If someone had told me 2 months ago that I would be able to independently use a power saw, I would have thought no way and asked my husband to help me. Fast forward 2 months and I now feel confident using it on my own, especially for straight cuts. However, the process to creating my project is what I am most reflective of in this final post.

As someone who lives in rural Saskatchewan, I am forever grateful that the University of Regina has such a great selection of online classes for me to be able to complete my Masters of Education remotely from the community I live and work in. Online videos and open resources have made it possible for me to learn a new skill online. The videos and articles I read throughout my learning process guided me to gain knowledge of how to use tools, purchase materials, build my raised bed, and fill it with the appropriate soil and plants.

I often seek out information and learning online but have never tried to learn a new skill. Our topic of open education that was shared by guest speaker, Alan Levine really opened my eyes to how learning should be free and accessible to all. All of the information at my fingertips, allowed me to access free content to learn a new skill. However, I know this is because I have privileges that not all people in the world are able to access.

I found many benefits to online learning when completing my project and a few challenges. This chapter in the open access book “Student Success” by Mary Shier shares a great list of the pros and cons of online learning. Here is my reflection of how my learning online went over the course of this term. I prefer to think of them as Strengths and Challenges as I did not see any cons in learning a new skill online just some challenges to be aware of:

Strengths:

• Flexibility of learning-I could spend time researching and building around my work and home schedule
• Accessing information easily-I was able to access a vast amount of information to support my learning using articles, videos and blogs from professionals.
• Choice and Interest-tailoring my interest and allowing me to pick what I wanted to learn about made this project highly engaging and increased my self-motivation to work on it.
• Learning style-I am a visual learner so I appreciated the opportunity to watch videos and spend time working with my husband to complete my projects. I would have had a difficult time if I was only allowed to read articles about the skill I was trying to develop.
• Cost Effective-being able to learn a new skill for free was something I have never pursued. There was no fee to join a class or access a webinar online which I appreciated.

Challenges:

• Limited resources-Something I discovered throughout my project was that although I could access great information online regarding materials and the soil I needed, it was not readily available to me in my rural community. This did add up in costs from my initial plans
• Self-Motivation-I really had to push through and commit to completing this project as a new Principal this Spring.
• Knowledge does not equal Skill-I realized very quickly that although I could read all about how to build a raised garden bed and watch videos to learn new information about the skill I was trying to develop, this did not equal me being able to easily apply my learning ie. using a drill and being able to cut precise angles.
• Revising my learning-I had to be prepared to revise my initial plans and ideas to make it fit better with my environment and personal needs.

As I reflected on my learning process to complete my learning project, all of these strengths and challenges could be easily part of a students’ learning. Learning doesn’t always need to occur within the four walls of the brick building structure known as a “school”. Students can learn in different environments based on their learning needs and interests. This process made me recognize that we would like students to develop new skills but we need to be aware that there will be challenges along the way. I think the most important piece I take from this whole process is that knowledge does not mean you will be skilled in an area. In order to develop a new skill, you need many opportunities to practice and apply the knew knowledge you have gained. Only then will you see the growth and development of learning. This is a critical takeaway that I will be reminded of when asking students to complete independent projects. They will need time to gather their knowledge but I must also make sure they have the opportunity to practice and and apply what they have learned.

In closing, I am grateful that I have tried something new and am developing a new skill. I feel more confident to tackle another project in the future (maybe next summer). I am pledging to no longer be just the board holder/helper but also an active participant in future household projects! My little garden bed is growing and developing just like my own skills this term. I leave you with a final look (and my first Tik Tok) of my raised garden bed project as I added mulch for extra moisture and some solar lights for a little aesthetic appeal.

Thanks for reading!

-Kendra

It is time to wrap up my Major project for #eci831. My garden has grown, and I have grown in my gardening knowledge and in the way I can navigate the internet, apps and a variety of platforms to learn new things.

Before and After photos sum up the work that has been done. The part that I am most proud of is the vegetable garden. It was planted with thought, research and intention. The plants have been paired with others that will encourage growth, the proper seeding directions were followed and the placement of the plants was carefully considered according to my research. I can’t wait to see what the final product is! Regardless, I love watching the garden grow as there are noticeable changes every week.

