Dear Gardeners:
Things are returning to normal and we are fully open once again!
We continue to keep an eye on safety recommendations and will update our operations as necessary.
Come by the garden center to get your spring gardening gear ready or visit our shop online and find what you need there to create your perfect garden escape!
Happy Gardening!
The Urban Seedling Team
UPDATE (2022): We are back to normal operations, with a continued emphasis on operating in a responsible manner. (Masking and distancing as needed)
Dear Gardeners:
As an agricultural service, we are permitted to continue helping you to grow food.
Safety is our primary concern. To keep you and our staff safe:
We will do our very best to provide the materials and services you need to get your gardens going.
Keep calm and garden on!
Shawn Manning
This will allow us to enjoy the workshops outdoors in what will hopefully be some early Spring weather! Follow the event page to keep up with new information and take care of yourselves!
It’s getting close to that time of year. We will be doing the rounds of all the gardens, who have requested our closing service, to clean-up and plant some garlic before the winter. If you have not opted for the service this year and would like to be included in our closing schedule, it’s not too late. We are planning to start closing our gardens around the last week of October and the first week of November, so get in touch with us and we’ll be happy to help you put your garden to bed.
We also still have plenty of fish emulsion fertilizer here at the shop if you are closing out your garden yourself and need to give your soil an extra boost.
Whether you have a closing service or not, it’s time to start thinking about harvesting the last of the food. In the next couple of weeks you’ll want to root through all your plants and squirrel away whatever you can find. It’s time to stock up on the last of the deliciousness and start making jams, chutneys, sauces and soups that can last you for months. Don’t let those still-green tomatoes go to waste either, there are plenty of recipes you can find online for green tomato relishes, salsas, and ketchups that you’ve got to try. Kale goes really nicely with parsnips in a thick and cream potage and those peppers can be pretty nicely pickled. T’is the season for creativity in the kitchen!
It is a well-known fact that children love getting their hands dirty! With vegetable gardens in their schools, children have an exceptional opportunity to learn where their food comes from while developing an interest in growing fresh vegetables. It offers a chance for participatory education in the context of outdoor activities!
The Urban Seedling workshops offer participating schools a complete service from planning, construction, planting and maintenance of their garden. Through this program, we aim to fully involve students and teachers in workshops that focus on vegetable gardening. In addition, we offer summer maintenance services to keep your garden healthy!
We can also customize the workshops offered to meet the wants and needs of your establishment, whether by installing indoor growing solutions, offering additional workshops or proposing new workshop ideas (parent-child workshops, workshops for teachers, etc.).
A vegetable garden is a wonderful way to build relationships with the community, between parents and teachers, and between the children themselves.
1. Garden closing and garlic planting – Late October.
2. Biodiversity: Beneficial insects in the ecosystem – Mid November.
3. Composting: Living soils workshop – Mid December.
4. Garden Planning: Kids plan out what to plant in the gardens – Mid February.
5. Seed starting: Kids set up the system and plant seedlings for their gardens – Mid March.
6. Garden planting: Kids plant their seedlings in the gardens outside – Beginning of May
7. Garden planting and Maintenance: Kids plant summer seedlings outside, learn about garden maintenance tasks – Beginning of June.
8. Harvest party: Harvest all of the vegetables in the vegetable garden and make a huge communal salad – Late September.
The order of the workshops can be easily changed depending on when you choose to implement the program in your school.
We have been getting through our planting and plant delivery service for the fall season. While we do our best to make sure no one is left out it can always happen that a garden may slip through the cracks. If you have a fall planting or plant delivery included in you package and we have not yet contacted you to confirm a date, please get in touch with us at info@urbanseeling.com and we will schedule your garden right away.
We don’t want anyone to miss out on this last season of gardening!
For anyone who is wondering what gets put in the garden at this time of year, I have your answer. Just like in the spring, the veggies that really love the cooler weather are mainly the leafy greens. That’s right! You may think salad season is over, but think again. Kale, Swiss-chard, bok-choy, spinach, and all the other leafy greens love this time of year. You can also seed radishes during these cooler days. It’s not over yet folks!
