Greenhouse Gardening Tips

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Donna Balzer

Donna Balzer is a garden expert, a regular guest on CBC radio and host is internationally aired "Bugs & Blooms" on HGTV. For more great tips from Donna, visit www.donnabalzer.com. You can also read Donna’s gardening books: No Guff Vegetable Gardening with Steven Biggs and keep track of your success with her Gardener’s Gratitude Journal: Part Diary, Part Personal Growing Guide.

Donna Balzer in her thriving Pacific BC Greenhouse featuring butternut squash and greens

Discover the Benefits of Nature in a Greenhouse: A Gardener's Story

Late Fall Harvests

It's late September and I taste my first-ever finger lime, grown right in my greenhouse, and I am amazed by the crisp texture and luscious lime taste of the juicy vesicles. (See my first impressions here) And just then an unrelated email arrives. A Los Angeles-based marketing firm asks, "Will you showcase the benefits of nature on behalf of a client for an online event?"

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Speckled Lettuce

Benefits of Head Lettuce: Why Grow Your Own Lettuce This Season

If you watch old re-runs on Netflix you have seen how fashions and styles have changed dramatically since Seinfeld was filmed in the 1990s. The same is true for food – especially lettuce.

I first wrote about “novel” mesclun greens (mixed lettuce) in 1995. Since then, they have become so popular, that bagged lettuce is the only lettuce most people know. And this is too bad because lettuce greens or bagged greens are really just immature greens like kale and lettuce leaves. So, for something completely novel, why not go back to the future? Grow full-size head lettuce in your Greenhouse Garden this year.

Most people don’t remember life before the small bags of lettuce leaves so commonly sold now at big box stores and local farm markets. But if you want the crunch of lettuce in a BLT sandwich or if you want to replace Pita bread with a Keto-friendly lettuce leaf wrap for lunch, then start growing your own heads of lettuce this season.

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Hügelkultur beds outside my Pacific BC Greenhouse

Thriving Plants with Hügelkultur: My Experience

Growing Soil with Hügelkultur

When I moved homes and built a new greenhouse, I was in for quite a surprise. The natural soil on my new lot is sand. Pure, yellow sand. This means it drains really well. It also means it does not hold nutrients to feed my plants.

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