Poultry Talk Ontario (pto.ca)

Yeah. It's seed catalog time. Anyone recommend one company over another? In Ontario that is... It's been 19 years since I was allowed to have a garden . I want to grow sunflowers (for the chickens and wild birds), all the regulars like squash, peas, carrots, parsnips, beets (for pickling), green and yellow beans, maybe start horseradish and a asperigus beds, and tomatoes (I LOVE tomatoes). She even made me sell the rear tine tiller I had way back when...Mind you I always thought the older front tine tiller went deeper...

Anything I'm missing from my garden list?

Anything else I can add for the girls?

Anybody got tips for keeping weeds down in a new garden (grass now)? Roundup?

I'm out of touch with gardening tactics... I'm going to have to look up companion planting too.

What do you think?

"Since I was allowed to have a garden"...."she made me sell".... I assume "she's" out of the picture? What kind of control freak was "she"?

If you till now...or in spring; put a tarp on the garden (weigh it down with rocks or blocks) and keep it down until you're ready to plant. That will retard the weeds until you're seeded in. So you're plants will be ahead of the weeds. I'm a big fan of mulch (or straw)...it holds the water, smothers weeds, and moderates ground temps. It works great for trees too. I'm too lazy to pull weeds if I don't have to.

Or put newspapers down and cut into them to plant. I think thats from the book "Lasagna Gardening". http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic- ... az99amztak

man I'm still not even done harvesting the potatos! LOL idk im very much a rookie but we did have our most successful gardens yet this year. well at the old place we were trying to garden under walnut trees and not full sun.... DUH!

I'm currently building or rather converting an old front tine tiller into a pull behind rear tine tiller. my gardens will get bigger next year but not sure what were planting yet.

theres a couple threads on here on seed catalogues n gardening n such, the seasoned vets on here helped me out a lot.

for companion planting we did 2 seperate 3 sisters plots of sweet corn, squash and pole beans. it worked wonderfully at keeping the weeds down and was very productive. I tried some weird ancient variety of purple sweet corn that grew 14' tall, worked incredibly well for the pole beans but was not productive at all. im not sure if im going to plant it again but i have about a pound of seed left over. hmmm ya I've usually had good success buying off of ebay but not that corn. LOL

we have a seed bank going on here and as of yesterday doubled the varieties of seed we have... Thanks Kathy!!!

I've yet to order seed from one of the online/catalogue suppliers but many people on here have.

http://www.poultrytalkontario.net/forum ... f=32&t=226

thats the thread with the seed catalogues... a lot of them are even local.

The easiest way to start a new garden where there is grass now, raised bed, put newspapers ( about 10 layers ) on top of grass, and have a load of good soil put on top.
Did that with our last two new garden beds, can't believe I ever bothered with trying to turn turf in to garden before.

I ordered some seeds from William Dam seeds for the first time this year (damseeds.ca) and was overall very pleased with variet, price and germination. My only complaint was melons, I bought watermelon seeds (forget which variety) and hybrid canary called "Brilliant", and only one of each sprouted and then died :-( so I had to buy more and get a later start than I would have liked. Cheapie dollar store watermelon and cantaloupe seeds, almost ALL of them grew! I didn't source any more canary melon seeds yet, but I'm pleased enough overall with Dam that I'll give their melon seeds another shot.

I'm sorry but making somebody sell a rear tine tiller is over the limit to me!
You'll have a good time with the garden. Perhaps you can even get in on Nickyns seed swap next year. That would be fun for the kids.

i'm with KB. selling a rear tine tiller....sheesh. i have a front and HATE it, but it does the job.....want a tow behind for the ATV someday.

William Dam Seeds is nice-as a bonus you can visit bayvistafarm who literally lives next door and has test plots planted on some of her land every year!!!!! i also order from Vesey's (okay, i know they are in PEI). stokes is not bad as well-i play off the price per seed....most places have very similar cultivers so i'll hunt through what i want and buy the one that is the least cost per seed (because packages have different numbers of seeds depending on the company). Unfortunately the one company i have been less than impressed by is OSC (ontario seed company). i find their germination rates are horrid-could be me, or my dirt, or their seed, not sure but it never works well for me.... TNT seed is in manitoba and has some awesome cooler weather/shorter growing cultivers of the common stuff (like short season pumpkins etc).

Terra Edibles is a small Ontario company and sells some interesting heritage seeds and my favourite is Richters for mostly rare and interesting herbs and hard to find stuff.