A non-profit publication dedicated to the advancement of horticulture in the Prairies

80TH ANNUAL EDITION

WESTERN CANADA’S ONLY GARDENING ANNUAL

GrowingFood

Copyright © February 2019 The Prairie Garden Committee, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

All rights reserved. The material in this publication is for informational purposes only. The views expressed by contributors are not necessarily those of The Prairie Garden Committee. Reference to commercial products or trade names is made with the under-standing that no discrimination is intended and no endorsement by The Prairie Garden Committee is implied. The reader assumes all risk for the implementation of instructions and recommendations. The contents of this publication may not be reproduced or used in any fashion without the written consent of The Prairie Garden Committee, other than short excerpts as may appear in book reviews and literature citations.

ISBN 978-0-9939559-4-5

Published by The Prairie Garden CommitteeP.O. Box 21043Winnipeg, MB R3R 3R2

Chair: Ian WiseGuest Editor: Tiffany GrenkowEditor: Linda DietrickTreasurer: Lisa Jansen Bookkeeper: Monique GraboskiSecretary: Lisa JansenSales: Tammy JensenMarketing: Rita CampbellWebsite: Richard DenesiukCommittee Members: Darlene Belton, William Dowie, Lynne McCarthy, Tom Nagy,Susanne Olver, Lynsey Sable, Warren Otto, Cathy Shaluk, Andy Tekauz Regional Representatives: Sara Williams (Saskatoon, SK), Melanie Mathieson(Thunder Bay, ON), Jane Reksten (Calgary, AB)

Design: Ninth and May Design Co.

Photo Credits: See page 182.

Printed in Canada: Friesens CorporationForest Stewardship Council certified printerPress – all inks are vegetable based

Price: $17.95 per copySpecial quantity prices available to horticultural societies, garden clubs,commercial outlets, etc. For past editions and general sales information, see page 183

