5 Easy Steps To Get Started

By Ava Green

There’s a common myth that you need a lot of space to grow vegetables, but whether you have a few containers, a small sunny corner, or a larger garden bed, there’s lots you can grow! Here in Norfolk County, which is Zone 6 in Southern Ontario, some vegetables can go in the ground as early as the beginning of May, while many others are usually safe to plant around the May 24th weekend, once the risk of frost has passed. Here are five simple steps to get you growing your own food this season if you’re new to vegetable gardening.

Step 1: Decide What You’d Love To Grow

Start with a list of the vegetables you actually want to eat. Coming into Eising Garden Centre with a list in hand makes choosing plants so much easier! When building your list, consider:

• Vegetables you love
• High-value vegetables, the ones that are expensive at the grocery store but easy and economical to grow yourself
• Anything that tastes better when it’s freshly picked, like tomatoes, cucumbers, and fresh herbs

Step 2: Make a Simple Plan

You don’t need an elaborate design; a rough sketch on a scrap of paper is just fine. The goal is simply to get a sense of your space and where things will go before you start digging. We recommend starting a garden notebook or journal to track what you plant each year and how it performs. It will be especially helpful next spring!! A few planning tips to keep in mind:

• Most heat-loving vegetables, such as tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, eggplant and beans, need at least six hours of sun per day
• Cool-weather and shade-tolerant crops like lettuce, chard, kale, radishes, and beets do well with just three to four hours of sun 

• Spacing in a vegetable garden can be much tighter than in other types of gardens. Less empty space means fewer weeds and bigger harvests. Square foot gardening is an excellent method to explore
• Layer your garden beds with plants that are great companions. For example, basil and marigolds planted beside tomatoes are said to improve flavour and repel pests. Carrot and beet seeds tucked in beside and between your lettuce plants (which are a cool-weather crop) are a smart pairing; as your lettuce finishes in the summer heat, your carrots and beets will be sprouting up to take their place. This is referred to as succession planting and optimizes the space in your garden
• Make use of vertical space with poles or trellises for peas, pole beans and cucumbers
• Tuck herbs into any gaps between your vegetables; they’re useful, beautiful, and most pollinators love them

Step 3: Prepare Your Space

Once you’ve chosen a spot with enough light, it’s time to get the soil ready:

• Remove any sod or weeds before planting. If you’d rather not dig, the No Dig gardening method uses a layer of cardboard as the base for the new bed. This suppresses weeds naturally and breaks down into the soil over time
• Add a good-quality compost to your soil by either spreading a layer across the top of the garden bed or scooping some into each plant hole 
• For container gardening, almost any container works, just make sure it’s deep and wide enough for the mature size of your plants. Also, drainage holes are a must! Fill containers with a soilless mix containing compost, peat moss or a peat alternative, and one of the following: sand, vermiculite, or perlite. Avoid using garden soil, triple mix, or topsoil in containers, as they compact easily and will restrict root growth. Learn more about soil mixes, amendments, and fertilizers here

Step 4: Water and Feed Consistently

Consistent watering and feeding are the foundation of a productive vegetable garden:

• Vegetables need regular, reliable watering. Inconsistent moisture leads to stressed plants and poor yields
• Always water the soil, not the leaves. Plant roots take in water, and wet foliage can invite disease. Water deeply so moisture reaches the roots. Use your fingers to check how far down the water has penetrated into the soil
• Containers dry out faster than garden beds and will need more frequent attention
• Morning is the best time to water. If your plants are struggling on a particularly hot afternoon, a second watering is fine. Just be sure to aim at the base of the plant and avoid the foliage, which can scorch in direct sun
• Feed with organic fertilizers throughout the season to keep your plants healthy and productive. Follow the package instructions for the product you choose

Step 5: Plant Flowers for Your Pollinators

A vegetable garden without pollinators is a garden that won’t reach its full potential. Attracting bees, butterflies and other beneficial insects to your garden is one of the best things you can do for your harvest. Some of our favourite pollinator-friendly flowers for the vegetable garden include marigold, calendula, nasturtium, borage, sunflowers and culinary lavender. As a bonus, most of these are edible, so they earn their space twice over.

It’s Time

Starting a vegetable garden is one of the most rewarding things you can do with an outdoor space. There’s a quiet satisfaction in growing something from seed or a seedling and bringing it to your own table. 

Start simple, grow what you love and don’t be afraid to learn as you go. 

The team at Eising Garden Centre is always happy to help you choose the right plants for your space and answer any questions along the way. This could be the season that changes the way you think about your garden!

