Our Garden

This garden did not happen overnight. It has taken three years to get to where we are today, and honestly, it still feels like it's growing into itself every season. But that's the thing about a garden — you put in the work, you learn what grows well in your space, and slowly it starts giving back more than you put in.

Our whole approach is built around one idea: grow things the kids can walk outside and eat. If they're feeling peckish, I want them to be able to go out the back door and come back with something good. That's the goal. Everything else — the freezing, the preserving, the planning — comes from that.

We have a massive strawberry patch, and it is one of the best decisions we ever made. Strawberries are the first thing ready in the season and the kids are out there every single day once they start coming in. What doesn't get eaten fresh goes straight into the freezer for smoothies all winter long.

We have four rows of raspberries — about twelve feet long and two and a half feet wide each — with red, gold, and black varieties. The kids eat a lot of them straight off the cane, which is exactly the point. Whatever they don't finish that day gets frozen. By the end of the season we have bags and bags of raspberries tucked away for winter smoothies, muffins, and anything else we feel like making.

Our tomato trellis runs about eight feet wide and six feet tall, and it is one of my favourite parts of the garden. We love Greek salads, so fresh tomatoes are always disappearing fast. But any tomatoes we don't eat right away go straight into the freezer — whole, no prep needed. Come fall and winter, I pull them out for fresh tomato soup. There is nothing like making tomato soup in January from tomatoes you grew yourself in July.

The cucumbers grow on a trellis alongside the pole beans, and those beans are one of the most useful things in the whole garden. I can pick a handful when I need a quick side for dinner, and I also blanch and freeze big batches for winter meals. My green bean casserole — the one I make every Thanksgiving and Christmas — is always a big hit, and it tastes better knowing those beans came from our own backyard.

Garlic is one of those things I could not imagine cooking without. It goes into almost every savoury meal we make, so growing our own just makes sense. We dedicate a whole bed to it and every year it gives us enough to last through the season.

What I love most is how I preserve it. I have a whole method that takes about a day to do properly, but it is absolutely worth every minute — and I will be sharing the full process in its own post soon. The end result is that I have freshly minced garlic portioned out into perfect meal-sized amounts, ready to grab and go all year long. No more peeling, no more chopping in the middle of cooking dinner. It is one of those things that once you do it, you will never go back.

We grow kale for a few specific reasons and it earns its spot every single time. First and foremost, kale chips — we make them constantly and they disappear just as fast. We also add it to our Mango Tango smoothie, which is a house favourite, and the kale blends right in without anyone complaining. Beyond that it is a great addition to salads, or you can stir fry it up with onions and garlic and it makes a really solid side dish alongside meat or fish. Simple, versatile, and the kids actually eat it — that is a win in this house.

From the end of July all through August, we are all out picking blackberries. We have a ton of them, and it is one of those harvests that requires real dedication to keep up with. But it is so worth it.

I make a sage and blackberry jam that is one of my favourite things I put up all year. We also make a blackberry apple crumble that disappears fast in this house. And then the rest go into the freezer — for smoothies, for sourdough muffins, for whatever we feel like through the winter. I usually use up the last bag sometime in June, just in time to start restocking.

If the vegetables are the backbone of this garden, the flowers are its soul. They are my joy, my excitement, the thing I look forward to every single morning. My absolute favourite thing is walking out and cutting a fresh bouquet for the kitchen table — there is nothing that makes a house feel more like a home.

Sweet peas are one of my all-time favourites. The scent alone is worth every bit of effort. Then there are the sunflowers — oh, the colours. Every shade you can imagine, and they just make you happy to look at them. Snapdragons fill in so much of the colour story too, from soft pinks through to burnt orange and yellow, all the way to deep purple and mauve. I have them scattered through the beds and they never disappoint.

Cosmos pop up throughout the garden, and I have two rows of them running through the tomato bed making use of the empty space between plants — they look beautiful and they earn their spot. And then there are the nasturtiums. I did not plant most of them where they are — they planted themselves, and I let them. They have seeded themselves into every corner and crack they could find, and the result is an abundance of colour that I would never have planned better myself.

The flowers are not an afterthought in this garden. They are the whole point.

We run two chest freezers, one upright freezer, and the freezers in both of our fridges. One chest freezer is dedicated to fruit and vegetables from the garden. The smaller one is for fish. And the upright is for venison and bear. By the end of summer and into early fall they are all fully stocked, and with nine people in this house, it goes. There is something deeply satisfying about opening a full freezer in February knowing you put all of that up yourself.

But the freezers are only part of the story. I also do a lot of canning to stock our pantry through the year. Jams, pickled beets, green beans, okra, and pickles — always a ton of pickles. I make big batches of applesauce and pear sauce too, usually with fruit shared from friends, and it is one of those things the kids go through faster than you would think.

Then there is the dehydrating. A family favourite is dried plums and pear — they disappear fast as a snack. I also do apple and tomatoes, and I make fruit leather for the kids' school lunches. It is one of those things that sounds like a lot of work but once you get into the rhythm of it, it just becomes part of the season.

There's always something new to try. I make a point of adding at least one new thing each season, and this year it was globe artichokes. We have six plants in, and I can't wait to see how they do. They feel a little fancy for a homestead garden, but they're one of our favourite treats.

Next spring I am creating a dedicated asparagus bed — both green and purple varieties. Asparagus is one of those long-game plants that takes a couple of years before you get a real harvest, but once it is established it comes back every year on its own. That kind of permanence appeals to me. Plant it once, tend it well, and it just keeps giving.

That is the thing about a garden — it is never finished. There is always something to learn, something to add, something to look forward to.