Ground Culture

Mid January and Vanessa is harvesting beets, kale, spinach, and carrots from her edible landscape in Windsor. She has replaced the grass in her urban backyard with in-ground garden beds and staggers her succession plantings so that she has crops maturing in the garden around fall to be harvested all winter until it’s time for the spring crops to go in! No magic or energy intensive season extension required! (Just a bit of planning.) . We will be offering a series of workshops this year to help you plan your garden for year round harvests! What types of workshops would you like to participate in? Please tell us in the comments!

We wanted to share with you some of your responses to yesterday’s question asking where you purchase your garden seeds from. We talked about responsible seed sourcing, and we want to share some seed companies that you told us you love to support! QC: @fermetournesol ON: @kitchen.table.seed.house @hawthorn.farm @matchboxgarden @uharvest @williamdamseeds @cgseedhouse and for our friends BC: @westcoastseeds and @saltspringseeds US: @fruition_seeds and @highmowingorganics...eeds @reneesgardenseeds Feel free to drop more of your favourite seed companies in the comments! See more

Don’t forget THIS super important consideration about seed ordering (keep reading) For many gardeners, seed ordering is our favourite time of year. We’re dreaming up this year’s garden plans, drooling over heirloom crop varieties, and ignoring the fact that we already have 2 shoe boxes overflowing with seeds sitting in our cupboard left over from last season. Let me remind you of something that we tend to let fly out the window when it comes to seed shopping: shop respon...sibly! You put care and consideration into the other items you purchase, so why not apply those same standards to your seed purchases? When shopping around, research (or call up) the seed company and ask them questions surrounding where their seeds come from, growing practices, local climate adaptation, labour ethics, packaging materials, anti-racism, and diversity and inclusivity to name a few. Do you have any favourite seed companies? If so, please share them below!! See more

Alrighty! We are done reminiscing about the projects we worked on on 2020 (for now), and are excited for what’s to come this year for Ground Culture and the community we have been growing together with all of you! Some of you might recall when Vanessa shared with us some photos of her backyard edible landscape; she has carried on her grandparents’ legacy of growing food in the backyard by transforming the grass lawn into a giant edible garden. Winter is no exception. Here she... shares with us what she is currently harvesting in January from her zone 7 garden in Windsor, ON. Exposed to it all are the kale trees which she plucks a leaf or two from now and then, under row cover are spinach plants which will be replaced by a fresh planting in the spring, and stored underground are some tasty carrots which have gotten sweeter since the frosts came and increased sugar production in the roots. Are you still eating from your garden? If so, any season extension tips you’d like to share with us? See more

Another exciting project from 2020 are these twin elevated garden beds we built for a cute backyard with limited space in Windsor, ON. This lovely client was a world class baker (at least in our books) and made sure we left with full bellies every time we came by to work in her gardens! I said this before, and I’ll say it again... there is absolutely nothing wrong with the before photo! Growing food using what you have is a great way to get started. However, after our client was hooked on gardening, she decided to upgrade to these custom elevated cedar planters... what do you think?! Good move?

Part 2 of 2 of this food focused ecological landscape is the backyard! You may recognize this raised bed tucked into the back corner behind the garage; we already showed you the kitchen garden itself as it was a big project on it’s own! We felt like the landscaped portion of this project deserved its own post (or two!) because of how dynamic the front and backyards really are. In the backyard is a mix of orchard fruit trees, a raspberry hedge, the kitchen garden, a rain garde...n for stormwater management, a rain barrel for water collection, as well as some perennial pollinator plants that are going in around the fruit trees come spring. All that remains from the previously under-utilized lawn is a small patch of grass that will be converted to an eco-lawn alternative come spring. We are so grateful to have worked with our amazing clients on this project, and it will forever be one of our absolute favourites!! See more

Can you believe it?! Picking tomatoes and peppers off the vine in November in Essex County?!?!? With the colder temperatures on their way, I decided to pluck every last fruiting veggie from my garden and freeze/can/dehydrate whatever I won’t use fresh. Some of the green tomatoes will be fried up with eggs, some will ripen on the counter, and the rest will be turned into sauce or salsa verde. Hot peppers will be fermented into hot sauce, or dried and ground into chili powde...r. The roots of the plants were left in the ground, and the upper parts chopped and composted. The soil is now covered with shredded leaf mulch to insulate, protect from wind, rain, snow, sun, regulate soil temperature and moisture levels, and suppress eager spring weeds. November is feeling like an exhale to the 2020 gardening season, before the brainstorming, learning, reading, seed ordering, and planning for the 2021 season starts happening in the depths of winter. See more

Thinking about planting garlic to harvest later next year? (Because we can never get enough garlic in the kitchen, right? ) Brandi of Ground Culture in Windsor..., Ontario has our backs! She explains the best practices for planting your cloves now and caring for them through the winter season. If you have more garlic questions or live in Windsor, get in touch with Brandi - we're so happy to call her a garden coach and be a part of her journey https://www.gardenary.com/coaches/14 See more

A step by step garlic growing guide by Ground Culture. Enjoy!

You already know what time it is...garlic planting time! . . We posted an IGTV garlic planting tutorial for you that covers the basics. There is also a step by step growing guide in our stories that you can screenshot and snag for yourself! Garlic is planted in the fall, overwinters underground, then sends out explosive growth in the spring before being ready to harvest in the summer. It’s special because it’s one of the last times you can dig your hands into the soil before the ground freezes! Ask us your garlic planting questions in the comments below!

Introducing the new Ground Culture veggie cheeks filter! Brought to you by extremely uncomfortable closeups of my face. These filters were custom made for us by my talented sister @stephbechard as a surprise gift to me on my 30th birthday! My other sister @michellebechard_tattoos hand painted me the rad vegetable sweater in the 3rd pic. They know me so well. . .YOU can use this adorable filter by clicking on the face icon on our page (in the same section as the options to toggle between IGTV, Reels, posts, etc), selecting the filter, and tapping through the different features! Make sure to tag us when you use the filter so we can see how cute you are with your veggie cheeks! Watch our stories to see a demo of the filters live in action. Have fun! Thank you @stephbechard for sharing your talents with us.

Roots as cover crops: We tend to focus on the covering ability when thinking about cover crops, when in fact, much of the beneficial soil activity happens below the surface. Root veggies till and aerate the soil by mechanically creating air pockets and surface area without actually turning it over like what we do when we till the soil - very disruptive. They also exude sugar which feeds the microorganisms that are an integral part of the soil web of life. In addition to be...ing a super tasty vegetable typically found in Japanese dishes, Daikon is a powerhouse of a cover crop; it’s massive root size softens hard soils by penetrating the compacted earth and opening up channels for water, air, and other roots to inhabit. It’s upper leaf parts mulches the soil and protects it from drying out while suppressing weeds. But it’s real superpower... is it’s ability to absorb nitrogen, store it (and thus prevent the nitrogen from leaching away in the winter), and when left to decompose in place, it will release the nitrogen back into the soil in spring. Plucking one out of the ground and adding it to your salad, kimchi, or miso soup is an added bonus of this ultra multitasking root crop! See more