I can dig the night shift

I took advantage of my unusually high energy level tonight and double-dug the rest of my fourth raised bed. I can no longer enjoy that kind of work during the day now due to the permasmog conditions of summertime (and it's technically not even summer yet!). It went well. I look forward to planting a lot of flax and oats. Probably peppers, more tomatoes, and more lettuce, too.

Don't deplete my goosefeet

Something is causing the leaves of my spinach and chard plants to deteriorate (both are members of the goosefoot family, which also includes beets, amaranth, quinoa, lamb's quarters, and purslane, if you're interested). It starts with a beige-yellow streak in the leaf, and then grows until, in some cases, the whole leaf is hanging limply and sometimes puffy. Here are some pictures:

I looked it up, and the best guess I could come up with is downy mildew. Perhaps due to the unusually hot, humid weather we've been having. Anyone care to make a better guess?

It's rather disappointing, but I'm not going to be too bothered by it. If all my spinach and chard die off, then all the more room for tomatoes, squash, and oats!

Potato planting

I left a container of 9 organic potatoes I bought from the store to sprout over the last month and a half. HtGMV says to leave place your seed potatoes in a 3-inch high box and to keep them in a place at room temperature with some air flow and indirect light for a few weeks before you plant them. Here are mine today:

I read a while ago about planting potatoes in a stack of tires. I looked it up again and came across this article. The idea is to plant your potatoes in a couple of old tires filled with soil, and as soon as the potato plant grows to about a foot high, pop another tire on the stack and fill it with soil so that only 2 inches of the plant is now showing. Each time you do that, the plant will grow new tubers in the freshly added soil.

I knew I could rely on my neighbourhood railroad corridor to provide me the needed abandoned tires:

For my first mound, I stacked two tires on a section of concrete that lines my backyard gate, filled them with about a foot of soil mixed with compost, and arranged my spuds on the soil, spaced about 9 inches apart:

I filled the rest of the stack with more soil and compost. I did the same for a second stack, and voilà:

First harvest: radishes

I was away from home for the last few days, performing at a barn-raiser and spending time with family in Cobourg. I got a chance to see my cousin Elizabeth's gardens on my grandma's acreage. It was bliss to be out in the country again. The sights, smells, and sounds (and especially lack of sounds) of the countryside are unequaled here in the city. The notion of escaping smogville became doubly attractive for me. If every inch of unused land in Toronto were to be gardened intensively, however, I think I could find summertime breathing to be infinitely more enjoyable.

I came back from my weekend in the country to a tiny patch of now overcrowded radishes, and it finally looked time to celebrate my first harvest:

I picked the biggest ones and ended up with 450 g of radishes (about 2 bunches). I'm banking on the rest of the radishes to increase in size after this thinning.

Seedlings & sowings

I just realized that what I thought were weeds, might actually be the groundcherries! They look like weeds, perhaps because they are, in fact, considered weeds by many. And if I recall correctly, groundcherry was growing rampantly out on Plan B farm when I was visiting last year. Also, groundcherry is closely related to the tomatillo, which I remember at Everdale confusing with pigweed (before closer inspection). So I may have inadvertantly weeded out some of my groundcherries, but I've saved what I think are two tiny seedlings. The only thing that made these seedlings stand out to me from the other weed seedlings were their fuzzy stems, which I know tomatoes have as well.

Yesterday I began double-digging my fourth raised bed. It's the biggest one so far, and I only got about a third of it fully loosened. That was enough for the time being; I really just had to get two large tomato plants (one Sweetie and one Scotch Bonnet) and several oversized Simpson lettuce seedlings into the ground. Between the two I transplanted a bunch of white globe onion seedlings, which are a companion to both tomatoes and lettuce.

Today I sowed cucumbers, pumpkins, butternut squash, sweet dumpling squash, Pride of Wisconsin melon, and butterfly milkweed. I'm bringing the cucumbers and pumpkins inside during the night since it sounds like they require higher soil temperatures for germination than the other squash (according to the not-so-informative seed packets).

I tried to pick up a rain barrel today from a nearby Freecycler. Unfortunately, it was about 4 inches too wide for my bike trailer, so I had to leave it there. It was big and beautiful – a real functioning rain barrel, not just any old barrel – and it would have worked amazingly. Alas, I just don't have a big enough wagon, and I don't yet know of a local fossil fuel-free wagon producer. ;-)

I was working outside virtually all day today, and that was a mistake. I didn't realize today was a smog day in Toronto. I should have taken a clue from the characteristically orange-tinted sunlight, but I just wasn't thinking. As a result, I've felt a little sick all evening, especially after mowing the front lawn with garden shears. This is the first time I've ever noticed the effects of smog on my health so acutely.

