Gardening Archives | SHIFTING ROOTS

Week 5: Yard Transformation Challenge

May 23, 2018

May Long Weekend (or the unofficial Gardening-Weekend-in-Canada as I like to call it) has come and gone and my garden is in the ground! This week was extremely busy as I hustled to get my garden in, mow and fertilize the lawn, and cut down the overgrown nuisance trees in the yard.

Thanks again to Nat of Simple Family Crazy Life for heading up the challenge. Click here to see the other bloggers progress.

This post contains affiliate links, which means if you purchase anything I earn a small commission at no extra charge to you. You can read more about it in my Privacy Policy. Thanks for supporting Shifting Roots!

While the largest chunk of my yard work is done, there’s still much to do! Our fence-of-shame still needs fixing and I still have that side of the flower beds to weed through. I want to order more mulch and add it around the flower beds so I don’t have to weed so much.

Here’s a little tour I did recently on Facebook:

I do a live video almost every Tuesday at 10am CST, so like and follow my Facebook page for tours, Q & A and quick garden tips.

I’m seriously in love with my new vinyl raised beds in the front yard. They look so good and make me smile every time I see them. You can read more about my experience here.

I also can’t believe that I fit every single flower and vegetable that I wanted to plant into my garden space. If you haven’t tried square foot gardening and you garden in a small space, you really need to give it a try. I’ll be following up later in the year with how all my experiments with this technique turned out.

Get 4 Free Square Foot Gardening Templates

Start your square foot garden the easy way!

You'll get 4 4x4 plans for

Salad Garden
Beginner's Garden
Salsa Garden
Kid's Garden

Plus a short 3 day email course of how to get started with square foot gardening.

Wondering about the upside down tomato cages? I’m starting a new garden space and I laid cardboard down in order to kill the grass. Unfortunately, the tomato cages can’t pierce through that ground. Wish me luck!

Even though my garden is nowhere near perfect, I’m in awe of the transformation over the last three years. We started with a rundown mess of a yard, and are slowly but surely making it our own.

That’s it for this week! Next week I hope to take some glamorous pictures of the yard and share the final results with you.

Have you ever conquered an overgrown mess of a yard? Tell me all about it! (Please, I need to feel like I’m not the only one!!)

Get 4 Free Square Foot Gardening Templates

Start your square foot garden the easy way!

You'll get 4 4x4 plans for

Salad Garden
Beginner's Garden
Salsa Garden
Kid's Garden

Plus a short 3 day email course of how to get started with square foot gardening.

An Honest Review of My Raised Garden Vinyl Beds

May 22, 2018

This post is sponsored by Raised Garden Vinyl Beds. I received free and discounted product in exchange for my honest opinion of their product. This post also contains affiliate links, which means if you purchase something using one of my links, I make a bit of extra coffee money at no extra cost to you. Thanks for supporting Shifting Roots!

Last summer I made my first foray into the world of square foot gardening. I didn’t know exactly what I was doing, but those raised garden beds I kept seeing everywhere on Pinterest intrigued me.

My husband and I knew we’d be making some changes to the yard, but we weren’t sure exactly how much we could do in one summer, so we decided to make our raised beds cheap and cheerful. That way, if we decided to change things we weren’t committed.

We built ours out of thin wood and filled them up with soil. They looked great and did the job beautifully. However, I began having doubts when the nails were starting to come out of one of them in the fall.

We just built the things, and they were already falling apart?

A Raised Garden Bed that’s Built to Last

Once the snow melted it was clear that our sad little wooden beds weren’t going to last much more than one more year. The wood was starting to warp and the nails looked weak in another bed.

To be fair, we could have built them a little better. However, last year when I interviewed my friends Graham and Sarah about their yard, their built-with-better-wood ones were falling apart after 3 years.

That’s why when I saw an ad for Raised Vinyl Garden Beds on Facebook, I had to check it out. The beds looked like they were built to last and the company was local–win-win!!

P.S.–Raised Vinyl Garden Beds ship to Canada and the U.S., so you can get yours even if you don’t live in Saskatoon and area.

Almost finished our front yard project. The two wooden raised beds in the front will be upgraded next year!

