Use plants that work with the climate

Carol Chen spent decades convinced she couldn’t grow anything. At 62, watching her Edmonton neighbours tend their beautiful gardens, she figured that ship had sailed. “I was the woman who could kill silk flowers,” she chuckles, standing in her beautiful backyard..

The change started three years back when her husband died. “I had to find something to keep my hands busy, get me out of the house,” she says quietly. “But at my age? I was scared of starting up something from scratch thst I knew nothing about.”

No need to prove anything

What worked for Carol is something those of us past 50 know in our bones: you don’t need to prove anything to anyone anymore. Instead of trying to recreate those fancy English cottage gardens she’d bookmarked for years, she built herself one modest 4×8 raised bed and stuck to vegetables that could handle whatever Alberta threw at them.

• Carol’s tried-and-true cold-hardy choices were:
• Lettuce varieties: ‘Arctic King’ and ‘Winter Density’ that survive frost down to -5°C, extending the growing season a little.
• Radishes: ‘Cherry Belle’ mature in just 25 days; she succession plants every two weeks from April through August
• Peas: Sugar snap peas like ‘Sugar Ann’ can be direct seeded six weeks before last frost
• Swiss chard: ‘Bright Lights’ which produces colorful stems and survives multiple hard frosts

“My first season, I stuck to lettuce, radishes, and peas,” she explains. “Simple crops that actually thrive in our cool springs.” She remembered her dad’s old rule  – plant your peas as soon as you can work the soil – so she got them in the ground in late April. When they sailed through that brutal late May frost, she knew she was onto something.

The turning point? Carol quit battling Alberta’s crazy short summers and started working with them instead. She mastered succession planting – buttercrunch lettuce for spring, heat-tolerant ‘Jericho’ for summer, and ‘Winter Gem’ for fall harvests. Her radishes became neighborhood legend when she discovered that fall-planted ‘Watermelon’ radishes, left in the ground until October, develop remarkable sweetness after the first frost.

Work with the climate

“There’s no mystery to it,” Carol insists, gesturing toward her Swiss chard patch still producing despite October’s chill. “I finally stopped copying those glossy magazine gardens and started listening to what actually works in our climate. These plants don’t just tolerate our weather – they prefer it to those scorching summers younger gardeners complain about.”

Now in her fourth season, Carol has expanded to three raised beds and added cold-hardy flowers like calendulas and sweet peas. Her advice for fellow late-starting gardeners? “Don’t let our climate intimidate you. Those shoulder seasons everyone grumbles about are actually golden opportunities. And at our age, we have something younger gardeners lack – patience. We’re not trying to impress anyone or prove anything.”

Carol’s garden now provides surplus vegetables for neighbours and fresh-cut flowers from March through October. “People ask why I didn’t start gardening sooner,” she muses. “But this was precisely the right time. I had the time to observe carefully, the patience to learn gradually, and the wisdom to keep things manageable.”