I’m not a very good record keeper but thought I would keep some garden notes here to help me remember specifics about this growing year.
About the garden: 90 days (approx) frost free. I have a large wood frame greenhouse to extend the season and an in-ground garden. Usual time to plant seeds outside is the last weekend of May and first week of June to put out transplants.
This year instead of starting seeds in the house I planted them in the unheated greenhouse to see if they would be able to germinate. Brassicas are germinating well seems to take 3-10 days. I also have 6 tomato plants up (all the variety metchosin pink but that’s the variety I planted first) I have 2 muskmelon up and 1 watermelon. Ground cherries and TPS haven’t come up yet. Lettuce is coming up as well. Average nighttime temperature outside is about 0C.
I planted about 100 backup tomatoes in the house on April 12 just in case my greenhouse starts freeze. I have a few peppers I started back in March in the house too. I didn’t try to germinate peppers in the greenhouse.
That’s like crazy cold! I know one in Northern Sweden who does similar stuff. Not only is your blog good for remembering. It can also attract other extremophiles, so you can share notes or team up to exchange seeds. Progress will be more all over the line then.
I would love if one day people of warmer zones could provide these cold loving people with lots of variety to try and make these hardy explosive growing landraces become a reality.
Further South these cold landraces could become double season crops, or do well for people in mountainous areas, which would speed up selection down there. It’s win-win.
Keep it coming Ashley!
Well done, Ashley. Your growing conditions sound quite a bit like mine? I’m essentially at the Idaho Panhandle at Lake Ponderay (Sandpoint, Idaho) but I made the ‘strategic’ decision to farm off the northern slopes of Mount Spokane. Regardless, I killed another Asian Pear tree this year (sigh - poor lil cutey petooty couldn’t handle my hard frost cycles - the one that made it through -40F and gave me two viable branches that grew 12-18" last season appears to have reduced itself to one branch. I have little faith). I appear to have lost three more peaches (one seedling peach had even made it through a -40F cold snap two winters ago. You just never know here). Fear not, I have four types of seedling peaches stratifying in my seed fridge as I type (LOL - at a certain point in time I’ll likely have to give up the peach dream). So far, ridiculously oddly, I’ve found Northern pawpaws are much much hardier than one would surmise if the genetic pool is, well, actually Northern (ie - not Kentucky). Anywho, I’m grateful my 2024 GTS B. oleracea leafy greens made it through the January cold snaps (10 F -to- -15 F throughout the month) and I appear to be getting really solid flower set there. So far, the winner winner chicken dinners out my way (albeit entirely unsurprising) are blueberries; raspberries (oh raspberries); rhubarb; hawthornes; greens (including broccolis); horseradish; comfrey and apples. Plums are yet to be determined - I have many different species going but to date I’m unconvinced as these trees are much too young. Semi-sweet cherries and sour cherries appear resilient enough to make it through my extreme temperature swings but I have yet to see any meaningful flower or fruit - young trees. I lost a Montmorency but and English Morello has made it through some of the most extreme conditions. When the Prunus fail (which they often inevitably do), I leave the rootstock to see what I’m working with there. I have found a very reliable seed source for testing fringe plum species (Oikos) but I have yet to find anyone really working the cherry realm. I also seem to be quite adept at killing black locusts - which, well, I have cognitive dissonance over. They should be hardier but in reality they are quite sensitive to frost cycles. I am shifting my strategy to denser blocks of plantings there to try and find actual seedling strength. Anywho, short season extreme growers unite!
Thanks Joseph, our coldest weather sounds about the same. Generally, it doesn’t get colder than -40C here although last winter we had one night that went down to -45C. We get a lot of snow cover though so that helps the perennials. My trees still had two feet of snow on them up until a little while ago. I had to re-start my food forest last year because we moved so I don’t have much for pictures of that stuff but here are some things I’ve learned will grow here pretty reliably. A lot of my fruit relies on Canadian genetics which I’m not sure if you have access to or not but regardless here goes:
Saskatoons are basically unkillable and some of the best tasting berries available this cold
Haskaps also unkillable, if you somehow kill them they come back from the root pretty reliably but they’re sour - too sour for me but my son loves to eat them out of hand so that’s a personal preference thing
Sour Cherries - I have a bunch of “Meteor” sour cherries that lived through last winter but in the past I’ve grown cherries from the “Romance” series bred by the University of Saskatchewan and they lived just fine without pampering. There’s a guy in Saskatchewan that sells bulk amounts of cherry seeds from this series I could try to remember his business name and provide it to you if you’re interested.
