Are you hoping to add some new vegetable gardening books to your library this year? If you are, I've rounded up a great selection of the best vegetable gardening books for those of us in Canada! These are must-haves if you are looking for inspiration for growing the best vegetable garden, no matter what size of space you are working with!
10 of the Best Vegetable Gardening Books
This book by veteran Canadian garden writer Doug Green is full of information that will educate Canadian gardeners in all aspects of planning, installing, planting, and caring for their new garden. Gardeners will learn how to ensure their garden is eco-friendly and how to save money by storing, canning, or freezing the bounty of the garden. With hundreds of full colour pictures, Guide to Canadian Vegetable Gardening is sure to be the standard for Canadian gardeners for years to come.
When he created the "square foot gardening" method, Mel Bartholomew, a retired engineer and efficiency expert, found the solution to the frustrations of most gardeners. His revolutionary system is simple: it's an ingenious planting method based on using square foot blocks of garden space instead of rows. Gardeners build up, not down, so there's no digging and no tilling after the first year. And the method requires less thinning, less weeding, and less watering.
The first frost used to be the end of the vegetable gardening season — but not anymore! In The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener, Nova Scotia–based gardener and writer Niki Jabbour shares her secrets for growing food during every month of the year. Her season-defying techniques, developed in her own home garden where short summers and low levels of winter sunlight create the ultimate challenge, are doable, affordable, and rewarding for gardeners in any location where frost has traditionally ended the growing season.
Smith’s legendary high-yield gardening method emphasizes wide rows, organic methods, raised beds, and deep soil. Succeed with fussy plants, try new and unusual varieties, and learn how to innovatively extend your growing season. With thorough profiles of hundreds of popular varieties, The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible provides expert information and an inspiring roadmap for gardeners of all skill levels to enjoy abundant homegrown vegetables.
Small-Space Vegetable Gardens explains the basics of growing a bounty of edibles in a minimal amount of space. Andrea Bellamy shares all the knowledge she’s gained from years of gardening small. You’ll learn how to find and assess a space, how to plan and build a garden, and how to sow, grow, and harvest the 60 best edible plants. This hardworking and enthusiastic guide will help you take advantage of the space you have—whether it’s a balcony, a patio, a plot in a community garden, or even a small yard—to create the food garden of your dreams.
Vertical solutions deliver more yield in fewer square feet, especially perfect for the urban gardener. They're less work, too, so you can forget all-day weeding and watering. Some vegetables, such as tomatoes and pole beans, have been grown vertically for a very long time, but those who need to maximize space can grow almost any type of plant vertically—from melons and squash to carrots, peppers, and pears. Vertical Vegetable Gardening is your thorough guide for growing all types of leafy, root, and other vegetables vertically.
Your patio, balcony, rooftop, front stoop, boulevard, windowsill, planter box, or fire escape is a potential fresh food garden waiting to happen. In Grow Great Grub, Gayla Trail, the founder of the leading online gardening community (YouGrowGirl.com), shows you how to grow your own delicious, affordable, organic edibles virtually anywhere. Whether you’re looking to eat on a budget or simply experience the pleasure of picking tonight’s meal from right outside your door, this is the must-have book for small-space gardeners—no backyard required.
Savor your best tomato harvest ever! Craig LeHoullier provides everything a tomato enthusiast needs to know about growing more than 200 varieties of tomatoes, from planting to cultivating and collecting seeds at the end of the season. He also offers a comprehensive guide to various pests and tomato diseases, explaining how best to avoid them. With beautiful photographs and intriguing tomato profiles throughout, Epic Tomatoes celebrates one of the most versatile and delicious crops in your garden.
With Lasagna Gardening for Small Spaces - you can create the garden of your dreams, no matter how limited your growing space is. Pat Lanza's proven lasagna gardening method produces amazing results in pots and small plots. Even in beds just 4 inches wide, you can grow bountiful, beautiful gardens with no digging, no weeding-- no kidding!
Homegrown Pantry picks up where beginning gardening books leave off, with in-depth profiles of the 55 most popular crops — including beans, beets, squash, tomatoes, and much more — to keep your pantry stocked throughout the year. Each vegetable profile highlights how many plants to grow for a year’s worth of eating, and which storage methods work best for specific varieties. Author Barbara Pleasant culls tips from decades of her own gardening experience and from growers across North America to offer planting, care, and harvesting refreshers for every region and each vegetable.
What are the best vegetable gardening books that you can recommend?
Here's a GREAT printable planner from The Confident Mom! It's a printable 2024 weekly household planner! If you are looking for help with getting household tasks completed, check out this planner and support a Mom working from home!
The Confident Mom Weekly Household Planner breaks down household tasks into manageable daily and weekly bite-size pieces, utilizing smaller increments of time to keep the tasks from becoming too large and overwhelming. Most of the items can be easily completed in 3 to 30 minutes, and you can select appropriate items to delegate to family members (after all, even with the household planner, you still can’t be “super mom”).