6 From the Editor and Guest Editor

THEME: GROWING FOOD

9 Gratitude Grows in the Garden Tiffany Grenkow

13 Heirloom Tomatoes Dr. Eva Pip

17 Tomato Tips Ed Amman

21 Hooked on Heirlooms Mandy Botincan

25 Miniature Vegetables Diana Dhaliwal

28 Pondering the Modern Potager Lynsey Sable

32 Growing Vegetables in Containers Diane Marchese

35 Low-Maintenance Deck Planters Darlene Belton

36 Stepping Up the Space: Converting to Raised-Bed Gardening Jeannette Adams

41 Pressure-Treated Wood in Raised Beds William Dowie

42 Creative Raised-Bed Gardening on a Budget Kristina Blair

45 Vegetable Gardening in Clay Soil Janet Epp

48 Create a Garden from Scratch in One Afternoon Darlene Belton

49 Growing Edibles in Sandy Soil Wendy MacLean

53 Sandy Soil Specialists Lynsey Sable

55 Urban Permaculture Lynne and Rebekah Vickery

59 Closing the Loop on the Food Cycle Teresa Looy

62 Farming is More than Just Picking Up Chicks Stefan Regnier

66 Back to the Land: Hits and Misses Sharon Whitaker

70 Controlling Root Maggots Melanie Mathieson

72 Integrated Pest Management Sheryl Normandeau

76 Growing Fruit in Northern Gardens: A Review Linda Dietrick

78 Currants and Gooseberries Sara Williams

81 Try Sour Cherries! Melanie Mathieson

84 The Evans Cherry Story Ieuan Evans

87 Fruit Share: Rescuing the Harvest An Interview with Laura Rawluk

90 Gardening for a Cause Lynne McCarthy

94 Schreber Gardens (Schrebergärten) Susanne Olver

CONTENTS96 A Community That Grows Together Tiffany Grenkow and Rod Kueneman

100 Gorillas in the Park: ImagineAbility Garden and Greenhouse Mick Manfield

104 Riel House: Growing Crops in a Historical Setting John Frazer and Dawn Hicks

108 The Three Sisters Christine Hanlon

111 Growing Scarlet Runner Beans as an Ornamental and Food Colin Briggs

114 Artichokes Rita Campbell

117 Perennial Vegetables for the Prairies Tom Nagy

120 Jerusalem Artichoke: The Unsung Sunflower Joshua Pearlman

122 Horseradish: The Forgotten Vegetable Warren Otto

125 Proper Potato Planting Melanie Mathieseon

130 Growing Mushrooms from Hardwood Logs Tom Nagy

134 A Year-Round Vegetable Garden Niki Jabbour

137 Cool Crops on the Prairies Tiffany Grenkow

138 Wild Gardening and the Caretaker Attitude Laura Reeves

141 Finders Keepers: Foraging for Greens Christine Hanlon

144 Lobster Mushrooms Tom Nagy

146 Recipes for Your Fresh Garden Produce Rita Campbell

150 The Latest in Home Canning Getty Stewart

153 50 Years Ago in The Prairie Garden: Gourmet Goodies from Your Garden B. B. Chubey

155 Discovering Wild Fermentation Natalie Lieske

GENERAL

159 Mason Bee Nesting Houses Ian Wise

162 Gardening for Specialist Bees: Purple Prairie Clover Jason Gibbs

164 Urban Beekeeping in the Northern Prairies Ian Wise

168 Abutilon Hybrid ‘Bella’ Susanne Olver

169 Deer-Proofing That Works Darlene Belton

170 Allium: The Ornamental Onion Sandra Venton

173 Index to 2014-2018 Lisa Jansen and Sandra Venton

6 The 2019 Prairie Garden 7

FROM THE EDITOR

ExcEpt for thrEE yEars during World War II, this book has ap-peared annually since 1937, making this our 80th issue. It continues to serve as an inspiring resource for gardeners in the northern prairies and other cold-climate regions. Our focus this year, “Growing Food,” re-flects more than just a trend (which it is!). It reflects a truth: ultimate-ly, our food doesn’t come in plastic wrapping from the store, but from the earth. We chose our topic for its double meaning: sometimes we grow our food, as in gardens, and some-times food just grows, as in the wild. So we also look at foraging, along with a broad range of techniques and plant varieties for gardeners who want to embrace more edibles, no matter what kind of spaces they have to work with. At the back, you will also find our index for the years 2014–2018.

—Linda Dietrick

FROM THE GUEST EDITOR

Many yEars ago, a good friend sparked my love for The Prairie Gar-den when she randomly and quite fittingly gifted me with the 1992 is-sue on The Sustainable Landscape. After hearing how I was looking to step up my gardening game, she knowingly placed it in my hands, confidently stated, “This will be your bible,” and encouraged me to continue adding to my Prairie Gar-den collection.

As I read and learned, I often laughed and found myself savouring articles as though they were com-posed by good friends who had tak-en the time to share their wisdom and secrets so that I might under-stand and enjoy success, as they do. I can remember slowing my pace of reading that first book, so as to not run out of material before I could locate another edition. The informa-tion was precious and not something that I typically had the privilege to indulge in. By showcasing many interesting plants, explaining new techniques, and addressing relevant concerns for northern growers, the book clearly offered reliable content sourced from fellow growers.

Eighty proud years of helpful advice and community stories con-tributed by nearby experts and mo-tivated green thumbs will, I hope, continue to inspire and educate future generations. As stewards of often challenging prairie land-scapes, we gain confidence and be-come stronger as a whole when we

share and learn from each other’s experiences. Every grower is unique and each garden is different, but the common threads that bind us are curiosity and the determination to cultivate more growth in our lives.

It has been roughly fourteen gardening seasons since I first opened that 1992 edition, and today I find myself coveting these person-ally crafted writings more than ever. As my experience deepens, I feel proud and empowered as I harness each drop of wisdom to help build richer and more diverse gardens.

A recent opportunity to join this creative team and share my per-sonal take on gardening has been a blessing that has come full circle. Just as Helena put this inspiring annual in my hands so many years ago, I wish to continue the tradition and set the stage for future growth. Needless to say, I am thrilled to offer inspiration and hope to pass on some of the passion that this publication has stirred in me. My goal as guest editor of this 2019 Growing Food issue is to return the generous fa-vour by fostering and inspiring such growth in others.

Truthfully, I am not sure who I might be or what I might know if I had not found this essential and precious connection to gardens. I en-courage you to soak up the friendly advice that follows and then feel free to experiment. Remember, there are no real mistakes in the garden – only valuable lessons.

