challenges and nature

In my last post I commented on how cool this Spring has been. Would you know it, the next weekend we had a snowfall and very cold weekend, which killed all my tomato, pepper and eggplant seedlings in the greenhouse. And that is with heat in the greenhouse too, just not enough I guess! Who would have thought that we would have such weather in the middle of April. I knew I was starting the seedlings early but it is still sad, they were coming along so nicely. I immediately replanted tomatoes and peppers, they are coming along nicely in my house right now. I'm not taking chances with them outside until I'm sure these cold snaps are done with!

I recently purchased a really great time-saving tool. It is called an Earthway Seeder. I love it! This week I planted hundreds of beet and carrot seeds with barely any effort at all. The Earthway Seeder makes the furrow for the seed, plants the seeds, covers the seeds, and marks the next row all in one go! What a time saver and also, what a back saver. Check out this video to see an Earthway Seeder in action.

In my last posting I promised to include a photo of Tim and Wendy's garden full of good things to eat. The lettuces in this garden are growing much more rapidly than in my other gardens. I think this may be due to all the good compost Tim added to the beds and to the fact that this garden is protected quite well from most of the elements.

Many pictures!

I haven't posted pictures for a long time, so here goes.

First at the farm; Steve has turned the soil 3 times now with his tractor, and is planning to turn it a couple more times too. Here is how it looks so far!


It looks really great but the soil is still too wet, when you walk on it it is a quagmire. It should be only a few more weeks and I should be able to start seeding and planting though. I can't wait. I've calculated that I will have approximately 44 beds in this one area alone! They will fill up pretty quickly though with all that I have planned.

Below is my newest piece of property that I am working with. This is at the home of Tim and Wendy Turner, who have kindly allowed me to use it and are very supportive of my venture. The beds are brand new and were started by Tim with lots of compost and leaves and then some soil was brought in to fill the beds. These beds are already full of seedlings that I transplanted from the greenhouse since this pic was taken. I forgot to take a new pic - silly me. Next week!

Below are some assorted pictures I took in the greenhouse yesterday.




As well as the cold-hardy plants I've started some warmer weather loving plants such as tomatoes, eggplants, pepper, melon, summer squash, and zucchini. Some of these will be potted up and stay in the greenhouse, but others will be planted outside once the soil is warmed up enough.

Enjoy the sun!

Kale is wonderful - really!

Sorry I missed my posting last week, I was out of town visiting friends in Washington DC and have been sick with a rotten head cold. That's what you get for sitting next to people with colds on airplanes!!

For all of you out there who have an aversion to kale I think you should try it in the Spring, you may just change your mind. Late last summer I planted Red Russian kale. It was very prolific in the early Winter and there was enough that I let some overwinter. Now they are growing like crazy and have delicious tender, sweet leaves that can be used for salad greens or just steamed very lightly - yummy and very good for you too!!! Another plant that I started last year and is now bountiful is the purple sprouting broccoli. It is full of small shoots that are delicious. Unfortunately I don't have enough to sell but I am planning on having an abundance of them for next year.

This week Steve, who owns the farmland I will be using, ploughed it for me. He is going to turn it over a couple more times so that all I will have to do is start planting. What a great guy! He lets me use his land and gets it ready for me too - I am so fortunate - as you can imagine this saves me a huge amount of labour!

The cold nights are still lingering! It has to change soon right?!! My greenhouse is full to overflowing with plants ready to go out. Soon! I can't complain though, I regularly communicate with farmers on the SPIN farming forum who still have 3ft of snow!

There is quite a lot in the media lately about rising food prices here is one article.

We all know that organic food is better for you than industrial because of the absence of chemicals and pesticides, but did you know that organic foods have a documented higher mineral and vitamin content? Check out this article to learn more.

Ready, Set, Go!

Lately I've been feeling like I'm at the start line of a race and I'm waiting and waiting for the gun to fire so I can get started! It is often sunny and feeling Spring-like but it is still so cold that I'm holding back from getting more transplants outside and starting new varieties of seeds both inside and out; it feels like the cold will never retreat! This doesn't mean I have been idle though. I've been planting more peas - pole peas this time, and yesterday transplanted 100 or so endive seedlings outside and another 60 pac choi seedlings. Today I did start a flat each of genovese basil (let's hear it for pesto!) and three more varieties of tomatoes. These are all inside my house right now (in the heated bathroom) and I'm hoping by the time they need sunlight the weather will be at least a few more degrees warmer so that they can cope with the colder temperatures at night in the greenhouse.

