 Good morning and welcome everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today. My name is Kendra Sakamoto, and I'm one of the librarians here at West Vancouver Memorial Library. I would like to acknowledge this morning that I am coming to you from the traditional ancestral and unceded territories of the Squamish, Slewa Youth and Musqueam nations. I am very, very grateful to live in this beautiful place, especially when we talk about gardening and anything related to nature. These nations, the Coast Salish peoples have been the stewards of these lands since time immemorial, and learning sustainable gardening practices is an incredible way to follow in their footsteps and also be stewards of these lands. This morning we will be joined by Laura Marie Newbert, who is an urban permaculture designer, a writer, photographer. She is a gardener extraordinaire. Laura Marie is a regular contributor to the North Shore News, the Modern Farmer Magazine and the Million Gardens Movement, and her North Shore News article is really fantastic, so I encourage everyone to find it whenever you can. It comes out weekly. So welcome, Laura Marie. Hi, thank you. Can you hear me? Yes, you're good. Perfect. Okay, well, should I just share or start sharing my screen? No, take it away. Gidok, wish me luck here. There we go. Share and, oh, hang on, play. There we go. Okay, well, thank you for inviting me. I'm happy to share some ideas. I appreciate being called an expert, but you know, we're all learning and I certainly am and have made so many mistakes, which I'm happy to share with you. So, here we go with the joys and many challenges of cold season gardening. I look at gardening. Well, I look at it through a permaculture lens, so I'd just like to explain what that means. So kind of a complicated word term coined in 1978 by a, an academic environmentalist called Bill mollison. And really what it is, it is a design system for sustainable living and land use that adheres to natural logic that makes sense to me. The longer official explanation is down below and this will be recorded. So if you're interested, you can read all of that. Basically permaculture adheres to three overarching ethics about looking after people looking after the earth and sharing, taking only what you need and sharing freely. And there are 12 permaculture principles, which are based on observation conservation integration and adaptation, and they're listed there. At first glance they may not make a lot of sense. So I have in a couple slides I have kind of condensed them for urban use but urban permaculture which is what I really love which I am practicing and teaching. I see it as a way forward for the masses and primarily because it's beautiful, it's beautiful, and it's productive, but primarily it's beautiful and if we want to encourage people and ourselves to practice something to in a city, it better be beautiful so you don't offend our neighbors. It embraces permaculture ethos and everyone can participate at someone level at some level because it is very artistic and creative. While we're growing food and feeding ourselves we're also growing habitat for for nature for wildlife, and it's based on resilience, which means you can make all kinds of mistakes learn from your mistakes bounce back. Unlike rural permaculture, which has a reputation for being somewhat. I hate to say militant but almost that. My theory is do your best. Do your best, where you live, and you'll be fine. Hence my five kind of all encompassing rules that are very bendy or not strict rules. Don't do what permaculture mimic nature and natural systems. Don't do what doesn't make sense. Try and increase natural habitat whenever you can, and share. That's it. This is our home garden in our front yard and just want to skip ahead a little bit and show you two years ago in this corner at the bottom. That same space, same space, looked like that. Just dead grass, a 75 year old hedge. We did have an old greenhouse here when we moved in 20 years ago and all kinds of boxwood and a giant hedge but pretty much nothing else. And then two years ago during the coven lockdown. My daughter and I started building these raised beds. And then one thing led to another and now we have all kinds of stuff going on we have nine raised beds, the berry patch. Many dwarf fruit trees, Hugo culture gardens, food forest, herb garden, all kinds of things. So hang on a second, we'll go here. So this is what the property looks like. Now this is food. This is natural habitat. This was all grass. And now it is a, it is, it is winter gardening. It's 24, sorry, 12 month gardening, but it's not for us. It is food for us. Natural ecosystems, karaoke ecosystem, a wilderness ecosystem. And this is all about this is up for birds, birds and insects. It's important to have this if you're going to have food gardens here because these insects are very important part of pest management in a food, in a food forest or in, in food gardens. So, while it's important to create natural habitat, it's also really important to have it next to where you're growing food. I'm just going to go back. Actually, no, I'm not going to go here. So this is the only part we really concern ourselves with in the winter. This is where we grow food in the winter we've got three cold frames in blue. We've got nine hooped and fleece beds, small and large, got a solar greenhouse with various low heat when we need it. And more most importantly actually are these little green spaces here and these are covered pots and containers. So everything I'm going to talk about. If you only have pots and containers. All of the theories that that I talked about that relate to the hoop beds and to the cold frames also relate to container gardening. So, it's all scalable, you can, you can apply the principles, grow the same vegetables and fruits in all of the spaces to one extent or another if you just think about the basic things I'm going to talk about. So, hooped beds, or containers are great because they keep out water, they at least slow down rain and hail snow. They're great for taller plants because the hoops are adjustable they can be short they can be tall. You want to use those for slower growing think plants that don't need a lot of attention and you don't need to access them frequently. Cold frames are good for