Monday, September 12, 2011

Moved

I've moved all the garden posts over to my new blog http://nesfarm.blogspot.com; hopefully I'll have one every Thursday.

I have finally found some time for the garden at it's looking a little better then it was!

Next year... oooohooo, we're going to have some FUN!! :)

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Abandoned?


Maybe a little, but not forgotten. 
This is SO embarrassing! 

Mmmm... weed soup? 

I've just had no time this year, with the move and all the farm work.

I believe this is a spaghetti squash

And least the garden is producing a little bit of something.

Next year garden, I promise...

Friday, July 1, 2011

Can you save money gardening?

My first year I think I spent less then $20 on seeds & used a shovel I already had, and turned over & double-dug a HUGE patch of sod. 

Yes you can save money your first year of gardening. 

Did I save money my second year when I bought better tools, $100 of seeds (which I have spread out over at least 2 if not 3 years), and put in raised beds from recycled wood? Yes. 

This year I used seeds left over from last year & seeds I saved (but hubby just ran out and bought me $20 in seedlings to supplement what I couldn't start b/c of the move). I think I spent an additional $5 on some seeds I needed (+ broccoli I didn't have last year). Am I going to save again this year? Definitely. 

Then again we also bought a new house to put the garden in so if that counts I'm in trouble... 

A head of lettuce costs me $3-5 at the grocery store (depending on season) at home I can have a salad every night for pennies. I haven't bought lettuce seeds except for new varieties because I always let mine go to seed. Same with beans. 

You don't need fancy gadgets to garden. You need a shovel, and a will to work. I also live out in the country where I don't have to pay $5 a bag of manure, I just go ask the cows.



You can definitely save money gardening, especially when you compare the price of buying all organic food to growing it. But gardening is about more then saving any amount of money. It's about appreciating the beauty of flowers, improving the look of your home, and the sense of accomplishment you get from eating something you grew from a tiny little seed. 

Monday, June 27, 2011

The best house-warming present

The vegetables garden that keeps giving!
Perennial installations.


The long row of perennial fruit behind the garden.
Great planning because I could set something sun-loving at the very edge of the garden and still not have the bushes over-shadow it. Plus there is room to drive the mower through there.




I've never really eaten currants so I'm not really sure what I'm going to make with all these plants!!



The grape vine will shadow anything placed right behind it, but only a little, so it's the perfect spot for a lettuce patch! The poor thing did need a really good hair-cut first.


We have a lovely patch of strawberries just coming into fruit! Unfortunately there is also a ton of stinging nettle in there... OUCH! 

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Farm Report

A good beer at the end of a long day of work is essential to keeping your gardener happy 

I appreciate the principals behind a no-till garden, and the whole bit about killing microbes when you bring them to the surface makes tons of sense to me. Still, I find a garden that has been tilled so much easier to work in, and double-digging the best way to prep the ground & kill the weeds.

We did not till up this garden this year, and it wouldn't be necessary (although would have made planting much faster). I double-dug most of the soil and you can tell when the shovel hits the dirt how soft the soil is, this has been a properly cared for and used garden.

I'm expecting that because it's obviously been used year after year we're going to need some extra organic content; but right now my best plan should be to take a soil sample to the local extension office for testing.

In the mean time, we're all moved into the new place and I've already got all my little seedlings into the ground. Hubby also ran out and grabbed me a bunch more pepper plants, and they put my little stunted started seeds to shame! We'll see if my guys can catch up, but I'd be pretty surprised if they did.

If I had to do it all over again, I would probably have started with a seed starting method that didn't end up mildewing! But I would start & move my seedlings again. It was pretty easy & I still have plants to go in the ground that may need a little help late-summer/early-fall to keep going, but I should get a half-decent harvest from them.

And our giant pumpkin is already pretty large! Here's hoping we've got a good whopper.



For this year we have:
- bush beans (yellow & green)
- lettuce
- cherry & eating tomatoes
- green & yellow peppers
- hopefully 1 jalapeno pepper plant
- cauliflower & broccoli
- zucchini, spaghetti, pumpkins,
(I lost the tags to a few so should be a good surprise!)
- cucumber
- atlantic giant pumpkin!
+ Established plantings I'll blog about later.

Monday, May 30, 2011

Think Globally, act locally.



Yes it's a slogan you hear often these days, but it makes a lot of sense. Just like voting in an election, one vote either way doesn't really have a lot of sway, but it is the cumulative effects of many people acting together that shapes our world. 


And I'm not a nut-ball about these things. Our kids LOVE bananas, we have them almost every day. I would love to be able to grow them at home, but unfortunately I don't have a greenhouse (maybe one day). 


