Hi from Saskatchewan, Canada

bev 2/22/2011, 11:22 am

Hi, I'm new here. Great looking forums and I've been doing lots of reading.

My garden zone is 2B and although that presents some challenges I can grow most of what I want here.
This will be my first year SFG and I am very excited about it. I just need about 2 feet of snow to melt and no more to come down so I can start building my beds. But being that it was -20ºC here this morning I don't think that will happen real soon.

I've read the New SFG book and wish I had read the old one when it was first published. I could have saved myself a lot of work all these years.

ander217 2/22/2011, 12:39 pm

Welcome, Bev. Wow, zone 2. I hope you are getting hope from seeing the posts by the southern US gardeners that spring will come again.

What can you grow in your region? Are there any tomato varieties which will set fruit in your area?

Keep us posted as your garden grows, and don't forget to post photos.

Hi from Saskatchewan, Canada 396615

bev 2/22/2011, 12:58 pm

Yes spring is coming. We usually do our direct seeding to the garden in May; our weather is very variable from year to year so I have transplanted tomato plants out as early as Apr 30 (only once and with frost protection) and as late as June 10. Yes it's hard to know when to start them. There are lots of tomato varieties that will grow and produce well but it's often difficult to get much vine-ripened fruit before our first frosts. We pick a lot of green ones and ripen them indoors.

Things that we direct seed are corn, beans, peas, carrots, lettuce, radishes, spinach, beets. Potatoes usually do well here.

Stuff that is safer to start ahead are broccoli, cauliflower, peppers and, of course, tomatoes.

We can grow some varieties of apples, raspberries do well, strawberries sometimes winterkill. I have some tart cherry trees that often produce well. The only things I'd love to grow but can't are peaches.

boffer 2/22/2011, 1:14 pm

ander217 wrote:..Wow, zone 2....

I'm with ander...wow!

In another thread, someone asked, tongue-in-cheek: 'What can they grow in zone 1, lichen?' You're pretty close to there; I think you are the only zone 2 member on the forum. It will be fun to watch your progress.

Welcome to the forum and happy gardening.

BackyardBirdGardner 2/22/2011, 1:45 pm

Agreed on "wow." Your season may be short, but I bet it's intense.

Get in here and note your zone...lol....https://squarefoot.forumotion.com/t5070-zones
I wonder if you have any desire in a hoophouse/coldframe or such to extend your seasons? If so, that's another thing about this place that is priceless. Lots of people have experience with extending their seasons.

**camprn** 2/22/2011, 1:48 pm

Hi Bev

welcome to the forum. I am curious, on average, when is your last spring frost and first frost in autumn?

bev 2/22/2011, 3:10 pm

Our last frost date is said to be May 15 and first is Sept 18 but we often have frost in June and/or August - we cover plants we really want to keep and say "oh well, maybe next year" to those that aren't so important. SFG will get things into a smaller area (and also a more sheltered place) so that will help us protect things from the weather.

May and June are the best growing months (if the weather co-operates), July and August usually are hot, dry, and windy and veggies tend to mature fast and die. So, when choosing seed, the first thing I look at is DTM.

The field crops grown here are mostly canola, wheat, barley, oats, flax & mustardseed. Some are growing soybeans, field peas and a few specialty crops.

bev 2/22/2011, 3:20 pm

BackyardBirdGardner wrote:Agreed on "wow." Your season may be short, but I bet it's intense.

Get in here and note your zone...lol....https://squarefoot.forumotion.com/t5070-zones
I wonder if you have any desire in a hoophouse/coldframe or such to extend your seasons? If so, that's another thing about this place that is priceless. Lots of people have experience with extending their seasons.

With a large traditional garden there was never much spare time to try to extend things so we just took what we got. Switching to SFG I will probably be much more interested in trying to stretch our growing season. However May, June, July, and August are the only months that we really have enough day-length to grow much.

Oh, editing to add: Followed that link but couldn't find anything about zones.

BackyardBirdGardner 2/22/2011, 6:56 pm

LOL....that's because it's a dead link from a retard (pointing finger at self). I guess I messed up somewhere. It's in the subforum "SFG polls." If you can find it, you can click on which zone you're from in there....unless there's a minimum post count for voting on polls here.

Either way, I didn't think about day length up there.

Again, glad to have you here, and sorry about the dead link.

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Hi from Saskatchewan, Canada

Hi from Saskatchewan, Canada

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Growing in zone 2

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