Eleven Days..

the new bed

it's been such a busy past couple weeks, luckily the weather has been decent. i finally got to finish the bed along the back fence with the ontario natives, some blueberries and blackberries, wild ginger, sunflowers and a few other things. the sunflowers are the ones i started from seed, so it will be exciting if they take off.. they will be the biggest things i have ever successfully started from seed. i have a [mostly] green thumb but when it comes to starting seeds i usually don't have much luck unless it's directly in the ground.

 [more freecycled garden ties]

another seedling that i am quite proud of is my scarlet runner. four years in a row i have tried sticking these things in the ground, starting them in deep containers, planting them along fences, and nothing... finally this year [while i was away actually] one of the beans in the cups sprouted! it was quick to take off so i had to get it into the ground right away.

when i first dropped it into the ground a day or two ago, it had it's two huge first leaves, and a little something was starting to come out the top. now it has three more leaves and it's starting to spread out. i planted it in front of what used to be a tree, and is now a couple foot tall log sticking out of the ground. it will give the beans something to grow up, maybe creating a bush, and giving the vines a way to reach the fence.

the blackberries seem to be happy in their new home, the plant has really bushed out, and it's starting to fruit! usually in the first year fruiting perennials don't produce much if any edible fruit, but we'll see.

one thing that i was worried about was the rhubarb. i had planted it a couple weeks ago and it didn't do much, except lose a couple of leaves and look really unhappy. this shocked me because usually rhubarb is so easy! i asked the woman at the farmers' market what was up with it, and she said it should be fine if it's still alive, just give it a couple more weeks to take. sure enough a few days later it started to perk up and produce a couple new leaves! that's it for now, i'll post later today about the benefits of polycultures. toodles!

no place like home.

i'm back! finally.. well i have been for a few days but unfortunately returned to a wet basement and i've had little time to post. being gone for over a week the one thing i was worried about was no one remembering to water the garden in it's youthful freshly planted state.. but mother nature took care of that for me. apparently it rained almost every day.

besides mostly everything still being alive, the biggest surprise was this sprout! i have tried to grow these scarlet runner beans a few years now and they either get knocked down or torn out mistaken for something else, or they just don't sprout! my guess is that they'd rather be in the ground than started in a cup, but with my track record i thought if they won't start this way, i'll never start these beans. and voila! not only did it sprout but it seems to grow super quick.. gotta get it in the ground soon!

Matt's lettuce patch is doing really well too. it seems something else besides us is enjoying it, but we've snagged a few delicious crispy leaves for ourselves. i love the colour! i'm hoping i have more seeds to throw down to continue growing lettuce later in the season.

besides the garden, another thing that is flourishing is the community around it. this house has always have five or six tenants, but the back yard was rarely used, it was left to become overgrown. since Matt and i have moved in, we have converted it into somewhere nice to hang out, grow food and relax. now when i arrive home from work more often than not everyone that is home is in the back yard either cooking on the fire or coals, hanging out with the dogs or checking out the gardens. i love it!

 [upcycled truck tire rim into fire pit]

the culture part of permaculture.. the human connections, those are just as important as the networks being built in the garden. somewhere along the way people are losing touch with the sense of community and working together, and i think these things are just as important to cultivate as the food is.

that being said, we have done a lot of networking at the farmers' market, and if my timing is right, i should be able to get in on the good stuff today. gotta fly! it's good to be home... <3

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!].

sprouts of sunshine.

i'm horrible at starting things from seed. especially in trays. especially indoors! if it can go right in the ground i'm alright but otherwise... i need some practice. so when i set out a huge tray of seeds out back, i wasn't sure if anything would go, and it was a pleasant surprise after a couple big rains to find sprouts!

this lovely array of seeds were donated by various friends who had left overs, or nowhere to grow them.. i happily adopted them. wasn't sure if i could make them grow, but free seeds are better to try my luck than ones i've had to pay for. so! here goes...