Seedling Swap

I haven't been posting much lately because I've been spending most of my time practicing with Meta and Chris for the Cowboy Mimes' second show last night. My amazing friend Kelly from Everdale kindly drove my big-ass keyboard to the gig at no charge, and it was a good chance for
us to swap seedlings. I gave her some of my many sweet pepper seedlings, and in return she gave me a zucchini, two varieties of tomato (beautiful, large mini-plants they are), and an unusual kind of eggplant that's produces orange-coloured fruit (I'll find out the name).

My own tomatoes are doing very poorly. None of my groundcherries have germinated, and only two of my ruffled red tomatoes have sprouted. All my seedlings seem to be growing very slowly, despite the amount of sun they get. Perhaps it's still just too cool at night? Or maybe my potting soil is too dense and the roots don't get enough oxygen? Beats me.

What do people think about transplanting seedlings into 100% compost, just to give them a boost? Maybe I'll experiment.

Bed #3: Transplants galore

I double-dug a third raised bed in the back. I'm having to make the best use of space back there while making do with a gigantic cold frame dead in the middle of it. So far I'm doing pretty well, but something will have to be done with the cold frame sooner or later. I probably won't need it for that much longer anyway.

This bed is my biggest one yet. Into it I transplanted hulless Arabian blue barley, Indian blue corn, the rest of my rainbow chard, the rest of my Bloomsdale spinach, Simpson leaf lettuce, and Scarlet Nantes carrots. The bed is bordered on one side by a fence, which I lined with corn, but there are still pockets left between the corn for morning glories, which are almost ready to be transplanted. I also left room at the end of the bed for something that will sprawl or climb, like beans, cucumbers or winter squash. (I may settle for beans, as it will be a while before any squash seedlings exist.)

I also had several healthy-looking Shirley poppies ready to be transplanted. After my first failed attempt to raise poppy seedlings, I ended up sowing another set of poppy seeds in a flat full of soil the same way I sowed all my other seeds (the biointensive way), rather than into biodegradable cups as suggested by Elizabeth. They were quite delicate and a little hard to handle when transplanting, but not as hard as my carrot transplants, and I can see why people don't recommend transplanting carrots – long roots! I found a bit of extra space in my second bed behind the chard and spinach for the poppies.

HtGMV argues for doing as many transplants as possible, rather than seed things directly. Among the few vegetables they recommend seeding directly into the ground are garlic, horseradish, radish, and shallots. Everything else, however, they say to start in flats full of soil. Even most grains they recommend transplanting (but the amount of time required to accomplish this on a large scale scares me). They offer some compelling reasons for transplanting seedlings:

• It makes better use of bed space: During the time that a seed takes to reach seedling stage, something else can be grown in the bed in the meantime.
• You end up with few to no gaps between mature plants, thus again making optimal use of bed space as well as keeping the bare soil protected from evaporation and weed growth.
• Plants grow better if they are evenly spaced. Even the most carefully broadcasted seeds will form a random pattern, resulting in plants that are too close together competing for light, water and nutrients.
• Transplanting stimulates growth: The loose, nutrient-rich soil of a freshly prepared raised bed acts as a second "meal" for seedlings.
• Seedlings in a flat require much less water than seedlings in a bed.

I'm trying to picture transplanting a field of wheat or spelt by hand, in a hexagonal pattern, each seedling spaced 5" apart. And then oats, rye, and barley. Seems rather daunting. Once each spring to grow enough grain to last me the whole year. Hmm. I guess I'm up for the challenge...

You spore me

Last night these friends popped up out of my flat soil simultaneously and without warning of any kind. It's amazing how fast they appear. What mystifies me is the fact that the first flat was kept warm indoors while the other has stayed in the cold frame for the past several weeks, and last night it must have gotten down to 10º or less out there. Yet despite the temperature difference, they agreed that last night was the night to emerge. Are they in touch somehow, across the ether? Is the moon their satellite relay? I think it's cool, whatever's behind it.

A barrel of rain and a corn conundrum

I was greeted this humid, summery, sunny morning by a beautiful bucketful of rain, laced with apple blossom petals from next door:

It was actually brimming over when I first came out, so it would be nice to find a larger barrel. That bucket holds about three watering cans worth of water, and right now I use about one full watering can per day on my seedlings. Ideally, I would have a large barrel, or two or three, mounted about 4 or 5 feet above the ground, and a hose with a valve coming out the bottom. But I'm not sure it's wise for me to invest that much time and effort into this rented property that I might leave as early as this fall. But it's fun to think about it. It's actually very feasible. The hardest part I think would be finding the old wooden wine barrels.

