CANADIAN REGION What are you doing JANUARY - MARCH 2019

**Kelejan** 1/1/2019, 12:12 am

HAPPY NEW YEAR to all our Canadian Gardeners and all our Square Foot Gardeners around the world.
:canada:

This is your Canadian Host Kelejan welcoming you to another year of our favourite way to garden, the SQUARE FOOT GARDENING way, the easiest way for beginners and oldies like me.

I live in British Columbia in the Southern Interior. We have a short season here compared with our friends down South and on this Forum we exchange many things, knowledge, support, and we also have OTHER SUBJECTS but our main focus is to encourage the spread of SQUARE FOOT GARDENING.

At the moment it is cold where I am but in other parts of Canada the weather is not so balmy. So I look forward to our gardening and cannot wait for Spring to be sprung.

**trolleydriver** 1/1/2019, 7:58 am

Happy New Year 2019 Kelejan and all forum members and guests.

Personally I am ooking looking forward to my fifth year of SFG. Today it is cold and snowy here in Ottawa, Canada's capital city. Between now and Spring my focus will be on SFG planning and indoor gardening.

Thanks Kelejan for taking care of us Canucks as our Regional Host on the forum.

**Kelejan** 1/1/2019, 10:23 am

TD, thank you, but I could not do it without you and Sanderson to keep me motivated.
Happy New Year to you and yours, and like me, with new members of our families to meet this coming year and perhaps them to try SFGardening.

**sanderson** 1/2/2019, 2:29 pm

Thank you Kelejan for being such an awesome person! (You too, TD )

**Kelejan** 1/11/2019, 8:27 am

9 Health Benefits of Gardening
Perhaps this is not so surprising when you consider that gardening fulfills several healthy lifestyle criteria, including:

1. Regular sun exposure (which has benefits beyond vitamin D production)

2. Fresh air

3. Fresh, uncontaminated food

4. Exposure to beneficial soil microbes that may support a healthy microbiome

5. Physical activity

6. Social contact and camaraderie

7. Stress relief and general sense of well-being — As reported by BBC News:⁵
"In a recent Dutch study,⁶ researchers asked participants to complete a stressful task, then split them into two groups. One group read indoors and the other gardened outdoors for 30 minutes.
The group that read reported that their mood 'further deteriorated,' while the gardeners not only had lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol afterwards, they also felt 'fully restored' to a good mood … There is no panacea for growing old but, the science suggests, gardening does appear to improve our quality of life as we age."
Indeed, many gardeners report feeling a sense of joyful well-being, and according to research from Johns Hopkins,⁷ having a cheerful temperament can significantly reduce your odds of suffering a heart attack or sudden cardiac death

8. Life purpose — As noted by Dr. Bradley Willcox of the University of Hawaii, who studies centenarians in Okinawa, an area known for having the highest ratio of centenarians in the world (approximately 50 per 100,000 people are over 100 years old), "In Okinawa, they say that anybody who grows old healthfully needs an ikigai, or reason for living. Gardening gives you that something to get up for every day"⁸

9. Life satisfaction — According to a Gardeners World magazine survey,⁹ 80 percent of gardeners report being "happy" and satisfied with their lives, compared to 67 percent of non-gardeners, and the more time spent in the garden, the higher their satisfaction scores; 87 percent of those who tend to their gardens for more than six hours a week report feeling happy, compared to those spending less time in their gardens

**Kelejan** 1/11/2019, 8:29 am

ROLL ON SPRING! I want to be a healthy Centenarian.

Sorry for the cut and paste. Where ever I end up in the coming years, I will endevour to have a Square Foot Garden and share it with my friends on this Forum.

**Scorpio Rising** 1/11/2019, 8:19 pm

Absolutely. Great info, no real surprise for us, but justified in evidence based research. SFG, we rock! However you do it! Get outside. I love you

bluelacedredhead 1/13/2019, 3:06 pm

A little late but still sincere. Happy New Year to All of the Members Here on SFG!

I've been lurking and somehow missed this post. Hope Everyone's Garden plans are coming along splendidly!

**Kelejan** 1/13/2019, 5:17 pm

bluelacedredhead wrote:A little late but still sincere. Happy New Year to All of the Members Here on SFG!

I've been lurking and somehow missed this post. Hope Everyone's Garden plans are coming along splendidly!

And to you as well, bluelacedredhead. Happy SFGing.