sunnn! sunflower sprouts look so happy.. maybe because as soon as they sprout they're already huge! if these things make it to fullness, they'd be the biggest things i ever successfully grow from seed. they were so easy to start, i'll probably try a few more when i return from down south.

as an added bonus, the lupins sprouted. i love lupins, they're beautiful flowers.. they remind me of taking trips through northern ontario. they should have been started indoors weeks before frost, and delicately transplanted. but here i have started them in peat trays outdoors, on a repurposed trampoline turned planting table.

it will be interesting to see what makes it all the way, i hope more sprouts appear! we've also seen the cucumber seeds break the surface. still waiting on various herbs like mint and sage, and a couple other flowers and veggies. stay tuned!

the first big rain.

it's been a long time since i've been to the farmers' market on a tuesday.. it's usually the most quiet of the market days, but it was especially so today as the rain refused to let up. i'm kind of glad it was quiet, it gave me a chance to talk to the vendors and get the scoop on what's happening this week.

i grabbed another load of plants, as many as i could carry on the city bus. the new assortment consists of blackberry, a fig tree [should be interesting], some bush zucchini, pickling cucumbers, two types of tomato.. black cherry [the purple tomatoes!] and a heirloom variety. there's also an assortment of herbs like sage, rosemary and thyme. i've had a hard time finding eggplant, the assortment won't have as much variety as last year's plot, but it will be a good start.

so back to that rain...

all of the seeds we dropped in the ground have doubled in size since yesterday, the rain has really done them some good. matt and i stood grinning with pride at our little radishes.. we will drop some more seeds in a week or two to have some later for harvest.

tomorrow the digging shall continue, and planting what other plants we have so far. the first batch that went into the ground earlier this week are taking especially well since the rain has come. check out the bok choy!

everything is already looking delicious. the kale is so crisp, the little lettuce sprouts are starting to look like grown-up lettuce, and the pepper plants in the ground look like they will begin to flower. thursday is round two this week at the farmer's market, hopefully the rain will let up and more vendors will show with seedlings. next year hopefully we will be set to start seeds indoors, but for now we take what we can get!

can't wait to taste the rainbow... swiss chard! yay for food!

a freecycle sunday..

it was a beautiful day today.. chilly, but the sun was warm. my brother and i headed out to our parents' house out in the country to celebrate his quarter-century birthday. my baby bro...! anyway, while we were out there, we loaded up dad's pickup with a few things from around the yard. he had an old beater of a mower, no longer sufficient for his huge plot, but perfect for our city yard.. it should survive the rest of the season. we finally got to cut into that meadow that had recently become home to some unwanted creatures; namely... ticks! eeuugh.. and with the dogs on the main floor it had become critical timing to get it cut.

not only did we score a freecycled mower, but we also got to take their extra garden ties, and a load of wood for the fire. oh, almost forgot to mention what i had originally wanted to take home, the rain barrel! we can collect the next storm off the roof to water... for free!

now that the grass is mowed, and we have more soil [we used dad's truck to grab more after unloading the freebies], i'm looking forward to progressing on the beds out back this week. tuesday, thursday and saturday are market days, when we can go and pick up more seedlings of our favourite fruits and veggies. we should have the beds mostly planted by sunday, and i fly out monday morning for a week. hope the boys can keep up with the watering!

the boys will also hopefully find the perfect home for the rain barrel, and get that system set up soon. i think i remember one of the other tenants mentioning his parents having a rain barrel, the more the merrier! we were fortunate enough that our parents had an abundance of things we could make use of, but there's always places to get good stuff for free. there are existing organizations like freecycle.org that helps make those hookups happen. also there's kijiji, and the local newspapers.

our city has a free mulch pile too, a lot of towns around here do. it's rough cut, scrap from fallen trees and cut branches in the area, but it's free! as for firewood, you can go down any industrial strip in this town and pick up truck loads of untreated pine skids piled up by the curb ...for free! these things are there for the taking, and they will be there regardless if they get used, so we may as well.

that's enough about free stuff, you get my drift.. lots more garden work to come, bright and early...!