Gabriola Island Lifestyle Blog

Archive for January, 2009

Lunar Gardening

Monday, January 26th, 2009


After the kids are bed my husband and I relax with a cup of tea and often watch a movie or documentary. Tonight it was a documentary series called DocZone, episode “Fly Me to the Moon”. It talked about “Lunar Gardening” and that right there peaked my interest. Lunar gardening is one of the oldest method of gardening that dictates what you plant in relation to the phase of the moon. During the New Moon you plant your root vegetables such as potatoes and carrots, while fruit, flowers and above ground vegetables are to be planted in the next quarter. All of this is to do with the gravitational pull from the moon and apparently speeds germination. It is during the full moon that you would do your harvesting, we have all heard of Harvest Moon. Harvest moon is the full moon closest to the Autumn Equinox. According to avid Lunar Gardeners if you follow the moon phases you should never need to water or fertilize your crop. This sounds like an intriguing idea and I think garners an experiment in our garden this summer. Stay tuned and we will let you know how our garden harvest goes in the coming year, who knows maybe this is the answer the the summer gardening water woes.

Posted in Gabriola Living, Gardening on Gabriola, Gulf Island Lifestyle | No Comments »

Gabriola Greens

Sunday, January 25th, 2009


A tasty and nutritious treat even for the little ones … my daughter loves this stuff! In the summer time we frequent the Good Earth Market to pick up our favourite greens and vegetables but in the winter I am happy to find these huge leaves of organic rainbow chard in our local grocery store.

Posted in Gardening on Gabriola, Shopping on Gabriola | No Comments »

Ride to Conquer Cancer: 2009

Sunday, January 18th, 2009

So it is a new year and I wanted to do something that was really special and would make a difference. Every morning I watch the news while drinking my coffee and I saw an ad for “The Ride to Conquer Cancer: 2009″. It peaked my curiosity so I went and checked out the website. The ride is a 2 day 200 km bike ride from Vancouver to Seattle starting on June 20th and finishing in Seattle on June 21st! Every rider who joins must raise $2500 to help fight Cancer to participate. I set my goal at $5000 and have grand hopes of far surpassing that amount. Within hours I was signed up and sending out emails to everyone I know looking for donations. My husband set up a Facebook group for me, “Help Carly join the ConquerCancer.ca fight!”, and we sent that out to all the people on our friends list. This is such an amazing event to be involved in. For more information visit www.conquercancer.ca and to donate click here.

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Fiddlehead Farm

Monday, January 12th, 2009


Just before the big snowfall, my husband and I took our girls to visit our friends at Fiddlehead Farm. We are looking to buy some laying hens and also wanted to get an idea of what kind of structure to build. They raise a lovely, calm heritage breed of chickens, called Dorkings, and we hope to pick up some chicks from the farm in the spring. Fiddlehead farm raises an assortment of animals and a vegetable market garden is also in the works.

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Winter Squash

Thursday, January 8th, 2009

These winter squash are such beautiful fruits of our garden. They can be decorative and store very well in a cool dry location, tasty and healthful they get sweeter as the winter progresses and can keep until the spring!

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mmmm….Home Made Bread

Friday, January 2nd, 2009

I just learned how to make bread a couple weeks ago and I had no idea how easy it is! I have become a little obsessed with “what can I make next?!” I started with a whole wheat pizza crust and have gone on to make ww cinnamon raisin bread, ww cheese bread, buttermilk honey bread and most recently a sweet bread braid filled with apples, cinnamon and walnuts … yummy!

Posted in Baking | No Comments »