Rain barrel nonsense

About a week ago I encountered my first thunderstorm since living here, and as the rain was pouring I noticed a spout from the roof that was spilling gallons of water onto a patch of gravel. My own personal waterfall, I thought. How delightful.

That, of course, isn't entirely true. My real thought was, as you might guess, how shall I harvest the rainwater? Rain barrel, naturally. But how will I aim the water into the barrel? Use the old duct that's piled among the debris that came with the house (which just happens to be the perfect length). But what should I use for the barrel? For now, the 5-gallon bucket from the shed will do, but I'd ask on Freecycle, I'm sure someone has exactly what you're looking for. (Note that this conversation is fictional; myself and I don't really talk like that.)

Pics for your enjoyment:

I predict the haphazard construction to last one rainfall before it needs to be repaired.

Of seeds and sprouts

I'm happy to report the birth of some cheerful companions: radishes in the double-dug bed and chard in the cold frame.

This morning I was also delivered an old, rusty wheelbarrow with a flat tire - thank you again, Freecycle! (Freecycle rules, people.) I'll be looking for a new inner tube for the tire, or better, heavy-duty patching tape for the old tube. It should be pretty handy for transporting compost and soil around when I get serious about double-digging.

My mini-greenhouse indoors is now equipped with a fan and - I caved - a lamp. We have zero windows that receive direct sunlight, and I really don't want to risk fungal buildup, so I'm going all out. I'm not really happy about it, but those seeds were expensive, and I want a garden before fall rolls around. If it doesn't work, then it'll probably be cold frame the whole way.

I sprouted lots of spearmint over the last couple weeks - probably way too much. I never thought the seeds were going to do anything, but I guess it can take a couple weeks or more for certain seeds to sprout. So I got overly eager and sowed spearmint in different ways at different times. Hopefully I'll end up with far more than I can handle.

watercolour, summer, 2000

And lo and behold, dear cousin Elizabeth has donated to the Garden project a packet of lettuce poppies from Tasha Tudor's garden in Vermont. Lettuce poppies (aka. opium poppies) are apparently the oldest poppies in cultivation. The seeds are highly appreciated, cousin!

Damping off damping off

After reading farmer Jon's posting in which he mentioned some of his seedlings were damping off, I realized that this was exactly what was happening to my seedlings. I was wondering why my poppy, valerian, and lavender seedlings weren't becoming expectedly big and strong with the warmer sunny weather of the last few days. Instead, they were getting scrawnier and eventually just collapsing and disintegrating, which sounds like exactly what was happening to some of Jon's seedlings.

I think my potting soil was poor. I'd water it, and it seemed to stay moist for a long time. When it finally did dry out, it was extremely dry, crusty and chunky, not fluffy like it was when I first filled the flats. All in all, it didn't seem like a very habitable place for a baby seedling (as nutrient-rich as it may have been). I may also have been watering too often. They say to let the soil dry out completely before completely saturating the soil with water again. This makes the soil inhospitable to the damping-off fungi that like to attack seedlings.

I realized that I really should have sifted my compost rather than just crumbled it through my fingers. I don't know what I was thinking. I guess I just didn't feel like going to the trouble of making a compost screen. So I went to the trouble this morning, and I made a great little sieve (I only needed to make the screen part shown on that page, not the frame it sits on). I found a ½"-gauge screen by the railroad tracks (I actually went there specifically to look for one, too; I also found a perfectly good cooler). I sifted all my potting soil, and already it felt much softer and less chunky.

But I knew I'd need to do more than sift it, because if I grabbed a fistful, it would still stick together in clumps that wouldn't break apart very easily. It seemed I needed the equivalent of peat moss for my potting soil to make it act more like a sponge. But peat moss is a non-renewable resource and its use promotes the loss of wetland habitats. An alternative to peat moss is coconut coir, but it comes from India, so that's out of the question. The more common alternative is vermiculite, but it's mined and its production is very petroleum-dependent, so it doesn't interest me either.

I went back to HtGMV just to make sure they really did say to use one part compost, one part garden soil for making potting soil. Yup, that's what it says. But then I realized that the compost they're referring to is the hypothetical compost that I would have made last year - from vegetable remains, compost crops and yard waste - whereas the compost I had delivered to my backyard seems to be very much manure-based. It's rich, dense and pretty homogeneous. By contrast, compost made from leaves, twigs, stalks and veggie scraps would be (as I recall our garden compost as I was growing up) much more powdery, fibrous, and heterogeneous. Which is possibly why it eliminates the need for a spongy ingredient like peat moss. This is all very speculative, of course.