**sanderson** 1/16/2019, 4:53 pm

. . . many gardeners report feeling a sense of joyful well-being . . .

KJ, This is from your #7. I love this.

**Kelejan** 1/16/2019, 6:40 pm

sanderson wrote:
. . . many gardeners report feeling a sense of joyful well-being . . .

KJ, This is from your #7. I love this.

Me too, sanderson. Very little beats it.

kygardener 1/22/2019, 1:25 pm

+1 for #7 ! I am stuck in an office about 55 hours a week and have a family. My small SFG (40 SF) is my excuse to get outside and get some sun and fresh air. The kids like to "help" too so I hope this starts them on the gardening path. Thanks to all who share their knowledge here.

**Kelejan** 1/22/2019, 6:15 pm

kygardener wrote:+1 for #7 ! I am stuck in an office about 55 hours a week and have a family. My small SFG (40 SF) is my excuse to get outside and get some sun and fresh air. The kids like to "help" too so I hope this starts them on the gardening path. Thanks to all who share their knowledge here.

kygardener, I also started young with my dad taking me to his allotment and allowing me to plant a potato and supplying that crop to our Sunday Roast Beef Dinner. although I never really took up gardening until a lot later in life, I always remember that time when he took me to the allotment gardens and showed me the magic of plating a potato and the praise I got from my mum that I had provided that portion of our meal. Of course, I watered and watched that potato grow until that wonderful day when I was allowed to dig it up and clean the earth from that pile of poatoes, which I remember was enough for two meals for our family of five.

**Kelejan** 1/22/2019, 6:28 pm

In my part of Canada, the Southern Interior of British Columbia, we are having a fairly
benign winter so far with the temperatures hovering around the zero mark C or 32F.

A bit of snow here and there, but nothing like what is happening in our capital city of Ottawa and regions in the East. One wonders if anything will ever grow again, but it always does, sooner or later.

Yesterday our snow had almost cleared, the sun was shining and it was very pleasant walking. A couple of days before that the ice was still on the road and it was quite dangerous. Just had a phone call from my friend who lives the other side of the Columbia River to say she had slipped on the ice so was not able to take us to the other end of our long and skinny city to our seniors lunch.

I wonder how my garlic is doing under its covering of snow. I was able to go out in the garden to check my compost tumbler to find the slide cover frozen, so I took my hair dryer to melt it and was able to put in quite a lot of compostable material and slide the cover back before it froze again. Any worms inside will be grateful if they have not frozen solid.

**sanderson** 1/26/2019, 3:38 am

Hair dryer! Good thinking.

**Scorpio Rising** 1/27/2019, 5:24 pm

I have 2 buckets of basically coffee grounds and miscellaneous kitchen scraps that need to go out to my pile, but they are frozen solid! Ace hardware had a bag sale today, with 20% off everything you could fit in a paper bag! I got a lot of stuff, including 2 buckets! More room to stage the composting material, we are super cold. No way anything is working out there.

**sanderson** 1/30/2019, 2:43 am

Two more buckets for scraps! Don't you love sales!

**Scorpio Rising** 1/30/2019, 6:52 pm

sanderson wrote:Two more buckets for scraps! Don't you love sales!

I do!

**Kelejan** 2/15/2019, 9:26 pm

54 YEARS OLD TODAY - CANADA'S FLAG

**AtlantaMarie** 2/16/2019, 12:48 pm

Congratulations!

**Kelejan** 2/16/2019, 1:32 pm

AtlantaMarie wrote:Congratulations!

Thank you on behalf of all Canadians. :canada:

**sanderson** 2/20/2019, 4:10 pm

BFF!

**Kelejan** 2/20/2019, 6:32 pm

I had an email from my brother this morning: he had been working in the garden doing some tidying up.

Envy emoticon?

He also says he has a conservatory

.

I think he is going to love me when I visit him. I love you

At the moment my gardening is doing some bean prouting and chopping up stuff for the compost heap that is frozen solid.

**sanderson** 2/22/2019, 5:04 pm

Kelejan wrote: . . . I think he is going to love me when I visit him. . . .

Of course he will! We all love you!

**Kelejan** 2/22/2019, 5:09 pm

sanderson wrote:
Kelejan wrote: . . . I think he is going to love me when I visit him. . . .
Of course he will! We all love you!

I sincerely hope so, sanderson.

If I do decide to return to England to live, I will not forget all of you as I love being a part of this forum; gardeners are such lovely people.
BIG hug

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