I know these beds are getting recharged and refreshed full of nutrients to be growing all the plants this year so yeah all these are going to need to be topped up we do want to revamp this whole middle area I’m not sure if we’ll get to it this year we might just grow in that long bed again I did plant some garlic here and that was back in the fall so I have not uncovered this yet which will be one of my first Garden chores is getting rid of all this mulch so we’ll just have to do a little bit of topping up I’ll probably end up growing in these beds just CU we have a few other projects this year because the plan is is to get rid of both of these long beds and then we’re going to wrap open that up to the little deck area we’re going to wrap a bed around there get rid of this and really open this area up and build some more of these raised beds to kind of figure in here I do have some blueberries grapes are in the corner it’s a little bit of asparagus and then the cherry tree here which we’ll have to work around nothing has leafed out in the Cherry Tree here yet but it is getting really close and actually if we go back up here and around to The Perennial bed I planted last year again it has all that deep malch so I’m not sure what’s coming back yet so over the last few years I have really become come to see the benefits of mulching it’s great for weed suppression for water retention keeping your soil cool all that kind of stuff but another thing I like to do is in the winter for my perennials is deep mulch that’s just giv them a really really deep bed of mulch I like to use the straw now one of the main reasons I do this is not just for protection over the winter but it’s actually in the spring once everything starts to melt and warm up up here we get a lot of times it’ll fully melt and then we’re going to get a lot of cold again so the Deep mulch actually protects them in the spring from those warm cool Cycles they’re not going to wake up too early and then get damaged so you can see here it’s actually still frozen this ground under here is still frozen really hard whereas out here where I didn’t have mulch it’s very soft I can dig right in there look you can see here actually these are my winter onions and they’re actually starting to grow again so that’s going to be one of the first things I need to do here because the weather is looking great we still have some negative temperatures but I want that sun to get onto the soil and start warming and waking up all my perennials can go down around here again these beds are a few years old I’m going to top them up I’ve done them all the same way so really it takes a lot of years and you’re going to be continually topping them up but like I said I like that because then I can go ahead and give it a fresh new round of compost every year now here are the strawberries and asparagus yeah nothing’s poking through I put all the old asparagus fronds down last year I’ll probably go ahead and remove some of them and just give those strawberries lots of room to start growing they can handle those little bit of cold that will get still and they will start growing really soon you can see there’s still a little bit of green but most of these plants have died back from last year but if we dig into here and see it’s almost time for them to start growing again and then over here all the stuff that I left up last year it’s almost time for it to start getting torn down and then I have to decide what I’m going to do where I’m going to plant things I’m actually thinking that this whole area I’m going to turn into a perennial area with a lot of herbs and medicinal plants back here because out front here I have the rhubarb and some mint and this is marshmallow I’ll probably take off the mulch from the rhubarb there and then I’m going to cut down all of this stuff that’s the other garlic I have to take the mulch away cut it all down still got to cut my tomato plants down and then it’s still going to be a while till we can plant in here but it’s time to start cleaning up and I’ll just throw that all into a big compost pile so then we can use that eventually to come back onto the garden same thing down here I got a H up my peach trellises there and then all this year again I think we’re going to Roto till it again this year and then cover it maybe with some cardboard and get it smothered a little bit and then plant cuz again we’re not going to need to plant in here for a little while which actually isn’t totally true because I do have to decide where I’m going to plant my potatoes because I’m going to be planting those usually mid April so in like two weeks so I’m going to have to decide where I need to plant those I planted them right over here last year the year before I had them where my tomatoes were running through my head and thinking right now I might actually put them where I had my fall Garden last year which is over here back over here on the other side of this stuff and oops it is very muddy there but this little bed here I could probably put them it does get pretty wet but if I put them on top maybe do a modified spru outout with some straw it might be okay there that area back there is where we’re going to do some expansion but it’s pretty a wet area we’re going to have to build it up a little bit still and then we’ll come back over here because this year what we’re going to do is try to expand as far down here as we can we’re going to get rid of that little bed where the corn is at I’m actually I’m not going to walk in here right now because it’s really wet but this has been covered for a couple years so we’re going to pull that up go ahead and just somehow work through all of this as best we can and then the plan is to have maybe a whole bunch of the crop Gardens down there cuz I want to have a nice big area for the Melt melons pumpkins all that where they can just sprawl and have a whole bunch of area I’m not sure if I’m going to do corn this year it never does super well for us but we will see how far down that way I can get we’re just going to stick in this front part here over here is all Willows and we’re going to keep them but we’re going to probably prune them back to maybe start being able to harvest them to do some like basket weaving and we do want to keep them here because again there’s a lot of water here and we don’t want it to get too wet those suck up a lot of water and on this side you can kind of see this big line right here that is kind of like a drain off ditch from the Pond across and there’s lots of water in there so we’ll only pick the garden up to like just the edge where we can still walk on that side so the plans for this year are to have this as our crop Garden I’m going to put a bunch of rows of things that I’ll be able to harvest in order to preserve that’s why I want to expand it as much as we can here where I had my tomatoes last year I’m going to put all of my cucumbers cuz I already have the trellis there so that should be a lot of cucumbers for pickling and then like I said I think all this back area here is where I’m going to put a bunch of perennials and herbs and such then I can put my potatoes over there and then that will expand over there where I want to put some maybe some crop herbs such as like catnip and chamomile and things that I can Harvest a lot of to start making tea blends to sell and then up here in the race beds this is where I’m going to put my kitchen Garden so I’m going to be planting a bunch of things here that I’m just going to be harvesting to eat I don’t know if you’re like me but I have a hard time sometimes as picking the vegetables and stuff from my garden because I just think oh it can grow bigger so I think by having this kitchen Garden up here I’m really going to be able to be like this is what this is for this is the purpose inste separate it from the stuff down below where I know it can grow to its maximum size and then I can Harvest it and then the last little thing I came back up top this all needs to get cleaned up this is the little deck it actually got bumped last year we’re going to fix that all up and we’re going to get the walk through here and then in behind there that is my Sanctuary Garden that I had planned to build so I do want to work a little bit on that this year I don’t think I’m going to get it fully finished a lot of those Gardens take time but that’s okay it’ just be nice to get a little bit of that established get a little bit of a view from it from up here as well and we’re going to do all the walkways kind of nice with some wood chips we got a wood chip last year and yeah it’s just Blank Slate but pretty soon it’s going to be a jungle and with that sun still shining bright I’m going to get to that first step and start removing all of this deep mulch from those perennials and we’ll see how quickly they start to grow thank you guys so much for watching and we’ll see you next time bye