their better, they're more expensive, however, they're greater for lower growing plants. If you need more frequent access, and they're great for perennial things that you can let are called cut and come again like if it's a lettuce you cut or spinach you cut and it's going to regrow. It's better to put that into a cold frame. And then the greenhouse is not a must have if you have one that's awesome but if you don't you can also use a windowsill or the top of your fridge or a, you know, a covered porch area or a balcony with some kind of cover you don't need the greenhouse. It's nice to have these heat synced and or covered planters. This is where most of my gardening happens in the winter, close to the kitchen door which is here. I can see what's going on with the wildlife I can see if something is happening with freezing or blowing rain, etc, etc. So, before we go any further want to whoops, hang on, want to talk a little bit about slow growing growing in the winter. This little Douglas girl is my little buddy, his name is Pesci. We'll see him here and there. Wild life are a big part of my garden, our garden, and I don't actually dislike Pesci or wildlife, any kind of thing even rodents because if we don't have them that means we don't, we're not doing a really great job of organic gardening they're part of the ecosystem. So, first of all, in winter gardening, the number one rule is just to relax and enjoy. I call it the Maria rule, because my mother-in-law always said she loved the winter because it was the time to relax after working like a dog all spring summer and fall, growing vegetables and putting them up and canning and preserving and drawing. So whenever I'm in the garden, either working too hard or working not very hard, I think of her. So, we should be realistic. This is Canada, and we are, you know, climate change is the thing. So we shouldn't be too hard on ourselves and expect to be growing the kind of food through the winter that we grow in the summer. This just doesn't happen. Also when I'm growing and if you're growing, I encourage you to think about food, wildlife, habitat, which is where it all happens underground and above ground. And also your pantry that you're stocking your pantry all through the growing season and the winter is the time to be using those things that you can and you dry. And I'll show you a little later on what that looks like. And it's important too during the winter to practice phenology or phenology, which basically is looking at things that are climate related to see how they activate other things like, for example, migration of birds, what's going on in the weather and around you when the birds start to migrate, what's going on around you, below ground and above ground, things that encourage leaves to drop, leaves to plants to bud, insect hatches, when do the, well, one is while the life coming in and out of hibernation. All of these things are relative to your microclimate, your neighborhood might be one thing, north and might be one thing, west fan, sea shore, mountains all different, your yard is entirely different also. So just because a seed packet says do this at that time when the soil temperatures this, you still have to accommodate your own microclimate and so in that sense, traditional indigenous knowledge is a good way of, if you want to do some research in that area, you'll learn a lot more than maybe by following a seed packet because indigenous teaching and which is what permaculture is based on and science of course is you just you're observing and then you're acting based on your observation. Also in the winter it's particularly important to respect the neighbors when you're putting something out there on your snow white lawn, if it's like a bright orange bucket or big blue tarp, they might not like that. So, I try and respect what the neighbors see over my fence. It's important to when you're clearing your yard and around this time of year maybe next month. There's much on the ground as possible in your vegetable gardens and your food for us and in your perennial beds, because in nature, things die and they just collapse and they make little houses for bees and birds and little mammals and if you decimate and clear cut everything and throw it all away so it looks tidy. Then you're not going to have there won't be any place for these for wildlife to live. That's really important. Also in the winter, when you're gardening, be careful to not overwater when when things don't have cover you have no control over that, but if you're on a patio or balcony or outdoor kitchen. You don't water too much. Normally in the summer I say moist chocolate cake. In the winter I'd say kind of dry chocolate cake, because you don't want to fill up all the pores in the water you don't want it to freeze into a block, kill the biology, you know, on the subject of failure. It's a good thing. I've made so so many mistakes, and I've learned so much, and I'm happy to share those. Most of all during the winter I love to cook. I'd love to lean very heavily on my herb garden, because it's right outside my door, and I really enjoy the bitter greens. They're really good for us we need to be eating those winter greens. And we they're put there so that we eat them because we need the things they give us in the winter when our immune systems are a little bit more compromise. And that whole idea of the, I'm not sure if I'm saying this right the pot of food that the big pot at the back of the wood stove that was burbling all 24 seven. All during the winter that we just kept adding vegetables and bones and broth to. That's a good thing and I try and do that in my own kitchen, as much as I can, and it's all just is just good to add all kinds of complex diversity in your pot is as good as diversity in the garden. And of course spices spices figure prominently in the winter. Okay so what can we grow we can grow all kinds of things we can start things from seed we can over winter, and the kinds of these things all grow in our gardens, and including herbs and aromatic so herbs being herbs, including things like garlic which we plant this month and onions I actually grow onions in cold frames very slowly over the winter and then we have perennial and semi perennial things like cutting salary fennel while derugula kale sprouting broccoli. These