10 Easy to Grow Vegetables for Beginners (Plus 5 You’ll Want to Avoid)

March 12, 2020

Planting your very first garden can be both exciting and scary. You can’t wait to eat fresh vegetables you’ve grown yourself, but you soon realize that there’s so much about gardening you just don’t know. Add in a few incidents with killing houseplants and it’s enough to make a beginner gardener throw in the trowel.

Don’t give up before you get started. You can grow vegetables as a beginner and be successful at it too. As long as you have a location with 6 or more hours of light a day, are willing to add some compost to your soil, and you water regularly, you can grow a vegetable garden this year.

I’ll show you the 10 easiest vegetables to grow, plus 3 I think you should avoid your first year.

P.S. All the vegetables you see in this post are ones I have personally grown in my own garden.

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Kristen Raney

Kristen is a former farm kid turned urban gardener who owns the popular gardening website, Shifting Roots. She is obsessed with growing flowers and pushing the limits of what can be grown in her zone 3b garden. She also loves to grow tomatoes, but oddly enough, dislikes eating them raw.

www.shiftingroots.com

Avoid These 8 Mistakes for a Better Vegetable Container Garden

March 4, 2020

This year I had visions of a beautiful container garden filled with vegetables on my back deck. I would make it interesting by adding flowers to some of the pots and create a space that was both beautiful and edible. However, my dreams and reality did not meet. Here’s the mistakes I made and how you can learn from them.

Really quick gardening disclaimer: I garden in zone 3b in Saskatchewan, Canada, and as such, my gardening advice is best suited to the Canadian Prairies. While I try to make my gardening tips applicable to as many locations as possible, it is impossible to be 100% relevant to every single zone in North America and beyond. Thanks for understanding!

Second disclaimer: Nobody really wants to see pictures of practically dead plants. The pictures here are of my pots when they last looked good, around the mid-point of the growing season. They went downhill shortly after.

Do you dream of having a container vegetable garden on your patio, balcony, or other small space? Gardening in pots can be tricky for beginners--here's 8 mistakes you'll want to avoid. #gardening #containergardening #pots #vegetables #vegetablegardening #beginners #plantcare

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Kristen Raney

www.shiftingroots.com

How to Start Seeds When Your Home Has no Light or Space

March 1, 2020

The seed catalogues are calling your name, but your home leaves much to be desired to start this years seeds. Maybe you don’t have a south facing window, or the one you do have has no ledge to rest plants on, or your apartment is basically a window-less dungeon. You’d like to get a grow light set up, but let’s be real. You don’t have the space, your kids or pets would get into everything, and you just feel like scrapping the whole idea. Besides, who has $200-$600 for a really nice set-up with shelves and everything?

There is another way.

Do you drink milk from plastic jugs? (Or could you get someone who does to save theirs for you?)

Do you have a small deck or other flat outdoor space that gets a decent amount of light?

Great! You can start seeds this year. . . even if you live in a place as cold as zone 3. I’ll show you how.

Have you ever wondered if you can winter sow flowers and vegetables in zone 3? Yes you can! Start your seeds the easy way--even if you have no light and no space in your small house. #wintersowing #seedstarting #gardening #zone3

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Kristen Raney

www.shiftingroots.com

28 Hardy Fruits You Can Grow in Zone 2 and 3

February 10, 2020

Are you dreaming of a backyard orchard or food forest but think that because you’re in zone 2 or zone 3 you’re restricted to crab apples? Absolutely not! There are 28 hardy perennial fruits you can grow that are perfect for a cold climate and short growing season. I’ve done my best to suggest some better varieties when possible.

When you’re done reading about perennial fruits, you can also grow these 6 annual fruits from seed for even more fruit production.

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