How to Plant a Vegetable Garden in Canada
As the world shifts toward more eco-friendly living, it's becoming more popular to grow your own vegetable garden so that you can control what chemicals are sprayed on your vegetables. In areas with extreme climates of hot or cold, however, vegetable gardening is a bit more of a challenge. If you want to plant a vegetable garden in Canada, there are some things you need to do to ensure that your garden will be successful. Does this Spark an idea?
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Things You'll Need
- Vegetable seeds
- Paper towels
- 8-oz. paper cups
- Quality gardening soil
- Straw or wood mulch
- Shovel
Instructions
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Start your seeds indoors four to six weeks before the threat of the last frost of the year. Generally, this is in May. To start the seeds, fold a paper towel into quarters and wet it thoroughly. Place the seeds between the folds, so that they are completely enveloped by wet paper towel. Keep the paper towels damp by rewetting them every day or two. The paper towels should be damp, but never soaking wet.
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Check the seeds after a week or so. You will be looking for growth in the form of a small green shoot and a small root. If you don't see either, fold the paper towels back around the seeds and continue wetting them for another week.
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Fill the paper cups with quality soil recommended for growing vegetables. Remove the seedlings from the paper towels and carefully plant them into the soil, roots down. The delicate leaves should be above the soil line.
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Dampen the soil and place the cups in an area where they will receive eastern or western sunlight. If daytime temperatures are above freezing, you can place the cups on a window sill during the day, but remove them at night so that the seeds will not get too cold.
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Transplant your vegetable seedling plants outdoors once the threat of the last frost in Canada has passed. Plant the vegetable plants directly into the ground, and add mulch around the base of each plant. The mulch will help the plants retain daytime heat and will protect the delicate plants against chilly Canadian nights.
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Understand the difference between "determinate" and "nondeterminate" vegetable plants. Determinate means that the plant will only yield harvests for one growing season. Nondeterminate means that the plants will continue to give harvests for several years. Keep your seed packets or keep a gardening journal to help you remember which of your plants are nondeterminate or determinate. The determinate ones can be uprooted and put into your compost pile. Nondeterminate vegetable plants can be wintered over.
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Winter over your nondeterminate plants. After harvesting vegetables from your nondeterminate plants for the last time in the fall, cut the plants back to about six inches tall, and completely cover them with a large pile of straw or wood chips, several inches deep, to winter over your vegetable plants and help protect them from the winter temperatures in Canada.
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