signs of spring.

winter in the garden

it's our first winter here at the new house, and we finally got a snow worth talking about. the first snow is always so refreshing.. and super bright when the sun comes out upon it. i was awake early to sneak some shots before the sun was high.

an end to one season, and the beginnings of the next.. walking around the yard and pondering the clean slate helps us to dream up ideas for the spring. last year, our first year in the new house, we learned a few key lessons about the new plot. the main one being, leave more space. at the last house we could plant things much closer together and they did not interfere with one another except to in some cases support or shelter each other where needed. in this space, it quickly overgrew. the soil us much deeper and more fertile here, not as much clay as the last place.

we did a lot of travelling in 2013, more than expected, which meant almost two entire months scattered about weeks here and there where the garden didn't receive any care. the further back, more wild garden beds survived just fine, but the kitchen garden closer to the house quickly got out of hand, and too much of the produce never made it to plate. on the plus side, there is a lot of fallen plant matter to compost in the heap and on the beds that we will use to build the soil. no tilling or turning.

next year we will be spending much more time at home with our garden. our design will be better fitted to the space we have available so that we can maximize our usage of the yard, and have better access to the bounty of abundance. we are already excited for spring, and it's only the first snowfall...

early summer fruits

first to the finish line, some pickling cukes! they started flowering not very long ago, and already these are just about ready to pick. we have a large supply of our own fresh dill, and will be trying our hand at makin' pickles. the next thing that will finish seems to be the bush variety zucchini, the plant has almost a dozen fruits taking off under it's enormous leaves.

i'm excited for the zucchini, i'll most likely trade a few of them to a baker in exchange for a fresh zucchini loaf. otherwise we are beginning to see tomatoes, and there's also quite a few mature peppers coming through. i was also surprised to find along the back fence that the wild grapes are actually producing fruit, we will have to see if they will end up being edible.

 the beds are looking beautiful, so far the cardboard garden experiment is going very well. there are next to no 'weeds', and if there are they are usually only along the edge so that they are easy to pull. there are a few blades of grass here and there, but considering i didn't pull many of the roots out, that's not bad. not a problem as of yet, and the vegetation has certainly become thick enough to shade out any 'intruders'.

you can barely see the path! but there still is one, it's a good thing i made it as wide as i did, or there would be no walking space. we will have to go through again and re-tie a lot of the tomatoes, they're growing so fast they need some adjustment. the beds seem to be keeping very moist on their own, they require no watering until the third day of heat without rain, it mostly stands up on it's own so i don't have to worry if i go away for the weekend. it's nice! there's a lot planned for next year based on this year's overall success, possibly including fruit trees and shrubs.

a week away..

bad timing i know... i don't have much of a choice though. i have been chosen as the delegate for my district to represent at an international shareholders conference, and it just happened to be the first week of June. worst week to step away from the garden.. i'm nervous for the most recent planted beds as it has been very hot this past week. the first couple patches planted are already well enough established that they no longer droop in the heat. it's supposed to cool down this week, here's hoping..

we created this series of beds [which is truly one connected bed] one section at a time, so we have had the benefit of a couple weeks to observe how the first sections took before planting more. we used a sort of 'lasagna' style of building beds, we turned, mulched with cardboard, composted mulch, topsoil and composted sheep manure. there has yet to be a weed.

tada! well, this is the garden so far.. i had to halt production to reserve funds [and time] for this trip that starts tomorrow. what we have in the buckets is orange mint and peppermint, a fig tree, in the back bed lettuce [mesclun mix], carrots, radish, tomato, and rhubarb. in the main beds we have purple kale, regular and oriental eggplants, bok choy, rainbow swiss chard, and more radish. for peppers there's hot hungarian, long red italian, hot cherry, cayenne, bell pepper, and possibly a couple other i can't remember. there's a variety of tomatoes too.. cherry, black cherry, burgundy stripe heirloom, early girl, and i think there was a yellow one as well. oh, and blackberries and red onions!

the corner closest to the door houses most of the herbs, things we will want ready access to when cooking. the variety so far includes rosemary, french tarragon, regular and hot oregano, basil, sage, lavender, flat and ruffled parsley, dill, thyme and lemon thyme, chives and a little curry. i also finally found some chamomile seeds! i was excited to find any at all.

we wanted to plant a fruit tree of some sort, but we aren't sure if we can put a tree on this property.. so we decided to start with a tree we can keep in a pot; a fig tree. a woman at the farmer's market had held onto it for me, i fell in love with the idea of fresh figs. i covered the top with rocks after mulching with composted manure to keep the moisture in.