Get Your Vinyl Raised Garden Bed Set Up in 30 minutes–No Joke!

I chose two of the 4×4 premium beds. I’ll be investing in a third and replacing the two sad wooden ones in my yard next year.

The beds are fairly easy to put together, and it took me less than 30 minutes. It actually took me longer to look for a cordless drill, give up, and find the screwdriver.

I had a little trouble keeping everything square, but with the second one I screwed in one of the corners first, then assembled everything and it was no problem.

The directions say that you can use a screwdriver, but I highly recommend a cordless drill. I couldn’t find ours and ended up using a battery operated screwdriver. It worked well, but I had to push quite hard to get the screws to go in the vinyl. I know a cordless drill would have required little effort.

Related: 8 Reasons You Should Start Square Foot Gardening

If you’re ordering soil for your beds, I recommend getting a mix of soil, compost, and peat moss. Your landscaping centre will likely call it something like garden bed mix. I found that one bed used up around 1/2 a yard of soil.

Once my beds were set up it was time for the fun part–planting!

Planting is Easy and Fun with a Raised Bed

The beds are 3 1/2 feet by 3 1/2 feet on the inside. I used the seeding square to measure out and plant my garden, so I was left with a six inch strip on two of the edges. This was great, because I got in an extra row of marigolds and lettuce.

Here’s what I planted in one of mine. Feel free to download the image and plant the same in your own! You can also download 4 more planting templates here.

Related: The Best Vegetables for Beginners & How to Get Started Gardening Fast

I am loving gardening in my new vinyl raised beds. I don’t have to bend as much, they look fantastic, and have serious curb appeal. I’ve noticed quite a few people check them out as they’re walking by our front yard, and had a few ask me where I got mine.

They’re really sturdy and kid friendly, so I don’t have to worry about them falling apart if they get sat on, or my son getting splinters in his fingers if he tries to help me.

Low Maintenance? How about NO Maintenance!

Best of all, I will never have to build them again. Because let’s be honest–who really wants to spend a weekend rebuilding your raised bed every 3-5 years, plus staining them every year? You might have the best of intentions now, but there’s something seriously demoralizing about rebuilding something you’ve previously built. Cedar is so expensive these days, that depending on how you build the bed, the cost is very similar to vinyl.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be planting my garden or enjoying time in the sun instead of adding yet another project to my to-do list.

Raised Garden Vinyl Beds come with a lifetime warranty, so they will look good today and 25 years from today. Even cedar can’t do that.

Want to get your own? Let me make the deal a little sweeter. When you send me a copy of your Raised Garden Vinyl Bed receipt, I will give you my beginner gardening course for free–a $50 value!

Pin me for later:

8 Reasons to Start Square Foot Gardening in Your Backyard

May 13, 2018

Have you been scrolling on Pinterest lately, oo-ing and ah-ing over all those beautiful raised beds you see with perfectly spaced plants? It’s called square foot gardening and it’s the perfect solution for those of us with a small space to garden in, or anyone who wants to have a more low-maintenance garden.

This post contains affiliate links, which means that I make a small commission at no extra cost to you if you purchase an item from any one of these links. You can read more about it in my disclosure policy. Thanks for supporting Shifting Roots!

The square foot gardening method was created by an engineer, Mel Bartholomew in the 1980’s. You can learn more about it in this video, or purchase his book, All New Square Foot Gardening, Second Edition: The Revolutionary Way to Grow More In Less Space. I’ve personally read and love it, and it’s what has convinced me that this is the best way to grow my vegetable garden.

Curious? I’ll give you 8 good reasons why you should try it this gardening season.

[Read more…]

10 Vegetable Gardening Essentials

May 8, 2018

Gardening season is here! If you’re planting a vegetable garden this spring, you’ll want to check out these 10 items that make the job a lot easier. These are all items I personally use or are as close as possible to the ones I use myself.

This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you purchase something by clicking a link, I earn a bit of extra coffee money at no extra cost to you. Thanks for supporting Shifting Roots!

[Read more…]

The 36 Best Cut Flowers to Feed Your Floral Arranging Habit All Summer Long

May 4, 2018

If you’ve been reading this blog or following me on Instagram for awhile, you might have noticed that #ihavethisthingwithflowers. I am obsessed. To feed my obsession I need a garden filled with cut flowers that will hold up well in my various arrangements.

