I'm a Better Gardener Than Blogger!

And just like that I am back at the blog.

Apparently I am a better gardener than blogger, but I hope to write more in the new year.

The 2015 garden was a smashing success, with some huge yields of tomatoes, beans, butternut squash, patty-pan squash and carrots, and beets, and garlic - the list goes on and on.

A daily haul from the garden this summer
 

Next year it will be gardening with a purpose in mind as I have plans to sell at the farmer's market and have a long list of people interested in buying fresh veggies from me, so I am pretty excited by that. 

To that end I have been making a very long list of seeds to order, and I'll be finalizing and sending that in soon.

Now, my attention turns to Christmas.  Starting this weekend there are events, dinners, and family visits planned that will fill our days.  Only one more week of work left, then we are off for two weeks!  Since it's been so warm I may get a few days in the garden to continue extending the beds and adding compost in preparation for spring.

 

Last weekend, digging composted horse manure for the garden
 

Potting Up

This week more of the seedlings started in the IGG have been potted ready to take home.  The Red Bull Horn Peppers and Butternut Squash plants were all large enough to transplant and make room for more lettuce and herbs in the IGG.

Chuckles Dad came by and took about half of each variety home with him for his garden in Pemberton, which is great, since I planted too many of each and was wondering how large this years garden would actually have to be to accommodate all the plants I have started!

I still have a dozen Ancho pepper plants in the IGG, they are much behind these fast growing pepper cousins of theirs! 

Also, sprouting in the IGG are four kinds of lettuce and a whole tray of basil - want to make at least twice as much pesto this year as well as drying a whole lot more of it, I am almost out of my dried basil and it is to die for, it is so tasty.

Two weeks ago I transplanted the cabbage and kale started in the IGG into the garden and put one of the hoop covers overtop, they seem to be thriving.  Beside them I have put a couple of rows of snap peas, seeded right into the ground and a row of ....something else...luckily I did write this down in my Garden Book, but I don t have that here with me right now.  I think it was some of the Choi seeds.

And, the cut up sprouting potatoes from the fridge have now emerged from the ground so we will have a little taste of fresh spuds in a couple of months. 

I am off to the island this weekend with Bogey to visit young son and his little menagerie of dogs, cat and chickens.  I hope the weather is good, I am taking my camera and my wetsuit and hope to get a little photography and boogie boarding in with the kids!

The Orchard is In!

The orchard is in!

Last weekend I moved the two pear trees that we planted on the lawn, and besides being in the way for mowing the grass, they weren't really in the best spot for sunlight.

Behind the old riding ring is the most productive of the three apple trees on our property, so I lined up the two pear trees with that apple tree, all about 16 ft apart.

Once that was done, I was enthusiastic to finish the job, so I dug two more holes on the other side of the apple tree, then went to the local nursery and got a cherry tree and an apple tree.

The cherry is an Aaron variety which is self-pollinating, and the apple tree is a graft with Jonagold, Spartan, Royal Gala and Fuji branches on it, so it also self-pollinates. 

Self-pollinating is kind of misleading, as the bees are still needed to do the work, but with many fruit trees, another tree of the same fruit but different variety that blooms at the same time, is required to be nearby in order that cross-pollination takes place.  Because I wasn't sure what the apple trees are that we have, nor the cherry trees, I thought it would be best to choose varieties that don't depend on another tree for cross-pollination to occur.

I fed them with lots of the composted manure, so fingers crossed that they all take off!


This week I potted all the tomatoes that were started in the IGG and they are going home to the hoop houses today.  I seeded basil and four varieties of lettuce in the trays that were vacated. 

 

 

 

Composting

Another busy weekend in the rear view mirror, where does time disappear to?

We had overnight guests, a funeral to attend, friends in for lunch,  dinner out with friends one night, then an unexpected trip up to Merritt to pick up my parents, but it all fit in somehow, as it always does. 

Inside the hoop house you can see the kale growing with it's frilly leaves.  I added more Endive and Lettuce to this bed.
 

I had two garden related activities that I really wanted to accomplish -  number one was to get some more endive, lettuce and peas planted out in the raised beds that have the hoop covers on them.   Done!

Our kitchen compost barrel was full to the brim about a month ago, and my handyman Chuckles made us a new one so that we could alternate them.  The old one (blue one) has been sitting on the ground for a month now, being rolled over each weekend to keep on stirring the contents.

