Recovery

the food garden recovered well after the storm. it required immediate attention, but we managed to lift just about everything back up off the ground. the bed is certainly a little bit overgrown, i have cut back enough branches from the tomatoes that you can walk up the center of the patch, and see what lies beneath. as i had mentioned in a previous post, we weren't expecting the garden to get so big considering our experience in previous years.

the garden is so thick it's almost like a mini food jungle.. when you walk into the center of it you can feel that it holds it's own temperature that is much cooler than the sweltering summer heat present on the outside. the soil beneath is dry only on the very outer layer, i probed the bed with my finger and i could see that it also holds a fair amount of moisture. i bought a hose almost a month ago because we had almost a week without rain and dragging cans of water out from the basement was becoming tiresome. i used the hose all of twice, and since the garden has been able to hold it's own. we haven't gotten this much rain in years, but it has rained every two or three days which has eliminated the need to water pretty much all summer so far.

when we first put the eggplants into the ground, we were concerned that the crazy weather at the start of the season may have stunted them, as they began to flower when they were only half a foot tall, barely strong enough to stand never mind holding fruit. then we had one of those days where it just would not stop raining, and within a few days the plants had nearly tripled in size. a couple of the asian eggplants have quite a bit of fruits on them, just about ready to be enjoyed.

though the storm did a lot of damage to the garden, the damage was a blessing to the rainbow swiss chard. we didn't think it would make it this year.. at the beginning of the season some sort of slug or insect had a feast on both plants. there was next to nothing left of the leaves. after cutting it back to allow it to re-grow, much of the surrounding vegetation had gotten enormous and shaded out the chard. when the storm hit it blew many of those things aside and allowed the swiss chard to thrive.

there will be so many tomatoes! last year the summer was so intensely hot and dry, no matter how much we watered we still ended up getting blossom rot on the first round of tomatoes. this year they are plump and full, and there are many. these heirloom purple striped make some funky shapes, i love heirlooms! so much character, and flavour too. the over planting this year combined with the process we used to build the beds created a perfect little microclimate for growth in what used to be a sun drenched little patch of meadow. in the next post i'll recap the method used to build the beds, which was far less labour intensive than our methods in previous years, and much more fruitful. not to mention, barely any 'weeds'!

Storm Damage

it's been a hot week.. brutally hot. last weekend i went on retreat to a slightly northerly vacation to swim in a lake and escape the city, and when i returned the garden had had another growth spurt, and outgrown most of it's stakes. because of the heat [even at night, augmented with killer mosquitoes!] i hadn't much of a chance to fix it, especially since last week i had just tied everything up to the top of 6 foot stakes there wasn't much i could do without taller ones.

finally the weather cools down, but there are only a few moments before a frightening black cloud erupts over the peninsula unleashing one of the craziest storms we have had in the past decade. the lightning was something to behold.. the wind and rain was spinning and intense, and somewhere in the weather mash up the garden took a beating. when we went out to check midway through the storm we could see that almost all of it had been pushed right down to the ground.

our last garden patch was completely surrounded by a wooden fence which acted as an excellent wind break, and saved the garden from damages like this. the more wild, almost entirely freestanding method from last year's place doesn't work here, as the field next door is an open invitation for the wind. this is the first time all year we have felt it's wrath, and this has been a key learning point for next year's garden.

i hadn't expected this patch to get as enormous as it did, big thick healthy stocks and tomato plants and vines far taller than i am. the land is fertile, our bed building method worked like a charm, and we've gotten far more rain this spring/summer than we have in the last five combined. it was just a mash of all the perfect elements to help the bed quickly overgrow and get out of control.

i suppose the fact that we weren't expecting to have a garden this year [and then built one last minute] is a contributor to the minimal staking method we went with.. after all was said and done support structures were minimally in the budget. many pieces were recycled. we had expected that the only way we would get to grow anything this year was going to be in minimally maintained patches cached away around the town, we wanted to see if it was possible to build small patches that require minimal support and care. our findings conclude that with proper wind break, it is completely possible, as long as the bed is built well in the first place.

growth explosion

we have been getting a lot of rain the past couple weeks, which has helped the garden catch up to where it should be growth wise. we have been getting some crazy weather, [really hot, then really really cold] which stunted some of the plants, especially the peppers and the eggplants. the peppers went into flower mode immediately and so did some of the eggplants.

now you can actually see the little eggplants hiding amongst the other plants, they're finally more than twice the size they were when i put them in the ground. i was afraid they were permanently stunted. i may still end up with miniature eggplants if any at all, i know a couple of them had already started to flower.

...and check out these figs! i wasn't sure we would get fruit the first year, it is but a tiny tree. but the lady at the farmers market told me as long as it's well watered and fed it should produce something this season. and voila! there's about a dozen fruit started on the tree. how exciting!

the zucchini plant has to be the biggest thing in the garden by mass and volume.. the thing is just huge. the stalks are almost as big around as the finished fruit should be, and there's half a dozen fruits coming through already. the leaves are bigger than my head, and the bush has to be over five feet across. i gave it three, and i also put it in a low spot hoping the extra water accumulation would help it survive the summer heat. it also helped it to take over that entire corner of the garden..

the closely planted food polycultures are proving to work well so far. now that the foliage is almost covering the beds completely it is easy to see that the plants help one another by confusing pests, shading the soil to keep in moisture, and shading smaller more delicate plants from the harsh sun, thus allowing them to thrive in the moist microclimates amongst other palnts. this also crowds out potential 'weeds' from flourishing as there is little room left for intruders.

Eleven Days..

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!].

ground break and earth quake..

so apparently there was an earthquake today. i was at work likely running a machine at the time so i didn't notice. if it was felt here that is.. i know it was felt by a couple friends in Toronto but no word yet this far south. just also happens to be the day we finally start digging the veggie beds. good times!

we had to cut into the meadow.. our landlord had promised since we moved in to bring over a mower. the one here was left out to rot, and the grass is about knee height in the sunniest spot. since i'm trying a 'cardboard garden' i started turning some of the grass right back into the dirt where it stands.. when i lay own the base layer of cardboard over the turned in grass it should keep it down long enough to decompose, and hopefully not sprout through.

on top of that will be layers of topsoil, sheep manure compost and leaf compost..and amongst the veggies while they're filling out will be some white clover sprouted from seed to act as a living mulch. the soil was surprisingly moist and crumbly, like a piece of cake.. i thought it would have been much harder to dig into than it was. my upstairs neighbour is trying a more traditional approach in the back corner, it will be interesting to see the differences between the beds. i can't wait to get back at it in the morning!

it's the long weekend, so i'm sure it will be busy at garden stands and markets for the open of garden season. hopefully i will make it over to the farmer's market to grab seedlings of things i didn't get a chance to start soon enough.. oh! and the lettuce seeds are sprouting! gotta grab some radish and carrots to join them in the planter.

well it's been a long day of work, play and gardening.. time to go relax with a book.

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.