Garden Post: June 2011

June is a month when we’re really able to start eating from the garden.

The asparagus is delicious. It never even reaches the kitchen before I’ve eaten what I picked that day. The peas tower over the trellis. And near the end of the month I realize that I over-planted them, so that I need to use heavy twine to keep the thick wall of vines and flowers and peas from collapsing forward in a heap during a windy day. But the shells and peas are fat and juicy. The broccoli starts have mostly bolted. Jonathon suggests to wait until after the solstice and then plant them more as a winter and overwinter/spring crop.

I’m eating nice fat beet roots, as well as turnips, rutabagas and kohlrabi. Almost all of the tomatoes (greenhouse and outside) are full of green tomatoes. The earliest producers appear to be Sophie’s Choice, Muscovich, and Golden Nugget, but many others appear only a week or so behind. We’ll have to see which ripen earliest.

I pulled out the monster kale plants that were left over from last winter, and I transplanted them, along with old chicory, a clump of perennial arugula and radicchio starts into a back garden plot that is often over-run with morning glory. By the end of June, these are all well established. And the kale has gone to seed, and is dropping its pods. I plan to keep ahead of the morning glory until these plants have a chance to take charge, but it’s dangerous to bet against morning glory.
Near the end of the month I plant four more flats of seeds for the winter garden, along with other seeds to replenish greens, peas and beans as they die out or bolt through the summer heat. My planned winter crop includes: pac choi and other Chinese greens, kale, lettuce, red orach, chicory, swiss chard, three varieties of beets, cabbage, leeks, corn salad, kohlrabi, turnips, carrots, parsley and some varieties of snow peas that are supposed to survive into the early winter months.

The cherries on the new trees were looking amazing. However, word got out to the deer population and they have done a lot of damage to the fruit and leaves. Fortunately it doesn’t appear that they have chewed on the bark. So what options do I have? I can just let it happen and hope that the trees survive to become tall enough that most of their branches are beyond the reach of deer. I can try the suggested method of placing stakes around an area, then string a thin fishing line at their nose height. Apparently they will bump into the line, unable to see the thin filament, and become frustrated and leave. Another option is to shoot a deer out of season, and then put the meat in my freezer. I’m sure that is what past homesteaders did, while giving thanks for the delivery of meat to their back door. I’m not sure what present laws have to say about shooting an animal to protect your garden. I doubt that the Conservation Officer would be happy. I will have to look into that. It certainly would be easier than making a long and expensive hunting trip back out to T. Island in the fall when deer hunting season opens.
About hunting. By June 1, I started to hike more often in the evenings, carrying a rifle and looking for bear sign. On three occasions I encountered sows with cubs – not legal or proper to shoot at them. On one of those trips, I was able to back away without being noticed. On the other two occasions, the mother sent her cubs up a giant Douglas fir tree. It is amazing to watch these little round clubs fly up the branchless trunk, a hundred feet or more in only a few seconds.
The sow then stood just out of sight from me, tearing at the ground, growling and huffing and snorting and groaning. During the second stand-off, the bear was far enough off the trail that I risked walking past her as she snorted and complained. I was getting tired of having the trail blocked to the area where I had seen a large lone bear in the trees a few weeks earlier.

I came close to having a shot on a few other hikes, but finally, on June 5th, while hiking high up on a trail along the Bunster Hills, I finally shot and killed a lone bear. I will write more about that in a separate post. It definitely affected me in many ways. I don’t think that I will ever get to the point where it isn’t a difficult and profound act – one full of questions, rituals, conflicts, doubts and rewards.
At this time, I will say only that three days later when I ate the first part of the meat in a marinated stew, the food was much more than just meat without context or meaning. With the first bite, I was overwhelmed – not only with memories and images, but also with gratitude for what I was eating and sharing.

June has been tough and fast and so much still to go. I wonder if this ever slows. I wonder if finally I come to learn enough that the garden and land can be more carefree and obvious. The same questions with hunting, and with preserving food.
Certainly some of the equipment and skills will be in place. And now, my landshare partners have all agreed to move ahead with legally establishing the land title. That will help settle some of my monthly financial struggles. Big projects like the microhydro generation and a larger greenhouse will be complete in the next year or two. But does it just keep growing? Is it like so much of our modern economies and expectations? Or do I reach a point when I say that this enough, that this is wealth and luxury already, and that now is the time to enjoy what I have, to share food with others, play music, write, and to temper some of that ambition that has carried me this far?