Living a more "green" life is about making choices though, and we choose to eat bananas and apples all winter because they make the most ecological sense to us. Apples are grown in Ontario and stored all winter, so you can still get fresh local apples in January; and bananas are generally shipped by sea not air, which is far more plant-friendly.


That doesn't mean we never have oranges, but I try to get them when the harvest is coming in from Florida so they don't have to travel as long, plus they taste WAY better.

We also buy local meat (VERY local, like next door...) and nothing makes my soul feel better then putting together meals where everything except the salt & pepper are grown/raised and harvested within walking distance. 


With the new "farm", we'll be growing our meat & veggies side by side on our own land! I definitely do not do this every night (I like delivered pizza as much as the next person!), but even one meal a week with all our own food makes me feel grounded and like I'm doing something good for both my family and the earth. 


I don't expect everyone to drop their urban lifestyle and move out to where they can have their own little patch of land, but for us it's about doing what we love, and contributing to saving our children's future. 

Monday, May 23, 2011

What varieties to choose

The first answer should be: What grows well in your area; and the best place to find that out, is at your local nursery.


When it comes to my garden, originally I was after flavour and ease of care (especially being a new gardener) but in the last few years I've really found that most things you grow at home taste a million times better then store bought no matter the variety. 

With a quickly growing family and very long cold winters, now quantity and freezing quality is the most important to me. 


Zucchini does't freeze very well so doesn't taste as good frozen as it does fresh; but I froze a whole bunch and added a little into pasta sauce once a week. Even though I grew piles of the stuff, and was literally begging people to take some from me, I ran out of zucchini mid-winter. Before I grew it this year, I didn't think I liked zucchini, but it was so yummy! 


I also froze beans, peas and peppers and we ate all of those as well. While I won't have the time this year (literally the number of days because of the move) to grow enough in the garden, I'm going to try. For next year I'm aiming to carry us right through the winter with frozen (or canned!) vegetables. 


In a couple cases (like beans) I may grow two different varieties, one for fresh and one for freezing. 

Non-hybrids (true heirlooms or not) are also important to me only because I want to be able to save my seeds from year to year. There is absolutely nothing wrong with hybrids, it just means that you're getting a cross of two different strains of the vegetable, so you won't get consistent plant from the next generation of seed (like a mutt dog).


My criteria for choosing variety:
#1 Number of days to maturity
#2 Freezing quality/taste after freezing
#3 Quantity of produce vs Space/care requirements 
#4 Non-hybrids for seed saving 

Ask at your local nursery, check with other local gardeners and research before you buy. Seed packets are sold on their descriptions, most of which say nothing helpful about the actual plant, and can be down-right misleading at times (depending on where you are buying from).

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

What we're doing, since we gotta move!

Only a few weeks to go before the big move and it's time to start making plans.

Tomatoes & Peppers
At least half of each are going into patio containers for the summer. There just isn't enough time to get a good harvest. Containers will let me bring these guys into the house in the fall. That way I can get veggies from the laundry room until the plants stop producing.

I had a much higher success rate with my tomato seeds then I planned, so I'll have enough to put a few out in the garden as well.

Beans, Cucumbers & Peas
These veggies I can succession plant after we move in.

Lettuce & Spinach
I've already got them sprouting up here from seeds that fell last fall. I'll be able to harvest before we move, then plant a slow bolt variety at the new place for the summer.

Squashes
I don't usually plant my squash until early June anyway (it's just not warm enough here). So I'll just have to find a spot that is really well sheltered for the fall and I should still get an okay harvest as long as I get them in right after we move.

Cauliflower & Broccoli?
On special request from the toddler, I've started broccoli & cauliflower for him. These are cold season crops so I'll have to find a shady spot for them, and plan to plant some more closer to fall.

Strawberries & Raspberries
I picked up a small raspberry plant from my family's cottage last year, so after the move it didn't fruit last year (it barely grew). The little plant has come back with a vengeance! I feel bad moving it again and preventing it from fruiting, but I'm sure we'll have a huge plant by next year. I'll be digging up both my strawberries and raspberries from the garden and moving the whole plants.


A few of my seeds will be staying in the freezer this year. I grew celery for the first time last year (I don't recommend it for your first-year garden, but it isn't too hard), but I definitely don't have the 110 days it takes this year. I also won't be planting any onions, potatoes, garlic or corn, they also take too long and wouldn't move well. Next year!

It's not all bad news though, I do get to plant so more permanent garden areas, like asparagus! We're also planing on grapes, kiwi vines and apple trees. I'm so excited to have my own, permanent-for-a-long-while, vegetable garden!

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Well that didn't work.

Mildew.

*le sigh*

Perhaps next time I'll try spacing the out a little better so the air can get around them, I don't know if that was really the problem though.

One thing I did find about the cardboard tubes, they were INCREDIBLY easy to remove the seedlings from.