My favourite sources for this assignment have been: Feedly, TikTok, Youtube and Twitter.

Thanks for following along!

This week took a turn for my family. My mother-in-law passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. We needed to drop everything and head to Ontario to be with family. Fortunately, my in-laws were recently in Saskatchewan to visit during May long weekend. At that time, we shopped for our plants together, had a crazy chat about manure and discussed how our gardens are similar but also very different as I don’t have to worry about the deer eating my garden!

Last week, I was able to connect further with my father-in-law while helping him with the garden. Letting him know what plants were growing and how he could care for them going forward.

In my previous posts, I mentioned No Mow May and other suggestions that I have found about maintaining the lawn and attracting pollinators. When I was walking around my in-laws’ yard I couldn’t help but notice how special their yard looks with wildflowers as parts of the lawn are cut less regularly.

After a week away from my yard, I am thankful for underground sprinklers which watered the lawn as well as the perennial beds. My brother and his family kindly kept my vegetable garden watered every other day which only left me weeding and grass mowing after two weeks of growth.

My research this week concentrated on pruning, identifying plants and planting cucumbers.

Pruning

Poppies– Once the flowers have bloomed you are to cut off the stem, deadhead, so that new blooms can possibly come. It also looks much neater. I missed many of my poppies blooming this week however, there are still a few buds that I hope will open this week.

Lambs Ear– Similar to the poppy, when the purple flowers in the middle have finished blooming you will cut that stem off right at the bottom and you will be left with the fuzzy leaves.

Tomatoes- I cut the leaves off the plant that are touching the ground and a few inches up. This is to help the energy go to the main stem to produce larger fruit. It also helps with the airflow. The next stage of pruning is to remove the suckers. My plants aren’t large enough for this yet. @perkyplantparent on TikTok

Plant Identification

I went back to Facebook’s Saskatchewan Gardeners page to identify the last mystery plant in the front perennial bed. I was not disappointed as they came through again. It is a Veronica and Saliva.

Cucumbers– The almanac suggested that the window for planting cucumber seedlings in my area started Thursday, June 15th. I got mine in the ground today. I purchased three plants a few weeks ago but hadn’t put them in yet. They didn’t get proper care this last week so I purchased three more today just to be sure but planted all six. I had been searching Tiktok for information on planting cucumbers. Many videos were saying to plant the cucumbers with a vertical trellis to encourage the plant to climb. I decided to plant them following the advice of @notjustgreenfingers, the video below. I also found lots of helpful information on Youtube.

To end off the weekend, I picked the rhubarb from our back garden bed. I brought this plant with us when we moved one year ago this weekend. It produced 4 cups of chopped rhubarb, exactly what I needed to make a special rhubarb crisp for our Father’s Day dessert.

See you back here next week for the final wrap-up and before and after comparisons. The neighbourhood cat must be up to something else as I haven’t seen him in my garden for a few weeks.

Well, the good news is that my raised garden bed is built, but my oh my how am I going to fill it and what should I fill it with? Once again, living in rural Saskatchewan presented a bit of a problem when it came to finding what I would need for soil. Buying bags of soil was out of the question as I would have needed far too many and that was out of my budget since I had splurged on the cedar boards to build the bed. However, I did some research to try and figure out what type of soil I should use to help the plants grow. This article “Everything You Need to Know About Gardening in Raised Beds” provided lots of great tips about soil and planting in raised beds. Something I took away is that I would need to buy in bulk as I would need several yards of soil to fill my bed. I decided to buy dirt from a local business which was a mix of soil and manure. My plan is to add more nutrients to it every year to provide the plants optimal growing conditions. Here is video I found that is all about…well I’ll let you investigate!

Along with my planning and designing, I have had to learn some new skills at math. I had to figure out how much dirt I would need. I found the Soil Calculator a great site for figuring out how much dirt I would need to fill my bed.

Oh boy! It turns out I needed around 3 yards of dirt. After work one day, I came home to this!

Before starting to put the dirt in, I needed to take care of the grass at the bottom of my garden bed. I chose to put a layer of cardboard at the bottom for two reasons. First, cardboard will naturally decompose and become part of the soil. Second, I had used landscape fabric in the previous garden beds my husband built for me and now every year I am battling grass coming through at full force! This is a great video regarding the pros and cons of using cardboard in a garden.