Garden Post: May 2011

May

I’m regularly torn between wanting to work with my hands in the soil and equally wanting to write down observations and lessons learned from the experience, or from comments and advice coming from more experienced gardeners. It’s amazing how fast those thoughts can become scrambled or lost. When I was travelling and living in the jungles of Panama, I tried to jot down at least the most basic of observations. Often it felt ridiculous to record such simple details, yet even a week later I would often be surprised to read the notes. Especially in situations where every day, almost every moment, there is new information and questions flooding in, I tend to only retain fuzzy and general outlines. It helps to have the garden journal to refer back to. By next spring or summer I will be able to rely on these records to avoid repeating some of the mistakes I’ve made so far this season.

The month of May can produce a variety of garden experience, depending on the climate of that specific year. We’ve had hot and dry years in recent times, but last year and this one have been wetter and cooler than average. The one thing that separates last year’s experience with this May, is the addition of the new greenhouse and all of the cold-frame windows. Even with leaving the ends open on the tunnels, I am able to keep plants slightly warmer at night, and drain off much of the direct rain so that the raised beds don’t become saturated.

Jonathon offered raspberry canes and gooseberry starts that he had cut from other projects. Paul K. also provided a collection of raspberry canes along with another dozen potted blueberry plants. Sometimes it feels like I already have too much happening to take on another row of plants, but almost always I give in, and I carve out another bed. I know that by this time next year I’ll be harvesting new fruits and berries from these gifts. It would be crazy to say no.
Plants surrounding the house take turns flowering. From Magnolias to wild flowers and planted bulbs. From Rhododendrons to Camellias, and dogwood trees to wild cherries. Tulips everywhere. Peach trees, pears, apples and blueberries. Even some of last year’s kale plants burst into yellow flowers by the end of the month.
I pot the calendula and nasturtium starts, and re-pot the pole beans, hot chilis and cilantro. I put a new layer of wood shavings over the established blueberries from last year. I haul rocks to build rings around the new blueberry plants and the apple whips I planted in February. By now the peas are climbing and enveloping the trellis, forming pods by the third week of May. The Beets, turnips and kohlrabi produce great greens, and their roots are developing well. I turn and re-pile the compost in the triple-bin I built last winter. It smells like life and death all mixed together. Beautiful.
Weeds are starting to explode as well. In the back garden I use scissors to trim comfrey and horsetails just above the surface. I find that if I pull the horsetail out by the root, it comes back with two or three heads. By snipping off at the surface, it often doesn’t return – at least not at that spot. I use both of these cuttings to make a fertilizer tea for the garden and greenhouse.

May has brought a few battles.
After planting out the first 25 tomato plants under cold-frame tunnels, my semi-feral (less and less each year) cat decided to shit in the garden bed. She must like the atmosphere in the covered gardens. We’ve been through this before. I close up the ends of the tunnel, and it seems to fix that problem. The second battle is this year’s bumper crop of major thistle in the areas where I cleared forest but didn’t seed with my mix of rye-grass, clover and oats last summer.
I spent the better part of a day digging them out in the area around the back orchard, along with the new population of the Dock (spelling) weed with its amazingly deep tap root. It was a day of meditation. It didn’t start that way, but it became a good life lesson.

Even with the cold and wet season, by the end of the month, most everything is in full swing. I’ve planted out, or potted in the greenhouse or on the deck, 30 varieties of tomatoes, 74 plants in total. That will certainly be incentive to build the solar dehydrator in the next month or two. The potatoes are all up and growing well. They were planted in trenches, but by the end of the month they have been filled in until the plot is fairly level. I’ll keep hilling the soil as they continue to grow, encouraging more potato production as the roots become covered deeper and deeper.