While planting may not be over, you still need to make sure you harvest as much as you can from your fruiting vegetables that are still producing. We are looking at warmer weather next weekend but you want to make sure you don’t forget about your peppers and tomatoes before the frost comes. Harvesting is as important a maintenance job as weeding and watering but so much more rewarding when you get to literally enjoy eating the fruits of your labour.
It’s gotten really hot out there, so while you’re hanging out at the pool or finding other watery ways of keeping cool, don’t forget your hard working plant friends in the garden. They are going to need some extra love with the garden hose at this point of the season.
Can’t be around enough to make sure your garden is hydrated? No problem, you can always use a watering timer to help you out with that.
Have you noticed brown leathery spots appearing on the bottoms of your tomatoes or peppers? This is called blossom end rot and means there is a calcium deficiency in your soil. Sudden extreme heat and growth spurts can cause your plants to redirect nutrients to the leaves, essentially starving the fruit. Heavy rainfall can also wash the calcium away from plant roots. The solution is simply to add fertilizers that are rich in calcium to replenish the nutrient content of your soil and remove all the affected fruits.
With the hot weather and the productive season of your vegetable garden gaining momentum, you may also begin to see pests that think your lovely healthy plants look pretty tasty. Slugs, snails, aphids, leaf-hoppers and other pesky bugs can be controlled by dusting your plants and soil with diatomaceous earth. It is important to do this during a period of dryness to avoid it being washed away and wasted by rainy days. While this is an excellent natural repellent to damaging insects, it can also keep away insects that are beneficial to the garden, so be sure not to over-use it.
This is the time of year that will make or break your garlic bulb’s growth and it will only take about 3 seconds plus some eating time!
Shown above is a photograph of the garlic flower we need to cut! This curly tail coming out of the top of your garlic is the garlic flower, also called a garlic scape, and it is taking all of the energy of the plant in order to go to seed. We don’t want that, we want to redirect that precious energy to make the bulbs underground grow big and beautiful. At 2 curls you will need to break this off! The best part is that these “garlic scapes” are fresh with green garlic flavour and very delicious to eat. Around this time of year you will notice these for sale all over at local farmers markets!
Chop these off, eat them fresh or fried. Enjoy!
Things are getting hot out here, this week especially is reaching humidex values of 40 degrees celsius! This means that both you and your garden need to drink lots of water!
Because it is so hot, your spring greens ( ie. lettuce, tatsoi, mizuna, & radish), all will be finishing up their life cycles. Please refer to the video in the title above to get the best tips about how to harvest those loving greens while they are at their best. What’s great about life’s cycle is that once you remove those spring plants this weekend then your summer veggies (ie. aubergine, tomatoes, peppers) can use that free space and nutrition to start producing your summer goods! If your greens have already started flowering, it is important to cut the flower at the base of the stem and Let’s start making those salads!
To learn how to make space for your summer vegetables watch:
As we head into the next summer growing phase, these plants you have growing are high calorie fruit producing plants! This means that they heavily eat a lot of the good stuff that your soil holds in order to live their best life. In order to get the most potential out of these plants you will need to fertilize once in July when the plants need to boost to grow in size and then once again in August when they start to produce flowers to boost the energy for the fruit production. This is an agricultural essential for getting that healthy and abundant fruit that we want. Here at our Urban Seedling hub, we have stocked up with organic nutrient-rich fertilizers called fish emulsion and algae formula.
Feel free to grab your bikes and come restock when need to! We stock the best for our plant friends.
We have HOPS in the garden center. The hop plant is a vigorous, climbing, herbaceous perennial, usually trained to grow up strings and trellises. They can be used as decorative greenery in your garden, medicinally or as flavoring beer and other beverages as they impart floral, fruity, or citrus flavours and aromas. The two varieties we have in stock at our garden center are the Centennial and Chinook for $20 (tax included) per plant.