If only I'd had some of that "other" compost to use for my potting soil! But as luck would have it, today just happened to be one of the city's "Environment Days" where I knew they gave away free leaf compost, and it just happened to be within a 25-minute walk from my house, too. Clearly, it was meant to be. I grabbed the biggest knapsack I had, lined it with a couple oversized plastic bags, grabbed a shovel, and headed down. I got there, and there was barely enough left between the tufts of grass to scrape an oversize load into my knapsack. I'll leave you to imagine how uncomfortable the walk back home was. At least it wasn't raining.

I added the sifted leaf compost to my potting soil, and it seemed to improve it a lot. It had just the texture I was looking for. So I resowed most of my seeds, plus tomatoes, groundcherry, and spearmint, using the new soil (I think it's still within 7 days of the new moon) and we'll see if it works a little better.

Life of a double-digger

I prepared my first raised bed yesterday by double-digging an existing 18-square-foot bed in the front yard. Double-digging is one of the essential features of the biointensive method. It originates in French intensive gardening, which was developed for people with narrow backyards in France to enable higher yields for a given area. The idea is to loosen the soil two feet deep without completely disturbing the natural soil profile, so that roots can easily delve deep rather than spread out.

HtGMV describes several different bed preparation procedures you can choose from, depending on whether you're double-digging it for the first time, preparing last year's biointensive bed, starting a bed in poor soil, and so on. I followed the "Initial Double-Dig" procedure, since even though I was preparing it from an existing garden bed, the bed hadn't previously been worked biointensively. Here's the simplified version:

1. Loosen the top 12 inches of soil with a spading fork (I highly recommend the beautiful, stainless-steel Lee Valley tools) and remove any weeds, roots, or stones you came across.
2. Spread a 1-inch layer of compost over the entire area.
3. Using a flat-edge spade, remove the soil from the upper part of the first trench (a couple feet wide) and place it in a soil storage area for use in making compost and flat soil.
4. Loosen the soil in the first trench an additional 12 inches using the spading fork.
5. Dig out the upper part of the second trench and move it into the first trench. The first trench is complete.
6. Loosen the lower part of the second trench.
7. Lather, rinse, repeat, until you've reached the end of the bed.
8. Shape the bed into a mound by raking it.
   

Result:

Ain't that somethin'?

Next, I planted carrots, radishes, sunflowers and edible flowers. Carrots and radishes both like to be planted next to lettuce. They are companion plants, which is another essential feature of biointensive gardening. Companion planting is a not-totally-understood phenomenon that some species of plants thrive better when grown next to certain other "companion" species. There are also some plant species that will inhibit the growth of certain other species ("antagonist" plants). The de-facto book on the subject is Carrots Love Tomatoes by Louise Riotte.

So back to the carrots, radishes and lettuce. Carrots and radishes like lettuce, so since I'll be expecting lettuce seedlings in a couple weeks, I left some room for lettuce to be planted nearby when the time comes. Carrots and radishes also make good companions themselves if they are interplanted amongst each other, as carrots take longer to mature than radishes, as this diagram illustrates:

I came up with a pretty ridiculous pattern for interplanting my radishes and carrots, based on the fact that carrots should be spaced about 3" apart and radishes 1" apart:

Please do not let this frighten you. Interplanting is completely optional. I just think it's super fun. (Remember, I was a math major.)

So then I poked holes where the seeds should go, popped the seeds in, covered the holes up, and gave the bed a healthy spray with the hose. I hope something grows out of it.

Planting by the moon

The biointensive method of gardening derives its name from the two methods it has its roots in: biodynamic agriculture and French intensive gardening. Biodynamic farming is a holistic system of growing food involving many spiritual concepts, including the idea that the moon and planets are cosmic forces that influence plant fertility. Biointensive gardening shares this view, particularly with regards to the lunar cycle, which is clearly described in the biointensive bible, How to Grow More Vegetables (henceforth referred to as HtGMV). I scanned a couple helpful illustrations from the book that explain how it works:

This morning was the new moon. Following the above guide, I sowed most of my short-germinating seeds in flats this afternoon, including lettuce, spinach, chard, onions, peppers, cilantro, and even carrots (and I realize it's not recommended to sow carrots in flats, as transplanting risks harming their roots, but apparently if you do it biointensively, it's okay). I have three types of flats I'm trying out at the moment:

