New Gardens

New Gardens

This year we’ve expanded the gardens by two or three times of what we had last year. Yet it’s still just a start of what we hope to build.
It is only mid-May, and I have to admit that I let my enthusiasm get away on me a couple of times, so that I wasted a certain amount of effort by starting seeds weeks ahead of the season, and transplanting some starts outside too early as well. It just means that I had to start over again. The garden is teaching me patience and peace of mind.

The land here has a wide mix of growing conditions. The back garden has some decent soil mixed with clay. All of that garden area holds on to good moisture, even during long, hot dry stretches. In some sections I have mixed in extra sand and/or peat to loosen the soil and improve drainage. At present I have started garlic, artichokes, Jerusalem artichokes, climbing peas, kale, chicory, leeks, potatoes, carrots, blueberries, gooseberries, red currants, strawberries, broccoli, brussel sprouts and various herbs. By the end of the month we will transplant various squash, cucumbers, melons, cabbage, bush beans and tomatillos into this area.
The front gardens are a series of winding raised beds. We plan to add to this garden since it gets the best sun exposure on the property. We have built up most of the soil in this section, mixing topsoil, sand, peat, compost, manure, seaweed, etc.. In the less exposed beds lettuce, kohlrabi, turnips, various Chinese greens, radishes, parsley, spinach, garden cress, carrots, broccoli, brussel sprouts and chard are growing. In other beds there are more climbing and bush peas, many herbs, broccoli, arrugula, kale and sunflowers. Within the next couple weeks we will transplant about a dozen varieties of tomatoes that are now growing in the small green house.

By planting small amounts in various areas, I hope to discover this year what plants work best in each area, and under what soil conditions.
The new and large area that will be opened up after building the new driveway, will have less than full sun exposure(depending on how many trees we decide to cut), and is almost completely sand and sandy clay in some areas. In other words, even if we bring in extra soil to build beds or plant trees, the area will be ‘extremely’ well-drained. That said, there should be plenty of water for moderate but consistent irrigation.

** If experienced gardeners/farmers have suggestions concerning what to plant in this area, I would appreciate their advice. *** We plan to seed native grasses over the entire area as well so as to be able to raise small animals (poultry, rabbits, ducks??) starting next year – for meat, eggs, and manure.

Beyond all of these gardens, the property has about a 10 or 11 mature apple and plum trees, along with another dozen young plum and apple varieties donated to me by gardening friends in Victoria.
I am waiting for the machine-work to complete the new driveway and landscape terraces by early June so that I can plant 14 more potted fruit trees (7 types of cherries, and the rest are pears, plums and apples) into the ground, as well as a number of fig trees and other berry bushes.

After three weeks of sunshine and almost no precipitation, it has started to rain steady and beautiful this afternoon. I’ll have a mess of black slugs to deal with, but the gardens will love the moisture.

Slug Patrol

Slug Patrol


Every morning starts with a walk through the gardens, the greenhouse, and the collection of fruit trees – especially the potted trees that are still waiting to go into the ground this year after all of the machine work is finished where the old driveway used to run.
I call it the “slug patrol” but it really involves more than just hunting out the slimy black creatures that are doing their best to reclaim my back garden. During the last four years I haven’t done much back there so that the surrounding black berries pushed in from the sides, horsetails and morning glories had free reign, raccoons ravaged the compost pile so that the area began a fast return to the wild. Still, during that time, I would occasionally hack out a clearing to plant a garlic patch (it is the only truly self-sustaining crop that survives back there) each fall. The three apple trees produce well for us, if we can get in before a black bear and her cub arrive just as the fruit ripens. There are two clumps of rhubarb that emerge from the tangle every spring and early summer. And there is also a large square section with old strawberry plants that somehow still produce even while having to compete with the slug, horsetail, black-berry, etc. onslaught each season.
This year, I decided to take back a small section of this back-garden tangle to plant some pole beans and climbing peas. While working compost into the garden, I noticed that the soil seemed quite a bit better than other parts of the property. Encouraged by this, I cleaned up another raised bed area for different carrots. Before the week was over, I’d moved from one section to another, so that a potato patch went in; a cabbage section was cleared; a long row with eight new blueberry plants now skirts along one edge after I cut back the blackberries. Artichokes, gooseberry, more leaks and kale and chicory have a foothold in the worst sections, and another large raised bed is waiting for more squash, cucumbers and beans. One more bonus is that the garlic is looking better than any crop we planted in earlier years.
The gardens in front of the house are a little easier to maintain. They aren’t so close to the encroaching wild. Plus, since I walk past them throughout the day, I regularly notice if a slug, or our cat, is becoming too interested in one of the plots.
The slug-patrol gives me a chance to start my day outside, making sure that no pest is given any extra daytime hours after their long night feeding on our vegetable starts. I might have to repair damage from last night’s wind, or do some watering if things are dry. Sometimes I come up with a new garden plan for next season, or just a way to make it easier this year. But mostly it’s a chance to really enjoy each new bit of growth and change that can sometimes happen in the span of just one day.