We still have tons of plants in the garden center to help you get your garden going for this summer including tomatoes, peppers (hot ones too), aubergines, strawberries and many more. We are will also have a fresh shipment of soil for this weekend so we have all you need to get caught up with the planting season.
If your summer vegetables (peppers, tomatoes, aubergines, etc…) are in your garden already, they will soon need some extra room to grow. Don’t forget to harvest those leafy greens while they are at their best, and so that your summer veggies can start producing. If your greens have already started flowering, it is important to cut the flower at the base of the stem and Let’s start making those salads!
Learn how to make space for your summer vegetables:
The good weather has arrived, night temperatures are getting warmer and warmer, summer has officially begun! It’s time to remove your floating coverand let your plants enjoy it!
It is very important to spend a little time daily or weekly in your garden. The plants are in full growth, which is why it is important to weed your garden, you can do it manually or with a hoe. It is also time to thin your seedlings, for example; your radishes, carrots and beets that you have planted. Every plant needs space and nutrients and any competition prevents them from having access to them properly.
We had a cold and rainy spring, but now that the sun is among us! However, it is important not to forget to water your vegetable garden. To avoid flooding it is very important to touch the soil to check its humidity level before each watering. If it needs water, favour the morning and late evening period, watering in the middle of the day can be lost due to a high evaporation rate and can even create burns on the leaves of plants. You can always opt for automatic irrigation with our irrigation programmer.
For the first time in the history of our garden center, we have received hop plants! In addition, this week marks the official release of summer vegetables. Come visit us in store to see our many varieties and start your summer planting!
For gardeners that planted early, your root vegetables radish, beets and carrots are starting to sprout. Every plant needs enough space to grow and be happy, this means thinning. Thinning means removing the weak looking sprouts and leaving the strongest looking ones. Carrots and radish need 2 inches (5 cm) and beets need 3 inches (7 cm). To help you better thin your root vegetable check out our video and thinning page for a visual aid and tips.
Starting next week temperatures will be above 10 degrees at night, this means that we can start planting fruiting vegetables like tomatoes, peppers and eggplants. Plants will be available for sale in our garden centre starting next week. Fruiting vegetables should be planted one per square foot. Click here For tips on transplanting your fruiting vegetables into the garden
If you have not started your garden yet, don’t worry! Our garden centre is open all weekend 10- 4pm including this holiday Monday from 10-4pm. Come in and consult with our garden centre experts for all your gardening needs. We can help you select all your plant and seeds to get you started gardening.
Coming up for Urban Agriculture Month in the Grand Potager: Come and discover how to grow ethnic and rare plants, the mysteries of hops, urbanbeekeeping and learn how to make a successful garden in a low light situation!
May 22nd – Low-light Gardening: Making it work! with Urban Homestead Montreal – Autosuffisance urbaine Montréal
May 23rd – Culture du houblon urbain with Montréal Houblonnière and Botaphyte
May 26th – Les abeilles et l’apiculture en ville with Rucher Reine Noire
May 29th – La culture des légumes ethniques et rares with Hamidou Horticulture
The temperatures are warming slowly but surely but there is still a potential for frosty nights coming up this week. If you have already planted your leafy greens and root vegetables, don’t worry. You can simply tuck them up under a floating row cover to keep the frost from getting to your plants. The row cover will also protect your garden from weed seeds and animals. Row covers let 85% of the sunlight through it so you can leave it over you plants for a week or so.
Our leafy greens and root vegetable seedlings are ready! You can come find them and lots of other helpful gardening materials and supplies at our garden center. It is also a good time to start thinking of sowing your root vegetable seeds in your garden and transplanting any leafy greens you may have started inside. If you need a little help with this process you can visit our blog for useful tips, come to one of our upcoming workshops with Tereska, or sign up for a garden coaching session with one of our experts.
May is urban agriculture Month at Grand Potager! A variety of activities are available in the greenhouses. Depending on the events, you can discover mushroom growing in the city as well as learn how to create, plant and maintain your first vegetable garden. Take advantage of the expertise of urbanagriculture specialists during workshops and training sessions!