• 9-cell seedling trays that you commonly get seedlings in at garden centres (Jen found seven of them on the side of the road, like just about everything else we own)
• plastic egg cartons (the awful ones you have no choice but to accumulate as a consumer of organic eggs)
• the bottoms of old cardboard boxes, cut to be about 3 inches deep

I have a feeling that the egg carton seedlings aren't going to fare so well due to the egg cups' short stature. HtGMV says:

The depth [of 3 inches] is critical since an overly shallow flat allows the seedling roots to touch the bottom too soon. When this occurs, the plants believe they have reached their growth limit, and they enter a state of "premature senility." In this state the plants begin to flower and fruit even though they are only transplanting size. We have experienced this with broccoli and dwarf marigolds; the broccoli heads were the size of the nail on a little finger.

But I read this after I'd already poked holes through the egg cartons for drainage, rendering them undesirable as egg cartons. I had to make good use of them, you understand.

The cardboard box idea I derived from the flat design described in HtGMV, but they make theirs out of wood (and I'm sure I'll figure out why they didn't suggest using cardboard in no time). They're a lot heavier than regular seedling trays that you buy, and they're not nearly as convenient for transplanting (it takes time to separate the roots), but I'm sure the plants will thank me for it (and then I'll reply, "No, thank you!").

I put some of the cooler-germinating flats in the cold frame, and the other flats needing warmer temperatures on the window sill. I can't wait to see how they fare with the sunshine and warmth expected in the next couple days.

Cold frame in a day

I built a cold frame! Here is the finished product:

I'm rather proud of myself, actually. (100% muscle power, I'll have you know.) I'll describe how I did it.

I (very) roughly followed these instructions from an article on GreenOptions.com. Actually, I only referred to the article for inspiration and a few tips. Here's what I remember taking away from it:

• Use plywood for the sides
• Use 2"×2" scrap wood pieces for connecting the sides together at the corners
• Attach wooden cleats to the tops of the windows (apparently a cleat is a projecting piece attached to something to prevent it from slipping)
• "Putting insulation on the sides of the cold frame doesn't do much for it, because so much of the heat captured during the day will be lost through the uninsulated window once the sun goes down."
• "... building a back wall for the cold frame from stacked bricks can serve as a heat sink to store more heat gathered from the sun, to help keep the temerature up through the cold night. Building a cold frame against a wall, or into a hillside, where there is more thermal mass to store the heat, can also be a strategy to push it even further."

Here are the ingredients you'll need to build your cold frame:

Note that the small pile of scrap wood depicted above is not an accurate representation of the scrap wood you will actually need. You will discover which pieces of wood you need as you are building (hopefully you like to solve puzzles). Many will need to be cut out of larger pieces of wood, which leads me to the other key ingredient that is not depicted: muscle power. I happened to have plenty to spare; hopefully you do, too. If not, perhaps you could find a neighbour that would be more than willing to show theirs off.

The first thing I did was attach cleats to the windows. You only really need one small piece of wood to attach to the top of each window, but I wanted to prop my windows up a little higher at the top, so I attached a 1"×3" as well. I used Robertson screws (square head), which are the best screws, and if you wish to find them in the States, best of luck. You can stick these screws on the end of a screwdriver and they usually won't fall off, allowing you to screw them in with only one hand. But I found that I eventually needed the force of both hands on the screwdriver to push it down at the same time as turning.

Now, something I forgot to take pictures of was my use of the compost pile for the north wall of the cold frame. I dug a chunk out of my compost pile leaving an approximately vertical, south-facing wall. Then I found a large piece of old countertop (this place has everything; don't worry, plywood would be fine) and propped it up against the compost pile. I then steadied the countertop in front using two cinder blocks that had been sitting by the side of the house - anything big and heavy, like stones from the brook, would work just as well. Then I shoveled compost back against the countertop to (hopefully) turn it into an effective heat sink.

The next piece I made was the front piece, which I arbitrarily decided should be 13" high. I wonder now if I should have made it shorter, because it has resulted in not quite as steep a slope for the windows as shown in the article. I guess your desired slope will depend on different things - the time of year you intend to be using the cold frame, your latitude, maybe more. Anyway, I wasn't much interested in worrying about these details. My plants needed a home!

To make this front piece, I found a plank of wood and cut it to the width of the two windows placed vertically side-by-side (I chose to make a squarish cold frame; if you're making a long rectangular cold frame, cut the plank to the length of the two windows placed horizontally side-by-side). Then I cut two 2"×2" pieces to 13" high, and screwed the ends of the plank to the bottoms of the 2"×2"s.