this will be the last entry until i return next weekend, when i will evaluate how the plot survives my absence in such a sensitive time. hopefully the housemates will remember to water [and love it!].

long weekend planting

YAY GARDEN! yes, we finally got one of the beds done. our first experimental bed started as a grassy meadow of a lawn.. the dirt and some of the grass was overturned, layered with cardboard, and then with various leaf mulch,and a blend of composted sheep manure, sandy topsoil and black earth. we are limited on funds this year so we work with what we get for cheap or free. so far we made out pretty well.. we had plenty of plain corrugated cardboard from the move.

however the move was at a time that made it hard to start seeds before the last frost, much of what we sprouted at the old house didn't survive the move. we have had better luck directly in the ground with the lettuce anyway, it already looks better than it did inside.

the main bed was planted with seedlings from the farmer's market, and some from the grocery garden centre. in between we are experimenting with making the groundcover layers of different low-growing plants from seed such as beets and turnips in a couple spots, and then lettuce mix throughout. once the sprouts start to show i will go in between where there is still space and drop some romaine or other lettuce seeds that will benefit from periodic shade of the taller plants around them.

the planter box with the already sprouting lettuce was infiltrated with carrots, beets and parsnips in patches throughout. we are experimenting with building dense polycultures, some plots we will intentionally overplant to see how much food mass a single plot can hold. this must be done carefully with attention to companion plants, root depths and how much space the plant itself will need to thrive.

tonight i think we may start some of the wildflowers and sunflowers in some peat cups so they are ready for when the ground is prepared for them. otherwise their sprouts would get lost in the meadow! also we have a few spare totes from the move so i'm thinking i will use one to make some super rich compost. Matt drinks a lot of coffee and we eat a good amount of eggs [shells!].. plus we have pulp from the juicer. mix that with some of the brown stuff from last year's leaves and a bit of water and see what we get!


in other news, we discovered quickly that this house doesn't have a hose hookup outside. i'll tell ya i've been getting a good workout going from the downstairs tub up and out to the yard a bunch, but i don't mind.. for now. by next weekend we should have our first rain barrel set up to collect off the roof. also i'm storing all of the water from the dehumidifier in a tote outside for soaking the soil. we seem to pull about 3-5 liters a day out of the air in the basement of this old house... that's a lot of humidity! keeps the basement super cool with all the windows closed too. that and a couple of air circulator fans and it's easily ten degrees cooler down here than on the main floor. love it! well there's a bunch more work to be done, ta for now!

changes..

so, we moved.. we lost most of what we had sprouted at the old place, but we now have access to an entire back yard. only problem is.. we're broke! the move happened sooner than expected which worked out well, but we weren't anticipating one of us losing our source of income. while the man looks for another job, we are focusing as much funds as we can on growing some fresh food.

we are very limited on tools this year, literally all that we have at the moment is a spade, a watering can, and a wheeled cart to bring home bags of soil from the market across the street. i have an enormous stock of seeds from last year to experiment with, though for many it will be too late to start. we found a few random packs of mesclun mix seed, so we prepared the already existing pre-dug bed for the lettuce by adding some more soil and compost. it's in a space that will get a lot of shade but still enough sun to grow something, so we figured it's the perfect place to start some lettuce.

there was a patch of weeds growing out of a mound next to the bed so i decided to chop it up, pull the weeds and break up the soil to throw down some clover seed, and in the process of doing so i found a sprouted walnut! we have a big black walnut tree on one side of the yard, a squirrell must have buried itself a snack and forgotten about it. we decided to throw it in a peat pot to see if it will survive.

if it does survive we don't have enough space in our yard for another large tree, so we will give it up for adoption. it will be interesting to see if it grows! our next project will be to start the vegetable garden. we have decided that we will try a 'lasagna garden' method this year, we have lots of cardboard from the move, a large pile of leaves raked into the corner left from last year, top soil and some composted sheep manure.


it's a pretty cold, rainy day today.. we even got some hail. for the past few years we have experienced intense cold snaps in May, hopefully this is the last one. in the next two weeks we should have the veggie bed prepared just in time for planting season. 'lasagna gardens' or no-dig gardens are usually best started in autumn, but it is possible to start one in spring. we will be experimenting with a quick-ish method that will also help us to get rid of weeds and grass while creating a fertile, moist and sunsoaked spot to grow some food.