On May 22, I see that the Lapin cherry branches are covered in tiny green cherries. A few days later, all of the newer cherry trees planted last summer are also full of tiny fruit starts. I did not expect so much production after only one summer and winter in the ground. Now I really need the dehydrator. Last year Paul K and Kristi gave me a jar of their dried cherries. Each one tasted like a real gift. I want to be able to do that for myself and for others.

Near the end of the month, Tova came back for a visit. We hiked with a few friends, and we boated to a nearby island with for our annual “ship of fools” overnight camp out. Beautiful.
I’ve started to hike in the evenings, three or four times each week, looking for a black bear to fill my empty freezer. I have all sorts of thoughts about that prospect. The spring bear hunting season ends on June 15th, so there isn’t much time left. Otherwise I will be left to buy meat, from local farmers (good quality, higher price) or from the commercial grocers (lower price, unthinkable additives). This month, while working, I listened to Jonathon Safron-For’s book, “Eating Animals”. And while it never really told me that much that I didn’t already know, or suspect, it has being the final push to stop sitting on the fence. If I am going to eat meat, I can’t accept or support the disaster that is served up through industrial-style meat production and slaughter houses.
I have a lot more thoughts concerning meat eating vs. vegetarianism or vegan diet. I have a lot to say about animal rights and hunting. All sorts of questions and gray zones to consider. But there is no way of defending what has become the accepted form of producing meat for mass consumption. For’s book helped me realize that personal level of hypocrisy. Thank you for the lesson.

Garden Post - April 2011

Even after a cold and wet and cloudy March, everything starts happening in April.

By April 2, the flats of tomatoes were mostly germinated and pushing out of the starter soil. I had been worried about the vigour of my saved seeds from last-year’s tomatoes. Mostly I was concerned over the method I had used to save and store the seeds. I have read instructions that call for much more elaborate methods, but I opted to simply choose ripe tomatoes (the riper the better – without allowing it to rot or become mouldy), and then cutting it open and smearing the seeds onto a piece of paper towel, or paper from a paper bag. Then I labelled the paper and left it out on my table for a handful of days until all of the moisture had evaporated. When it had dried sufficiently, I folded the paper and added it to my bag of stored seeds.

This year’s germination rate of all the varieties appears to be close to 100%, so I can vouch for the effectiveness of this method. Even the tomatoes that weren’t as ripe as I wanted for seed saving, have germinated well. I know that many gardeners have told me that I need a proper grow light, set very low near the tiny starts or the tomatoes will become leggy and weak. And yes, this concerned me. At the same time, I know that it wasn’t so long ago that the majority of gardeners in this area did not have electricity and grow lights.
My thoughts in these situations are to absorb information from all of those people around me, because almost all of them have much more growing experience than I do. And many of them have found their way around pest and climate conditions without the use of chemical sprays or other high-tech solutions. However, ultimately I have to be the one who makes the decisions as to what is possible or not for me, in this location, in this climate, with these goals or desires that I have.
When the tomatoes first germinated in the open flats, most of them were indeed leggy and weak looking. Especially in my location – facing East and South, the daylight hours are shorter than optimum. However, to compensate for these less optimum conditions, I decided to start the plants early, and then at each transplant, I stripped off the lower leaves and buried most of the small stock into the new soil.
By mid April, I had transplanted all of the spindly starts into 3” pots. It became obvious at that time how much I had overplanted. At that point I was able to select only the healthiest ones, choosing 4 or 5 of each of the 25 varieties I had saved from last year. Still ending up with a lot of tomato starts. By burying the main stock into the pots, the new starts became much stronger and thicker than they would have been otherwise.
Around the end of the month, I moved this stock from the indoor growing window, into the new greenhouse that I had just completed. I did this to slow some of the upward growth and to begin hardening the tomatoes before they are planted in late May.
By the end of April –with the addition of a few different varieties from Jonathon and Jenna - I had 30 tomato varieties growing. Each variety has its own strengths. Some are early producers. Others keep well through the winter months, and others might be best for drying or canning. In a later post I will make a list of all types. I plan to save seeds from all of those that do well, and in this way develop a good inventory of plants tailored specifically to these light and soil conditions, as well as to my needs and tastes.


