Veggie Chompers

  As the end of 2020 is approaching, I'm taking a moment to reflect on my year.  Thinking about my accomplishments, my failures, the lessons I've learned in the past 12 months, the status of the goals we had set for 2020 as well as a list of new goals for 2021. At the end of 2019, my husband an I had agreed that we would put our house up for sale in the spring of 2020 and find a large land to build a homestead.  Unfortunately, we had to face two speed bumps at the very beginning of the year.  First, our house got hit by a snowplow during the night of February 14th to 15th, which led us into a dispute with our insurance company.  It was finally resolved right before Christmas.  And then, the worldwide pandemic situation...you know...2020! But as disheartening as it started, 2020 actually turned out to be a good year for me!  I realised very quickly that we had been blessed with the gift of time and that I had to make the best out of it.  Keeping our homesteading goals in mind, I

  Last month, I took inventory of my all my seeds and came to the conclusion that I had plenty!  Then, a couple days later, I ordered 10 000 seeds.  Anyone else?! I see it like an investment because once you buy a variety of something, you can grow it and save the seeds again.  It's an ongoing cycle.  So I bought the COOLEST plants! 1. Baby Milk Bok Choy 2. Purple Lady Bok Choy 3. Drakibor Kale 4. Redbor Purple Kale 5. Feng Qing Choy 6. Emiko Chinese Cabbage 7. Katsuona Mustard 8. Petrowski Turnip 9. Purple Kohlrabi 1. Japanese Minowase Daikon Radishes   2. Pusa Gulabi Radishes 3. Pusa Jamuni Radishes 4. Mixed Radishes 5. Malaga Radishes  6. French Breakfast Radishes 7. Rouge Sang Carrots  1. Kajari Melons 2. Carminat Beans 3. Diamond Aubergines  4. Principe Borghese Tomatoes   5. Blue Beaury Tomatoes 6. Roma VF Tomatoes 1. Sweet Mace Tarragon 2. Lime Basil 3. Lavender 4. Borage 5. Simplyherb Sage 6. Lemon Basil 7. German Chamomile 8. Catnip Herb 9. Sariette ancienne d'Acadie 1

 In February of last year, when I first began to garden, I didn't want to spend a ton of money on a growing setup, but I wanted to be able to start my seedlings indoors. We bought two 48'' LED grow lights and did what we could with what we had on hand to install them over a ''table'' (my sowing machine).  Honestly, it worked perfectly!  But I knew that I would eventually need more shelves and more lights if I wanted to grow more food.   Well, guess what?!  We recently upgraded our growing setup and this will allow us to be fully productive all year round.  I thought I would write a blog post on this for two reasons.  First, by showing you our old setup, I hope to inspire you to do like us and do what you can with what you already have and I also want to share our new growing setup with you because this might be helpful to someone. As you can tell, this setup couldn't be more homemade!  We used a sowing machine as our growing table on which we had put a s

That's it! It's that time of the year!  The moment every gardener has been waiting for is finally here! In December, seed companies send out their annual seed catalogs with the most beautiful pictures of their produces.  Therefore, it becomes difficult to make choices and buying seeds for your garden can quickly get overwhelming.  I'm gonna be honest, if it's your first time buying seeds, you're soon going to be asking yourself : ''Should I buy all the tomato options, or only most of them?''  I'm here to give you some tips to help you make those important decisions (stay in budget) and also to guide you toward the establishment of your first garden.  But I want to start by sharing all the companies that I buy seeds from.  There are no affiliate links in this article.  I only share those websites with you because I love how they work and they offer good varieties of seeds. As I mentioned, most of the seed companies send out free catalogs to their

  I'm SO excited!  I'm getting ready for my first ever SEED SWAP!! What is a seed swap? Seed swaps are events where gardeners and farmers meet to exchange seeds (heirloom most of the time).  It's a lovely way to extend your seed collection and make new connections in a community. Whispering Willow Farm 2020 Seed Swap When I heard that Jill, from Whispering Willow Farm on YouTube, was hosting a seed swap, I decided to join. Whispering Willow Farm's 2020 seed swap was opened to Canadian and American residents, with a shipping fee of 15 USD for Canadian residents.  Enterings are now closed. This is an online seed swap so we actually have to mail our seeds and wait for our swaps to arrive.   Whispering Willow Farm Seed Swap YouTube The rules of this seed swap go like this : -You have to send 10 packets (each packet is a different variety) -Each packet must contain between 5 and 10 seeds -All seeds must be heirloom varieties -It can be seeds you saved from your garden or see