—Tiffany Grenkow

“It is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are.”

—WENDELL BERRY

8 The 2019 Prairie Garden 9

It Is saId that gratItudE is the secret to a happy life. Since we can learn to feel gratitude almost anywhere, I would like to share how I think grat-itude can grow in the garden.

Kitchen gardens, especially, can offer gracious rewards in the most delicious and delightfully tactful ways. When I cultivate the things we eat, my family and friends enjoy the most obvious of edible rewards, but my garden also offers poignant lessons from a world we often take for granted. It gives me a deeper connection with the magic of nature. Learning to create healthy eco-systems while connecting with life on such a fundamental level is im-mensely valuable. When I take care of my corner of the earth, it takes care of me. That connection is both gratifying and easy to understand.

Admittedly, I’m the first to swoon over traditionally landscaped properties, so I have struggled with a reluctance to use my property to grow food. Not too long ago, my first (and current) yard was beautiful-ly landscaped with cottage flowers and perennials, which periodically put on a nice show. But I gradually realized that it required a fair in-

vestment of care, and it seemed to lack mystery – as well as interesting things to nibble.

Amusingly accurate is the joke amongst flower gardeners about how the best time to visit the gar-den was two weeks ago or two weeks from now. This isn’t exactly fulfill-ing and makes you wonder about the value of a display garden whose sole purpose is to please the eye. Unfortunately, anything short of perfection is often perceived as fail-ure, which in turn might make the space feel more like a burden than

BY TIFFANY GRENKOW

Tiffany Grenkow is an urban farmer and food activist who helps lead and tend the garden plots and orchards of Winnipeg’s South Osborne Community Commons. Her gardens produce food for her family, sweet potato slips for local growers, and specialty crops for local chefs.

GRATITUDE GROWS IN THE GARDEN

My son monitoring the rain gauge in my first allotment garden

The first gatherings of the garden in May of salads, radishes and herbs

made me feel like a mother about her baby – how could anything so

beautiful be mine. And this emotion of wonder filled me for each vegetable as it was gathered every year. There

is nothing that is comparable to it, as satisfactory or as thrilling, as gathering

the vegetables one has grown.—THE ALICE B. TOKLAS COOK BOOK

10 The 2019 Prairie Garden 11

made ketchup. Summer squash spent hard time on the grill, and torpedo onion rings raised the bar in the snack department. All produce was prized, and vegetables were easily incorporated into each meal. Celebration ended up revolving around whatever was happening in the garden, and this endearing way of life quickly became both comfort-able and inspiring.

At first it was thrilling just to see small portions of my produce play a part in our diet, and then gratitude started to snowball. Soon I began to recognize a cascade of life’s gifts and simple pleasures that I had previously failed to notice. Sun-soaked raspberries, pickled beets, and tart juice squeezed from apples stowed in the freezer became symbols of gratitude that were hard to deny.

Edible gardens are inspiring places that encourage taste buds to explore and expand. Even small pots of herbs or solo tomato plants can provide inspiration and help you enjoy more of what the seasons have to offer. Not only does produce taste better when it is picked at the peak of ripeness, but nutrient values are increased and healthy eating just comes easier. Since we consume whatever we grow, and since we can’t exactly grow cookies, we graze on peas or baby carrots instead. I shudder to think how not growing my own arugula might have meant a lifetime of pushing it away.

It’s easy to be grateful when rain plumps your perfect bell pep-pers, sunshine sweetens melons, or bees and butterflies conspire to help make you dinner. Yet even in

winter, after the plants die back and the heavenly aroma of heirloom pumpkin pies fades away, a greater appreciation of life and its delicate natural balance remains. Aside from providing fresh flavours and nutrition, the food in my garden lets me see that bigger picture.

Gratitude that grows in the food garden can become infectious and possibly even unstoppable, so you may want to warn your neighbours – or help them make a larger garden.

the privilege it really is. Strangely enough, this only crossed my mind after years of tedious maintenance. I finally began to question the value of spending precious energy tending grass when it could be food.

