Grow your own, organically

Growing your own vegetables means enjoying freshly picked produce — straight from the garden. “The best reason to grow vegetables is because they taste better and are better for you,” says master gardener Elaine Rude, who will be at this weekend’s spring Garden Show as a speaker on the How-To clinic stage, and is also an expert in the Garden Show’s Ask an Expert booth. “You can pick them right when they’re fresh, and their nutritional content is much higher. Food isn’t being trucked in from 1,000 miles away, and you can grow it organically, without sprays.”

Rude suggests starting off with veggies you like to eat. If you are successful, it will give you confidence to pursue other things.

“Once you get confident with some of the simpler things, you can move out and try more unusual vegetables,” she says.

Rude also suggests starting off small, with plants that are easy to grow in Calgary’s climate — for example, cool-season crops such as lettuce, spinach and carrots. These are veggies that don’t mind a cool spring, don’t require a lot of fussing and work within Calgary’s short growing season. Things like Swiss chard, potatoes, carrots, beets and onions all do well here, as do many types of herbs, and fruits such as strawberries and raspberries.

Rude also recommends becoming familiar with your gardening space. “Everyone’s gardening space is a little bit different, so get to know your site a little and know what’s going to do well there,” she says.

Even if you live in an apartment, there are new products on the market that allow people to garden on balconies, where “you can grow potatoes in a bag and get a good crop.”

According to Rude, there’s no reason why people in Calgary couldn’t grow some of their own vegetables, since many veggies grow very well here. “Everybody has enough space that they can grow some of their own food. My grandmother gardened on a balcony for years and grew all sorts of stuff.”