Resources:

Why Use a Garden Journal?: https://eising.ca/why-use-a-garden-journal/

Square Foot Gardening: https://www.almanac.com/planning-square-foot-garden-grow-more-less-space

Fertilizers & Soil Amendments: https://eising.ca/fertilizers-soil-amendments/

Companion Planting: https://eising.ca/companion-planting-with-herbs/ and https://eising.ca/incorporating-vegetables-into-your-garden/

Optimizing the Gardening Season: https://eising.ca/optimizing-the-gardening-season/

No Dig Gardening Method: https://charlesdowding.co.uk/blogs/no-dig-resources/beginners-guide

Reading Plant Tags: https://eising.ca/full-sun-part-shade-what-do-plant-tags-actually-mean/

Growing Vegetables in Pots: https://eising.ca/planters-are-for-more-than-flowers/

What’s not to love about fresh flowers? They look good, they smell good, and as it turns out, a lot of them taste good too! Adding edible flowers to your food is an easy way to take a simple dish and turn it into a work of art— a guaranteed way to impress friends and family at your next dinner party. While not all flowers are edible, many that grow here in Simcoe are totally safe to eat and are packed with loads of vitamins, so why not add some of these to your garden this summer? Who knows, maybe you already have a few in some of your planters outside!

How to Cook with Edible Flowers

Before you start popping off flower heads and eating them like candy, there are a few things you should keep in mind to ensure the best possible harvest that’s not only delicious, but also safe to eat:

Don’t eat edible flowers that have been sprayed with chemicals. Pesticides and herbicides are full of harsh chemicals that could potentially cause illness, so keep things organic and chemical-free if your flowers are going to end up on your family’s plates.  

Not all flowers are edible, and some are poisonous. It’s definitely not a good idea to eat any flower before checking if it’s safe to consume. Just do a quick Google search before chowing down, and you’re good to go.

Edible flowers taste the best when they look their best. Harvest flowers when they’re at their peak, preferably in the morning so they maintain higher moisture levels, as this is when they taste the best. Plus, the sight of tired, wilted flowers isn’t exactly an appetizing addition to your plate.

Keep them fresh with proper storage. If you want to save your edible flowers for later in the day, you can cut them at the stem and place them in a cup of water until you’re ready to use them. If you’d like to store them for longer, fill a Tupperware container with a moist paper towel, place the flowers inside and refrigerate them for up to one week. 

Try to use them in cold dishes. While some flowers like lavender can be pressed and baked into sugar cookies, generally you’ll find that flowers lose their colour and volume when exposed to heat.

The Best Types of Edible Flowers for Gorgeous Dishes

Here are some of our favourite edible flowers you can grow in Simcoe, and the types of dishes that they taste great in:

Cooking with edible flowers is a delight for the senses— the sight, the scents, and the flavours are incomparable. At your next dinner party, if you present an assortment of beautiful dishes featuring fresh blossoms from your garden, don’t be surprised if your guests whip out their phones and flood Instagram with pictures of your latest creations!

Nasturtiums: The bright blossoms of these common edible flowers have a hint of spice, making them a great ingredient for salads, or even fresh summer pasta tossed in garlic and oil. The buds of nasturtiums, called capers, pack a ton of flavour and are especially prevalent in Italian cooking. The leaves of these edible plants are pretty tasty too, so feel free to pluck off a few and toss them in for a little extra green stuff!

Chives: It’s not just the green parts of the chive that have that delicious garlicky onion flavour— the purple blossoms have it too! Tear up their spiky petals and sprinkle them into all sorts of dishes for a deliciously savoury kick.

Lavender: Often lauded for its calming fragrance and frequent use in aromatherapy, this lovely purple blossom has a pretty potent flavour that pairs beautifully with lemon and can be used in loads of desserts. Press tiny lavender sprigs into cookies and cakes for that extra special touch. You can even take it a step further and boil them into a simple syrup for pouring on top of ice cream or mixing into some fabulous summer cocktails.

Pansies and Violas: These are some of the prettiest edible flowers around, and they’re versatile too! They have a nice mild flavour that complements both savoury and sweet dishes, so try sprinkling them on top of salads, or press them into some vanilla frosted cupcakes.

Dandelions: That’s right, all this time you’ve been begrudgingly plucking out these weeds from your lawn, you could have been tossing them into salads or brewing them into soothing herbal teas! The flower, the stems and leaves, and even the roots are safe to eat. Plus, there’s certainly no shortage of them in Simcoe.

Begonias: Turns out these ever-popular container garden flowers are pretty yummy! Their strong citrus taste adds a lemony zip to both salads and desserts. Wax begonias and tuberous begonias are both edible flowers, but you should take some caution with the latter— tuberous begonias contain oxalic acid, which should be avoided by folks with rheumatism, kidney stones, or gout.

Calendula: These bright orange edible flowers are often used in place of saffron, the most expensive spice in the world. They have a delightful tang that really stands out in rice dishes, so save yourself a little dough and opt for this budget-friendly alternative.

Roses: A rose by any other name still tastes as sweet! These fragrant edible flowers can be used fresh or dry as a garnish for many desserts. Similar to lavender, edible roses make a great base for aromatic simple syrups. For an exotic twist on a classic dessert, mix up some rose syrup and crumbled pistachios into vanilla ice cream— it’s a popular treat in the Middle East!