Wow, that's pretty exciting to think we might get a new Far Northerner! LOL

Most of southern Manitoba is zone 2 or 3 and is very fertile, farming is the industry in southern Manitoba and the population is not very dense. The problem when you want to start up a farm in a very remote location is that they will have to run electricity in, and that can get very very expensive. It might be best to look for a previously settled site even if you rebuild it all. You would probably be able to find farmland for reasonably cheap by American standards. Most Manitoba farmland is mixed trees and fields, depending what has been cleared.

As for the winters, well... I don't know how tight your socks are on, but our winters can be milder or more severe, and the snow depth varies considerably. It's definitely not for everyone. Our growing season is reasonably short and many vegetables must be started indoors, for example tomatoes and peppers. I don't know what you want to grow specifically but a greenhouse won't do any harm if you want to have one. For instance, I don't know anyone who grows sorghum or okra but anyone can grow corn or beets.

As for Dryden, my personal knowledge of the area is only that it is not prairie land, it is more sheild, and while there may be pockets of very high quality land it is more wilderness and trees/lakes/rocks. Marcia on this forum lives near there and may better advise you.

Glad to help you out in any way if you need it... good luck.

p.s. in Southern Manitoba you may want to look into your cultural groups, some towns don't really speak English much and some areas are errrr... not culturally mixed... not to be unkind but I would not want someone to buy land and then feel alienated... I hope nobody is offended by me adding that...

Or if you have any suggestions of places to live in Canada that have decent soil, good precipitation & ground water sources, zone 3 (or higher), low population, winters that don't absolutely knock your socks off, and plenty of trees as we will be using a wood stove & hearth, I'm all ears.

If there is such a place in Canada, I'll move there!

Just kidding, just like to welcome you to the FN forum....for sure starting plants veggies/annuals/perennials benefit with a greenhouse.

Sharon

Our growing season in Winnipeg averages 119 frost free days, May 24 to Sep 21. Though some years there really isnt much in the way of frost beginning May 1st and the first fall frosts are usually light ones.

I imagine a greenhouse wouldnÂt hurt, but itÂs not an absolute necessity. Where it might help if you are the type to start your own tomato transplants and flowers, for example, instead of buying from the nursery.

We can grow an assortment of veggies, but often try to look for varieties that have short number of ripening days. Pepper and Tomato seeds are started early indoors or transplants are bought from a nursery, but thatÂs probably the same in zone 5. Stuff like pumpkins can be seeded directly outdoors but some people do start earlier in jiffy pots and then transplant out. Check out T&T Seeds website (www.ttseeds.com) They are located in Winnipeg and cater to short season varieties of veggies, nursery stock, fruit trees and shrubs, etc. That can probably help answer a lot of your questions about what grows here.

You also might want to check sprout farms website. www.sproutfarms.com They are located in Alberta, but list lots of types of prairie hardy fruit.
I am not sure about the costs of putting in electricity if the land you buy isnÂt already serviced that is, but as for the actual price of electricity itÂs fairly cheap, a basic monthly charge of $6.25 and then 5.78 cents per kilowatt hour for the first 175 kilowatt hours, slightly cheaper afterward.

Sounds like you might be interested in the southeast corner of Manitoba. ThereÂs plenty of farmland, farmland mixed with forested areas, and cottage country areas. All probably within 1 to 2 hours drive from the city. My parentÂs used to live in a rural area, cottage country, near Lac du Bonnet, MB. One thing they did remark was how much cheaper it was to buy firewood in the country than in the city. They were a 20 minute drive from Lac du bonnet and an hour and a half from Winnipeg.

I donÂt mean to scare you but I do have to mention winter. Your winters sound a lot like Toronto, ON. I like to think that our climate isnÂt so different than TorontoÂs from about March to November, maybe somewhat less humid, but from Dec to Feb we are colder. Average high in January is -14C/7F but most often it includes sunny dry days. Sometimes some wind chill, however, but it can be pleasant and sunny. For me the worst part of winter is from Jan 1st to mid Feb. After mid Feb itÂs still winter, but much milder and easier to take.