things grow all I wouldn't necessarily say they were a winter crop here in bank in west and north and, you know they just kind of keep growing, they plant them in the summer and they keep going you cut and come again a lot of them you cut them. And they just keep growing, you keep you cover them and there's no reason why you won't be able to grow them right through spring sometimes right through the next year and the year after that depending what they are. So summer sown root vegetables like carrots turnips parsnips beets and radishes. They grow through right through the winter I'll be it slowly, and summer starts colrabi and rutabaga salriac and Brussels sprouts they will also grow under cover. And finally, we eat a lot of things we start in July, August in individual pots like here you can see, I've got winter spent spinach growing in a little pot that I'm going to plant in my herb my hair planter outside the kitchen door. And I think winter greens mustards ridiculous and dives arugula walk mixes, the summer kales the small ones like storm kale dwarf Siberian kale. Those things braised beautifully they're a little bit tough. And that's good because the toughness is what keeps them resilient through the cold weather, but also contains all kinds of really good micronutrients. So, you know, steaming them and stewing them and braising those things they end up in our guts and all the the biome from those plants ends up in our gut biome and that's what makes us strong. So you can see here I have this is a covered planter I've got arugula here I've got winter romaine. I've got winter purslane or minors lettuce here these are all things that you can cut and they will just keep coming all winter. And I've interplanted into the straw melt some broad beans that will show up in the in the spring. This planter is a great little thing from a company called Life Space, it's a self watering planter. You can get the water level low in the winter but you've got herbs up top where they get lots of sun. And then we've got some more like some peas growing up these little winter fall peas and beans some winter romaine all kinds of lettuces and down below here I've got some things for hummingbirds and some perennial fall flowers and some beans and all kinds of parsley here because I've got some Iranian friends who love the Persian stews so I've got the parsley growing there. It's not quite enough to make a stew but in a bigger planter you absolutely could plant just gobs of it. And then we've got the beets. There's all colors of beats that I start planting in, I guess July. And I also have started started some about a month ago, and I'll be able to harvest beats all winter. This is Colette, which is a cross between Brussels sprout and kale. It's a gorgeous thing. It's going to grow and is just now starting to produce these buds so I'm covering it in fleece and then I'll be able to harvest all winter. And we have your purple sprouting broccoli and all the winter greens down here. And this is a persimmon fruit, which anybody can grow that in a pot. And those actually don't ripen until Christmas time so that's a fun little surprise. Cover crops, something else. We should be growing and for all kinds of reasons. We can cover crops in pots, we can containers and also raised beds and in-ground beds. A great thing is to plant legumes. So winter peas, fava beans, we can plant those now and they will grow very slowly through the winter and they will grow actually a food crop. Early spring, but more importantly, they're keeping the soil covered so it doesn't erode and keeps carbon in the soil and keeps it from blowing away and washing away. And more importantly, the legumes fix nitrogen. So they're pulling nitrogen out of the air and taking nitrogen out of the soil and containing it in little nodules on the roots and also in the greens. And when that plant dies or it's cut at soil level, that soil stays in this, that nitrogen stays in the soil as a fertilizer. Here my little neighbor, Sophia, that's the kids, my neighborhood kid, neighbor kid's little bed in our yard. She's planting broad beans between the sprouting broccoli and the carrots. And they will grow, we're going to cover this in fleece and they'll grow all through the winter and in the summer they'll be able to come over and pick some beans. So other things you can cover crop with in the winter are things like radishes. You can put radishes in the soil like daikon radishes and winter radishes. And they will loose, they'll go down deep in the soil and they'll aerate it to help break up soil. If you have tough soil or high clay soil or rocky soil, it's a good thing to plant radishes and they'll help with the porosity. Okay, so going back to this little winter garden map, we're going to start here with blue area. These are, oh no sorry, the red area, the hooped beds. Just going to look at fleece and hoops. We talked a little bit about the benefits, the protection from the elements and the wind, they're slow, they can drop depending on the fleece you use. You can extend your season or zone denies, it's called, and you can gain anywhere from two to eight degrees Fahrenheit in that little microclimate under the fleece. Also helps keep out the birds, small mammals, some flying insects, and the heat sink that you're creating under that fleece will kind of slowly trickle the heat out. If you have a sudden drop in temperature, it won't change temperature so quickly under the fleece. Drawbacks however, and I speak from experience, if you use a heavy fleece that doesn't let enough water through and it snows a lot and then it's wet or it melts and it freezes again, you can have a collapse of your cold frame of your hoop beds if you use the wrong kind of hoops. They can freeze closed, which isn't great if you want to go out and harvest something and it's been freezing for two weeks you're kind of stuck. And if you're, you know, you're going to get soaked, or you're going to get covered in snow, sometimes too, which isn't great. And they also limit pollinator access. Here are some examples of use of fleece in our gardens this on the left here was Christmas Day I think it was last year I was out there with my broom sweeping snow off some raised beds. This was October 23rd last year we had an early first frost up we're up the mountain a