No stone is left unturned because the household planner has a variety of suggested tasks staggered at appropriate intervals and includes everything from meal planning to items often forgotten such as checking your credit report to school shopping. Taking care of yourself should also be a priority, so there’s even “you” time on the list! You’ll be able to efficiently keep up with the tasks that can often be forgotten and feel prepared each morning with a realistic “to-do” list.
Don’t like one of the suggested tasks already filled out for you? Then simply digitally edit the file to remove or add your own task to create your own completely customized list.
Stain Removal Guide: 7 Common Stains and How to Remove Them
The threat of stains is everywhere. Every time we eat, go outdoors, do a DIY project, or even do office work we encounter things that can ruin our clothing in a flash.
Because money can be tight and no one wants to have to toss away clothing, it's important to know how to approach these stains and effectively treat them.
Take a look below at 7 common stains and how to remove them so you'll be ready to tackle stains in the future and make sure they don’t get the chance to set in!
Use this stain removal guide to learn how to treat common stains:
1. Grass.
Pretreat the stain using an oxygenated cleaner. (I love Baby OxiClean. It seems to work better than the regular OxiClean!) It will help cut through the grass stain immediately. You'll then want to use a color safe bleach to wash the stain away, using the hottest water setting in the process. For grass stains, you may need to treat the stain twice to fully remove it.
2. Blood.
One of the best ways to treat blood stains is to pre-treat it with cold water. Soak the garment in cold water to help release the stain. You can then treat with a color safe bleach to help remove what remains of the stain.
3. Grease.
A tried and true way to treat grease stains is the use a grease fighting soap such as Dawn as a pre-treatment. Fill the sink with warm water and grease fighting dish soap and allow for the garment to soak. When you launder, use hot water and an oxygenating cleaner.
4. Chocolate.
Did you get melted chocolate on your clothing? No problem. For chocolate stains you will use a hot/cold method. First you can harden the chocolate with ice, then scrape off what you can. Soak the garment in cold water, but wash the item in hot water using an oxygenated cleanser.
5. Wine.
Immediately blot the stain with a soft cloth soaked in club soda. You want to then soak the garment in cold water. Pretreat the stain with an oxygenated cleaner and then use a color safe bleach when you launder the item. Bleach based stain sticks can help treat the item a second time if the stain persists.
6. Ink.
Have you ever heard that hair spray can help release ink from your clothing? It’s true! Take basic hair spray and spray it onto the ink stain. It will help release the ink. Blot the ink with a paper towel and launder as usual. If you don’t have hair spray, you can use rubbing alcohol.
7. Gum.
When gum becomes stuck to clothing it can become a gooey and sticky mess quickly. The best way to remove gum from clothing is to hold an ice cube to it. The ice will harden the gum, making it easier to pull away from the clothing. Hold an ice cube for a few minutes to the gum, peel it off, and wash as usual.
The next time you encounter a stain, you'll be prepared when you use this stain removal guide! Keep these tips in mind for removing common stains so when a stain hits, you don’t need to worry about throwing that clothing item into the trash.
Do you have any secrets to share for this stain removal guide? Let us know in the comments below!
I'm a weirdo, but I actually enjoy cleaning. It's a nice way to "take a break" from working or loud kids. Now, this doesn't mean I have a perfectly clean house. Not at all. I did mention I have kids... Regardless, a clean home makes me feel happier when our family can make it happen.
Perhaps you're like me. You enjoy a clean house, but maybe you struggle with knowing how to get it done. Luckily, there’s an easy way to keep your home neat and tidy without cleaning all day long.
I had fun creating a Printable House Cleaning Checklist that I thought you might enjoy! The printable house cleaning checklist includes daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly cleaning suggestions to help you take the guess work out of keeping your home clean.
Looking for even more help especially as life gets busy? Check out this gorgeous HOME CLEANING PLANNER – with room by room checklists, daily + weekly task lists, and seasonal cleaning checklists to make sure it all gets DONE!
If you love to go camping, or even if you have never been camping before, here are 12 camping hacks that are definitely worth a try!
These camping hacks can make your camping experience an easier one, and even help you to be a little more comfortable while you are out enjoying the beautiful outdoors.
Take a look at these 12 camping hacks for every camper and see if they will be helpful on your next camp out!
1. Pack the big plastic baggies.
Take a package of big plastic baggies on your next camping trip to see how helpful they can be. You can mix ingredients in them while cooking, you can use them to keep toilet paper dry, and you can even store wet bathing suits and other damp items in them.
2. Make your own fire starters.
One of the easiest fire starters to make is to use empty toilet paper rolls filled with dryer lint. Then all you need to do is set them on top of some kindling and light them. Your fire will take off in no time. When waiting to use your fire starters just store them in a plastic baggie as mentioned above.
