Prairie Garden's Crop Report

U-Pick Strawberries :  The strawberries are in full bloom as of June 24th.  Ripe strawberries should be ready to pick starting the second week of July.  We are praying for rain so the berries size up before they start turning red!  Please check below for more information on prices, and the hours that we are open. The "King" berries are the first and largest of the season.  Pick-Your-Own starts for them about the 9th of July.  They are the first berry of the berry cluster, and are available for the first week. "Peak-Season" Alberta U-Pick Strawberries in the Edmonton region are ripe for the picking the week of July 20th.  The berries are sweet, juicy and dripping with sun-ripened flavor. The "Fairy" Berries are the sweetest (but alas, the smallest) of the season.  Pick them starting the week of August 1st.  Celebrate the strawberry season with us at our on-fam Fairy Berry Festival the August long weekend.     U-Pick Strawberries at Prairie Gardens   Come to visit us in July to pick your own sweet sundrenched Alberta strawberries on our farm near Bon Accord, 25 km north of Edmonton on 97st. (HWY28).   Our Alberta Strawberry Season runs July 9th - August 5th Open 10 – 6 daily.  Please call before you come. 780.921.2272. Strawberries are $16/4L or $8/ 1.5L.  Bring your own ice-cream pails to pick in if you have 'em. If not, we have 4L & 1.5L pails available. Please sign up for the Prairie Gardener E-newsletter to be notified when the strawberries are ready for picking!    We have grown Kent and Honeyoe July bearing strawberries on our Edmonton area farm for the past 20 years.  In the spring, we rake the straw off of the rows and rows of strawberry plants into the walking aisles.  By early June, the strawberry plants are in bloom.  By July 15th, the 'king' berries are starting to ripen. These are the largest berries of the summer. Overall, the strawberries are a large to medium fruit with incredible real strawberry flavor!  Very sweet and juicy, and are red to the center. Strawberries are in season from mid July until the first week of August.  The sweetest, but smallest, berries of the season are called Fairy Berries, and are ripe just in time for our Fairy Berry Festival on the August long weekend. Market Garden Vegetables We grow U-Pick Peas, U-Dig baby potatoes, Green and Yellow Beans, Squash, Sweet Corn, and Pumpkins on our farm.  Harvest begins around the middle of July.   Sweet Corn and Maze Corn (August and September) Look up!  Way up!  Maze corn grows quickly - over 3 meters tall - and is ready to get lost in by the August long weekend.  We grow over 7 acres of maze, with 5 km of trails in it.  Each year, Precision Mazes, from Kansas City, Missouris, creates a brand new GPS design for our Great Prairie Corn Maze, full of twists, turns and surprizes!  Even after the frosts, the maze corn stands tall until the end of October, and becomes part of the fun at the Haunted Pumpkin Festival. Our sweet corn is usually ready to harvest around the last week of August.  We grow six different varieites, from Extra Early Supersweets, to Peaches and Cream.  We sell it by the cob or by the sack.   Pumpkins (October) We have a huge Pumpkin Patch on our farm, over 7 acres!   Expect to find big Jack O'Lantern Halloween bruisers, a great array of pie pumpkins, and miniatures that the kids will love!   Our prices range from $1 - $25 depending on how large.  We start the pumpkins early in our greenhouses and transplant over 7000 plants to the fields at the beginning of June.  The vines grow like crazy in the pumpkin patch with our long northern Alberta days, but the frosts that arrive in September send us scurrying to harvest our crop.  We bring the pumpkins indoors into our heated greenhouse 'pumpkin patches' for October sales, and celebrate Halloween Alberta style, with our Haunted Pumpkin Festival through the entire month of October. Directions to the Farm: We are located 25 minutes north of Edmonton on 97 St. (HWY 28).  Go past Bon Accord on HWY 28 - 1 km.  Turn left on Lily Lake Road. Go 2 km (north)  #56311.  You see our signs! Map & Directions

A Real Alberta Pumpkin Patch! Open for Pumpkin Sales Daily September 15th Until October 31 10 - 5 pm Pumpkins Galore!  Orange, white, blue, striped and more.  You can never have One Too Many!    Pie Pumpkins - Wee be Little, Baby Bear, and Pik-a-Pie Learn more about pumpkin varieties - Patch Primed for Pumpkins

Gourds  It's time to decorate the porch for Thanksgiving!

Winter Squash   Great to grill on the BBQ!  Try something new.  We brush the 1" slices with  Maple Syrup and Balsamic Vinegar.  Yummy!

Gourds

Squash

White

Blue

Banana Potatoes We are famous for our Gold Banana Potatoes.  These are a real gourmet treat!  We roast them until tender with garlic, fresh dill, sea salt, and butter. They are available until October 15. They stay 'baby' all season - at full maturity they are about 4" long and about 1" wide. We also grow Red Norland potatoes, excellent for summer potato salads, and Eramosa, which translates from spanish to "the beautiful potato".  It has white skin, and is perfectly smooth and round. U-Dig Potatoes

Sweet Corn (In Season August - September) Taber may be famous for it's corn production in Alberta, but fresh sweet corn is absolutely the sweetest when it is fresh picked.  The sugars within the kernals convert to starch very quickly (by 50% every 24 hours).  We grow six different varieties with different maturity dates.  Our corn on the cob is ready starting usually the last week of August, and is available until the first killing frost - around mid September.  Please give us a call at 780.921.2272 to order it by the sack for corn roasts or parties.  The long weekend in September we celebrate the harvest with the Prairie Garden's Corn Fest! Come get lost in a huge 7 acre field of corn - The Great Prairie Corn Maze!  We are open until October.

Summer Squash (In Season July - September) We grow a wide variety of summer squash including green or gold Zucchini, Vegetable Marrow, Scallopini, Lebanese Zucchini, Papaya Pear,  Vegetable Spagetti, and Stripetti.  They can be cooked in a number of ways.  We love to sautee slices of them with butter, garlic, and herbs. You can also stuff them with a mixture of cooked hamburger, rice, and tomatoes.