SHIFTING ROOTS

home, garden, food, and prairie lifestyle

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About

Ever since I could talk, I’ve wanted to be a singer.  I got up the courage to act on my dream, and 2 degrees and a 12 year voice teaching career later, here I am.

Being a working musician/singer is definitely not what I thought it would be.  While I love it and will always have music in my life, the lifestyle is hard on my family and I’m ready to go in a new direction.

So where to look?  Back to my roots.

kateepederson.com

Passions usually present themselves as a theme that has run through your life from the very beginning.  So music. . . right?  Well yes, and no.

All the while there were other passions that I’ve largely ignored while I’ve been pursuing singing and a teaching studio.  I love to make things beautiful.  I’m a Martha Stewart at heart.  And I LOVE all things magazines, was a huge yearbook geek, and made a family newspaper with my cousins when I was child.

So this blog all about shifting my roots from music to blogging, and living a simpler life after my constantly shifting one.  (12 moves in 15 years, anyone?)  Growing some roots. . . shall we say?

I hope you’ll join me on this journey.  Life doesn’t always happen the way we plan, but often it leads us to something better than we ever imagined.

kateepederson.com

I wrote the previous blurb in 2016 when I started this blog and I never could have imagined what the “better than imagined” would turn into.  I debated totally rewriting this page, but decided to keep what I originally wrote so that if you are struggling in your career and looking for a change, you’ll have the courage to start taking your own steps towards a future you couldn’t have previously imagined.

In the time since then I’ve taken loads of classes on blogging and social media, applied myself, made non-negotiable blogging time everyday, and now can say that over half of my income comes from blogging.  I am confident that in a year I will be able to quit teaching music should I choose to do so.

Now, let me tell you the second half of this story, the one that is related to what Shifting Roots has turned into.

kateepederson.com

I grew up on a century old family farm and was involved in gardening as soon as I could walk.  My family believed in hard work and that kids were never too young to pitch in.  Unfortunately (fortunately?) for me, I am an only child, which meant that I was the go-to kid for all the work that needed to be done.

I didn’t like having to help so much more than all of my friends and I often resented it.  Little did I realize that along the way I was learning a lot of skills that my peers had no clue about–how to tell a weed from a vegetable, which flowers liked sun, and which flowers like shade, what order to plant your vegetables in and how and why to rotate your crops, when vegetables are ripe, how to process peas, corn, berries, and so much more.

kateepederson.com

Once I grew up and had my own home, suddenly all those tasks I resented became important life skills that I now needed and wanted to do.  I also quickly realized that most of my friends wanted to start their own gardens, but didn’t have any clue how to go about it.  They either lived in cites and didn’t grow up with a garden, or their parents never made them help with it.

Suddenly I became the go-t0 girl amongst all my friends who were buying their own houses and wanted to get started with their own gardens or landscaping.

And that is where this blog comes in.  I hope that if you are new to gardening, you’ll find a wealth of information to help you get started.  Gardening doesn’t have to be this elusive all-or-nothing thing.  Start with the resources you have, and expand your garden a little each year as your skills and confidence grow.

Even though I’ve been gardening all my life, I still make mistakes along the way–and I’m not shy about talking about them!  There are no perfect gardeners.

P.S. I garden in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, which is zone 3b.  If you’re tired of all the gardening advice out there applying to zones 5 and up, I’m your girl!!

kateepederson.com

Interested in collaborating?  Email me!  I’d love to build an online community of like-minded people.  [email protected]

Want to follow along on the journey?  Find me on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter.

Want some help with your own gardening?  Join the Growing Roots Gardening Community or check out my Beginner Gardening Course.

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Grow roots with us

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Welcome!

Hi, I'm Kristen and I help new gardeners learn to grow their own vegetables and beautify their yards. I also share recipes that use all that delicious garden produce. Grab a coffee (and your gardening gloves) and join me for gardening tips, simple recipes, and the occasional DIY, all from the lovely city of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

P.S. First time gardener? You'll want to download the quick start gardening guide below!

Recent Posts

  • 26 Best Flowers to Grow for Dried Flower Arrangements
  • 17 Perennial Flowers That Love Shade
  • How to Design a Cut Flower Garden in Raised Beds
  • How to Start a Cut Flower Garden
  • How to Make Watercolour Decorated Sugar Cookies

Welcome!

Hi, I’m Kristen and I help new gardeners learn to grow their own vegetables and beautify their yards. I also share recipes that use all that delicious garden produce. Grab a coffee (and your gardening gloves) and join me for gardening tips, simple recipes, and the occasional DIY, all from the lovely city of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

Connect with Shifting Roots On. . .

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Find What You’re Looking For. . .

