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    🇨🇦 For People Who Like to Sweat, Swear & Do Stuff 🇨🇦

    GARDENING

    Gardening tips, tricks & tutorials from 25 years of experience.

    • How to Grow Zucchini: You've Been Doing It All Wrong.
    • The English Cottage Garden - Year 6
    • How to Grow Tomatoes - in Pots or the Ground
    • Peeling the skin of a green luffa.
      Growing Your Own Loofah Sponge - Step-by-step
    • How to Grow Potatoes - Complete Guide
    • Installing an Electric Fence in Your Home Garden.
    • Tiny toothache plant seedling in a very small soil block being held by 2 fingers.
      From Seed to Sprout: Discover the Art of Seed Starting
    • Freshly dug home grown sweet potatoes.
      How to Grow Sweet Potatoes aka Kūmara 

    "To call planting a seed gardening is like calling boiling a pot of water cooking. Gardening is everything that comes before and after the seed is planted."

    karen bertelsen

    See more Garden Posts ➡️

    FOOD

    • Indian Street Corn. Kicking Your Plain Corn to the Curb.
    • How to Make Homemade Hamburgers - My Way
    • Roasted Asparagus with Shaved Parmesan
    • Classic Caesar Salad. Please Don't Buy That Crap in a Jar
    • Guaranteed Crispy, Roasted Potatoes with a Tangy Mustard/Dill Sauce
    • the art of doing stuff burger
      The Best Cheese for Burgers. 7 Gooey Options.
    • The Summery, Sugary, Lemon Drop Tart
    • How to Cook Ribs. A Complete (seriously) Guide.

    PROJECTS

    HOW-TO TUTORIALS

    Get them done now so your season doesn't suck later.

    • One Of My Best Backyard Hacks Ever
    • The Magnetic Gate Latch. DIY it in One Hour.
    • Make a Backyard Barn Board Light. DIY Outdoor Lighting!
    • How to Replace a Window Screen

    BACKYARD HACKS & INSPIRATION

    • The Backyard Ideas Post! 26 Tips & Tricks For Creating A Beautiful Backyard.
    • How to Build a Pizza Oven. Part I.
    • DIY a Modern Birdbath to Attract Birds
    • DIY OUTDOOR FURNITURE. HACKING RESTORATION HARDWARE.

    Bad Day? These'll Make You Laugh.

    At the very least you'll grin at these stories of my misfortunes.

    • The Blood Donation Story Anniversary
    • Bikram Yoga an adventure in vomit.
    • Oh hi! Um. Have You HAD a Brazilian Wax??
    • I Support Earth Hour. Just… Not Like This.

    See more Wintery Recipes ➡️

    About Karen

    Karen Bertelsen standing on a chair hammering in an electric fence post.

    My name is Karen Bertelsen and I was a television host.   In Canada.  Which means in terms of notoriety and wealth, I was somewhere on par with the manager of a Sunset Tan in Wisconsin.

    I quit television to start a blog with the goal that I could make my living through blogging and never have to host a television show again.  And it's worked out.  I'm making a living blogging.  If you're curious, this is how I do that.

    So I'm doing this in reverse basically.  I'm the only blogger who is trying to NOT get a TV show.

    Learn more about me →

    Recent Stuff

    In order of appearance starting with the latest ...

    • How to Harden Off Seedlings
    • Salad, Santa, A Skull
    • Garden Season
    • A hand holds up a palmful of compost that doesn't look completely broken down with some twigs and straw showing.
      How to Know if Your Compost is Ready
    • How To Use a Paint Sprayer
    • Grub Damage
      How & When to Get Rid of Grubs with Nematodes
    • This Week the Poppies Came Up and Everything Escalated
    • The #1 Way to Use Up Your Soft, Sprouting Potatoes
    • The Best Homemade Fly Trap for Outdoor
    • How to Replace a Shut Off Valve
    • Meatballs, Microwaves & Six Wasabi Peas
    • 9 luffa seedlings, a pot of onion starts and some tomato seedlings being watered on a capillary mat.
      Capillary Matts For Automatic Watering
    • If You Grow Leeks, Onions or Garlic You NEED To Do This Right Now.
    • Traditional Hand Stirred Maple Cream aka Maple Butter
    • How to Plant Asparagus -Now's the Time!
    • Old fashioned baked beans made from scratch with toast.
      Old Fashioned Baked Beans From Scratch
    • Fun Facts about Cadbury Eggs (One is Truly Alarming)
    • This Week I Planted Doubt, Dug Up Hope & Propagated a Comeback
    • Toothpaste with raisin in it for April Fools prank.
      The Best Easy April Fools' Day Pranks
    • 31 Things You Didn't Know You Can Freeze

    The Posts That Made Me Famous

    Thanks to Google, Pinterest & Design*Sponge (RIP) these are my most popular posts of all time.

    • The Modern Chicken Coop
    • A stump table sits beside an Eames recliner.
      How to Make a Tree Stump Table - DIY End Table
    • How to Grow Zucchini: You've Been Doing It All Wrong.
    • How to Make Homemade Hamburgers - My Way
    • The Backyard Ideas Post! 26 Tips & Tricks For Creating A Beautiful Backyard.
    • Have a Ryobi Battery That Won't Charge? You Can Fix That.
    • Peeling the skin of a green luffa.
      Growing Your Own Loofah Sponge - Step-by-step
    • How to Build Interior Window Shutters.
    • Halloween Craft. The Pumpkin Diorama - An Update.
    • How to Make a Pumpkin Pie With Fresh Pumpkin
    • How to Recover a Chair in 5 minutes
    • How to Avoid Courier Broker Fees From Online Shopping.

    Summer Garden Checklist

    • Installing Drip Irrigation in Your Home Garden.
    • The English Cottage Garden Spring
    • ADVENTURES IN SPRING CLEANING A CHICKEN COOP, AND OTHER CRAP.

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