In the outdoor gardens, I planted out many of the greens I’d started in the greenhouse or indoors. In this forested property, there are a lot of insects and slugs that eat up the tiniest starts if I sow the seeds directly into the soil. By starting in flats, the survival ratio is much higher.
By mid April I had planted into the beds many broccoli starts, along with lettuce, Chinese greens, cabbage and spinach. In another plot, I planted out the first batch of beet, turnip, rutabaga and kohlrabi starts. Later in the month, I directed seeded rows of carrots, along with fennel and celery starts. Being as it was still very wet and quite cold at nights. I used cedar lumber and rolls of thin plexiglass that someone had given me a few years ago to build a number of 3’x5’ windows that I could lean together to make cold frame tunnels over the various garden patches.

Also, in mid April, I built a new climbing lattice, using branches from a fallen alder tree. Near the end of the month I moved the climbing pea starts from the greenhouse and planted them out around the lattice. Since it was still cold and wet, especially during the nights, I leaned some of the new cold-frame windows against the lattice to help give a slightly better climate for them to survive. Once again, most people will direct-seed their peas, but on this property, it helps to transplant the starts.
Meanwhile, plenty of kale and chicory and other greens from last fall and winter were all exploding with new leaves and later with florets that were delicious and plentiful while waiting for the new greens to become established. This year, my plan is to focus more attention on growing a great winter garden. As well, certain plants can be planted in late summer so that they are almost mature by the time winter sets in. Then, in the first warmth of the new spring, they will suddenly finish their cycle with plenty of new growth, leaves and florets, during the late winter and early spring, just as we are craving fresh produce.

A Garden Post: February - March, 2011

I’ll admit that I’m not much of a blogger. I don’t write and post my daily moment-by-moment thoughts, nor do I update my status throughout the day. I just don’t understand how people can do that, and still get their non-blog life accomplished in any meaningful way. It’s impressive, but baffling.
Another factor is that I don’t appreciate posted work that is so raw as to be endlessly repetitive and confused. So I do at least one edit before posting. However, as any gardener/farmer/writer knows, by the time someone is finished settling an idea as a written piece, there is already a line-up of projects to do – and to write about. And so I often convince myself to delay the writing until that next stage of the garden or construction is complete before putting down in words. Another month goes by with nothing written, again and again.

So this will be an attempt to catch up on a few of my own notes. It’s raining lightly this afternoon, just enough to keep me from pulling out my carpentry tools and continue building the small cottage for my brother and his wife on their neighbouring property.

I’ll go back a few months and when this year’s summer garden began.

In early February, I took the Ferry to Comox and met with Larry from Denman Apples. He had come from his orchard on Denman Island, bringing a selection of 16 apple, plum and pear trees (some 1 –year whips, others that were 2 or 3 years old with a nice branching pattern already established). These were all bare-root stock, so I had to get to work digging holes, mixing in a certain amount of compost and fracturing the surrounding walls of the hole with a pick, before putting all of them in the ground.
On the open area of this property, we now have about 50 fruit and nut trees growing, with about 2/3s of that, mature enough to produce a good amount of fruit each year. The others will be 1–4 years from producing much fruit – depending on their age, and on the type of root-stock selected to grow on. Few things feel better to me than planting a fruit or nut tree, or some sort of perennial producer such as blueberry bushes or asparagus, knowing that they are now in the ground and soon will be giving us fresh and wonderful food. Many of them will be doing this for the rest of my life. Plenty of reason to start planting today.



Here, on the so-called Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, garden season can continue all throughout the year -even without a green-house or cold frames, although they will definitely add a large amount of production and variety to the garden harvest during the winter months. That said, work on the summer gardens usually picks up energy during March or April, depending on the climate patterns during that particular year. This year has been a particularly cool and cloudy and somewhat wetter spring season, with many flowers, trees and plants hesitating before showing themselves. Without a greenhouse or cold-frames to help out, many gardens have been 3 or 4 weeks behind the average season.

