Five simple strategies for enjoying a productive food garden while spending months travelling in our Airstream.
In this post I share strategies that allow me to enjoy months of travel from spring through fall while still having the pleasure of growing our own food. But first, let me paint the picture (pun intended!) of how this whole gardening-versus-travelling challenge came about.
In Canada, many campgrounds are open from early May until late October, and my husband and I spend much of this season exploring in our Airstream.
This iconic travel trailer provides all the comforts of a condominium, but with an ever-changing backdrop of new places to explore and interesting people to meet.
We travel slowly, taking time to absorb the culture, history, and natural beauty of everywhere we visit. These adventures provide authentic inspiration for my paintings of Canadian Shield scenery.
We've enjoyed incredible camping experiences like these every summer since we left our day jobs 22 years ago.
As delightful as this mobile lifestyle is, it does take me away from another of my favourite hobbies: gardening!
For most of my life, this passion has led me to create expansive flower beds around our various homes. I still love tending my perennial gardens, but during the pandemic, when camping opportunities were limited, I decided to try my hand at growing food.
In 2020, my husband built these raised beds, and I experimented with an agricultural gardening technique called Hugelkultur. An earlier post, My Corona Garden, explains this sustainable gardening method.
I had such a successful harvest that year, growing 15 different fruits and vegetables, that I was hooked! But when pandemic restrictions lifted and we returned to our travels, I needed a plan for maintaining a productive food garden while spending months away from home.
Over the past five years, I've continued adding raised beds and refining my gardening strategies so I can be both a traveller and a farmer!
One of my most exciting upgrades was installing this rainwater collection system behind my husband's shop last spring.
We connected the water reservoir to a drip irrigation system in the new planters, with a small pump controlled by a timer that watered the beds every other day.
This food-grade 1,000-litre (265 US gallon) tote, recycled from the commercial food industry, provided enough stored water to last all summer without running dry.
Now, let me share my five strategies for growing food while spending months away from the garden!
1: Start with fertile soil, and keep it that way
I fill my raised beds with a triple-mix blend that I make myself, using native topsoil from our yard, composted manure, peat moss or coconut fibre, and builder's sand.
Every fall, I add at least a 3 cm (1 inch) layer of composted sheep or cow manure, along with slow-release organic fertilizer. The soil settles in the planters each year, leaving room to replenish it with fresh organic matter.
2: Plant densely and use thick mulch to deter weeds and preserve soil moisture
Raised beds with rich soil can support more closely spaced crops than traditional in-ground gardens. I've used Square-Foot gardening layouts in the past with great success.
By making good use of the available growing space, vegetables shade much of the soil, leaving less sunlight for weeds to take hold.
I also cover all my garden beds, both food and flower gardens, with at least 2.5 cm (1 inch) of composted bark mulch each spring. This helps suppress weeds and keeps the soil moist by slowing evaporation from the surface.
3: Add drip irrigation under the mulch
This has been a game changer!
Drip irrigation delivers water directly to the soil where plants need it, rather than relying on overhead watering. With the tubing tucked beneath the mulch and connected to a timer, I can keep the garden watered without having to be there.
The results speak for themselves. This year, I harvested an impressive 28 kg (61 lbs) of potatoes from my irrigated 1.2 x 2.5 metre (4 x 8 ft) planter!
My other planters, which relied solely on rainfall, also did pretty well this year, thanks mostly to the kindness of Mother Nature (who can be fickle).
4: Choose hardy crops that don't need lots of attention
I'd love to grow more lettuce, tomatoes, and sweet peppers, but these crops generally require more frequent watering, monitoring, and harvesting than I'm able to provide when travelling.
Instead, I focus on sturdy vegetables that can largely look after themselves once established, such as potatoes, carrots, onions, kale, and pole beans.
I also grow perennial edibles that return faithfully each year, including rhubarb, asparagus, thyme, chives, blueberries, sour cherries, red currants, and ever-bearing raspberries.
If we're home long enough in the spring, I also can plant early crops like radishes, spinach, and peas, and harvest them before we leave.
5: Enlist the help of friends
Our travel schedule varies from year to year. Some seasons, we're able to pop home now and then, giving me a chance to check the garden, do some weeding, and harvest what's ready.
Other years, I've had the help of generous friends who can, for example, thin my carrots in late spring. Sometimes our house sitter provides supplemental watering during extended dry spells in midsummer.
And of course, my garden helpers are always welcome to pick any produce that ripens while we're away!
If you're thinking about taking up food gardening, or looking for ways to make your garden easier to maintain so you have more time for other things you love, I hope you find this advice from the trenches helpful.
I'd love to hear about your own gardening experiences. Do you have any tricks for keeping a garden productive without spending all your time tending it? Please click the Leave a Comment button at the top of this post and share your thoughts!
You also can see what my pandemic garden produced in my earlier posts, My Corona Silver Lining and A Corona Harvest: Feeling Thankful.
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Happy gardening, wherever your adventures take you!
In my last post, I shared the warm welcome our Airstream caravan received in Red Bay. The community kindly watched over our trailers while we traveled north to our final destination. Read my Red Bay story here: 
It had a comfortable bed and modern private bathroom. Some friends stayed in other rooms in the building, while others had one-room cottages heated by wood stoves.
A nearby dining hall was where we were served generous meals three times a day.
She came out to chat with guests after every repast and was such a dear lady.
