Angela Knight's little garden at CBC Calgary starts to gets bigger

It's been a week since we planted our first raised bed garden box.

• Lasagna gardening comes to CBC Calgary
• Please send your garden pictures to [email protected]. We'd love to see them!

Kath Smyth, the Calgary Eyeopener's guide to the growing season from the Calgary Horticultural Society, dropped by Friday morning to see how things are growing and ​to supervise the planting of the second box.

Last week, we planted kale, herbs and lettuce in planters. In the first raised bed, we seeded Swiss chard, radishes and carrots.

We also added kale, lemon cucumber and zucchini to the box. Oh, and we started a bag of potatoes.

How did we do?

Well, considering we had almost 24 hours of continuous rain and a wicked cold wind, not so bad. 

We lost the zucchini to frost and I blame the squirrels for the disappearance of our lemon cucumber (just a small hole left in the soil) and some of the kale in the box. 

Kath says we could have protected our garden a bit better by covering the soil and plant material with a frost cloth.

She also recommends cutting off the bottom of a plastic pop bottle, poking a hole it in (so the plant can breathe) and placing it over a plant to keep it safe from frost. You may want to put a rock on top so it stays in place.

Kath gave us a solid 'B' with room for improvement.

The second raised bed 

This week, we planted beets, arugula, gourmet carrots and a little more kale along the edges of our second bed. 

We also put in peas and beans and provided a trellis for them to climb up . 

Finally, we planted potatoes in a bag just like we did last week. The race is on to see which bag produces first. 

Still too cold for some flowers

I wanted to put in the flowers for our big pot outside the studio window at CBC Calgary but Kath thinks we may have a few more cold nights in store. 

Snapdragons, cosmos and pansies can handle the cold. However, the begonias and impatiens I wanted to plant are too tender and will have to wait until next week.

​Kath's tip of the week

Mix radish seeds in with your beet seeds. Radishes are one of the fastest things to come up in the garden. The radishes will emerge first and loosen up the soil so the beets will germinate better.

Kath calls radishes the workhorse of the garden. Not only do they help keep the soil aerated, they work towards helping to trap insects and they germinate quickly.

Next Friday, Kath will be back to help me with companion plants and how the right combination will help your garden thrive. 

Happy growing!