Privacy Policy

Do you tend to plan out your garden to the nth deg Do you tend to plan out your garden to the nth degree, do you just wing it, or are you somewhere in-between?⁠
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I tend to plan it all out, and then when I actually get out in the field, so to speak, the plan changes a little bit. ⁠
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If you need a garden planner that's both pretty & practical, my garden planner is available in the ebooks section.  It's only $9 and has lots of upgrades from the previous planner.  Use code CANADA if you're Canadian to account for the exchange.⁠
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P.S. You can see exactly what you're getting in the video--no surprises. ⁠
P.P.S  I get my planner bound and printed at a printing place.  Lots of people just print their own and put the sheets in a binder.
Are you gardening in containers this year? When y Are you gardening in containers this year?  When you're shopping for vegetable seeds, look for varieties that have names with words like patio, tiny, small, etc.  While lots of vegetable varieties will do fine in a container, you'll have an easier time with ones that are specifically bred for that situation.⁠
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📸 by @blushbrandphotography
I'm living the pepper dream in this photo. While I'm living the pepper dream in this photo.  While these ones are a bit on the small side, who doesn't want ripe peppers in July in zone 3?!?! ⁠
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Over the years I've gotten better at growing peppers, and I promise I'll spill my secrets in February when it's actually time to start them.  Until then, get yourself all or one of my four favourite varieties: ⁠
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🌶️Carmen⁠
🌶️Escamillo⁠
🌶️Candy Stripe⁠
🌶️Hungarian Hot Wax⁠
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Do you have a favourite pepper variety?⁠
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Have you flipped open a seed catalogue lately? It Have you flipped open a seed catalogue lately?  It's so easy to get completely overwhelmed, especially if you're new to gardening.  Why are there so many varieties of everything and which ones do I choose?⁠
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Here's how I try to narrow it down.⁠
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🌤️ Short growing season like me?  Try and prioritize varieties that have short dates to maturity.⁠
🥗 What do you or your family actually eat?  While I think you should always try a couple of new things, there's no sense in planting a giant garden filled with vegetables that you're not going to cook with. ⁠
🥒 Do you care whether your vegetables are heirlooms or hybrids?  Heirlooms are the kind that have been around for 50+ years and you can save seeds from.  Believe it or not, this year we're prioritizing hybrids for some of our garden.  The Hermit @mgsraney is obsessed with production this year, so anything that's going in "his" greenhouse better be able to produce a lot.  I'm using more heirlooms in my "glamour garden" as we call it, because I want things that are pretty and I can save seeds from.⁠
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What do you prioritize when you're picking out seeds?⁠
Last week we started thinking about our plans for Last week we started thinking about our plans for cut flower gardening, now this week we start thinking about plans for our vegetable gardens.  Unlike cut flowers, there's not as many vegetables that need to be started ridiculously early.  However, it's still fun to plan and dream and get your thoughts sorted.⁠
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I'm curious--what size of garden do you have to work with?  Are you on an acreage or farm, city backyard, or do you have a couple of pots on an apartment patio?⁠
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As for me, I have quite a mix.  I have my container garden on my backyard deck, the small cut flower garden in my yard, then vegetables in raised beds.  We also garden at my Mother-in-law's acreage, so there's a giant garden over there where we're figuring out how to grow food on a larger scale.  Then finally, sometimes my Mom grows things for me in her garden if I'm nervous that I'll ruin them in my own garden--call it a backup garden if you will.⁠
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📸 by @blushbrandphotography
I hope you've enjoyed this week of chatting about I hope you've enjoyed this week of chatting about the best flowers to plant in a cut flower garden.  There's so many options, these 5 that I talked about all week don't even come close.  If you need more help creating a small cut flower garden, I created this plan intended for a raised bed (but you can plant it in-ground too.⁠
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Head over to my insta links page on my profile, and you'll see the button to click on that will take you directly to it.⁠
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#cutflowergarden #cutflowers #raisedbedgarden #raisedbedgardening  #growyourown #greenthumb #raisedbeds #urbangarden #urbanfarm #squarefootgardening #slowflowers
Hey friends! There's a lot of new faces in this l Hey friends!  There's a lot of new faces in this little corner of IG, so I wanted to introduce myself.  My name is Kristen and I'm the gardener & content creator behind Shifting Roots.  I'm wife to @mgsraney and mom to 3 kids, ages 8, 23 months and 7 months.  Needless to say, our house is BUSY.  I garden in zone 3 in Saskatoon, SK, so if I can grow it in my short growing season and cold temperatures, you probably can too.⁠
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Here's a few fun facts, can you relate to any of these?⁠
🍅I don't like raw tomatoes, but I grow a ton of them because I like tomato sauce.⁠
💐I probably sound like every flower is my favourite flower, but my two favourites are peonies and zinnias.⁠
🌈I can't pick a favourite colour--I love so many of them in different circumstances.  If you force me to choose, I think I've got it narrowed down to coral and turquoise, but even then I still want to throw in yellow, emerald green, fuchsia. . . ⁠
🖤Even though I love colour to the moon and back, you'll often find me wearing black and white in real life, because it's just easier and I don't have to think about it going together.
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