The blue barrel, ready to be emptied, the new white one is on the stand behind.

 

Lovely rich worm filled compost ready for spreading.  All from kitchen scraps!
 

So number two garden chore on my list was to get this barrel emptied and spread the contents onto the gardens.  So, after having dinner with Mom and Dad at their place Monday evening, I went home and in the semi-darkness of dusk, and in the pouring rain I dug about two-thirds of the contents out of the blue barrel, into a wheel barrow and distributed it around all the flower beds in the yard around the house.  It felt good to get that much done, and I love my garden time, light or dark, rain or sun. 

Admittedly,  I like it more in the sunshine, but I will take it however I can get it!

A little about my kitchen composting -

We have been composters for many years.  Now many cities include kitchen compost in their regular recycling pick up, but we would never give this valuable stuff away!

On my counter I keep a fairly large plastic bucket with a good lid, into which goes all peelings, eggs shells, coffee grounds and filters, unbleached paper products and seeds, pits, leftover veggies, etc.  Never any meat products, bones, fat or anything of animal origin. 

Every day or two, I empty this into the big barrel shown in the pictures above.  The barrel in use has a metal bar through it, so it rests on the metal stand, and can be easily rotated.  Most times when I dump my kitchen bucket, I give the big barrel a spin, to keep everything mixed together. 

It's amazing how much veggie matter we generate!

We alternate the two barrels, so one can rest, fully compost and get emptied onto the gardens as we are filling up the other one, then we switch them, so every 6 months we have a fresh batch of compost to spread.  This amends the soil beautifully, and when it's ready for spreading it is full of fat worms ready to get to work in the beds.

Gardening is Cheaper Than Therapy

 

 

Tomorrow is the first day of spring officially, although here in the lower mainland of BC spring has been with us for a month or more!

I thought I should post you some new pics of the progress of the indoor Growlight Garden (IGG) and the mini hoop houses .

The IGG on March 3rd
 

The IGG on March 11th
 

These three photos I took this morning:

Closest tray is scallopini squash and roma tomatoes

Left tray is cabbage and peppers, right tray scallopini
and tomatoes

Peppers just germinating now, left tray compared to scallopini
squash in the right tray.
 

In order of germination I have started: cabbage, scallopini squash, early girl and roma tomatoes, ancho peppers and red horn peppers, and butternut squash.

It is obvious to me that I am going to want to transplant at least some of these seedlings into pots (peat pots?) soon as there is a real disparity in the heights of the different plants, and ideally I want to keep the grow lights about 10cm above the plants to discourage leggy growth. 

But since some of the plants (cabbages and squashes) are so tall already, and the red horn and ancho peppers only just germinated this past week,  10 cm above the squashes is a good 20 cm above the peppers!





























I also  noticed some very tiny white bugs two weeks ago, on the damp matting beneath each tray of plants.  They get quite agitated when the tray is removed and they are exposed to the light.  We looked at them through a magnifying glass (they are super tiny things) and then I Googled and found out that they are Springtails.  Called this because they have a hinged body with a powerful tail that propels them quite far, even these tiny ones we have are good jumpers!  Interestingly enough, much of the info I found initially was on marijuana growing blogs!

Magnified juvenile Springtail
 

I took the matting out of the IGG, washed it with really hot water, then dried it thoroughly, then put it back.  Since then, there have been very few Springtails, and I have been checking and squashing them daily, although by all accounts they don't really cause harm.  I am curious as to how they originated, it has to be from a) the peat pellets I put the seeds in b) the potting mixture I put aroung the peat pellets in the trays, c) the seeds themselves, but this seems quite unlikely or d) the matting that came with the IGG (also seems unlikely).

I have not taken a super recent photo of the hoop house interiors, it's been about 3 weeks.

Hoops were left open one day to expose to sunshine and fresh air

I am disappointed that the lettuce and endive did not germinate, so I plan to put more in this weekend.  I think the soil dried out a bit too much, which I didn't think would happen since the beds were wet when I covered them, and the interior of the hoop plastic always has lots of condensation on it.  I have watered them a couple of times, to no avail.  Maybe when I am there this weekend, I will find that they have finally sprouted.

