Editor’s note: The following is from Vernon’s Communities in Bloom Committee.
Longer days and the sound of melting water make many of us gardeners impatient for spring and summer. Late winter, though, is a most important time of year, as it’s the perfect time to learn, plan and start projects that will make the upcoming growing season more rewarding, beautiful and delicious.
Dingy snow on the ground and sad produce at the grocery store has many of us dreaming of fresh veggies from the garden. Why not do some research into urban and year-round gardening?
Andrea Bellamy’s book Sugar Snaps and Strawberries: Simple solutions for creating your own small-space edible garden is for folks who have limited space and would like to grow delicious food. She shows you how to have your tiny nook, corner, porch, balcony, or postage-stamp-sized yard overflowing with fingerling potatoes, fragrant herbs, sugar snap peas, French breakfast radishes, and scarlet runner beans. Yum!
For those who would like to extend their harvest season into the winter months, Elliot Coleman’s book, Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long shows gardeners how to grow traditional winter vegetables in backyard cold frames and plastic-covered tunnel greenhouses without supplementary heat. Copies of these books are available through the Okanagan Regional Library.
If you prefer receiving your gardening information in person, mark the upcoming seed swap events on your calendar. Seed swaps are great places to meet people who love sharing their knowledge of food gardening. The Shuswap Seed Swap and Sale is happening on March 3 at A.L. Fortune secondary school in Enderby. And the Schubert Centre hosts the SENS seed swap and plant sale on March 22.
Okanagan College is offering a number of courses on permaculture, taught by local experts Jana and Gord Hiebert of Element Eco Design. Topics include soil ecology, food forestry and water harvesting. Have you wanted to build a rain barrel but didn’t know where to start? Free workshops resume in May at Xerendipity Garden in Polson Park. Workshop themes may include: rain barrel building, backyard composting, saving your harvest and winterizing your garden.
See Facebook.comVernonCommunitiesInBloom for more information.