Once the cardboard was laid down, it was time to get busy loading, hauling and dumping the dirt into my raised bed.

It took two evenings to fill the garden bed! I was so happy to finally start to plant!

I have big future plans for my raised garden bed to become a spot for fruit bushes such as strawberries, raspberries and rhubarb but this year I was not quite ready to tackle this plan. So, I decided to start small. I chose to plant tomatoes and peppers of different varieties along with some flowers and a shrub. One plant that I had heard great things about to include in gardening was the marigold thanks to Laurie’s blog. I always wondered why my grandmother included them in her garden every year. Here is a short video that shared 6 reasons you should plant marigolds in your garden.

After purchasing my plants at different greenhouses, I set out spacing them out first before planting them in the soil. This is something, I would do again in the future as it gave a great visual of how much space each plant needed to grow. The soil was very workable and easy to dig and plant in. Here is a video with my raised bed finally planted!

Overall my learning project went well. So things I hope to do in the future to make it even better based on my research is:

• Adding more minerals and nutrients to the soil
• Looking into watering systems
• Researching how to grow fruit in raised garden beds

A couple of things I need to remember in the future:

• Remember you live in rural Saskatchewan, products and resources aren’t readily available
• Think about where your garden is located in proximity to a watering source. It is going to take all of my garden hose to get water to this raised bed.
• Start early thinking about plants. I was not able to get all of the plants I wanted in my garden bed as I was late at planting this year.

Up next week, the final wrap up of my major learning product which will include adding some mulch to help with soil moisture! Thanks for reading. I leave you with a youtube short I was playing with this week!

-Kendra

According to the 2023 Planting Calendar: when to plant your vegetables for my area, the window to plant tomatoes started this week. So, Wednesday evening once it cooled down, into the garden they went. See the video below to find out how I planted my tomatoes.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/yo1ccixAtVs – Tomato planting!

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/3nKD3ge3MTk– The tomatoes are planted!

This week’s learning is from:

• An article I found from Feedly– Grow Stronger Tomatoes.

• TikTok- Now that I am connected, I am going to stick to TikTok for everything Tomato. Here are a few accounts that I have really liked for Tomato content.
  

Update:

The grass clippings, orange peels and egg shells seem to be keeping the cat out of the garden!

Finally, here are some updated pictures of what is happening in the yard this week.

Next week, is cucumber week!

What better a day to start building a raised garden bed then in +30 degree weather, right? However, June is here and the learning and building must go on! So after a slow start to the morning, I began my raised garden build. As I mentioned in my previous post, I am going to be building a garden bed that is 12 feet long on each side using 6 foot cedar fence boards. It will be 3 feet wide on each end so I can easily reach the plants. Although, I found many different ideas and plans online, I wanted to create my own drawing and design to fit a certain area in our yard. Here is a reminder of my design:

I spent some time looking at raised garden bed videos and plans to decide on how to tackle this project. I especially liked this video as it had similar materials I chose and the look I wanted.

The website trees.com had a great read about 24 DIY Raised Garden Bed Plans & Ideas That You Can Build In Your Garden. Each plan shared the difficulty level and when you clicked on the plan you liked the materials and instructions were included. This would have provided me a great way to start my building but instead I kind of went rogue with my learning and designed my own raised bed plan. After gathering all of my materials, this is what I used for the build:

• 32 cedar fence boards (plus a few more for errors)
• decks screws
• old scrape boards from treated wood to secure the fence boards
• cordless impact drill
• compound mitre saw
• measuring tape
• pencil
• lots of water
  • a great supervisor and supporter! (my personal husband)

To start, I began by cutting my end boards from 6 feet into 3 feet lengths.

Then I started to connect the sections together. For this, I used some treated wood scraps that were in our garage as anchors for the corners and to connect the 6 foot boards.

I started the build on our driveway but felt it was going to be too heavy to continue there so I moved over to the area I wanted the bed to be placed in. In hindsight, I should have continued to build on the concrete as it was a more leveled surface. Something to remember for future builds!