After last year’s experience, I realize that growing food is a lot easier if I exercise a little more patience rather than eagerly getting the seeds started indoors and then hoping (usually in vain) that this year the heat and sunshine will come earlier than normal. That said, I still planted many seeds, (peas, tomatoes, kales, scallions, broccoli, herbs, etc.) indoors in late March. Another few weeks delay would have been wise, but I just can’t wait that long. I usually start them by on a table in front of a large window in the house. The room is warm and cozy with the woodstove burning for heat.
March is a mostly a good month to be planning the garden,, sorting through the big bag of saved seeds to check inventory, and working compost and manure (as much as you can gather) into the beds. Last fall I seeded many of the plots with fall rye and legumes. These should be turned into the soil to break down. Usually it takes 4-6 weeks to break down to the optimum level for planting new vegetables
By the end of the month, I had about 8 flats of seeded containers resting in my warmest and brightest window. Since my house is an off-grid location (ie. I have no power hook-up to BC Hydro) I do not use grow lights, and the heat comes from the woodstove in my small house.

Accumulating Real Wealth:The Compost Pile

The Compost Pile


There is a mountain of available information through books, online resources, neighbours and nurseries concerning techniques and recipes for the ultimate compost project. However, for the short version, all that you have to know is that you should start composting today.
While my land and garden situation allows me to take on composting in a larger and more open (somewhat untidy) version than an apartment dweller can do, there are ways and means to take part at any level.

The most important lesson I’ve learned from my first clumsy efforts and research, is that “no matter what you do, no matter how many little mistakes you make, you are still probably going to come up with reasonably good, usable compost." (Stu Campbell – “Let It Rot”)

Why do we compost?

- Because it is a chance to feed and nourish your garden soil, replacing all of the nutrients that have been depleted through the growth and harvesting of past garden production.

- Because it costs nothing, yet offers so much in return – soil quality and composition, plant and soil health, a sense of empowerment as you take control of what you used to think of as garbage, and the peace of mind that comes with caring for the soil that we all depend upon.

- Because you will now be playing a positive part in ending much of the unnecessary transport of valuable materials to a landfill site.

-Because it is a form of quiet, but persistent revolution. It is an act of defiance in the face of a market economy that insists you should be working overtime in order to acquire cash and find comfort through increased purchase of materials. Now you are stepping out of that cycle. Giving and receiving in a non-cash exchange of goods. By composting, you are saying that you want to be responsible for both your trail of garbage, as well as feeding the new plant life, and even your garden produce.

- Because Life and Death and Decomposition and Rebirth is a beautiful dance. And composting allows us to begin to understand, and engage, and experience through touch and smell, and to participate as a helping part in that endless cycle.

Composting: Getting Started

On this land, surrounded by forests and fronted by an ocean inlet, my concerns are slightly different in the specifics than those in the city. While I might worry about raccoons and black bears tearing apart my compost bins, my friends in Vancouver will be more concerned with attracting rats. I’ve built my compost bins a good distance from the house, hoping that the feral cats on the property will focus on any rats, and I avoid putting meat and grease products that might attract more rodents. Raccoons and bears have done some heavy damage in the past, but I have to accept that as part of my neighbourhood. It seems like I have less problems if I leave the compost open, but spread manure, or urine soaked woodshavings over each layer of household scraps and fruit, etc. The manure and urine/shavings also add an extra volume of nitrogen and carbon to the mix.

The most basic method and goal in composting is to combine organic waste materials so that they can decompose to a point that they form a crumbly nutrient-rich medium which can be added to your garden.
A further improvement would be to attempt to combine a variety of materials in a manner that accelerates the process and results in a balanced fertilizer composition for the garden soil. Through reading and workshops you can create a very exacting and efficient recipe, but the short version is that all materials must be bio-degradable, and that the greater variety of things in the pile, the better.
The key to decomposition, and to releasing the contained nutrients so that they can be utilized by plants, is the massive community of micro-organisms in our soil that feed upon and digest the nutrients locked up in crude form in plant and animal materials. By digesting these nutrients, micro-organisms alter the nutrient form and thereby create a constant flow of sustenance to new plant growth. Again, the simple answer is that the more diversified the mix, the more types of microorganisms will be fed and encouraged.

In order to prosper and multiply, these microorganisms need:

-Carbon: An energy source. This can include dry, tough, fibrous materials – dry leaves, straw, sawdust or fine chips, cuttings from yard work, etc.