I just pealed the wrapper and out popped perfect little seedlings ready to transplant.

In fact they came out so easily I would consider using this method again, if I could do without the mildew.



In comes the old rabbit hutch. Not exactly the best option, but with 4 weeks to the move, we've packed everything :). Plus this will make it super easy to move all my seedlings, provided I can keep them happy.

The biggest problem is that I've got hot-weather seedlings on the one side (tomatoes & peppers) and cold on the other side.

Oh well!

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Another year, another seed starting method

So it's a little late if you're starting seeds now, and you should probably consider heading to your local nursery to pick up some seedlings in a few weeks; but we're moving soon so I want to keep my seedlings small so they don't get damaged.

Every year so far, I've tried a different seed starting method

Year 0: In the ground
You can't see it in the picture,
 but this
corn plant had to be
double-staked to keep
from falling over &
only gave one ear
because it was planted
 in a peat-pot.
This was a bad idea. In Ottawa the weather does not get warm until late May/June, in fact we had a snow storm last April. There are some vegetables you can/should start in the ground, but around here, Tomatoes are not one of them. I ended up with seeds that were flooded and washed out so they were all over the place, and most didn't germinate because of the cold temperatures or rotting in the soil.

Year 1: In peat pots
Who ever thought this was a good idea?? There is a reason there are so many mummies pulled out of peat bogs. Peat pots are just about the worse thing to start your seeds in. They don't degrade in the soil so your plant's roots get bound up in the peat pot so you can't remove them without killing your plant; or they prevent the plant roots from growing so badly they won't reach full production & are very unstable.


Year 2: In plastic flats
I'm pretty neutral about plastic flats, I know some people really like them, and they make it easy to heat the seedlings, but they aren't my favourite. I find the plants difficult to get out with out damaging the seedlings, but your success my vary greatly with the type of plastic flats you have.


Year 2: Newspaper pots
So after finding a nifty gadget in the seed catalogue (I'm so glad I didn't buy!) and watching some you-tube videos, I decided I wanted to try these guys out but I was so disappointed! They seems like a great way to start your seeds so I spent hours making tons of little tiny pots, only to have them disintegrate the minute I tried to water my seedlings.
I ended up transplanting everything into half plastic water bottles, which actually worked quite well.


Year 3: Cardboard Tubes
This year, I'm trying a variation on the newspaper pots, cardboard toilet paper tubes. I've been squirreling them away all winter (so if you don't have a large family, this may be prohibitive) and I collected about 2 dozen non-bleached tubes.
Planting the seeds was a lot messier then I had planned! But I made a little funnel out of some glossy junk mail, and that helped keep the soil in the tubes. I'm keeping all my tubes on an old baking sheet & being very careful not to move them around too much (not to mention moving them to the new house, haven't quite figured that one out yet).
Hopefully the cardboard will prove to be much stronger then the newsprint of year 2 & easier to remove the seedlings from then year 1.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Spring, Sprung, Lettuce.

Every summer, I have a few lettuce plants that I don't get to quite in time and they start to bolt. Bolted lettuce starts to take on a very bitter taste, not really something you want to eat. Instead of pulling it out I always let it grow, and here's why:


All those little light-green plants are new lettuce plants!

I don't do anything to protect them over winter (although we always get a good snow pack) the seeds that fell last summer will just go dormant and perk up as soon as the weather starts to warm up.

Now we'll have some lovely heads to harvest in just a few more weeks!

The only problem with this method, is that lettuce seeds have little tufts on them, so they tend to blow around quite a bit. This is only an issue if you're really set on a neat & tidy garden. It's very easy to tell a bright green lettuce from weeds and lettuce won't compete with the other veggies in your garden.


Bolted Lettuce
Dried lettuce with seed

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Diving into your First Garden

Beginning gardeners always ask the same inevitable questions: How much space? What should I grow?

How Big to Go

Don’t bite off more than you can chew. No, really. No really, really, really. It’s so tempting when you start out, to get under all that nasty sod and bring in some lovely veggies. Especially once you catch “the Bug”. You need to balance how much food you want to produce, the time you want to spend in the garden, and how much land you have to work with. A properly maintained container garden will produce much more than a mismanaged ¼ acre.

First choose veggies your family actually likes & eats (leave experimenting for your second year on). Then look at varieties appropriate to your area and some quick research can tell you how much you can expect one plant to produce. Then deduce from there how much you need to grow and how much land that will take up. (I'll write more about how to do this in a later article) 

You don't need to become completely self-supporting in a summer! Just a little something homegrown to add to a special meal once a week, will go a long way. 

Contain your Excitement

Containers are a great way to start. They give you an opportunity to take your first year to prepare a larger garden while still producing food; and you may find you like container gardening so much, you don’t want to go to a full-scale set-up.