We explored the island's 2-km footpath several times, climbing over the rocky hills to see gorgeous views of the village and sea. It was a photographer's delight.
One afternoon, a fifth-generation resident and retired fisherman led us on a walking tour of the village.
Battle Harbour Historic Trust, a charitable non-profit corporation, owns and is restoring all of the historic buildings near the docks plus guest accommodations.
Battle Harbour's commercial fishery began in the 1770s, and by the early 1800s it had become a major port for Newfoundland fishing schooners.
Local merchants procured salt, food staples, and manufactured goods from Europe. Huge warehouses near the docks stored these supplies, which were then doled out to fishermen each spring. Merchants purchased the salted cod from fishermen and then forwarded the fish to European markets.
For 150 years, fishermen in Labrador operated under the 'truck' system, receiving supplies on credit from merchants in exchange for their seasonal catch. At the end of the season, the value of their fish was calculated against their debts, often leaving families dependent on the merchant from one generation to the next.
After a nine-hour drive, our group of six Airstreams was thrilled to reach the tiny coastal village of Red Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. But the biggest surprise was the enormous iceberg grounded just offshore.
Red Bay was one of the highlights of our Expedition 51° Airstream camping tour. Although temperatures hovered just above freezing and the winds were fierce, the community gave us a wonderfully warm welcome.
The red building housed the new café and a whaling exhibit.
The site includes rendering ovens, cooperages for making barrels, wharves, temporary living quarters and a cemetery, along with underwater remains of vessels and deposits of whale bones. In the photo of Boney Beach, those grey rocks in the foreground are actually 500-year-old whale bones.
Red Bay became the primary source of whale oil, which was shipped to Europe for lighting and manufacturing. By the 1570s, an estimated 2,500 men arrived each spring from Spain and France to work in seasonal whaling stations along the Strait. As many as 15 galleons used Red Bay to hunt bowhead and right whales, with each ship capable of carrying 1,000 barrels of oil, the harvest from about 20 whales.
My husband and I love camping in our travel trailer whenever we can during Canada's warmer seasons. Some years, our adventures add up to several months on the road as we explore different regions of this beautiful country.
Evening Magic, varnished watercolour on 5 x 5 inch panel, captures an island seemingly suspended in time as the sky blushes with the final colours of sunset. This tiny painting is a tribute to those fleeting moments when nature offers its most peaceful embrace.
The four-barrel swimming raft depicted in Lake Magic, varnished watercolour on 5 x 5 inch panel, is wrapped in a veil of mist.
Quiet Majesty, varnished watercolour on 6 inch diameter panel, captures the gentle glow of evening as weathered granite, still water and a venerable white pine create a scene of quiet strength. It celebrates the restorative calm found in Canada's rugged landscapes.
Of course my husband soon found his happy place… helping a fellow Airstreamer fix his heat pump and entry door latch.
All the towns we had visited since crossing the border were established relatively recently, and, being so far inland, had no historical connection to the fishing industry that had shaped coastal culture so profoundly.
THE LONG DRIVE TO RED BAY
I breathed a sigh of relief as we crested a hill at Port Hope Simpson and the gas station came into view.
We continued south on Hwy 510 over higher elevations and encountered snow, sleet, rain, wind, and sunshine. Ninety minutes later we reached the windswept coast and the charming UNESCO World Heritage Site of Red Bay. Best of all, a huge iceberg was grounded just offshore!
I have been proudly represented by Meta4 Contemporary Craft Gallery in Port Perry, Ontario since they opened their storefront in a historic building in 2005.
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Crossing into Labrador felt like entering another world. Ahead of us lay more than 1,100 kilometres of wilderness, where black spruce forests, rocky rivers, and endless lakes stretched to the horizon. It was time to experience the legendary Trans-Labrador Highway.
We had stayed in Lab City in the winter of 2016, for a 
The route was hilly and the road curved through wetlands and forests, around ice-crusted lakes, and over countless rocky streams.
With so little traffic, it often felt as though we had the entire highway to ourselves.
We parked overnight for free beside the municipal arena and enjoyed dinner at the only restaurant, which was in a multi-purpose indoor town complex. The building also housed the pool and fitness centre, municipal offices, school, library, hotel, and grocery store.
Instead of using a single large dam, the reservoir relies on a massive network of 88 dikes to contain the water. 
Imagine the power of the Churchill in its unfettered heyday, especially during spring runoff. It must have been incredible to witness!
Early this spring, my husband and I joined five other couples, each towing an Airstream travel trailer, on a grand adventure to the wilds of northeastern Canada.
The route features a mix of raw boreal forests, untamed rivers, UNESCO World Heritage sites, and remote coastal villages. 
First of all, our group had to get from Ontario to Baie-Comeau. On May 18 we set off on an easy 1,300 km (800 mile) journey that we spread out over the course of a week.
The north shore of the St. Lawrence River is gorgeous and the curvy highway swoops over and around rugged, rocky hills.
THE EXPEDITION:
As we crossed the Hart-Jaune River, I took this photo from the truck. We saw countless lakes, rivers, rapids, and waterfalls during our trip.
On Hwy 389, which is a mix of paved and gravel sections 565 kilometers (352 miles) long, there were no campgrounds in which to stay. 
At the end of the second day of travel on Hwy 389, we were excited to reach the Quebec/Labrador border, where the Trans Labrador highway begins. The sign reads "Welcome to the Big Land".