bit so frost came earlier. We had some winter beets so I covered them just with some sticks close pegs and lightweight fleece. But you can see in the background we still have peas we still fall peas that were very happy but it just comes suddenly here with climate change especially. And top right, we have some very effective very nice PVC and heavy fleece covered beds that worked extraordinarily well. So this was a good idea. Just to use some. We call those little conical trellises that were left in a garden I just draped some fleece over top, and it worked for a while until the snow came and then the points on the fleece went through the fleece. The points on the pyramids or the little trellises went through the fleece and it was a big disaster, all of the plants that run underneath just got crushed. And here we have smaller beds. These are two by eight foot beds. And they have a single wire hoop with a lightweight fleece and that worked quite well and I'll explain why that worked well. It was an accident actually but it worked. We have arugula here and Brussels sprouts on this side with carrots in it. They both did very well under very heavy snow. So, some of these pictures I took just a couple of days ago. And I want to just show you that you don't have to invest hugely in order to put some fleece over small beds or containers. This could just as easily be a two by eight foot bed as it could be a one by three foot container with a couple of small trellises I had used these to grow peas. So what I did is I moved them to the center of the bed, put some tennis balls on top of the points that I didn't shred my fleece again. So I painted the tennis balls and with a lacquer or not a lacquer a shiny a glossy spray paint. And what that did was it roughened up the surface so it really grips onto the fleece nicely, and it should keep it from shifting. And then I've got these little Home Depot clips on the corners now. I think before you could see I was, I had them in the middle. But it's kind of a lot if you need something from the side you have to undo this whole deal fold it all back. It's a lot of work and you can get so. So now I'm doing corners. And so I can take the two unclip these two guys fold this back gain access from the side or just gain access from the end. It works a lot better. And this is the kids garden bed that I showed you before so you can see I just moved those trellises into the middle, put tennis balls on them. And I'll have this sprouting broccoli, the carrots and the broad beans down the middle are all going to do really well over most of the winter unless we get like a catastrophic snow. I'll be able to go out there and just shake the fleece and shake off the snow. And then you can see inside. This could just as easily be a container it's a small raised bed that could be a container this Brussels sprouts just getting going early in the winter. You can see them up top here I have a roll of carrots down, which we were harvesting in January just tiny ones but they're you know how great is that to be able to harvest fresh carrots in January. You can see that it froze it did that many, many, many times during the winter it would freeze and thought just like the beats shown here. These beats were under this bed. You can see they're frozen and they look dead and willty. But if you leave them alone, they will recover nicely multiple times their cells collapse and then expand again with the heat. It's beautiful. This is a Missouna, I think it is mustard, and this is a gorgeous radicchio a Pella Pella Rosa I think it was started out green and over time turn red. And you know it's just beautiful. That's a young one that must be maybe January but come March it'll be bright red and gorgeous and it doesn't matter how many times it freezes. Don't pick it. If you want to use this for cook for salad. You have to wait for it to fog and pick it. Pick it when it's frozen it'll just turn to mush. Okay, so what not to do. I invested in these really nice looking double hoops with these fancy clamps that went down about three inches into the soil. And they're supposed to supposedly keep the snow off. It cost me a fortune. I bought them for three dads I thought I'd have them for a lifetime. But they didn't anchor deeply enough. And this is what happened. The snow froze, and it was too heavy. I think it snow heavy snow weighs about 21 pounds a square foot, and they just totally collapsed, and they fell over you can see the anchors didn't hold. So the best thing to do is to use rebar and PVC hoops that have a top rail and I'm going to show you how to do that it's very inexpensive. Also, something you shouldn't do is not measure for the fleece this picture on the bottom you can see, there's a nice little one inch gap. That all kinds of critters would jump into and the wind would catch and the thing would fly off and not good. You need this apron. This at least, you know, six inches of apron fabric apron to keep the critters out and just to keep the fleece on this. This bed here is one of the two by eights and this could be a container also it was just a piece of wire hoop here, and a very lightweight fleece but it didn't collapse, and it didn't collapse. I'll show you why you can see it here on the bottom right it didn't collapse because there was a piece of rope. It was actually just garden string that I had tied around the whole bed because I had potatoes in there earlier. And that the wire the string kept the potatoes from the greens from falling over, but a happy accident also was that it kept the hoops from collapsing under the snow. So, that's a good tip, if you're going to be doing this in a pot or a planter is just secure it with string. So this bad these bad this is what I found works the best. It is inexpensive one inch or half inch PVC pipe use for plumbing, and two foot lengths of rebar, which is a coded rebar you can get it all at Home Depot rona rona anywhere home hardware. You sink the rebar in about a foot, leave a foot sticking out, you bend you put the rebar over top and you bend it around that's a 10 foot length in a four foot but four foot bed that works really nicely because you tons of height for your tall vegetables. You can, I don't want to go into where everything is available but I've detailed it and really detailed description of where