After years of coddling giant delphiniums and striving for short-lived bursts of aesthetic perfection, my attention shifted to a more sus-tainable strategy to employ the land and feed my family. Unless those gorgeous swaying delphiniums were bound for a vase, their effect on my life would be fleeting. Food plants play more committed roles in my garden, and I love them for this. Even long-forgotten rhubarb plants possess powers strong enough to call forth pies, and so they became worthwhile investments. I very much cherish cooking and eating the best quality food, so growing it became far more appealing than

staking and deadheading just for the sake of aesthetics. Flowers are essential for pollinators, and I wouldn’t dream of a garden devoid of blooms, but vegetables are admi-rably keen to multitask and earn their keep, while at the same time offering plenty of visual interest.

It wasn’t until I grew out of my shady yard and ventured into my growing community that I would recognize how far the benefits might reach. Fortunately, a city-owned al-lotment garden put me out in full sun, and new possibilities began to sprout. For the first time, there was ample space for experimentation, which bolstered my confidence and experience. New spaces gave me ex-cuses to step out of my comfort zone and before long, I was motivated to put as much as I could on our table.

The children munched min-iature white cucumbers ripped straight from the vine, and together we steamed dragon’s tongue beans until their stripes faded into but-ter and dill. Peruvian potatoes im-pressed us with their purple chips and spurred us on to make home-

My daughter enjoying a ‘San Marzano’ tomato on the spot

My mother and me pulling carrots in my grandmother’s garden, late 1970’s

Lost a little lawn and gained buttercrunch lettuce

20 The 2019 Prairie Garden 21

prevents the soil from splashing up onto the plant. Avoid using clippings from chemically treated grass.

PruningIf you are growing determinate va-rieties, it is not necessary to prune unless you have diseased branches or leaves. Branches that are touch-ing the ground should be removed along with any diseased ones. Some gardeners remove suckers (the shoots in the leaf axils), while others do not. By removing some suckers you are improving air circu-lation, which will help prevent fun-gal diseases. I prefer to let some of the lower suckers grow so the plant has two or three vines. Allowing the upper suckers to grow makes for a top-heavy plant, which becomes too difficult to tie to a stake for support.

FertilizingFertilize your plants every two weeks. I begin with a 10-52-17 solu-tion until tomatoes form and then switch to a 15-15-30.

Copper sprayEven after all the TLC that you have given your plants, you may still find your lower leaves turning brown and wilting from one of the fungal diseases. Trim and dispose of these diseased leaves in the garbage. At this stage, copper spray will not cure the problem but will slow down the spread of the disease. Ideally you need to begin spraying before you see any sign of disease. I prefer not to use sprays if not necessary.

Favorite varietiesCherry: ‘Super Sweet 100’, ‘Sun Sugar’, ‘Ju-liet’

Early (50–65 days): ‘Early Girl’, ‘Fantastic’

Mid-season (66–78 days):‘Celebrity’ (determinate; VFF2N-TASt), ‘Big Beef’ (indeterminate; VFNT), ‘Park’s Whopper’ (indeter-minate; F1F2VNT), ‘Beefmaster’ (indeterminate; VF), ‘Beefy Boy’ (in-determinate; VFFTSt), ‘Mountain Fresh’ (determinate; VFFN)

Late (80–110 days): ‘Brandywine’ (heirloom; indeter-minate), ‘San Marzano’ (heirloom Roma type; indeterminate)

I hope some of the methods I have shared with you here will help you achieve a great tomato crop!

‘San Marzano’ tomatoes

I guEss you could say the veggie bug caught me early. Call it obsession, addiction, craving … or let’s just say I was hooked. I blame my parents – they both grew everything under the sun. For me, it started with the need to make money. At 13, I or-dered my first packets of vegetable seed from Veribest Seeds, a subsidi-ary of Dominion Seeds at the time. I was nervous: would the neighbours like what I grew? Well, five years later, trekking some 20 miles a day after school to make my deliveries, I was usually sold out.

Fast forward a few years: hubby and I have moved our wee family out

to the country, and oh my, look at all that land! He started holding annu-al garage sales, and one year I of-fered my extra tomato plants there for a dollar each. He wouldn’t admit it, but I was doing better than he was. That’s how the madness began!