Then I lay the windows onto the north wall mentioned above, the cleats keeping them in place. I propped them up at the bottom using the front piece. I cut two 2"×2"s to attach to the back wall at the corners (to attach the side pieces). I also cut two 2"×2"s to line the base of the sides, as extra supports. Then I found a big piece of plywood behind the shed, propped it up against one of the sides, and traced where I'd have to cut it. This took some time to saw. Then I screwed the cut plywood piece to the 2"×2" attached to the back wall, the 2"×2" attached to the front piece, and the 2"×2" I cut for the base, as shown in the diagram. I did the same for the other side (using the remainder of the piece of plywood, in my case). Some of those screws were really hard to get into the 2"×2"s. Sometimes I had to take a break half-way through a screw and do something else before finishing it.

Finally, I boarded up the front piece with lengths of scrap wood. And the structure was complete!

I came up with the idea for the mirrors on the sides as I was falling asleep one night. We have this usused bathroom cabinet sitting on our back porch, and I figured I could make use of the mirror doors. I have no idea how much they'll help to gather warmth and light, but it seems logical.

To absorb more of the heat during the day, I placed a flagstone in the middle and surrounded it with bricks and shards of rock.

And we're done.

Reconnecting with the earth

I realized today that three of my four paper-towel-sown varieties are happily sprouting - the poppies, the valerian, and the parsley (yes, I sowed parsley, too). Following cousin Elizabeth's advice that poppies don't like to be transplanted, I created these sort of biodegradable seedling cups from a plastic egg carton lined with old tissue paper (thank you, Jen). It would have been even easier with a paper egg carton, but one must make do with what is given.

I made a very simple flat soil, following the recipe outlined in the biointensive gardening bible, How to Grow More Vegetables by John Jeavons: one part sifted compost, one part soil from the garden. I didn't even bother sifting the compost but just broke it up through my fingers, since I needed only a small amount for now. I filled the egg carton with this potting soil – packing it just enough so that it doesn't really move around (the best soil is 50% air) – and delicately pressed what poppy seeds had germinated into the cups of soil. I set them by the window. Pictures soon.

I've started constructing my cold frame (or mini-greenhouse for seed propagation). I got two beautiful, big old windows for free from good old Freecycle (damn, they even delivered them for free!). I'm using my compost pile for the north wall, which will not only protect the cold frame from the wind but also hopefully absorb daylight to be released slowly overnight. I will detail the construction of this cold frame when I have made some real progress and taken some pictures. I guess the poppies will be guinea pigs of this device.

Sprouting

A few of the seed packets I bought mentioned the seeds required light to sprout properly - specifically, the poppies, valerian, and lavender. So I scattered some of each on wet paper towels, covered them with another layer of paper towel, set them up beside the brightest window I could find in the house, and made sure the towels stayed damp to the touch. So far nothing's sprouted, but it's only been two days. I'll keep you posted of the progress!

Before it was a garden

Here are some photos of my tiny plot:

I calculated that I have about 150 square feet of land to grow food on. The backyard has random debris and a thin layer of gravel on it. It looks like it used to be a driveway. Luckily there is a sheet of plastic between the soil and the gravel, so at least the soil has been somewhat protected from harmful chemicals. I am going to enrich the soil by gardening biointensively. Says Wikipedia:

The biointensive method is an organic agricultural system which focuses on maximum yields from the minimum area of land, while simultaneously improving the soil. The goal of the method is long term sustainability on a closed system basis. Because biointensive is practiced on a relatively small scale, it is well suited to anything from personal, family, or community gardens, market gardens, or 'minifarms.' It has also been used successfully on small scale commercial farms.

In only 200 square feet of land, you can grow enough vegetables for one person for a whole year. However, it takes a couple years to build up both the soil and your skill in order to make that happen. For more information on the fascinating biointensive method, visit Ecology Action.

To begin a biointensive garden on poor soil, one needs enough compost to cover the growing area 1 inch thick, plus enough extra for using in flats. I calculated I'd need about half a cubic yard of compost in total. I ordered compost from Homeland, a family-operated garden centre on the Danforth. Their minimum delivery amount was 1 cubic yard, so I bought that ($30 + $60 delivery charge + tax). Here is 1 cubic yard of compost:


They dumped the compost half inside my backyard, and half on the road. I had to buy a shovel ($15) and a tarp ($8) from the hardware store to move into the back yard and protect it from the elements.