to get everything the skew numbers, not the cost, but exactly how to put this together. This little ridge along the top that's what'll keep the whole thing from collapsing under the snow, and he just put you drill a hole and holes at the end and you put a little nail through there. And it's, it's great. This, like, I can't imagine any amount of snow collapsing this. These are Lee Valley, this whole kit can come from Lee Valley, you can look it up with you because I know they're going to record this. There's a bunch of different weights of fleece. If you go on to the Johnny seeds website, you can get something called agribon. You don't have to get it from Johnny's but it has a really good chart shows you the different degrees of light that get let through you can have only 30% and a heavy fleece. You can have 85% light getting through on a lightweight fleece button the lightweight fleece you only gain two degrees Fahrenheit and a heavy fleece you can get up to 10 degrees. So, you know, choose accordingly. And here again, there's where you get everything is a different kinds of fleece. This fleece is a little bit dirty you can see that's the third season. This is this season just last week I took this picture. It gets a little bit dirty but you can wash it easily it doesn't matter. This is the second season dirty this is brand new. And then of course this is the heavy agribon, and it's not that expensive. These clamps. They've got nice little soft ends on them and different sizes you can get a whole package of them from Home Depot. Okay, here we have cold frames now. These are wonderful but they can be expensive if you're going to do what I did here and put them on four by eight beds. But you don't have to you can you can buy tiny cold frames online for small two by two three by two four by four all kinds of things. I'll just make them sorry, which is what we did I should go back there for a second. That's my daughter there I think this was in March, where she's choosing or picking some winter greens, and some kales you can see they're kind of bent up here, because they were growing. They were getting too big for the cold frame. It puts these together helps me put these together the panels. Otherwise it's just a raised bad but at this time of year we we put them together, mostly he, and we just put them in storage during the winter but you can see I have taken flats of winter greens grown from seed I grow them myself in the greenhouse but you can grow them anywhere you don't need a greenhouse and just grow them somewhere it's sunny and protected from the elements. And then, you know I've just cut whatever was in this bed down to the ground didn't pull any roots out leave the roots in, and then plant. And I've got the soil temperature here just to show you that it's like 6570 degrees in the soil, whereas in the spring when we're planting, it could be 50 degrees or 55 degrees so that's quite a difference. So if you get things in the soil at this stage they will. They'll be nice and they'll grow quickly. See we have the picture of the ridiculous you earlier it's turned nice and read by the spring. Here's some perennial fennel. I just left it in the ground. I just put it back here, and you know that that's been in the ground since May. And there is no I didn't need it I just kept it going. I think I harvested it, I don't know maybe January it was still fine. Great thing about cold frames, if you don't get things into the ground you can just put the pot in there and it'll it'll keep it from freezing is my lemon verbina that's a perennial herb kind of little shrub. I just, you know, I just cut it back I don't ever pull it out goes bear in the summer and closed in the winter and it just keeps on going. These greens here these are, I think this is Italian end dive, and it's in its second or third year just keeps going and I don't see any reason to. I mean I get beautiful tender greens from it I just keep cutting it and it keeps coming back. And as long as you keep cutting it it'll keep. Unlike what a lot of people tell you. My experience has been that it just keeps giving me beautiful tender greens. This bed here, why am I showing you this oh it's all the same bed just different ears. See I grow peppers in these beds and in these pots in the summer because they really get really nice and warm and not as wet. And I just leave them in there. There's no reason to take them out and I plant around them in the in the winter. Here we have those beds again in March my daughter's to picking some beautiful, beautiful winter greens and making some lovely dishes like this, which brings me back to the winter pantry. You know, the things we, we, we preserve during the summer, like sour orange juice, drying sour oranges, we can use when we're making, we're harvesting our cellariac and our carrots. We can make this beautiful cellariac and carrot salad in any time. Because we've, we're using items from our summer pantry that these carrots. These carrots here that are shown with the cellariac I took them out of a winter bed that had been covered in fleece, but also out of the ground, I have planted some carrots in the gutter next to the berry bushes. And in January they were this big and they were fine. So experiment and don't worry about seed packet instructions. This is another beautiful salad that I think was put together in March, when the, when the sprouting broccoli and the kale start sending out shoots and wanting to go to seed when the weather starts warming up. The fruits are absolutely delicious. And you can put those together with some seeds and some nuts, and, and create a really beautiful nutrient dense energy salad. There's some flowers in there I mean it's so gorgeous that's like a 30 $40 salad in a, in a vegan restaurant. I make salted cod cakes and salted trout cakes. You can fancy that up. Very easily with items from your pantry. This is the garden that same cold frame that I showed you earlier with the salary I can add that is that same garden in March when the cold frames come out come off. Things are just going mad you can, you can pick all of these beautiful greens and make this salad. You can do that in March, February, right through the winter. You can make some beautiful warm bowls with your root vegetables, carrots, your beets, root of Vega, Kohlrabi, celery, parsnips, mix