WHO AM I?

This is me, in the middle of the picture, and in the middle of my potager,

picking carrots with a couple of my favourite little garden visitors. 

About me....

I'm Tanja, and I live on Vancouver Island, the wet and wonderful west coast of Canada, with my husband of 35+ years with our three pets. We have an English Mastiff named Hemingway, he is goofy, big, slobbery, sheds like mad, but is so totally lovable. The new puppy, Berkeley, is a Saint Bernard. We have never had a Saint before so is a learning curve. What we know so far is that she is a quick learner, smarter than the mastiffs (but don't tell Hemi), she loves snow and cooler temps,  but is just as slobbery, drooly, and shedding as a mastiff. We also have Little Lulu, our resident rodent catcher.  

We all live happily on 1.1 acres on the edge of a small city. Not rural, but not quite suburban either, somewhere in between, kinda like the country-style 'burbs ; )

The gardening here on the island is pretty fantastic, a Zone 7 gardening area with mild and wet winters followed by temperate but (usually) dry summers. Winters are wet and rainy while summers are super dry with nary a speck of rain for months on end. We all have golden lawns till throughout the summers till the fall rains begin again. 

Planting companion flowers with edibles. 

I LOVE to grow food.

In my raised garden beds, I grow whatever the family wants to eat, plus extra to share. 

I also like to experiment with new things, too. It's (usually) not actually a new thing, but just something new to me. I have to grow it and test it, you never know when you might stumble upon a new favourite! Like growing sweet potatoes!

Heirloom tomatoes are my absolute passion though, all colours and kinds. I have been crazy about them since I grew my first purple tomato over 20 years ago. Purple Prince blew me away with both flavour and vigor, and I have been hooked on heirlooms ever since. I still grow Purple Prince every year, it never ceases to amaze.



The Nitty Gritty Potager blog is all about growing food in healthy, no-dig potager style garden beds. 

Potager style gardening is just a fancy schmancy way of saying that I create diversity in the garden by planting flowers and herbs in with the edibles for a healthier, happier, bee-buzzing, organic food garden.

We grow in raised beds as the island is a rock, literally, so we must go up as we cannot go down. Great drainage is also a must as it rains a lot, lot, lot.... 

My flip flop feet ; ) 

I share what I do each month, as well as tips about how to grow organic year round. You will also, occasionally, find ideas for crafting or canning ... whatever has caught my fancy at the time. I do not share a lot of recipes as I heartily dislike cooking, hubby does most of that. 

 The potager on a rainy afternoon.  

As a passionate organic food grower, I not only grow food my own using these techniques, but also teach, advocate, and promote kitchen gardening ... plus, folks are free to roam my gardens for ideas, and sample the goods, too ; )

I find the Urban Homesteading movement to be one of the best things to have happened in many decades! It excites me that we are all slowly but surely starting to rip out lawns in favour of food crops, mini orchards, and chicken coops, getting back to the land, so to speak... even if our land happens to be a small city lot!

This little fella is the apple of this Nana's eye ; )