Taking time to Write

A Second Introduction

Taking Time to Write

It feels good to finally take a moment and begin recording a few thoughts and events that have taken place since the new year began.


When you live on a small plot of land in the rainforest of the Pacific Northwest, you have to make a point of doing something – some bit of maintenance, building, planting, weeding, wood cutting, fixing, etc – everyday just to hold on to what you have. Rainy winter months want to wash your efforts away. Mould grows in hidden corners. Carpenter ants and termites thrive in these conditions. The forest floor and fern bogs behind the house are black with rotting organics.
It reminds me in some ways of the experience I wrote about while in the Darien jungle region of Panama. There can be a claustrophobia that engulfs you in a rainforest. It seems that you can never fully set down your machete if you want to keep a little patch of sky and open air around you. And if you were to sit patiently for long enough in that open patch, then the surrounding bole-climbing vines would follow your shadow lines and climb over you and encase you; slugs and worms, centipedes and maggots all doing their part to turn your patient body back into fertile soil.

I also understand that most of these feelings come from the desire to change a natural forest into something different - my vision of what I want to see here – a mix of forest and gardens, orchards and wetlands. Likely the best thing I can do is to look at what already works here (forest stands, mushrooms, wild berries and fruits, native ground cover mixes, etc.), and then adapt much of my plans to work with those elements. I also have to accept that many of these firmly-established populations such as slugs, deer, bears, horse-tails, and black berries are often going to look at my puny efforts as their good fortune. Perhaps they’ll silently thank me as they choke my gardens or harvest the vegetables and fruits while I sleep at night. All I can do is to say “you’re welcome.” I’ll look at the disaster scene in the early morning, drink my coffee, and make a new plan.

Since deciding to make this shift to a more sustainable balance of life, I had a very slow start for the first few months. Much of that was caused by the need to earn enough to make the payments on the half of the mortgage that my former land-partner (and very good friend, Bill) used to be responsible for. After he decided that he wouldn’t be able to spread himself between his home in California and his second home on this ocean inlet, I took over his payments and began the process of searching for one to three other partners to own the land as a community co-op land-share title. As of last month, another good friend, Kymo, has decided to purchase a ¼ share and to build his cabin with materials that exist on the land (Cedar, Douglas Fir, stone, sand, clay, etc).
In response to that, I have begun work to move the road access to the back of the property. By doing this, we will free up the former driveway area along the waterfront, for orchards, gardens and building sites. It will also give us better access to the back of the property where there are growing conditions that might be suitable conditions for other food gardens (mushrooms, Wasabi, blueberries, …) as well as potential habitat for raising ducks.

For the last few months, I’ve been working steadily on the property. However, similar to the activity of trying to write a book, or to “fix-up” an old sailboat, it often seems like we are accomplishing nothing. With every project completed, I see three new ones that I hadn’t noticed before. And for every simple task to do, there are three steps ahead just to get to that task. For instance, Tova and I wanted to cut some firewood from a big Douglas Fir that had fallen during a storm. Before we could get to that project, I remembered that the chain on our saw had to be sharpened, and that I needed to get to town to buy a new file for that. As well I noticed that the truck’s back tire was low on air, and in order to fill the tire I would have to do some repair work on the compressor’s regulator to get the tank to fill, and then drag out the generator (which hadn’t been used for months) in order to run the compressor since our smaller solar inverter isn’t strong enough to start the compressor. You get the picture.

In the last couple months, it has felt so good to get back to the simple and physical task of preparing and planting gardens around the house.

In his beautiful book "Trauma Farm: A Rebel History of Rural Life," Brian Brett writes:

In a garden you learn the value of time. Weeding, like farming, is never accomplished. It’s an activity, not a result, so a good gardener learns not to fret about finishing a job… You work until your mind runs free. (p. 77-78)

I will likely quote more from Brett’s beautiful book in future posts. His family’s experience during their past eighteen years on Willow Pond Farm is a very worthwhile read.

I find that even if I’m not trying to write a book, it’s good to take the time to record a few notes, and maybe even sketch or photograph some scene or detail that we noticed while weeding or building. It helps to stop all of the busy-ness.
These occasional notes and photos are better than trying to record “everything” – something that often happens when gathering material for a magazine article or book. In that situation, I can sometimes get so caught up in the act of documenting the moment that I end up with the record, yet having completely missed the true experience. It has to be somewhere between the two.