North-West Region gardener Rhea Good with some fresh transplanted "Italian Culinary Parsley" at her home in the Battlefords area. She says it tastes great in a Tabbouleh salad. (Submitted photo/Rhea Good)

By Angela Brown

A gardener's life

NW Region gardener keeps green thumb active throughout winter

Dec 4, 2022 | 4:07 PM

Gardening enthusiast and educator Rhea Good, who lives in the Battlefords area in the North-West Region, isn’t disheartened by Saskatchewan’s bitterly cold winter.

Instead, she keeps her love of gardening alive by staying busy indoors tending to her projects during the winter months, and she encourages others to do the same.

Good enjoys making sure her family has access to plenty of nutritious and tasty foods, throughout the year.

Having her own backyard seasonal greenhouse also helps as a start.

“You would have to heat somehow in our climate if you wanted to maintain the greenhouse over the full winter,” she said. “So I just use my greenhouse as a season extender, not as a four-season greenhouse.”

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Good’s last day of harvesting was Nov. 4 this year. There is usually some ambient heat remaining in the greenhouse so the temperature will stay above freezing for a couple of days at the start of the winter, as she salvages the last of her produce.

She says with a chuckle there is actually home-grown watermelon in December at her house this year.

Good is still enjoying some leftover watermelons from her daughter’s outdoor field garden this year.

“I also grow watermelon in my greenhouse,” she added.

During the winter months, Good spends time planning her garden for the next spring season.

“I do highly recommend people formulate a written garden plan, like mapping out where the row is going to be, and what plants are going to be beside each other because you can gain some advantages with companion-planting,” the longtime gardener said.

Good advises people to save time and work for themselves by planting their onions closer to their house or the entrance-way to their garden, and to put the potatoes at the back since they won’t be harvested until the end of the season.

“There are just little tricks like that for planning out your garden space on paper in advance,” she said.

Good also spends time during the winter planning the seeds she will use in her garden in the spring.

“Depending on how specialized you want to go with your seeds, you can get a lot of seeds at any of the hardware stores in the spring,” she said. “But if you want to order some more specialty heirloom seeds or specific varieties, then you probably are going to have to use the mail-order companies. That takes a little bit longer.”

Seed saving

Good is also a dedicated seed-saver and reuses all the seeds she has harvested in the fall from the produce in her garden.

They are now inside her home, drying on trays.

Later, she will start her work separating the seed from the chaff of the rest of the plant, which can take a bit of time.

“Some seeds are easier to pull out than others,” Good said. “But it’s just a task that takes place in the start time of winter. So that you are ready when spring comes around.”

This year she is planning to prepare a lot more seeds she has saved, to plant in the spring, than she has ever done before.

“I have California Wonder Peppers, watermelon seeds, Serrano peppers, a whole bunch of Purple Basil, oregano, and Pencil Pod Yellow Wax Beans,” Good said.

She also likes to re-plant herbs such as parsley and mint in her home over the colder months that she brought in from her garden at the start of winter.

Also, Good will keep busy drying the herbs she harvested in the summertime to use up over the winter, such as dill, parsley, and mint.

With the dill, she will use it to make Borscht soup, cabbage rolls, and a tasty rice dish.

“Of course, parsley can go into any kind of soup, stew, [or] lasagna,” Good added.

Her transplanted parsley will keep growing all through the winter.

“This Italian Culinary Parsley plant produces lovely green foliage all year and grows well in containers, in a field garden, and in a greenhouse,” she said. “My favourite recipe with fresh parsley is Tabbouleh salad.”

For mint when it is dried, Good said, it makes a nice tea.

For the three Italian herbs: sweet basil, oregano, and thyme, they can be used in any kind of Italian recipe.

Basil is also ideal for tea.

Good encourages people to bring a little sunshine and imagination into their home and kitchen this winter, however, they choose to incorporate healthy ingredients and nutritious foods in their cooking.

For her gardening-tip resources, Good said she still uses some practical books she bought back when she was in her 20s that still hold true today.

“Those are my go-to’s when I’m looking [details] up, because I find that a lot of online information just is not realistic for our climate,” she said. “I just prefer the older books that seem to have more reliable information for my intensive purposes. But, for sure there is lots of information out there. I just prefer the older books; they seem to be more reliable for me.”

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Angela.Brown@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @battlefordsnow