Leahsbackyard

05/29/2026

The weather is finally treating us well lately 💛🌅🚜

04/30/2026

HEY YALL 🤠 I've been working really hard to put together a mini-course (webinar style) for those who are asking all the gardening questions this spring!!

Stop stressing about what to plant, when to plant, how to plant where to plant and everything in between! I hope that it helps to ease some overwhelm so you can enjoy your gardening experience 🌸🦆💚

Link to course page :
https://square.link/u/sdN5RYdx

With 14 years of professional horticulture experience, a degree in agriculture and a BA in Environemental Studies, I have been offering gardening/self-sufficiency workshops and seminars in Northeastern Ontario since 2017. I'm thrilled to try this new way of sharing my expertise and experiences with you. The technical learning curve was definitely a challenge for me. I welcome any feedback!! P.S. you're doing more than just buying my course, you're telling me "I'm on the right path"! 🫶💫✨️
[To purchase, head on over to my website and you will receive a link to the course via your e-mail attached to your payment]

04/02/2026

Warm air, patience, sealed skin 👌 Food storage is as important as the harvest itself! 🤠🥔

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18cXHKh2uT/

You just harvested a pile of squash and onions and your instinct is to get them cold. That instinct ruins half of them.

Some vegetables need time in warm air before they go into storage. A curing period lets harvest wounds seal, skins toughen, and flavors develop. Skip it and they rot in weeks. Give them the time and they last through winter.

🌿 What to cure and how long:

- Winter squash and pumpkin — set in a warm spot for about ten days after harvest. The skin hardens and stem scars close up. After curing, a cool dry room keeps them going for months

- Sweet potato — a week to ten days somewhere warm and humid. The starches convert to sugars during this window, which is why fresh-dug sweet potatoes taste starchy and cured ones taste sweet

- Onion and shallot — spread in a single layer with good airflow for two to three weeks. The necks need to close and the outer skins need to go papery. A soft neck in storage means rot spreading through the batch

- Garlic — hang in warm shade for two to four weeks. The outer wrapper dries and the sulfur compounds that preserve it concentrate. Cured garlic in a mesh bag outlasts anything in the fridge

- Potato — different temperature. These want about two weeks around 50-60°F in the dark, not warm like the others. The skin develops a corky layer that seals in moisture for long storage

- Ginger — just a day or two of air drying to thicken the skin before it goes in the fridge. Short cure, big difference

- Dry bean — leave pods on the vine or hang them until the beans rattle inside. Two to three weeks of drying. Store damp beans and mold follows fast

The pattern: warm air, patience, sealed skin. Then cold storage works the way you expected it to.

Most of these keep for months when cured. Days when they're not. 🌱

03/26/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18QTqbNMze/

You leave crops exposed all season and wonder why a single late frost wipes out transplants you spent weeks hardening off.

Each garden cover protects against a different threat. The wrong cover traps heat when you need airflow or blocks light when you need warmth — turning protection into a new problem.

Floating row cover is the best match for lettuce, brassicas, and young transplants. The lightweight fabric lets light and rain through while holding a few degrees of frost protection underneath. It also blocks cabbage moths and flea beetles without any spray.

Bird netting suits blueberries, strawberries, and cherries perfectly. These crops attract birds the moment fruit changes color — netting draped over a frame keeps every berry on the plant. Without it, birds can strip a ripe harvest in a single morning.

Shade cloth belongs over lettuce, spinach, and cilantro in midsummer. These cool-season crops bolt the moment temperatures stay above eighty degrees. A thirty to fifty percent shade cloth extends their harvest window by weeks instead of letting summer end your salad season in June.

Cold frames are reserved for overwintering spinach, carrots, and garlic. These crops survive freezing soil if wind and ice stay off the foliage — a simple glass or polycarbonate lid over a low frame creates a passive greenhouse that keeps hardy crops producing well into December.

🌱 The cover rule that prevents more problems than it solves:

- Ventilate every cover on sunny days above sixty degrees — trapped heat does more damage than the frost you're guarding against
- Anchor edges with soil, sandbags, or clips — wind turns an unsecured cover into a sail that damages plants underneath
- Remove covers on flowering crops when pollinators are active or fruit set drops dramatically

One cover per threat. That's how season extension stops being a gamble 🌿

03/10/2026

Low-till or no-till is best to keep soil integrity! 🤎
ushttps://www.facebook.com/share/1LF4uLR6sR/

🌱 There's a tool that aerates your soil without destroying a single fungal thread, inverting a single layer, or waking a single dormant w**d seed.
It's called a broadfork — and it does everything a rototiller does without any of the damage.
Here's the problem with tilling. Yes, it breaks up compaction. But it also severs mycorrhizal networks that took an entire season to build, inverts soil layers that need years to redevelop, drags buried w**d seeds into the germination zone, and smashes the soil aggregates that give healthy soil its structure. The more you till, the more you need to till. It's a dependency cycle.
A broadfork fractures soil along its natural fault lines — vertical channels that let air, water, and roots through without mixing, flipping, or destroying anything underneath. Fungal networks stay connected. Soil layers stay intact. W**d seeds stay buried and dormant.
A 2019 study found broadforked plots maintained significantly higher earthworm populations, mycorrhizal colonization, and soil aggregate stability than tilled plots after just three seasons — and the difference compounded over time.
One broadfork costs around $120 and lasts 20+ years. A rototiller costs more and degrades your soil biology every single pass. One tool builds soil. The other maintains dependency.

03/06/2026

Great time of year to pot-up your plants!

Your pot style is just as important as watering! Also, keep in mind pot size.. and don't pot-up too big 💚 Plant Social

02/02/2026

Wiarton Willie predicts early spring!!! 🤗🐦🌱🌷🎉

01/30/2026

Here to help your planting itch! Fresh herbs invite joy into every day cooking: just cut what you need from your counter or patio and let the plant grow back again - less waste, more flavour, more joy 😊🌿🍽

Grab yours this weekend!!!
Fresh Herbs for Sale Sunday

Seedy Sudbury runs from 10 to 3 at College Boreal (back of building) on Sunday February 1st! 🌱

$7.50 each = $30/4

01/28/2026

Cute little bio for me! ☺️💚💚 See you on Sunday at College Boreal for the annual Seed Swap!

01/23/2026

HEY SUDBURY! Herbs are back for Seedy Sunday!

Fresh organically grown herbs for sale in 4'' pots. Cut and come-again for your cullinary needs, $7.50 per plant.

Looking forward to kicking off the gardening season with you!
Sun Feb. 1st 2026 at College Boreal

Gardening event offers something for everyone