those up with the baby greens, all that you can grow in pots on your patio, even if you have a, you don't have to have a garden patio if you get some amount of light or you can advantage some white wall or glass even for reflection you can grow small root vegetables and use them throughout the winter and mix them with pantry items like preserved lemon and almond and roast garlic and fried capers and beautiful peppers and exotic spices that you can get for very, very little money on the North Shore you go to Persia foods. It's like my very favorite place to go for nuts and seeds and just gorgeous everything. All kinds of lovely pickles you can add to your greens. You can add a chicken breast or a crab cake and really make things very elegant. I care I think this is halibut on braised rapini with some chipped garlic and slivered nuts and here another braised soup I think that's a mushroom broth. So look at this is when you're when you're thinning in this in the winter the late winter garden when you're just starting and you're thinning your, your radishes and your carrots you pick you take that whole little vegetable little baby vegetable and you put it in a broth with your baby carrots and that is about as nutritious as nutritious as it gets. And a simple meal anytime just raise some greens or whatever left leftover white wine you have any of a gorgeous vegetable. Here we have purple sprouting broccoli, we're making some lovely and dive. We call that stuff Pesto, any kind of green you can use Pesto for we've just confeed some garlic and added whatever kind of nuts you have in the cupboard and you make a beautiful Pesto. Here we have the spring greens again wilted spinach, you know, fry up some garlic easy peasy just all those beautiful flavors together. So this is another these gardens that are undercover here, these are heat sink gardens so if you're in an apartment or a small house, the chances are, you're going to have an a situation whether it's in a way, a window well or a doorway, where you can advantage heat and reflected light. So here in the summer in the summer this space, we're growing tomatoes you can see right here it's the undercover of a, of a kitchen garden roof. It's in the corner of the house there are some vents from the kitchen and bathrooms that come out in this general area, keep it quite warm and free from snow and ice and rain. I'm guessing 10 degree difference. So I can advantage that in the winter to grow my winter vegetables and I can come out the kitchen door I don't get wet. You can just have a pot or two, like this is a potted blueberry into which I've put some evergreen already called perennial arugula wild arugula. You can do that anywhere, you could put it in a shoebox outside the kitchen door, as long as it's a little bit sheltered, and most you can grow all kinds of things. I clip fleece onto the change that I grow the, the trellis change I use for tomatoes very cheap you could use a shower curtain you could use an old curtain. You can use whatever you have. This garden this is my little herb garden which I put under I rolled just underneath the cover here a little bit, so that it doesn't get snow and rain on it and that's where I go outside the kitchen door and get my herbs in the, in the winter. But this little pole that has the lantern hanging on it. What I do with that is I hang old curtains, just a pair of old cheap dirty shares, and I wrap it, the whole thing, and that keeps from it just gives me a little extra, a little extra time to grow spinach earlier. I plant spinach in here and all kinds of different things, a couple of peas, and yeah that the curtains keep it, the spinach going all winter, which is really great. The various trellises I break them down and I've used this trellis here in this pot just to demonstrate how easily how easy it is to cover anything with whatever you have, just to get to gain up to eight 10 degrees. So that you can keep your your vegetables growing so we've got a collection of different kinds of trellises, you can just be imaginative you can put this part of this part of that part or any grouping of them. This is a great little thing. It's a self watering garden bed, great for apartments you can grow just about anything using the same principles I've discussed with you but you do have to be careful that it doesn't stay too wet. You don't want it to get moldy, and you don't want it to freeze. So just keep it about half full is what I'm what I found in and make sure that the air pockets stay in the soil that's very important during the winter, because that's how the biology in the soil moves nutrients and oxygen and micro microbiology moves through the soil, and that's how it stays alive. I just use those collapsed pieces, these, these things that bent when I had them in the, the not so great solution for the big beds, I just broke them in half and I use them in these small beds and it works great actually. Really, really great and I just have, you know, it's not fancy but works. I have some chains, I velcroed a strip of wood here and hung some little chains with some fall peas works great. Smaller containers, these work really well in the winter I did some of these for a mother-in-law. This is just mustards that I started in I think it was this these were started in this particular year, September 20, which is late I'd start them in August, but if you plant them quite deeply in a container to give it a little bit of wind from wind in the beginning, you know, you can cut this all winter long and just keeps coming right back. We've got different mustards, all kinds of different things growing here, sprouting broccoli, storm kale. You have enough here to keep it going right through the winter. Also in pots, you've got herbs, if cutting celery, you this celery just keeps on going all winter you cut it from the outside as you need it. It's great to grow in pots. This is some salvia, some little next age, mosh, which costs a fortune to buy. You can grow that grows very slowly, beautifully in pots over the winter. Lemon balm I use this for decorating when I'm making when I'm baking or also for tea. This is some sorrel. It's growing beautifully all winter in pots. Also sprouts, these are growing unprotected outside, which was a great idea till it snowed really heavily but that's