I started adding 20–30 more tomatoes each year. Soon I found myself with well over 450 variet-ies, acquired from numerous other growers and gardeners in Canada, the US, and around the world. I stayed true to the heritage or heir-loom varieties, never really keen on the hybrids, because I always had an eye for the unusual types … gi-

BY MANDY BOTINCAN

Mandy Botincan operates Mandy’s Greenhouses on her family’s farm near Tyndall, Manitoba. For 27 years, she maintained a collection of 1500 variet-ies of heritage vegetables that she started from seed and sold as transplants to her customers.

HOOKED ON HEIRLOOMS

Mandy’s garden fills every horizontal and vertical space.

24 The 2019 Prairie Garden 25

with its shiny burgundy and white halves. ‘Bumble Bee’ beans are huge whites with maroon splashes. ‘Aztec Red’ yields some the largest burgundy kidney bean seeds I have seen. ‘Kuma Anna’s Charcoal’ is the heaviest producer for pods, all with a beautiful cream-coloured base suf-fused with purple-pink. The major-ity of heritage varieties are used in dry form, with only a few useful for fresh eating as green or yellow pods.

Peas are easy to grow and range from those with sweet edible thick pods to thinner-pod snow types to the shelling types. Most heritage va-rieties are best used dry for soups, as was the way in years past, when people lacked refrigerators and freezers. We are drawn like bees to their flowers: pure white flowers like those of ‘Mummy White’, bou-quets of salmon and white flowers on ‘Salmon Flowered Crown’, and gorgeous purple and pink flowers

on ‘Purple Sugar Blossom’ with its large, sweet, purple edible pods. And don’t get me going on the many available seed forms of peas!

It has been difficult to narrow down this story to only a selection of the 1500 or so varieties I have had the honour to grow. I have experi-enced white sunflower seeds; yellow raspberries; black bumpy squash; green muskmelon; crisp home-grown parsnips; white-seeded pop-pies, purple broccoli and cauliflower; black-leaved, sword-shaped lettuce; yellow and red chard; multi-co-loured and purple-blue sweet corn; purple, red, yellow, and white car-rots; white, reddish-orange and brown-skinned cucumbers; white-, yellow-, and orange-fleshed beets; and don’t get me going on all those potato varieties….

We know that the plants we eat have become much less diverse over the last century, and many heritage varieties have been lost. But people are doing something about it. Seed Savers Exchange, the non-prof-it seed organization in Iowa, has over 25,000 rare and heirloom veg-etable varieties in its seed bank. In Canada, Seeds of Diversity offers over 2,000 varieties in its mem-ber-to-member exchanges and helps groups across the country organize Seedy Saturdays. This is our heri-tage! It is our right to grow, eat, and preserve all these beautiful variet-ies. Let us cherish them and never let them go.

thErE Is nothIng so lovEly as home-grown produce, fragrant, deli-cious, and nurtured in our glorious prairie summers. We can’t all be farmers, and we don’t all have the space or time to grow a lot of food, but even a pot on a balcony can sup-ply a touch of summer if we grow miniature varieties.

There are three different types of vegetables that can be called min-iature. First, there are the varieties that are truly miniature in both the size of the vegetable and the small-ness of the plant. Second, there are the vegetables that mature young and so can be harvested very small and early. Finally, there are the re-ally small vegetables on big plants, such as heritage cherry tomatoes.

Probably one of the earli-est-yielding and most popular miniature vegetables is the cherry tomato, which has become a super-market staple and favourite snack for all ages. There are two types of these miniature fruits. The first is the type that grows on small plants suitable for pots. Known as patio tomatoes, they include ‘Tiny Tim’, an excellent variety with bright red cherry tomatoes on a 38 cm (15 in.) bush. The other type includes all the wonderful heritage cherry tomatoes,

which come in all sorts of colours, shapes, and flavours. They can be-come huge vining plants, producing non-stop all summer. A very old and prolific one is called ‘Yellow Pear’, which forms a very large plant with tiny, yellow, pear-shaped tomatoes that taste and look gorgeous in sum-mer salads. Other varieties such as ‘Black Plum’, ‘Sweet 100’, and ‘Sungold’ also provide delicious and beautiful cherry tomatoes.