Peas inside hoop house

Of course the peas are going like gangbusters, but they are doing the same in the bed that doesn't have a hoop over it, although I did protect it for the first few weeks with a sheet of corrugated clear plastic.   Now it is just totally exposed.

Peas in bed with no hoop house
 

The kale is now about 2-3 inches tall with the first of its frilly leaves. 



I have tilled the garden bed once, but I need to scrape off the grassy surface of the areas that I want to convert to garden this season.  I tried just hacking through it with the tiller, but besides being very difficult and hard work, it only results in a lot of grass roots being broken up and mixed into the soil which will lead to more work (weeding) soon.

We plan to fence the garden this season as well as expanding it.  It was pure providence that no little critters disturbed it last year, no bunnies, no deer, quite amazing! 




Garden Plan
 

The garden plan was laid out in February, shown here.  It has already been somewhat modified, and probably will be again before everything is planted.

I am going to try some companion planting to see how that works out this season, and I am especially excited about the corn/pole beans/squash combo, as the beans grow up the corn stalks.  But, do they choke the corn and stop it from producing I wonder? 

I am not going to subject all my corn to this just in case!

 

 I saw a cutesy sign in a home décor shop last night out walking Bogey, it said:

Gardening is cheaper than therapy - and you get tomatoes!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's Here!

Yippee, my seed order arrived yesterday!

In an enormous box, since I also bought a growlight  garden in order to start seeds and keep a supply of fresh stuff around in winter. 

Growlight Garden
 

Although Chuckles was a little condescending about it, he helped me assemble it and seems interested in the possibilities.  But he claims he could build a better grow light garden!  I don't dispute that, it's just the amount of free time he has in a day (none) and the number of projects on his to-do list (about 800 and counting).  Which is why I didn't tell him ahead of time I was making this particular purchase.

The seeds themselves inspire all kinds of daydreams on my part, which is why I told Chuck he could use the bobcat to strip off the grass layer on the garden area so I could start tilling  and amending it this coming weekend.  Any job he can do that doesn't involve the renovation of the shop is a welcome change, so he is thrilled at the prospect.

We could also start fencing the garden area, which didn't get done last season.  We have the fence posts, just need a post pounder and some wire mesh. 

Dad examining some Iris
 

Meawhile, last weekend on our Saturday outing I took Mom and Dad to Tanglebanks Nursery and we had lunch at their Bistro.  A friend of mine came along for the adventure.


The food was very good, some interesting choices on their menu, and the place quickly filled up!  I will definitely make it back that way once spring arrives and they have more stock in their yard.

Mom was very smitten with these Primulas
 

They did have some lovely primulas on display, with enormous petals and even some with frilly petals which I have never seen.

 



Meanwhile, back at the country estate there was some trenching, pipe laying and trench filling happening.  These pics were first thing in the morning, when the morning mist was still swirling about.

 

Mini-Hoop Houses

The urge to garden got to me!  After weeks of reading through my seed catalogue until it was dog eared, and checking out Pinterest and Facebook for fresh ideas, I needed to get some dirt under my nails! 

After the torrential rains of Friday and Saturday, Sunday was a perfect day, balmy and bright, warm enough to work outside with just a light sweatshirt on.

Chuck and I got busy and made some mini hoop houses for our raised beds.

 Hoop houses are now trendy, as full sized greenhouses and as what we used to call cold frames back in the olden days, when I was a kid.



The Materials Assembled
 

 

Taking shape

 Using some PVC tubing, poly and scrap wood from the ongoing workshop project, we made covers for three of the beds.  In a couple of hours we turned the raised beds into little greenhouses, into which I have now planted Endive, Grand Rapids leaf lettuce, Kale and Peas. 

Adding the Poly
 

 

It's a bit early, I admit it.  However, there's a 50 50 chance by my estimation that we could get through the rest of winter without another freeze, so I think these little crops might work out, and soon we could be munching on some fresh greens.

And if not, well I had a marvellous time with my sleeves rolled up, in my gum boots, digging in the dirt with the sun on my back and Bogey chasing the odd stick I stopped to throw!

Garlic sprouting
 

A quick trip to the back garden yielded this great news - the garlic planted in October is all up now.  We can look forward to another (bigger) crop of garlic this year.  I am going to put more in this spring to see how it performs alongside the fall planted crop.