The build was going quite well, however, I could feel my husband cringe every time I used the impact drill! I spent most of my time the previous week practicing on the mitre saw and I definitely should have spent a lot more time using the drill as you can see in this video!

This build was a two person project. I needed support holding boards and piecing each section together. The main part of the garden bed took several hours to build but seemed to go together well.

After a short break, I was back at it! Time for the finishing top caps. I felt very optimistic as I had practiced making angles the week before and they seemed to work out. This video was a great watch for learning how to make angles. Unfortunately, it didn’t give me any tips for how to correct errors when cutting angles.

Well… I soon discovered this was not going to be a smooth end to my build! Angles became my nemesis! They started out well but then they no longer seemed to go together. I had to be careful as I was nearing the end of my supply of cedar boards.

Slowly my angles began to no longer fit quite right! I was persistent in wanting to do it myself so my husband tried to offer support and advice without taking over my project, kind of like a teacher in the classroom would! Unfortunately, I had to enlist his help to save the remaining boards so I wouldn’t run out!

With a little help, I pieced together the remaining corners and accepted defeat regarding making perfect angles! Oh well, I do need to put my pride aside and recognize that I am a rookie in this area. Finally after a long, hot day my build was complete!

A few things that I am taking away from my learning this week are:

• Take into account that watching videos and reading articles does not equal being able to develop a skill.
• Developing a skill takes time and practice
• Always have extra material on hand!
• Be aware of uneven ground and boards that have warps in them
• Give yourself lots of time! I thought it would only take half a day but it actually required the full day to build
• Give yourself grace as you learn a new skill! Be proud of what you accomplished without looking at all the flaws!

I did find that watching videos for me was much easier than reading how to build a raised garden bed. I gained lots of tips about the build such as materials and how wide to make it! Up next, I will be looking into how to fill the raised bed, what type of soil will work best and what kinds of plants I should put in the bed.

If you have any recommendations on filling my raised garden bed, I would love to hear them!

Thanks for reading and watching my raised garden bed build!

-Kendra

Take a tour with me to see how the garden is growing!

The work in the garden this week was mostly maintenance including weeding and cleaning out last year’s growth from the side flowerbeds.

My main learning focus this week was proper care of peonies, lawn care and how to keep cats out of my vegetable garden bed.

Peonies

Tips and Tricks for Peonies. This short Youtube video answered all my questions and even identified the kind of peony I have. Our home is 40 years old. We moved in last June and all of the gardens are already mature. I have no idea how long some of the plants have been there but I do know that the peony plant is well established. From the video, it appears that I have a double-bloom garden peony. They like the sun and can grow 3- 4 feet wide and tall. To grow bigger blooms, I can pinch off small side buds, which is similar to how to grow better tomatoes. Finally, established peonies don’t require much care in the spring and I should cut them back to 3 inches in the fall which I didn’t do last fall but did pull it all out this week.

I found another helpful article on Almenac.com: Caring for Peonies: 10 Tips and Tricks. I always see ants on the peony buds. The ants don’t harm or help the buds they just love the taste of the nectar, who knew!?! Also, because the flowers are so big, they can be very heavy so staking the plant can help, even using a tomato cage. I have a little fence and a rope holding mine. I will see how that holds up this year.

Lawn care

Lawn care seems to be the ongoing “issue” in my yard. We are keeping the grass longer so it doesn’t get burnt and watering it daily in the early morning. The No Mow May article I previously mentioned, suggested cutting the grass every two weeks. Since I made the above video, we decided to cut the grass this evening. I found another article called Slow Mow Summer suggested that it’s not the time between mowings but the length that should determine when to cut and never cut more than a third of the length. This is how we decided to cut the grass today. With all the recent rain the grass is growing like crazy!

Stop the Cat

Finally, someone or something is digging in my vegetable garden….The size of the prints leads me to believe it is the friendly neighbour cat that I often see crossing through the yard. I want to safely deter the cat from stopping in the garden. I found an article on the David Suzuki FDNs Twitter page which gave many ideas I am trying this week. I have added orange peels as citrus is supposed to deter the cat as well as egg shells and pine cones to make it uncomfortable to walk on. Finally, I added grass clippings so the nice soft dirt is hidden.

Best resources this week came from Youtube, Feedly and Twitter.