Pears - I’ve been having really good success with most of the Russian descended pear trees but haven’t gotten any fruit yet.
And then I’d agree raspberries can live through anything, same goes for horseradish and rhubarb. I’ve never really tried blueberries. Currants are super hardy too.
Have you overwintered heading cabbage? I have problems with cabbage plants being weak and super susceptible to pests. I think if I could save my own seed it would help but I’m not sure how to best get them through the winter.
Also very cool that you’re trying to get some peaches to live. I would love to have a peach tree someday and in theory it should be possible since there are peaches hardy to zone 4. I once heard of a guy that grew Siberian C Peach in Edmonton, Alberta I think he still has some videos up on Youtube. Apricots would be nice too.
I don’t personally know anything about pawpaws but this nursery in Quebec has been doing some really interesting breeding work you might want to check out PAWPAW - CANADIAN HARDY -TAYLOR – Green Barn Farm
As far as plums, my Fofonoff plum (bred in Saskatchewan) has been alive for four or five winters, one of the only trees I was able to bring with me when I moved then my husband accidentally ran it over and it still came back with buds again this spring from above the graft. I also have a “Lee Red” plum that I think has survived four winters with me and came with me when I moved. It’s still alive this spring after -45C and being moved at an inopportune time. Bred in Alberta, I’ve had good success with anything bred by Lloyd Lee.
I haven’t overwintered heading cabbage yet, no. I’m still dialing in when I can plant and reliably harvest Brussels Sprouts. LOL. So far, I’ve been very adept at growing out great seedlings. Growing out very healthy plants. AND, planting them just late enough I don’t get meaningful ‘sprouts’! This season, I aim to prove to myself I am not a moron (that could be challenging) and am giving them plenty of time to put heads. Once I’ve dialed this in more ‘precisely’ and understand my valley window (I’ve only been on farm since late 2020) I’ll bring in the more formal cabbage heads into the mix.
I’ll look through those links. Thanks! I also failed to mention Shipova and Sea Berries. Both seem like very worthy brethren here. Nanking Cherries are resilient enough to make it through my winters but my frost cycles don’t encourage those blooms’ production and this may be because the bees aren’t highly active when they bloom (likely hiding) and I have yet to get active honeybee hives here. The ‘native’ bees seem to be active about a month later than the tomentosa blooms.
Lol good luck with your sprouts. I’ve never really put much effort into brassicas because the pest pressure is so bad for them here and I don’t like eating them enough to put in a lot of work when other things grow easy and I like to eat them. However, this year I started a whole bunch of mixed brassicas and I couldn’t help but notice that the GTS broccoli was untouched while some other plants were plagued. So I culled the plants that were getting badly damaged instead of trying to save them from the bugs. Anyways, that’s what made me interested in saving cabbage seeds for the first time.
I’ve never heard of shipova but it does sound interesting. Do the fruits taste good? And I would agree sea buckthorn is very cold hardy. I plant it here and there with other fruit trees to fix nitrogen.
I have honestly never had a shipova. I first heard of them back at a professionals Edible Forest Garden workshop with ol’ friend Dave Jacke years ago in Helena, Montana. I only planted my first four this past fall. With the ‘pears for your heirs’ mantra, I’m not anticipating fruit for a good bit. Hopefully, I’ll be alive to tell the tale!
Things are growing in the greenhouse and I should be able to plant the outside garden any day. Just finishing the fence around it first. Nighttime temps are around 3C.
Hello from a fellow Zone3 Canadian located in the foothills outside of Calgary.
I love that you started seeds in the greenhouse without heat. I am going to do this right away! Tonight actually. So, thank you for paving the way for me.
I am on a new property and I have gardened before but I haven’t used greenhouses, started seeds, or saved seeds and I am new to adaptation gardening. This will be a big growing year over here.
That’s awesome! I hope seed starting goes really well for you. It’s probably warm enough now to start things directly in the ground if you want to do that. I planted most of my seeds outside this week. Just beans and peas left to go in this weekend. And maybe a second row of cucumbers because I want to make a lot of pickles!
