Over the few months, a beautiful friendship has been cemented between Localeaf (our nursery), Pollinate Aylmer (our incredible group of local volunteers), and Partenaires du Secteur Aylmer (our mentors, enablers, and now partners in helping us bring back the butterflies, fireflies, pollinators and other wildlife in our community). We've grown so much that we found … Continue reading Pollinate Aylmer and our Winter Happenings
I met a maybe-new-friend last week, and of course we chatted plants, chickens, and weird ailments. She said something to me along the lines of wishing she could bring herself to just do, and not overthink her garden planning. If she reads this post I hope this will inspire her to trust she can. Or … Continue reading Embrace Impulsive Gardening: How killing plants makes me a better gardener
Every plant we sell is grown locally, from seed, by us, on our own property, here in Aylmer. Most of our seeds are ethically harvested from our own extensive gardens, in Aylmer, or from our cottage in Blue Sea. These are the plants we can claim are truly 100% Localeaf. A patch of what was … Continue reading How Local is Localeaf?
We LOVE tomatoes around here. My personal favorites are large beefsteak and slicing varieties, but the kids prefer cherry, grape and any other small type of small tomatoes so we have always grown a few different kinds. Last year I experimented with growing more tomato plants than we needed, and placing some in random parts … Continue reading Tomatoes, tomAHtoes and 34 varieties of everything in between
Getting away from my personal life and back to the purpose of this blog, here's an update on our activities and where we are at coming to the end of this short month, and preparing for spring. I don't want to sugar coat anything or pretend we have things figured out because we are soooo far from that, but bit by bit it feels like we are starting to figure out some things. The kids have been amazing through it all.
I've been winter sowing seeds successfully for sever years, and racking up mistakes, learnings and tips from my experiences, as well as those of many others who started winter sowing before me, so by now I'm pretty comfortable with the practice. I found it overwhelming when I started, so I began small, with just a … Continue reading Winter Sowing for Beginners: Easy Steps to Get Started
We grow plants from seeds. That is at the core of what we love to do. Year after year, our collection of seeds grows. This is in part due to our plants growing, us collecting seeds from our maturing baby plants, saving seeds from our existing harvests, foraging the vast unspoiled wild land near our … Continue reading Our seeds, free seeds, shared seeds, and the small seed companies and nurseries we have loved supporting this year
OMG OMG we are moving! More on where we are going later, today I'm focused on the why. As I re-read what I wrote below I have noticed that this post is very long, and gushy, and riddled with run-on sentences. Maybe you stumbled on my blog and you don't want to read my stream … Continue reading Embracing Change: Our Family’s Journey to a New Home
So you're thinking about ditching your lawn. Do it! We've done it, and we promise you won't regret it! In fact, this whole crazy venture we have embarked on by starting Local Leaf first started with an idea to replace a small part of the lawn in our front yard. We started small (not really, … Continue reading Lawn Alternatives: Create a Sustainable Outdoor Space
Our property in located on a quiet street corner, and we have an impossibly tiny back-yard but a LOT of space wrapping around the side of our house (side-garden?), which was dead and dessert like grass until last year. This year we transformed this side-yard into a thriving mix of annual flowers, vegetables, native flowers … Continue reading Essential Tips for Designing a Productive Vegetable Garden
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