I don't know about 1b, but i had a friend who used to live in Thompson, zone 0b, and she had beautiful gardens. The extremely long daylight hours help make up for the shorter growing season.

I live in interior Alaska- zone 1 and we have beautiful summers.. right now it's 80 degrees. You do have to wait to get your plants out.. I just planted the veggie garden yesterday, but once in the ground, with 20+ hours of sunlight, they grow really fast (right now, our sun is setting at around midnight and rising at 3:30am). The biggest problems I've found is that a lot of my favorite perennials are just annuals here and the moose are voracious plant munchers.. but I love the moose, so I'll forgive them, LOL (and put up a taller fence this year).

~~Veronica

Hello Nutsaboutflowers...

Well... where to begin?... I can tell you it's not like Mars here... lol ... I live in the same area as North of 53...just a few miles south in fact... these last couple of springs have been later and colder than usual, but I think that has been the same for at least all of western Canada... we live surrounded by a boreal forest.. and have some of the most beautiful lakes in the world.. in fact just a few miles north of here is the third most bluest lake in the world...Clearwater Lake... many people have cottages there... as far as what plants grow here.. well.. it probably would be more like... what doesn't? That's a much shorter list.. lol.. I know palm trees and bananas won't make it through the winter, without ALOT of extra care.. lol... Gardening can be abit discouraging if trying to grow something from a Zone 5 to 8 or more but, if one tries to grow plants that are rated to Zone 4 or so, alot of the time they do actually come back, sometimes beyond that... microclimates actually do wonders...

I'll leave it at that for now and try and make up a list... though I know there will be alot of plants that I would probably miss, since I don't have a large enough yard to hold them all.. lol...

ttys,
Rob

Sorry, Nutsaboutflowers, for not responding to your post. At the moment I am being discouraged about this cursed zone I live in.
This spring has been particularly miserable. Everything is well behind. Here we are at the end of May and we're still having temps near zero almost every night. I haven't transitioned any of my seedling outside yet. Yesterday while moving some perennials around I found that my compost is still frozen.

But to answer your question, lots of stuff grows here. I find that most perennials rated zone 3 will usually do quite well. We are lucky in that we usually have reliable snow cover for the winter, so that really helps.
Once we finally do get summer, it can be quite hot and dry. And as Marcia says, the extra long daylight hours help a lot also. In addition to what Rob says about boreal forest, I would add that to the west we also have a very fertile agricultural valley bordering the North Sask. river.
BTW, I am a she.

So now I'm somewhat versed in Zone 1b gardening =:) I didn't even think of the longer daylight hours, so that was pretty interesting.

North 53 - Your compost is still frozen? Good Grief ! We're in 2b or 3. I have a big compost pile and I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if it's still pretty cold in the middle. Our nighttime temps have been a little discouraging, but not as bad as yours. My lettuce doesn't seem to mind at all =:)