okay. I still use them. I just cut them off. Here's a mistake. I forgot to cover this pot with some fleece. And then this is what happened. It just kind of all melted. You know, they were beets. Avalanche, what are they called? White beets. They were nice. I had to dig them up and use them quite small because I screwed up and forgot to cover it, which I could easily have done here. And this is wild arugula growing in a bed outside. It gets totally covered in snow and ice and it's wild arugula so it just keeps going. I can go out at any time of the year and any conditions and it's probably my favorite winter vegetable. Mulching, super important. Soil biology is very important. This fellow here, Andrew, so he's a soil farmer. Christina, she's a organic land care specialist. They helped me figure out what to do with soil. They can help you because they both sell amazing soil and nutrients or any kind of gardening outdoors and indoors actually. And I've got their links here. They will all give you, or not garden works actually, but the Christina and Andrew, and also West who makes those self watering planters will give you 10% off if you just mentioned me or upfront and beautiful, my business, not my business, my school. And also here I'm just showing you some mulch. This is the cheapest way to mulch. It's a very important thing to do. Keep the soil covered for reasons I mentioned. This is very cheap. It's called garden straw. You can get it at Home Depot. This is me being kind of crazy and making my own mulch, but I wanted to try it as an experiment and it worked really well. Lots of information, you know, too much for an hour but go back over this information and learn why it's so important to keep this delicious living soil going over the winter with mulch. Okay, this is super important in winter gardening doesn't matter what you're doing. You must keep or help the insects, birds and small mammals keep them alive over the winter. And if it's really, really cold make sure you keep a supply of water for birds and small creatures, you see the pans frozen on really cold days make sure that you keep water for birds because they can die of hypothermia if they drink if they eat snow to get water they will they can die very easily as can these little small mammals because they just aren't big enough to store enough heat energy. So our under our outdoor under our outdoor kitchen patio roof. We have all kinds of little of creatures that normally don't get along they get along all winter because I keep them keep some seed there and some and some water. Also, I keep the habitat, the natural habitat for them to to protect them and also feed them these are all native plants there's snowberry evergreen high bush cranberry evergreen Huckleberry Salalberry, Lingonberry, and for birds to eat over the winter. And also, I have a hummingbird feeder out right next to the salvia, which is where what which feeds the hummingbirds during the summer hummingbirds will always come back to the exact same spot where they're fed year after year and season after season. So for that reason, I hang my little hummingbird feeder right where it's used in the winter where it's used to being fed in the summer. I think. Oh, good. Just on time. I wanted to mention these four books. These are great books, no matter where you are if you want to garden throughout the season in this climate. Linda Gilkerson is a master entomologist gardener lives on Salt Spring, which is not with Vancouver or North Vancouver it's much warmer, but she can teach you a lot about gardening. In the winter and this is her book, just basically gardening all the time. Nikita Boris she's in on the East Coast, and this woman is in the States. Lorraine Forkner she's in, I think, Oregon, but great information about winter gardening. So, I hope I taught you something. If you want to ask me any questions or find out more read anything I've written you can find me at up front and beautiful.com, or at chef at hand. And you can email me anytime. Wow, that went fast. That was amazing. Thank you. Should I should I stop sharing. You can yeah. Okay, we can see your face a little bit better. Yeah, but I do, we can see you. Yeah. Any questions for Laura Marie please put them into the Q&A so that she'll have time to get through these questions that was so fantastic. Okay, so one question, why do you prefer winter fleece over your hoops instead of vinyl. Well, as a permaculture designer. I try to avoid plastics where I can vinyl is not permeable to water. I like the fact that water can come through, even if like what happens when rain hits fleece, it stops, but ultimately it will drip through kind of like when you're brazing in a pan. And then you get the condensation vinyl vinyl is fine if you don't water want any water getting in, but then you have to make sure that your pot, or your bed is getting moisture from below. So it really depends what you're what you want. If I didn't have cold frames, I probably would use vinyl, but I have cold frames, and so I'm kind of lucky I'm privileged in that way. Okay, and someone's asking, what is winter fleece exactly and where can you get it and I think you you did put in your presentation where you can get it. Yes. What exactly is it. So fleece it is a synthetic it. It's a synthetic material. It's kind of like interfacing, you can actually use interfacing. It's the same kind of idea or a sheer curtain. It's meant to it's semi permeable. So water and wind can and temper and heat can get through it, but not as if, like if it was just a piece of screen, right, it, it's a barrier is what it is. It's also called row cover. There are a couple other words for it. I just call it fleece because that's easy. Make sense. Okay, how do you stop squirrels from eating your persimmons and probably all the other things. Okay, well, I don't mind losing about 20% of my persimmons to anything or anything to anything. That's kind of the deal. I'm fine with it. If you don't have that much I get that it would be a problem. You can get these little tiny. I didn't say that. They're little grids, they're about 18 inches by six inches, they're little mats and they spikes on them. And they keep, if you put a mat of them under your tree or even along the edge of your beds. The squirrels won't, they don't like it and cats don't like