Almost every vegetable has a variety that will do well in a pot, including pumpkins and other squash. It’s even possible to grow field crops in modified containers. Climbing peas and beans can do very well in a gutter and trellis set up. Lettuce can be grown almost anywhere and in almost anything that holds soil. Containers, in general, require much less weeding, in part because you can employ weed-suppression methods (such as landscape fabric) for less money because you’re doing it on a small scale. Plus it is so easy to extend your season by just bringing you plants indoors for a few extra weeks of harvest when it gets cold.

Containers are a great way to just dip your toes in the gardening pool to test the waters before you jump right in.

Going Grass-less

If your goal is simply that you hate mowing there are lots more options then turning it all into veg. This would be a good place to look into naturalization and permaculture. Vegetable gardens obviously produce tons of yummy food, but they aren't necessarily going to take up less of your time, or less water, than lawn.

You can always get bigger

I started out with a 6’x3’ square, last year I had 12’ x 31’ to work in, and this year, even more. If you stretch yourself to thin before you knowledge and skill can catch up, you’re going to burn out and end up hating gardening. 6’ by 6’ or even 4’x4’ is a very manageable amount of space and you’ll be amazed at how much food a well fertilized patch that size can produce.

Keep it in the Community

If you don’t have any space, or you’re feeling too nervous about doing it all on your own, look into community projects; they are sprouting up everywhere! It’s a great way to get to know all your localy veg-head neighbours and soak up all their knowledge & experiences before bringing that back to your own home garden.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

What to do, when you gotta move

Our moving boxes
This is a problem that faces most veggie gardeners at least once in their career; especially because the high-season for real estate clashes with prime gardening time. What to do when you have to move part way through the gardening season. Except not moving, and not gardening; neither are legitimate options.

Start Early Crops

Depending on when you are moving, you may still have enough time for a few quick crops. Things like lettuce, cauliflower, beets all do best in cool weather By starting early indoors and taking advantage of early season extenders (like row covers) you can get at least a little something out of your garden before you move. Plus, if you leave a prepared garden behind, you may ignite the garden bug in the new home-owners.

Transplant Smart

We're moving in June, and Ottawa doesn't get warm until June. So when it comes to squash and other warm-weather crops I'm not losing any time and I'll start those plants the same time I normally would.

Count back from your move date and pretend it's your frost date. You'll probably want to give yourself an extra week after you move so you've got time to unpack before you have to transplant. If you've got to put your garden in as well, you may need to give yourself even more time.

Use rubber-maid/storage containers with lids to start your transplants in so you don't end up with soil all over you car's carpet when you have to move them. 

Don't let your plants get leggy. Veggies like squash and tomatoes can become fragile and unhealthy as they grow too large in small pots. It's best to keep them a little on the small size for the move.

Short Season Crops

This may be a good year to invest in some shorter season crops. You may not be able to find them at your local garden shop if you live in the south (most garden shops only stock for the zone they are in) but there are lots of online seed shops you can order from. Just because something is for a shorter season doesn't mean anything about heat tolerance, so you need to research. By choosing shorter season crops you'll be able to squish your veggies into the time you do have available, and you can use them in other years for succession planting.

Contain It

If you're moving right in the middle of your season, this may be the answer for you. Choose light-weight containers that will be easy to move, and varieties that do well in containers. Luckily there are varieties of almost every vegetable tailored for container growing, including miniature corn and pumpkins. For moving day you may want to stake your plants & plastic wrap to cover the soil.

Raise it Up

You can purchase pre-made raised bed containers, adding that with the price of soil this may be a pretty expensive option but it does mean you could have a ready-to-go garden in an afternoon.

Let's Make a Deal

Talk to your Realtor; some sellers would be amicable to letting you on the property for at least a day just to turn up your soil and create a vegetable garden. This obviously varies greatly by personality & situation but if that's your only options it's not going to hurt to ask.

Monday, March 21, 2011

First Peek

When we first went to see our new home I was so distraught at the thought that I wasn't going to have a veggie garden this year. With the packing, moving, settling in, un-packing and sprucing up the house I wasn't confident I was going to be able to get around to actually putting in a vegetable garden, let alone maintaining it.

So, while we're still definitely going to be a little scaled back from last year & I'm going to get a late start, our date with the home inspector fell on a lovely spring day. The snow had melted, and revealed something almost magical beside hubby's new work-shop.



WOOHOO!!!!

Monday, March 7, 2011

So neglected but not abandoned

My poor little gardening blog, not enough time & too many excuses.

Oh well, spring is just around the corner and I'll have lots more new & exciting vegetables in a brand new veggie garden, at a brand new house... oh my!

I have a few old posts that didn't quite make it through the editing process, so some new old ones may pop up in the next week or two.