I checked in on all the gardens to see how everything planted in the last few weeks are faring in the cold (it was 0 degrees C a couple of night ago!). No worries, everything looks awesome! I also spent a day this week, with the help of my son, finishing turning over the rest of the rye and clover at Lee Ann's. I will have to spend a day in a week or so going through the beds more carefully and pulling any morning glory roots I see. Regular readers of this blog will know that I have just a bit of an issue with morning glory - I hate it!

This week I discovered a website put together by a guy who is doing exactly what I'm doing, it is worth checking out: http://www.communityrootsboulder.com/

And here is a link to an article that you may find interesting, it presents various models for reclaiming urban land to grow food on it: http://arieff.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/cows-grazing-in-the-rumpus-room/?ex=1206676800&en=3f531372b17c66c7&ei=5070&emc=eta1

Spring is in the air!

I continue to be very busy: turning over rye and clover planted last fall; succession planting more salad greens, oriental greens, parsley, radishes, peas in both the greenhouse and outside; planning the beds and plantings for this season; starting new varieties in the greenhouse: kale, celeriac, mustard greens and even tomotoes (these are a little early, but hey, you never know!) The peas, radishes, mizuna and arugula I planted outside February 25th are up and looking good.

Last week the organic Russian Banana Fingerling potatoes I ordered arrived. These are expensive but from everything I have read about them are well worth it. Apparently they taste great, have great texture and are in demand by chefs at chic restaurants. Fingerling potatoes don't look like conventional potatoes, instead they look like gnarly witches fingers!

This weekend is the One Straw Society's Seedy Saturday. I will be manning the membership desk in the morning but also hope I have time to shop. This is a great event to find locally grown unusual and heirloom seeds. Seedy Saturday is at the Roberts Creek School on Saturday from 10-3pm.

thank you!

Last Friday I sent an email out to friends and acquaintances asking a dozen families to join me, using the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model, for the 2008 season. The response has been fantastic - I want to thank all those who have signed on as members already.

CSA brings together the best of many worlds: delicious, local organic food to your table, but also the satisfaction of being a part of a community effort. Small-scale farming is a challenging venture in these times, but with the support of the community it can and does work. The model calls for member families to invest in the season’s costs at the beginning of the growing season, the time when funds are needed most. In return, members are given first priority each week on what is available, and also pay less than non-members.

CSA is an economically viable way for small-scale farmers to produce a select quantity of vegetable foods of wide variety in an earth-friendly way. It puts people back in touch with their own food too, creating a real relationship between the grower, the consumer, the product, and the land on which the product is grown. Why eat food that lacks flavor, has been uniformly grown, chemically treated, harvested too soon, and transported long miles? Instead, at a cost not significantly more than elsewhere, CSA members regularly receive a cornucopia of fresh, ripened, pesticide-free vegetables throughout the harvest season. CSA is earth-friendly because it uses only organic farming methods, but also because it respects the land and it’s limitations, the weather, and many other growing conditions that require us to grow and enjoy our food working with, and not against, these variables.

Once I have met the weekly needs of my CSA members I plan on selling additional produce either through email orders or at a local farmer's market. I'm very excited about this inaugural year; all the support and interest is very inspiring - thank you!

The planting begins!

The weather has been holding - it has been so wonderful - really feels like paradise!

I've been busy planting more flats of seeds. For the flats I decided to use 'soil blockers'. This is a great system where you don't use countless plastic pots, instead you use this very cool handy-dandy tool that squeezes together blocks of soil/peatmoss and then pops them out with a little hole ready for the seed! It is pretty labour intensive at first but what is cool about soil blocks is the ease in transplanting them - no messing with pots, just make a hole in the bed and drop in the soil block. Below is a link with a video of how to make soil blocks - my soil blocker is just the same but is a hand-held one, not a stand up one:

http://wannafarm.com/?p=7

And here is a picture of the happy, happy seedlings in my hoophouse. I started each flat off in a bathroom in my house where I could pump up the heat locally, and then once they germinated I moved them to the hoophouse. I built a 'tent' inside the hoophouse with a heater inside it. The flats are placed on top of the tent (you can see this in the picture) forming a giant heat table! So far it is working very well as our temperatures are still getting quite low at night - about 2-3 degrees C. This way I don't use as much energy trying to heat the whole hoophouse.


In the forefront you can see endive, mizuna and pac choi seedlings.