it. You can probably get things like that online in many places but you can also put a squirrel collar on your tree, like you can get them at well birds unlimited because it's not a bird feed stands but it's basically a collar, or you can just make one out of anything cardboard and wrap the trunk of the tree and the squirrels won't get up there. Mind you they could jump from another tree so. The other thing you can do or take the mesh bags, the little gift bags that you can buy and tie them around your persimmon and each persimmon and the squirrels won't get them. Yeah, we do that for grapes. Okay, what can we start right now for winter gardening. Well you can start all of the greens that you can start green still, but you have to have an invite you can't start them. You have to have some a heat source. Um, you could start them, germinate them in soil, some semi living soil on top of your fridge, and then put them near light as soon as they germinate, and then stick them outside and they will grow slowly garden centers have a few things not very much. Um, ideally, you know, you have to plan ahead. Originally I, you know, I wish it were different but we're the 49 parallel so there's not a lot you can start from seed right now. Even though this is the warmest fall we've ever had. Yeah, I mean honestly you could you like I say all those winter greens I mentioned, you can start even carrots and beets. It's worth starting. You just have to know that it's not necessarily you're not going to maybe get anything until the spring. Right, you know peas and beans, those cover crop, the fava beans, the broad beans, the winter peas, for sure you can put those in the ground now garlic goes in the ground now, I put leaks in the ground, like that that's all good. It's just you're not, you don't have the heat to get any, you know, kind of juicy sweet crop right very soon. Okay, so my vegetable beds are partially under my cedar tree and are the cedar droppings bad for my vegetables. Um, I've had that same situation and I, you know, it didn't really affect. It can dry the soil out. I'm not sure about the acidification it's kind of this, you know, there's disagreement about that, whether the acid is bad for the soil. What I do find is very helpful is to put winter radishes or radishes in keep them in the soil all the time, because that helps break up the soil. It seems to add something that was missing because I did find my beds under a cedar and a hemlock did much better after I added radishes added radishes. It's a thought or you could put up a piece of, you know, a piece of that corrugated plastic like I use in the greenhouse you could, you know, put a piece over that bed. Okay, so in terms of soil health for over the winter, should you dig in compost or anything else to keep your soil healthy over the winter. I don't dig in anything because that is no dig is is what we do because we don't want to break the mycelium network, the fungal network that's under this in the soil. Again, I actually do add very well composted soil in the fall just about an inch where I have exposed where the rain's going to get through because it's going to wash the salts that are in the soil from any manures or anything that's in there. It's going to wash them out. Sometimes if you do it in the spring and there's a lot of salt from different manures, it can kill your plants or it'll retard the growth. You can get all kinds of deformities and things like tomatoes. You really have to know the soil, but if you work with a good soil farmer someone like Tara flora. That's not going to happen. And yeah, you pay a little bit more of the Pacific Northwest soil, my soil that you can get from garden works as good. But unless you know the soil and what it contains, you're taking a little bit of a chance. Yeah, that's not a great answer I know. Okay, last question. My artichokes came up too early in the spring so I kept putting mulch on them to protect them from the frost but they died. Should I have to let them freeze. Artichokes. Artichokes. What I found with artichokes is they need a couple of years that they just are in this climate. Unless you're really protected some people have really great luck if they have the perfect microclimate for me. They are doing this is their third year now they're doing well. I just kind of let them figure it out on their own with the biology that is there in the insects and the diversity of everything around them. I know take some patience but I'm learning that that is what it takes. Yeah artichokes do like a lot of time. So when do all the covers come off? How warm does it need to be you know particularly at night time for you to start uncovering your beds? I uncover them probably well when there's no danger of a hard frost. So that could be end of March. I'm trying to remember when that is exactly March probably end of March for the most part. Okay you know you really want to encourage things that you want to go to seed to go to seed. I like things to go to seed because I like how they taste the buds. You know the kales and all the brassicas when they go to seed that those buds that are going to turn into flowers are so good. So you want that to happen and also if it's too moist and damp you're going to get insect problems and mold and things. Yeah makes sense. Alright well thank you so much for this is so informative and fantastic. We do have a garden at the rooftop of the library so if you're around the library please come and check it out the garden beds will be accessible all winter long. Laura Marie is doing another program for us later this month called Gardening with Grandparents and it's going to be in person at the library and it's really designed to be an intergenerational program so if you have grandchildren or younger neighbors or if you're are younger and you have great aunts and uncles and you know anyone else in your life that you like to garden with come check out our website and I can put the link in the chat here. Come and check out that program she's she's got chef Trevor bird coming as well it's going to be a really really amazing and really special program so I hope some of you can join us for that. And Laura Marie thank you so much this was wonderful. Oh my pleasure anytime. And have a wonderful afternoon everyone. Thanks everyone. Bye bye. Bye bye.