Stop by next week for an update on the project Stop the Cat as well as tomato planting. I have found lots of great information I am looking forward to sharing and also planting my tomatoes this week.

After gathering all of my materials, the time has come to become familiar and conquer my fear of certain power tools namely the compound mitre saw (which I had to ask my husband to give me the correct name for). Before actually using the tools, I thought I should watch some educational videos to prepare. This basic safety video was a great reminder of things to remember when working with wood and tools. It was a bit of sober acknowledgement of how you must be very safe using saws as it could quickly turn into something horrific!

I also watched this video by Weathered Wood Home on how to use a power drill which I have used before but not often. I feel that this tools will be easy to use and won’t require too much practice!

Now, it was time to look into the mitre saw to gain some proper insight as to how to work it. This video was a straightforward introduction to the saw and had great safety tips to go with it.

Although, these videos were great starting points for using power tools, I found it best to learn side by side with someone skilled in using these tools aka my husband. I felt pretty confident in my skills using the hammer, screwdrivers and cordless drill so I felt my time was best spent becoming comfortable with the saw. As you can see by my face, I wasn’t very confident in using it when I began.

Although, I did pretty well with my first try, I still needed to trim a little off the edge to get the correct measurement I was practicing.

Since, I want to put a cap edge around the top of my raised garden bed, I also need to practice making angles.

The more I practiced using the saw, the more confident I became! Combining the safety knowledge and tool usage I learned through videos with hands on practice was an effective way to learn. In this learning journey, pairing the knowledge with the practical application of hands on tasks helped me develop my skills in using power tools. I believe you can’t have one without the other. If I had just watched videos and read articles around tool skills, I don’t think I would have been able to just simply pick up the tool and build. I also think that if I had just jumped in without watching the videos, I wouldn’t have gained some valuable knowledge around using power tools and safety before starting.

Next up… time to build! Hopefully the weather will cooperate for me to spend a good chunk of my weekend, building my raised garden bed. Stay tuned!

Thanks for reading! Please let me know if you have any building tips for my raised garden bed and/or have ever built your own.

-Kendra

No time for wasting. This week, I jumped into my online research as I knew I would soon have to get my garden in the ground.

First, I joined the Saskatchewan Gardeners Facebook page. I made a post to determine if one of my plants was a flower or a weed. Very quickly, I had 50 comments about my plant…not a weed!  It is a poppy! One of the commenters was able to identify one of the other plants in the picture. I used the Plant look-up tool on my iPhone in my pictures which confirmed what the comment said, it is a Lamb’s Ear.

Next, I used Feedly to start gathering articles related to my topic. I really like this site. I have to check only one place every few days and read the new articles. I have also found that some of the article sources are better than others and can look on those pages for other articles of interest. Here are a few articles that I found helpful this week:

Lawn care: From this article, I learned that I should mow the lawn every two weeks and keep the lawn length to 3.5 inches. It also talks about not cutting the grass in May. We had already cut the grass this month so I was too late to take that advice. The reason for that is to help with pollination. Other ideas for pollination that were given are to put a Hummingbird feeder, bird bath, bee house and a variety of coloured flowers to attract pollinators. So far, we have added a Hummingbird feeder and bird bath to our front garden bed. Below are not my pictures, I hope to have a few of my own pictures with birds soon.

Growing Vegetables– I took the advice from this article to prepare my vegetable garden for planting. I added cow manure to the soil and mixed it up together to raise the nutrient level in the soil. They also suggested adding fertilizer to the soil before planting, which we did. The greenhouse had cow manure and sheep manure. In reading both packages they seemed to do the same thing so of course I asked my toddler if he would rather have cow poop or sheep poop in the garden. His choice was cow so cow manure it is.

This article is specifically about tomatoes. They prefer full sun in the garden, which helped decide on garden placement. We purchased Beefsteak seedlings as they have the potential to grow larger tomatoes. Stay tuned for more about tomatoes in a later post.

When to Plant?: This site has lots of great information for beginner gardeners such as the easiest veggies to grow, how to decide what to plant, and guidelines for arranging the vegetables in the garden. This article led me to the planting calendar. This is a very cool web page. You input your postal code and it tells you when is the best time to plant seeds and seedlings based on the last frost in that area. I learned that I am late planting my carrot, green bean and pea seeds. They should have been in the ground by May 11^th and I got them in the ground May 21^st. I will plant my tomato plants and cucumber plants between June 15^th and 29^th as the almanac suggests.