I donÂt think of us as being that snowy. The first snowfall can occur anytime after Nov 1st but can melt within a day of falling. By late November we get snow that usually stays on the ground for the winter. There is pretty well snow on the ground until the third week of March when it melts. There arenÂt really that many snowy days, however, and usually snow that falls is light and fluffy, versus heavy wet snow. We can get blizzards, but not like New England or Nova Scotia where they get 2 feet of snow falling. Our storms would be more like 6 to 12 inches. Good and consistant snow cover actually helps in that it protects shrubs, perennials, even the roots of fruit trees for the winter.

Average high in July is 26C/79F and usually sunny and dry, though some years we seem to get wet spells in spring and fall. In summer there are very few days where it rains all day, most rain is a passing short-lived thunderstorm which dumps rain, then skies clear.

Good luck in your quest. I don't know if you checked out the City of Winnipeg web page or travel Manitoba, but please feel free to post any additional questions (or even email me directly via my member page).

Regards,
Glen

Well, we may be buying a solar array or wind turbine for our much more limited electricity needs. I figured the fertile prairie areas might be ok on the sunshine factor, but have no idea really. I have read that it is very windy in the prairies and wonder if it's really much worse than what we get here with our large expanses of flat, cleared land. Wind in IL can be pretty harsh, especially in the winter. Lots of wind could be good for a turbine.

When talking about a greenhouse I meant more specifically, keeping plants in there for most of their lives in the hope of 1) being able to grow higher-than-zone-3 plants and 2) getting larger harvests from plants that had a chance to grow longer. I've already read some threads on how you'll all be harvesting your first tomatoes green, while I've been chock full of red tomatoes for nearly 2 months.

So even if I set plants out in the heat of the summer it would be in pots/earthboxes and they would be moved back into the greenhouse later.

Can you describe to me what your definition of a more severe winter is? Just so we get an idea. And is "more severe" much different on the prairies than at the same latitude of the shield?

I was looking at southern Ontario at the outset of our research but it just seems far too congested. And it's a little close to heavily populated cities (US and Canadian), IMO. I'm not surprised that more Canadians want to live in the most temperate part of the country.

Thanks, Kristin

Hi Kristin,

The link below is Environment Canada's "Normals" page for Winnipeg. There's a lot of info to sort through and unfortunately it's in metric (you'd have to get used to that anyway) but you get the impression, our summers are hot and tend to be more humid than the Western prairie provinces but still drier than southern Ontario. January is very cold and you can expect a week or two cold snap with temperatures in the -25 to -30 range. Sometimes more sometimes less.

I don't think the daylight hours are long enough in the winter to support a fully solar electrical system. You might get by with a wind turbine or a combination system, but I think a large backup gas generator would be advisable in any case. Especially if you have animals to worry about.

I agree with Glen that you might like the southeast area of MB. It is a beautiful area where the prairie meets the Shield and not densely populated, but you would likely have no trouble getting power. It's zone 2b though, but if you are planning a greenhouse it's not gonna treat you any different than zone 3a.

I would definitely communicate with the Rural Municipality when you get to the point of finding a suitable piece of land, and make sure you can get a building permit with your alternative electicity plans and the type and number of animals you plan to raise.

Well, everyone has covered pretty much everything!

Northspruce is right - our area is closer to the Shield, more rocky and heavily forested, as well as having lots of lakes. Near Dryden, there is plenty of farmland, however. In fact, the town of Dryden began as an experimental agricultural station. Now, forestry and tourism are the major employment options here.

I guess if you get through a winter in Chicago, you can survive one here. While our temperatures can get a lot colder than Chicago's, we have a dryer cold and apparently doesn't feel as cold as the damper cold found in places like Toronto. The morning last January that was -44°C felt pretty cold, though! :> It's not pleasant and seems to get worse as we get older, but you do get used to it.

