Hello from the land up over.

Collin

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I want to say hello. I followed Mark over from his You Tube videos. I am from Canada and am in the flat, windswept prairie land of Saskatchewan. I decided to join as Mark seems like a pretty decent fella and I am envious how the tropics can grow so much fruit. We're a drier climate that can hit -40F in the winter but still get well into the 90s in the summer. Here grass and rhizomes are king. We don't get enough precipitation to grow a lot of trees but can grow berry bushes. I am an avid gardener and look forward to learning from all of you.

Thanks!

Collin
 

Mark

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Hi @Collin and welcome to our forum!

We need more Canadians (and Americans or UK/Europeans for that matter) to join SSC - I get the feeling that people outside of Australia think that because this site is Oz based they shouldn't join up, but I wish they would because we can learn much more about self-sufficiency if we have input from a worldwide membership.

Saskatchewan certainly has a challenging climate for growing fruit and veg! I did a Google and it looks beautiful over there but harsh alright :)

Thanks for joining us :)
 

Collin

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Thanks for the welcome Mark!

We're limited in what we can grow as we're on expansive grey clay but what rain we get does not soak in so the wet spots can actually look lush. I've included a picture of our garden in summer to show the folks that growing is possible. My mother's place as you can see has quite a bit of shade so I started my own (second garden) at the community garden.

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I also planted some grapes, plums, sour cherries to spruce the place up a bit.

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My place is THE go to spot for hares, morning doves, kestrals, crows, and partridges. I have many pics of the wild life gracing the front lawn. It probably has to do with the fact that I won't use chemicals and I make my own compost so stuff tastes normal. Thanks for adding me, I look forward to reading the forums. Collin
 

Collin

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Hello Stevo,

I can't remember who said it but winter to a plant is simply drought conditions. All sap is pulled to the base and roots. Depending on how photo sensitive a plant is it may come out of dormancy early or if triggered by rains. If it does it must have a coping mechanism for dealing with night frosts, like many brassicas, clovers and lupins. Once I knew that you'd be surprised how resilient life can be!

We make up for a short 105 day growing season with long days during the spring. The sun doesn't go down until almost 11pm near the solstice. Believe it or not a short season combined with long days are ideal for growing many vegetables while fruits typically want the opposite of long season shorter daylight hours.

For google mappers, we're 50.4452° N, 104.6189° W Regina, Sk.

And yes Zone 3a is -40F. And when I was a child, we were rated 2b. I remember many times when the hydraulics on cars would rupture master cylinders and slave cylinders for manual transmissions as the hydraulic fluid would not move properly at -45. You learn steel wheels hold air pressure much better than aluminum ones. Cars are continually plugged in to keep the battery charge up during these periods.

My avatar picture of the partridges was taken at 0F and those little birds managed just fine as long as they group together.Very tough little bird. Much respect. They are 2/3 the size of a cornish hen and survive on seeds. Makes you look at the inefficiency of a chook with new eyes. However they take 2-3 times as long to reach their small size compared to a modern chicken which would be double the weight in half the time. So it depends on how you measure things...

We have about 7.5 months of winter which changes to an abrupt 3 weeks of spring. Last frost is May28th and first frost is Sept 10. The quick transition to summer is how we end up with a pile of melt water in a short period of time. Willow and ash grow well here because of that.

My hope is to learn as much about gardening and cover crops as I can because getting one in the ground due to our short season is difficult. Cheers mate!
 
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stevo

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That's amazing. I'm starting to seize up just thinking about it.

I just did a Google street view tour of Regina, ... beautiful place!

Do greenhouses help for extending the growing periods there?
 

Collin

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Thanks. However we tried to double the population in the last ten years and went broke in the process. Now retaining those immigrants is hard in a climate like this one. You have to be born into it to really put up with it.

Yes and no on the green houses.. They will buy an extra 4 weeks at the front of the season and maybe 3 on the tail end. Anymore and you are burning money to keep the thing heated. Plus the mold and moisture issues mean you need to move the base around so you don't use the same ground back to back. Trust me, green houses make a killing with tomatoes, peppers and annual flowers. That is big business here. I would like to try patio containers of peaches. I've done that successfully with canna lilies.
 

Mark

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I also planted some grapes, plums, sour cherries to spruce the place up a bit.
Wow love the pics! It's so nice to see a plum tree with fruit ripening naturally without it having to be fully netted! There's no way I could do that because the fruit fly would sting it to hell and the other animals would eat the rest :)
 

Collin

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I have to net the sour cherries as the robins key in on them before they fully ripen. We do get black birds which attack the plums so we have to harvest the plums before fully ripe. If any cherries fall then the wood peckers come down from the trees...

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At this point the sparrows will sit on the eaves and just watch and wait for an opening. If the sparrows come, the pigeons come which draws in the kestral which sits on the power line overhead. The kestral has taken out pigeons and left the remains on the garage roof. I'm not sure you want those pics but they are there if you want them.

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The point is I'm about 2-3 weeks away from plum blossom which draws in the coolest bird. The Tennassee Warbler which is a fast moving little bird which helps pollinate my plums as the bees haven't woken out of slumber.

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Sorry about being so pic heavy. When stuff gets eaten I want to know the culprit. I am sort of passionate about growing stuff and when things go wrong I want to know the cause. It was observation that helped me identify the warblers as a secondary pollinator for the plums as the blossom time is too early in the season before the warmth comes on. We are right in the middle of a bird migration path that leads up to the boreal forest so we get a lot of 3 day rests from all sorts of birds and then they move on. Well except the crows and the kestrals. They go to war like the Hatfields and McCoys!
 

Ash

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Amazing to think that you can do all that in those conditions. I gather that the summer months are when much of the green life flourishes. Pics are great. They show us down under that all over the world there are different ways to do things and the results are great for the conditions. Thanks for sharing and welcome to the club.
 

ClissAT

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Hi there Collin & welcome.
Yes we love pictures. Big ones are good too!
As the others here have said, it's great to see how other people live & garden in other parts of the world.
So educational.
I admire your strength of being able to go from summer into winter temps in such a short space of time.
Gosh it must be a shock to the system though?
Bit of a pity greenhouses are not as useful as they are elsewhere.
I assume your house is central heated.
Have you tried growing say a tomato bush or vine inside under a UV or Grow light in winter?
There are also many versions of vertical gardens that hang on the wall which could provide you with greens & small fruit & veg if space permitted indoors in winter. Again with the use of grow lights.
The newer versions have meter long plastic pots with drip trays under them that fit onto a steel frame that screws to the wall. There can be 6 or so up the wall.
 

Muraki

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Looks like I will be able to learn a lot from following your posts! Being in Canada with those extreme temperature differences between the seasons would require some serious planning towards a garden. I'm just starting out and this is the first year I will begin growing anything. Here in NC the worst we might get is 0F, but normally it never drops below 10F in the winter months. So I will be following along, and I love the pictures!
 
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