Spring in the garden

There are signs of spring everywhere!  Today: garlic shoots poking up from the soil, kale ready to harvest in the grow tunnel, new seedlings sprouting in the cold frame, bare feet running through the yard, splashing in the back pond, supper on the patio outside, and a night time campfire.  Lovely!

For those who wish to learn more about spring edibles, especially wild spring greens that are going to be ready to harvest shortly - consider taking our Wild Spring Edibles Workshop on Sat, May 10.

Final garden clean up & winter gardening preparations!

Such sunny warm days this week - perfect for spending a few more lingering moments pondering over this past season's garden; harvesting the last seeds that have finally dried on the tulsi, marigold and calendula; digging carrots sweetened by last week's frosts; planting more garlic; tidying up the garden beds and preparing for winter.  We set up our cold frame, which is really a long grow tunnel created by pulling a large roll of plastic poly over the length of two of our raised beds and securing it over rebar-reinforced hoops (to hold up under the weight of snow!).  We've recently seeded the soil underneath with arugula, mixed salad greens, coriander, parsley, kale, spinach - some of which has already sprouted, and the rest which will germinate in late winter when the soil heats up under our mini greenhouse tunnel.  We have taken loads of advice from Eliot Coleman's Winter Harvest Handbook (full title "Winter Harvest Handbook:Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses") and Four Season Harvest, also planting up our greenhouse soil again, as well as transferring our hot peppers and rosemary indoors to extend their season...

Garden Weekend - wood-fired baking, cold frame & seedlings

A few updates on the garden - we are working at establishing more permaculture style keyhole beds, and also reorganizing our herb gardens. We've set up a second cold frame infront of the greenhouse, which will be used to harden off the seedling in preparation for the May 22 sale. This cold frame is simply a large rectangular box made of recycled wood, covered with glass windows.

The cold frame raised bed that contains our spring greens is bursting! We've been eating salad, dandelion greens, spinach, arugula, chives, etc for the whole month - and now with the warm days, many of the lettuces are starting to go to seed! I pulled out much of the spinach yesterday, as we are vowing this year to eat the greens when they are at their peak, rather than waiting until they go to seed and get bitter (which often seems to happen). We made two huge pizzas and loaded them with spinach and fresh oregano from the garden...baked in the wood-fired oven, yummm! See before and after photos here :)

The first round of basil is ready for harvest, and I've transplanted much of it into larger containers. We need the space on our indoor grow racks for new seedlings. Kale and broccoli have been moved to the greenhouse, and it's time to get the squash and zucchini started. These can also be planted directly outdoors later. We've started carrots and peas, plus sunflowers and some other flowers, out in the garden already. Of course, our little helper is doing a great job of watering and tending the plant babies.

First spring edibles

Today's lunch was an outdoor picnic that included our first luscious garden greens - young spinach and lettuce varieties from the coldframe, greens from the greenhouse (almost bolting by now, as the greenhouse has been over 30C on the sunny days), chives, garlic greens, young kale leaves, dandelion, green onions, parsley and edible violets...

Fall farm day...

This week the weather has been almost balmy! It gave us a little more time to get things in order out in the yard before winter sets in. Last seeds harvested and saved, now nicely packed away with labels for next year's planting. Compost and leaves added to garden beds. Garlic has been planted. Coldframe is prepped and planted, greenhouse also planted with lettuce and kale seedlings (the hot peppers and fig tree are still doing nicely in there). While we were working outside, we also baked bread in the cob oven - the perfect fall task of tending a roaring fire while raking leaves...

Late October garden tasks

We're looking forward to the winter months, where we take time to reflect, read, research and plan for next season's activities. One point that I took from Vandana Shiva's presentation at the university last week was the imperative to link ecological food production, poverty reduction, and climate change together - any solutions or actions we come up with should be addressing all three areas to be truly effective and sustainable. I hope to delve more into this topic through her latest book, Soil not Oil, this winter. Also, included on the ever expanding reading list are Arundrati Roy's Living with Grasshoppers, Novella Carpenter's urban farming book, a SPIN-Farming manual, and Eliot Coleman's Winter Harvest Handbook, as well as a few crafting books like the Handmade Home (I plan to keep my basket of sewing right near the woodstove, so I take real time to settle down and work on some projects each day). By the way, yes, we did finally take the plunge and decide on a woodstove - a small Jotul model - it has arrived and is awaiting installation. More on this in another post when we install it, light the first fire, warm a pot of soup on the cookplate and take a few photos...

For fall wrap up we are now pretty much done in the yard and garden. Seeds collected, vines pulled out, mulch spread, compost turned, winter greens planted...The garlic still needs to be planted, and as we are planning on reworking out garden layout for next year (putting in smaller 30-inch wide beds, instead of 48-inch as we now have them, and narrower paths - all to maximize our growing potential), I have yet to measure out where to plant garlic so it will be in a proper bed next season. The coldframe has been planted with greens, spinach, chard, herbs, chicory, and mizuna, and the plastic cover is reinstalled to keep the bed warm on sunny winter days. We need to transplant some flats of seedlings into the greenhouse beds (various lettuces for winter consumption) and then we're ready for winter.

April Salad Greens

Weather was around 15 C today! Here' s an inside shot of the grow tunnel, which was planted full of seeds in October. The tunnel felt like a sauna when I opened it up, and as our greenhouse was over 30 C today the tunnel was probably that or even warmer. It really heats up well on sunny days. There are herbs, various lettuce varieties, tatsoi, choho, chard, arugula, and more! Ready to harvest soon. That's a soaker hose running through the middle of the bed. We also planted our first spinach in the garden, under another cold frame today.

Winter Greens

October 21 - also planted our crop of assorted winter greens in the double raised bed that acts as our coldframe. We have thin black PVC piping curving over the bed to create a frame - the plastic pipe is set on metal stakes which are dug into the ground for sturdiness; then we cover this frame with plastic sheeting to create a grow tunnel that acts as a small greenhouse on the sunny winter days.

This year I planted cilantro, basil, red winter lettuce, buttercrunch lettuce, mizuna, mesclun, tatsoi, spinach, arugula, swiss chard, dill and green onions. The herbs will grow slowly, but the greens are already coming up nicely. We also keep kale in various beds in the winter, carrots are still in the ground (nice and sweeet now after our frosts), and the greenhouse is packed with hot peppers, eggplants, and basil in pots, plus chard, arugula and other greens in the beds. We don't need many leafy greens in the winter, as we are fine with eating seasonally (going more toward root veg in the winter, or greens we have preserved in our freezer), as well as sprouted indoor greens. However, it is heartening to peek into the tunnel or lounge in the greenhouse on cold days, enjoying the fresh green colours and flavours, and dreaming of spring again.