Veggie Chompers

  I have been busy preserving an abundance of fresh vegetables from the garden but the cold fall weather is catching up.   My backyard garden is about dead at this point but it’s not the case for my raised garden beds, as you will see in this video. The garden is full of surprises, like this giant bean that is almost as long as my arm!! WATCH MY YOUTUBE VIDEO THANKS FOR WATCHING Mel :-)

  We have some new baby veggies in the garden!  What ate my carrot tops? And look at this weird turnip!  I live in Canada and this is what I grow in zone 5B.  Watch my GARDEN TOUR on YouTube THANKS FOR WATCHING!

  Join me as I make my first tomato and pepper harvest of the year.   I also made a beautiful flower bouquet for the Veggie Chompers 2021 Garden Photo Rally.   I live in Canada and this is what I grow in zone 5B.   Watch it on YouTube THANKS FOR WATCHING! Mel :-)

  Join me as I give you a quick update of my two very different urban gardens.   They are just about to bless us with an abundance of food. I live in Canada and this is what I grow in zone 5B.   Watch my YouTube Video

Are you ready for something fun?  I hope you are, because I'm counting on you to participate!! The gardening season always goes by so fast, so I thought of something FUN we could do this year to capture cherishable moments in our garden.  If you've ever heard of a photo rally before, this is what I'm talking about!  A photo rally is an event where participants have a list of pictures to take.  They then submit their pictures, before the set deadline, for the other participants to enjoy.  You might be asked, for exemple, to take a picture of a certain thing, or a picture of you in a situation or with something.  The participants submitting the most items will have a chance to win the grand prize. OFFICIAL RULES Who can participate : Everybody How to enter : Join Veggie Chompers 2021 Garden PHOTO RALLY Facebook Group.  Post an album of your pictures before the deadline. Deadline : September 30th 2021, 11:59pm Eastern Daylight Time Winner : Every parti...

  Join me as I give you an update of my two very different urban gardens and harvest my first turnip of the season. I live in Canada and this is what I grow in zone 5B.   Watch my second week GARDEN UPDATE

Join me as I give you are tour of my two very different gardens, located in urban backyards.   I live in Canada and this is what I grow in zone 5B.   This is my first garden tour of 2021. Watch my FIRST Garden Tour

  Days are too short in Spring!  Between the day job, meal prepping and the daily tasks, there's not much time left for everything that needs to be done before the gardening season officially kicks off.  Amending the beds, taking care of the seedlings, dividing and transplanting perennials, pruning and treating fruit trees, the projects...I would litterally need 36h in a day to make it all happen. Anyhow, Spring kept me busy in the garden! MARCH : AMENDING THE SOIL AND BUILDING A NEW RAISED BED As soon as the snow had melted, I started to clean up the backyard.  We amended all of our garden beds with shrimp compost that I got delivered by the yard.  This meant carrying buckets and buckets of compost.  Good cardio/arm workout!!  We also used that precious time between winter and the official gardening season to build a new raised bed.  We still had a bunch of pallet wood from building our raised garden bed last year, so we designed this project kno...

  We are still learning to garden, as 2021 is only our third gardening year.  My gardens have been planted with cold hardy spring crops in the begining of April and more that 500 seedlings are growing in my house.  It's already mid-May, which means it's GO TIME for us.  All of those seedlings (and more seeds) are going in the ground during the next month.   I like to keep our objectives in mind when planning our garden and buying seeds.  When it's time to set those objectives, I always ask myself ''What can I grow enough to be self-sefficient?''  With limited space, I often need to be creative.  This year's objectives are similar to the ones we had set for last year.  We also kept space to experience with new crops. OUR 2021 GARDENING OBJECTIVES 1. Plan 3 distinctive growing seasons (spring, summer, fall) 2. Beans for a year 3. Salsa for a year 4. Pesto for a year  5. Herbs, fresh and dry, for a year 6. Celery for a year 7. Apples a...

  I had a lot of fun filming this little 2 minute capsule.  I think it represents well how gardeners are always so eager to spring!  Enjoy watching! Mel Watch on Youtube

  Come join me for my first seed swap UNBOXING : Watch my YouTube video  to see all the beautiful varieties I got! SPECIAL THANKS to Jill from Whispering Willow Farm on Youtube and Instagram. This was my first seed swap.  If you are curious to see what seeds I sent for this seed swap, you can read my preparation post right here .   -Mel-

  Stroganoff is typically a beef dish with a mushroom and sour cream sauce served with egg noodles.  Except the mushrooms, nothing is really plant-based in the traditional recipe, right?!   Today, I'm sharing with you my own vegan version of a stroganoff, using fresh mushrooms, zesty Lightlife ground and a delicious homemade cashew cream sauce.  Perfect for a weekday, this recipe is quick, easy and REALLY tasty.   Start by bringing a pot of water to boil and cook your pasta according to the instructions on the package.  You can use any pasta you like.  We really like farfalles so this is what I'm using today. While the water is heating up, chop the onion and slice the mushrooms.  I'm using white mushrooms today, but you could use any type of mushroom.  Cremini mushrooms are a good choice for this recipe. Then, put all the ingredients a high speed blender and mix the cashew cream sauce for 1 minute.  The sauce might seems liquid...

I know many of you are thinking about starting a garden this year.  That was me last year!  I learned a lot during my first year gardening, but there are some things that I wish I knew before I started my first garden.  Not that those things would have discouraged me from gardening, but I certainly would have been more prepared. Since the sun exposure isn't the best in our backyard, we opted to grow many vegetables in containers and built raised beds in my mother's backyard.  Of course, we had to fill those raised beds and containers with soil.  A LOT of soil!! I learned that black earth is not nutritious enough for your plants to thrive.  You want the soil in your garden to be rich and nutritious in mineral.  Therefore, you want to fill your garden beds with soil made for gardening.   Filling your garden beds with good quality soil can be expensive.  I suggest checking with your local nurseries to know the prices of soil per yard and th...

  I haven't received my seeds from Whispering Willow Farm seed swap yet, but I did receive my 2021 seed order.   My seed collection is growing and I actually can't believe how many different variety of seeds I have.  I can only dream about the different colorful vegetables that are going to grow in my garden this year.   Since I really value the act of sharing and I also want to meet new people in the gardening community, I was very happy to accept Nikky's invitation to her seed swap.  Nikky's YouTube channel is Our Simple Life, where she shares simple projects related to gardening and homesteading.  -This is an online swap (you send your seeds and you wait for your swaps to arrive by mail) -It was 10$ USD to participate -You have to send 25 packets, they can be same or different varieties -Each packet must contain between 5 and 10 seeds -All seeds must be heirloom varieties -It can be seeds you saved from your garden or seeds you bought -Make sure yo...