3. Try some lavender.
Lavender oil when dabbed in the skin can repel bugs. You can even burn fresh lavender on your fire to keep bugs at bay. Add a drop or two to your skin lotion for all over protection that smells great.
4. Make tin foil meals.
Place some chopped carrots, potatoes, and raw hamburger on a piece of tin foil. Add a little butter and salt and pepper. Wrap the foil up around the food tightly and grill for 15-20 minutes or until cooked through. When you open it up you will have a ready to eat feast.
5. Get creative with dessert.
Try the same concept above but instead add sweets to the inside of a waffle cone. Try chocolate chips, peanuts, marshmallows, and other sweet treats. Wrap the cone in tin foil and bake on the flames for just a few minutes. When you unwrap it you will have a tasty mess!
6. Try pool inflatables.
Your basic pool inflatables can make sleeping a little more cozy. Kids especially will enjoy sleeping on pool mat as opposed to the hard floor. This is also a more budget friendly option as opposed to buying a blow up mattress.
7. Pre-make French toast at home
Make up a loaf of French toast and place it in freezer bags in the freezer. When you're ready to leave for your camping trip, pop them into your cooler. All you have to do to enjoy a delicious breakfast is heat the French toast on a stove or campfire!
8. Freeze gallon jugs or water bottles and place them in your cooler
They will keep your food cold, and you will have plenty of water to drink for later!
9. Mason jar matchbox
Keep your matches dry and ready to use at a moments notice by creating a simple DIY mason jar matchbox!
10. Store scrambled eggs in a bottle
Try this if you are only making scrambled eggs on your camping trip! Avoid the mess of cracked eggs by prepping the eggs at home and storing the egg mixture in a lidded plastic bottle. Use a permanent marker to label the bottle to show the number of eggs in hash marks.
11. Make face cloth soap holders
How smart is this idea? Make face cloth soap holders for each member of your family to make washing up a breeze! All you need is a bar of soap, a face cloth and basic sewing skills!
12. Don’t forget the microfiber cloths.
Microfiber cloths are awesome for cleaning up picnic tables, drying hair after a swim, and even for washing dishes. They can literally do any job and wear well, even in the rugged outdoors.
Are you ready to give these camping hacks a try? Keep these hacks in mind for your next camping trip and see how much easier they can make things for your entire family.
Do you have any tried & true camping hacks? Please share in the comments!
My daughter tuned 10 (!!!) this year and really wanted a more grown up bedroom. One where she could just hang out on her own or with friends comfortably.
BeforeAfter
It was a project that took so long just to get started, but once we actually did start, it only took about a week to finish.
She knew she wanted to change her pink walls to gray walls. Her favourite colour is purple so I suggested doing her back wall a deep purple of some sort, but she was adamant that all her walls had to be gray.
So I headed to Pinterest to find inspiration. I was trying to find a warm gray that she loved and we finally settled on Classic Gray by Benjamin Moore. Her back wall is actually a darker gray, Revere Pewter by Benjamin Moore.
While I used colours from Benjamin Moore, I always buy any paint for a project from The Home Depot. I like their paint and I find it less expensive than Benjamin Moore paint.
I sort of wish the back wall was darker, but she loves it. Especially with the sprinkle decals that we bought.
Originally, I thought doing that feature wall in a fun peel and stick wallpaper would be a great way to add character to her room. But then I priced it out... Going that route was not in the budget. LOL. So I eventually thought to check out Etsy for wall decals. I found the fun sprinkle decals that she loved in gold. Waaay more budget friendly. (I'll give links and cost below for everything.)
The most expensive part of her room was her new bed. Everything is new there. The frame, mattress and bedding. We felt it was important to give her something that could last her for a very long time. (But I still got the deals!)
As for the other furniture, her dresser is a family antique that we've had forever. Her desk was a present for her birthday from her Oma and Grandpa, as was the nightstand.
I wanted to replace her curtains with some deep purple ones, but apparently she has an attachment to her navy ones. Haha. I'm, okay with that! This is a room made for her and not the design books!
In between the artwork, I am going to hang her ukulele once I get a hook.
Cost Breakdown and Sources:
Paint: $100 for 2 gallons from The Home Depot Paint colours: Benjamin Moore Classic Grey and Revere Pewter Gold Sprinkle Decals: $25 for 279 decals Desk: Ikea desk bought second hand for $50 Desk chair: Free, it's one we had around the house already Nightstand: Made by a family member years ago, but gold knob was added. (It was a gift for my daughter so I'm not sure how much the knob was.) Bed Frame: $303.31 for full size. (Not on sale anymore, but this is a solid bed!) Mattress: $289.99 Duvet Cover Set: $64.99 Purple Pillow Cases: $16.99 Sheets: $24.99 for full size white sheets Mattress Protector: $27.99 Art work: All bought years ago from Homesense so I can't link it unfortunately.
Grand total: $903.26I still need to buy her a lamp and maybe something for over her bed, but that will happen one day.