Companion planting: The article shows which vegetables should be planted together and which you should avoid for the best growth. I used this article to decide the best placement for the vegetables and which vegetables to plant.

I also watched this video to help me decide on plant placement in the garden. The video and article are about square-foot garden designs. Look back at the garden picture and notice black tape. This is where I measured out each foot to help space the garden properly.

The last thing for this week is Aeration. My brother called me and said he was renting an aeration machine for an evening, would I like my lawn done as well? How perfect, I thought. This will fit in so well with my project, that he is unaware of.  Of course, I told him to come on over. I did the research after the aeration was done. It will allow to the water to get in deep to the roots and help with the compression of the lawn.

I hope you will come back next week to see how the garden is growing, learn about spring perennial care and find out what other mystery plants are growing in my flower beds. I would love any tips, tricks or gardening advice you have to share!

The long weekend seemed like a great time to start planning my raised garden bed build. I always get the itch to start planting and greenhouse shopping around this time. I really need to reign myself in and budget wisely otherwise I could easily end up with way more plants than I need. I believe this approach will be needed for planning my raised garden bed as well.

I started by researching the best types of wood to use for my garden build. I went straight to my favourite planning social media platform Pinterest. I had already started a board titled “Gardening That I Love” so I decided to browse and add to my search of what type of wood I should use to build the garden bed and any designs I liked. I especially enjoyed this blog post from Deanna at Homestead and Chill titled “7 Ways To Make Wood Garden Beds Last: Nontoxic Sealer & More”. I decided that I wanted to use cedar as I thought it would be easy to find. Boy, was I wrong! Rural Saskatchewan it turns out is not the best place to shop for cedar. I spent most of Saturday morning calling local lumber yards all within an hour of my home with little or no luck in sourcing cedar fence boards.

In the midst of this calling adventure, I began looking at different designs that I might like to use as inspiration or plans for my own raised garden bed. The look and simplicity of this design was something I was really interested in.

However, the location I chose in my garden area was a corner section where the grass was spotty and the land was flat. Therefore, I wanted something that would meet in the middle providing a garden bed on each side. I did not have any luck finding a design to match the area I wanted to build the raised garden bed in.

I guess it was time to design my own! After calling around to several places, I finally found luck in Regina sourcing 6 foot cedar fence boards. Using this information, I planned my design around using the 6 foot cedar fence board for my original plan. It seemed to resist rot and was budget friendly upon my research.

Now, I wondered what this design would truly look like plotted out and when I would be able to get to Regina which is almost 3 hours away from where we live. So, I started by plotting out my design, with a little help from my husband! The visual provided great clarity as to whether or not my design was what I was looking for. It turns out, I wanted to make some adjustments to my original design as noted in this video.

I realized that 6 feet did not provide enough room on either side for a large amount of space for plants to grow and develop. It would really limit the amount of plants I could put into the raised bed. Adding an additional 6 feet on each side seemed to be the best plan to go with. Now, all I needed was a plan to get the wood! I called a few family members to see if they were going to the city soon. However, no one was planning a trip. So…with no big plans for our family this weekend before our weekends become full of sports events, we decided to take a Sunday road trip to Regina for wood and a few other household items.

Doing a little price comparison, we found that Rona seemed to be the best deal in the city for cedar boards. I am thankful for the knowledge my husband has in this area as I was given a mini-lesson on picking the best boards for the project. Each of the 36 boards (a few extra for good measure) were inspected to ensure they were not warped or cracked. After combing through two different bundles, we were able to pay and load up!

After, accomplishing our task, we couldn’t resist a little stop at McDonald’s for our daughter and of course Costco for the whole family. These are luxuries to those of us who live in rural Saskatchewan!

The next steps in my learning journey will be researching all about safety when using power tools and actually practicing before trying to cut into my precious cedar boards! Stay tuned for my next post about how I overcome my fear of the power saw. Let me know if you have any tips or suggestions to help me along the way to building my raised garden beds.

Thanks for reading!