- Nitrogen: A protein source used to break down the carbon food. They operate as activators, heating up the temperature and accelerating decomposition. These materials include green vegetation, grass clippings, and manure.

The elements listed above should ideally be balanced at a Carbon:Nitrogen ratio of approximately 25:1. Twenty-five parts Carbon materials, with one part Nitrogen material. Higher Carbon content slows down the decomposition process. Higher Nitrogen content can often result in smelly pile in which Nitrogen is lost as ammonia gas.
However, we return to the highlighted main point of the column. Just get started. We’ll learn and adapt along the way.

The other two essential elements are:

-Oxygen: required by some of the most efficient microorganisms (aerobes). Without sufficient oxygen (such as a very heavy, dense and wet pile that is never turned), decomposition slows by as much as 90 percent. That said, it still continues. All is not lost.

- Moisture; Different materials will require different amounts of added moisture. Add water to dry materials as they are added, so that the average has the consistency of “a well-wrung sponge”. Approximately 40-50% moisture level. If water is running out of your pile onto the ground, it is too wet. If you add a large quantity of dry materials, they’ll need to be hosed down. Fresh green materials are likely fine as they are.

With a good balance of materials and moisture, and with occasional turning of the pile, the temperature of the pile will heat up, perhaps as hot as 150 or 160 degrees F. At these temperatures, even pathogens and weed seeds will be quickly destroyed, and full decomposition can occur in a matter of weeks. At lower temperatures, some of those seeds might survive, but then earth worms and other insects will likely be more attracted to the pile to take over decomposition duties. The process will take longer, but it will still all work out.

I built a three-bin compost container in the yard. As well, I have a number of other single bins built using old pallets on a number of locations where I plan to plant another garden in the coming year or two. With the moveable pallet method, it allows me to create the fertile compost directly in the location where I want good soil. Any nutrients that leach out of the pile will be flowing into the new garden soil.

The trick is to chop the material into small enough bits (using a powered shredder if you have one, or (as I do) with a machete) before adding them to the pile. Otherwise it can be much more difficult to occasionally “turn” the pile - repositioning materials so that they can more completely decompose through balanced interaction and the resultant higher composting temperatures.
However, even if you elect to simply follow the Ogden Style (“Lazy-man’s method) - building large piles, built over time, adding layers of soil between compost materials, and covering with sod to insulate, and waiting for at least two years as the process worked slowly on the materials – you will be moving in a good direction.

After a period of weeks or months, the compost material is largely broken down into crumbly soil – like well-rotted manure. It can then be worked into your gardens as you prepare them. You can dig it in during the fall, after the first hard frost, but before the ground freezes solid. The nutrients will be waiting for you when you plant in the following spring.
Alternatively the compost can be broadcast or worked into the soil before spring planting, ideally about a month before you begin planting seeds. It can also be spread in an arc around fruit trees, or used as top dressing around vegetables or berry plants.


A few compost-pile trouble-shooting tips:

-If there is an unpleasant odor coming from the pile:

Either there is not enough oxygen getting to the materials - in which case you should turn and loosen the pile, or install perforated pipes to get oxygen into the center - Or, the pile is too wet, thus blocking the flow of air. In this case, the above solution is also helpful, as would be adding dry carbon materials such as cornstalks, wood chips, etc to absorb some of the water.

-If there is a strong ammonia smell:

Usually indicates an excess of Nitrogen materials. Try adding more carbon, as well as oxygen, as described above.

-If the pile is not heating up (and has not yet completed decomposition)

A first step would be to simply “turn” the pile, to see if the movement and oxygen can initiate new decomposition. Alternatively, the pile might need more nitrogen-rich materials to activate decomposition. Or, if the materials are very dry, they might need only additional moisture.



There are plenty of good books for reference. Also, usually events such as B.C.’s “Seedy Saturday”, or local “Food Security” groups sponsor composting workshops.
The basic information listed above has been drawn from online sites, personal experience and a number of books, including Stu Campbell’s “Let It Rot: The Gardener’s Guide to Composting.”

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