Now we need some greens for our summer dishes. The smallest of these are the micro-greens that are adored by high-end chefs for their decorative charm. These can often be picked (snipped with scissors) af-ter their first true leaf. They can be grown very easily on a windowsill on paper towels or in a small container like one of those clear plastic “clam-shells” from supermarket products.

BY DIANA DHALIWAL

Diana Dhaliwal is co-chair of the Manitoba Master Gardener Associa-tion. She maintains a large potager in her backyard in Winnipeg.

MINIATURE VEGETABLES

Baby vegetables: white beet, carrot, and purple-topped turnip

‘Salmon Flowered Crown’ pea

76 The 2019 Prairie Garden 77

dId you knoW that fruit grown in northern climates is especially good for you? Plants protect themselves from the colder temperatures and higher UV exposure by manufac-turing more antioxidants, the com-pounds that make so-called super-foods extra healthy. That’s one of many fascinating facts in this new guide to growing fruit in hardiness zones 1–4, a region that includes most of Canada, the north-central States, and northern New England. Not long ago, northern gardeners did not have many options when it came to fruit. As recently as the last decade, however, fruit breeders have added hardy new varieties of (among others) apples, pears, plums, grapes, kiwis, raspberries, straw-berries, and shrub fruits like sea buckthorn, haskaps, and sour cher-ries that were previously unknown in our region.

Until this book appeared, the only region-specific guide to these newer options was the 2016 edition of The Prairie Garden featuring Fruit & Berries, guest edited by Bob Bors, the University of Saskatchewan

fruit breeder responsible for intro-ducing the new haskaps and the Ro-mance series of sour cherries. Here he teams up with Sara Williams, the well-known Saskatchewan gar-den writer and founding editor of The Gardener magazine, to produce what now qualifies as the most up-to-date and definitive book you can buy on growing fruit in the north.

They cover the basics, but also much more. It turns out that ‘hardi-ness’ is a complex concept involving many factors, including dormancy. With fruit trees that have been bred to survive cold climates, you have to ensure they go dormant at the right time and do not wake up too soon in the spring. Excessive pam-pering can interfere with the tim-ing. The authors, both experienced teachers, offer clear explanations of this and other tricky issues like self-incompatibility, the characteris-tic of certain species that cannot set fruit from their own pollen, but need genetically compatible plants bloom-ing nearby so that insects can polli-nate them. Not all fruits have this requirement, so information is pro-

REVIEWED BY LINDA DIETRICK

Linda Dietrick is a Master Gardener and the editor of The Prairie Garden. Before her retirement she was a professor of German language and literature at the University of Winnipeg.

GROWING FRUIT IN NORTHERN GARDENS BY SARA WILLIAMS AND BOB BORS (COTEAU BOOKS, 2017)

vided about which ones do and which ones don’t.

The first third of the book offers excellent chap-ters on general growing requirements, pruning, pests (including birds and mammals), and diseases. This is followed by chap-ters on 20 different fruits plus hazelnuts, each with comprehensive informa-tion on how to plant and care for them and detailed descriptions of available hardy varieties. Especial-ly useful is the coverage of the newer fall apples, northern-hardy blueber-ries and lingonberries and how to acidify the soil for them, haskaps (aka honeyberries) and sour cherries from the Uni-versity of Saskatchewan, and recently developed varieties of the ‘superfruit’ sea buckthorn. Al-though unusual fruits like aronia and goji are included, the apricot is not. Sara Williams tells me that this is because it is only marginally hardy here and has not been widely tested by northern researchers.1

Aside from a few typos, the book is beautifully edited, with abun-dant photo illustrations and a sim-ple-to-follow system of sub-headings and bullets. Each chapter begins with a witty quotation, and the text is enlivened by information boxes.

For example, an illustrated box on p. 224 explains why saskatoons have to be processed immediately: they lack abscission zones, so the berries do not detach cleanly when picked. Others tell the stories of early prairie fruit breeders like Ce-cil Patterson, Les Kerr, and Bert Porter. Although it is designed as a reference, this book is easy to read from cover to cover. Gardeners look-ing to invest in fruit-bearing plants will find all the information they need to make good choices and grow a plentiful harvest.

1. Apricots may still be worth trying in zone 3 or 4: see Sheryl Normandeau’s article in the 2012 Prairie Garden, pp. 127–29.