Summer here can be more pleasant than in southern areas. We don't always have the humidity that makes it feel hotter than it is. Like anywhere else, we have good summers and lousy ones.

One thing others haven't mentioned is the bugs! June is usually a horrible month for mosquitoes - you can't go outside without being attacked by swarms of the little buggers. This is especially if you live near wet areas - we're lucky enough to have a large beaver flood behind our house. LOL

So if all this hasn't scared you off, welcome to the Far North! And good luck wherever you decide to settle. :)

Keeping plants in a greenhouse all year around can be done, but youll need to supply some heat during October-April and with the price of gas these days its not affordable for the average home gardener.

I suppose you could try to overwinter some tender perennials by digging trenches in an unheated gh but then you dont get that advantage of the snow which is an excellent blanket for protecting plants. It will still get cold in a unheated greenhouse.

What I do is start some of my plants indoors under lights, then transfer them out to the unheated gh around April, some nights when it gets real cold I have to turn the electric heater on earlier in the season and then around June I do the transplanting. So you see a gh gives you that extra month or two in advance. And right now I have the tenders in there since our nights are starting to get some frost, Ill probably bring them in or store them at the end of the month. So there you have another month to grow tenders.

I also wintersow outdoors, once germinated, I bring them inside the gh to continue their growth.

Dont dismay on the zone ratings, they are just guidelines, many of us successfully grow plants that are supposed to beyond our zones.

Sharon

Marciaz3,
You forgot the black flies... mosquitoes only suck your blood and make you itch a little but black flies can take chunks of you with them... I hate black flies.

Cecropia7,
Dryden is a wonderful little town. I've spent a lot of time there working with the local telephone company. The community is fairly friendly. There is a lot of Canadian Shield from Ignace to the end of the Ontario border. There are a couple nice lakes really close to Dryden and some of my friends have all year residences on lake front property.

It will probably take you three years to become comfortable with the winter. The first year you'll wonder when winter is going to finish. Don't worry most of the ice is off the in-land lakes by the end of May normally. I've even gone swimming on the May long weekend (for about 30 seconds).

The one thing that really makes up for the winter is the long days in the summer. I spend until 10:30 some nights in the garden and the sun is just thinking about going down. Now in the winter its the exact opposite but you get use to going to and from work in the dark. Besides you can't grow anything outside in the winter when its 40 degrees below... (okay you can but winter sowing is a different forum)

Andrew, i didn't forget the black flies - they're pretty hard to forget! LOL But they aren't as bad here as the mosquitoes are. Sometimes it's impossible to get outside because of them - even running from the car to the house is treacherous, and then you can never get into the car fast enough that none of them follow you.

You're probably right about it taking three years to get used to winters here. I remember back in university that that was a friend's experience. The first couple of winters, he wore heavy triple-roll turtlenecks all winter, but by the third winter, he asked me if i could take a roll or two off the neck! LOL (I was the local seamstress back then. I should have charged, thinking about it...)

I can pretty much relate to your questions/concerns about the "Far North" because we moved 4 years ago from "Lotus Land" British Columbia which is Gardening Zone 7 to Edmonton, Alberta which is Gardening Zone 3. When we got here I expected things to be much different then they really were. I was incredibly and pleasantly surprised at the vast amount of plants that grow here. I was (still am) totally blow away by how hardy so many plants are. I was amazed at how the extra daylight in the summer can make things grow so fast! I was amazed in the springtime at how fast everything "greened-up". I love all the hours of sunshine on the prairies! (I came from the rainy-zone so that's a bit different then where you are coming from though). Yes, it can get windy on the prairies! Ah well, often the wind brings good changes in the weather! Gotta love it all.

I am a big time rooky yet when it comes to gardening on the prairies so reading through this thread has been very enlightening!