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A warm hello to our gardening community!
After fielding so many requests for advice about growing in this unprecedented time of climate change, your team at Eagleridge Seeds would like to share some of our best techniques and strategies with you.
Right Plants, Right Places:
It has become even more important to select the best varieties for our ornamental and food gardens. Open pollinated, heirloom varieties have a history of success in adverse conditions. The winter in your location gives us a big clue. Here on Salt Spring Island and the south coast of BC, there has been a huge weather up shift to Zone 9. This translates to longer shoulder seasons of spring and fall. It changes the seeding schedule practiced for decades. It has become necessary to stagger our seeding, experiment with new timing, and create season extenders, like cloches and greenhouses as part of our overall plans.
We experienced no winter kill from our overwintering vegetables for the first in over 30 years. So placement of our food gardens becomes more important than ever. Creating our own micro climates using raised beds, walls constructed of wood or rock or planting hedges, all provide shelter from winter winds. Using existing structures can provide some shade for our heat sensitive varieties like lettuces and brassica greens such as Arugula and Mizuna. Mulch covers are now a full season application to provide winter insulation and water conservation in summer.
Winter Gardening:
The schedule has also shifted for starting our Winter vegetables. Usually this starts now on the Coast. Our longer Summer and milder Fall provides a much longer seeding window. Practical considerations, like drought and heat waves cause too much stress for sucessful seeding. It does provide a window to experiment with delaying seeding times. Most of all, watering restrictions poses the largest issue. Our response, to use small pots for starts, which require much less water, can easily be placed in shaded areas to protect emerging seedlings and can easily be transplanted once the temperature moderates.
Marsha's Picks:
St. Valery Carrot: One of the best in ground storage carrots ever! Our seed growing bed for next year was seeded 2 weeks ago. Absolutely delicious for fresh use too. We have about 10 packets left to share!
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