Here are my favourite plants to keep me in floral arrangements from June to September.

Disclaimer: I am writing from USDA Hardiness zone 2-3, so all plants listed will grow in this location. The good news is that if you live almost anywhere else, you should be able to grow these flowers. The bad news is your success with these flowers can vary depending on your area’s growing and soil conditions.

Annuals vs. Perennials

A cut flower garden should have a nice mix of annuals and perennials to help ensure that there will be something to cut all season. Annual flowers will not come back again the following year they are planted, but generally provide blooms all season long. Perennials will come back every year once they are planted, but usually have a much shorter bloom time.

Annual flowers are cheaper to purchase, but you have to purchase them every year. Perennial flowers are more expensive to purchase, but you usually only have to purchase them once.

With that out of the way, let’s get on to my favourite cut flowers!

All Season Cut Flowers

Daisy

Daisies are beautiful, simple, and look good on their own or with any colour flower. They can have a spreading habit, so be ready to divide them up and pass them on to a friend or neighbour.

Gypsophelia

More commonly known as Baby’s breath. They make a beautiful filler in any arrangement.

Marigolds

Larger varieties like the Mary Helen variety look better in floral arrangements.

Sedum

Even thought some sedums flower only in one part of the year, or even not at all, I love using them all year round for their interesting shapes and textures.

Spring and Early Summer Cut Flowers

Allium

Daffodil

Hyacinth

These grape hyacinths are the ones most commonly grown in zone 3. I love them in a small teacup arrangement. Warmer zones can grow many more and larger varieties of hyacinths.

Need help planning your backyard flower bed and more? These printables will give you a place to organize your thoughts and plan your projects. Click here for more information.

Iris

Lilac

Lilacs are actually a shrub, and not a perennial. However, I just had to include them, as spring wouldn’t be the same without a large bouquet of them sitting on my kitchen table.

Lily of the Valley

Lily of the Valley is fragrant and beautiful, but it spreads if left unchecked. Worried about planting something you might regret later? Check out my list of 28 perennials you’ll regret planting.

Peony

I am obsessed with peonies! We have 8 bushes of them and I can’t bear to give any of them away. . . although I probably should. Did you know that when you get a new peony plant it won’t bloom for 3 years!?!? Learn what you need to know about taking care of peonies here.

Related: The Ultimate Guide to Growing Peonies, plus fun DIY’s

Tulip

To me, tulips are the ultimate floral expression of spring. I loved our simple yellow and red ones growing up.

Summer Cut Flowers

Asiatic Lilies

Asiatic lilies are so easy to grow and come in an endless variety of colours.

Bee Balm

Makes a gorgeous filler plant!

Blanketflower

Plan the Perfect Garden

Get your free Garden Planner and worksheets and start creating the garden of your dreams.

Blazing Star

Clustered Bellflower

Shopping for a bellflower plant? Make sure to get the clustered variety and not the regular bellflower. The regular kind is more weed than flower and can easily take over your flower bed in a few years.

Related: 28 Perennials You’ll Regret Planting

Coral Bells

Coral bells can tolerate a bit of shade and make a stunning filler.

Dahlia

So many dahlias, so little time. Dahlias come in practically every colour of the rainbow, and the sizes can range from 1 inch to the size of a dinner plate. They’re a must have for the garden, although the bulbs must be dug out every fall and replanted in the spring.

Delphinium

Dianthus

Glads

Glads are a staple of late summer floral arrangements. In colder climates you’ll need to dig the bulbs out every fall and replant in the winter.

Gardening Newbie? Get all the advice you need and learn how to only take on what you can handle in this new beginner gardening course.

Hydrangea

Be careful of what you purchase in zone 2 or zone 3! Often the hydrangeas in the big box store will not be hardy enough for these climates. Check on the tag that the plant is hardy to at least -30 degrees celsius.

Lady’s Mantle

Lupin

Coneflowers

There are many type of coneflowers and all of them are good candidates for your next cut flower arrangement. Check for black eyed susan’s in ditches along the road.