I realized today that my Indian blue corn is ready to be transplanted (it grows very quickly), so I had to quickly come up with a plan to use up as many corn seedlings as I could manage. I maxed out at 4. (I sowed maybe 20, and unfortunately they're all doing quite well.) Corn needs 15" spacing, according to HtGMV, which left me with few options. I left a spot in the backyard bed for growing pole beans next to the chard (which are companions), and I remembered that corn and beans are also companions (two of the three sisters). So I figured out the arrangement that would use as much corn as possible while also making optimal use of space by filling in the rest with beans:

The circles represent the average amount of space needed by the corresponding plant. The beans I only sowed yesterday, so the corn will have a chance to get a little established before getting taken over by beans. And there I was wondering what kind of pole structure I'd need to design for the beans to climb on...

But what to do with the other 15 or so corn seedlings? I also have quite a few hulless Arabian blue barley shoots that look eager to move out:

Yasi's Place around the corner has a couple raised beds which they call the Wallace Community Garden. I'm definitely going to offer some of my surplus seedlings to them, as well as to my friend Kelly who lives a block farther. But somehow I think I'll still have some extras hanging around.

So I'm thinking of possibly doing a little guerrilla gardening. I live next to some train tracks which are surrounded by what appears to be mostly neglected but sun-soaked land. It looks neglected because it's abominably littered with trash. I might look around there for a spot that's far enough from road/pedestrian traffic but close enough to me that I can still keep an eye on it and do regular maintenance. I expect that at some point they'll want to mow around the tracks, so I should look for a spot that they wouldn't bother with (if I can find a little fence enclave perhaps).

Chard chomper & second bed

I noticed today that my Swiss chard seedlings were actually starting to get cut off at the base, just above the root. At first I thought it might be another case of damping off, but upon examining the soil close to the stem I caught a little larva-like critter red-handed. I did away with it appropriately (flicked it with my finger to nowhereland). A cursory Google search suggested it might be a darkling or rove beetle – assuming I lived in Arizona.

Whatever pest it may be, I figured the best way to handle it was to transplant the seedlings, seeing as their first true leaves (the leaves that grow after the seed leaves, or cotyledons) have finally appeared. But that meant digging a new bed, because I refuse to plant chard next to carrots and radishes if they're not going to benefit one another in some way (they aren't companion plants). So I double-dug a new raised bed in the backyard. It took a few hours, as I had to remove the plastic lining that lay beneath the gravel and penetrate the seriously compacted soil that it covered. Here is the result:

Into this bed I transplanted spinach and rainbow chard seedlings. To remove the seedlings from the flats, I used a short kitchen knife to help loosen the soil beneath them. Following the guidelines in HtGMV, I spaced the spinach 6 inches apart and the chard 8 inches apart in a hexagonal pattern (separately, don't worry). I realize now that I probably should have spaced them twice as close together and harvested the thinnings as soon as their leaves touched. I'll do that tomorrow. Immediately after transplanting, I watered the bed and sprinkled cayenne powder around them. By the way, I noticed that the radish leaves out front that had undergone extended contact with cayenne powder have started to curl. I'm trying to avoid sprinkling the powder directly on the plants now, which is much easier to achieve with 6-8 inch spacing.

Speaking of radishes, I thought I'd post a picture of how they're coming along. Note that the pattern would probably be flawless were it not for the rodents.

Nuisance repellent

Apparently I've started a garden in the domain of rather aggressive bushy-tailed herbivores (Sciurus nuisancis, I believe is the correct Latin name). They are digging remarkably deep holes in my raised bed out front, uprooting radish and sunflower seedlings quite carelessly. I probably should have expected this, but I don't recall squirrels ever being that much of a problem in Oakville. They certainly weren't a problem at Everdale last year, but that was probably because there were no trees near the garden. (The only problem there was Spike the cat using one of the raised beds as his litter box.)

I did some research and found that chili peppers are an effective repellent. So I've been sprinkling cayenne pepper on the edges of the bed, and it definitely works. I have been going through a lot, though, as it has to be reapplied every couple days, especially if it rains. So I stocked up at the bulk store and made a convenient shaker for it. At least cayenne pepper is something I could grow myself if I had to do this self-sufficiently. (Of course, the better solution is to not garden so close to trees and telephone wires in the first place.)

Hulless happiness, germination damnation

A while ago I ordered some different grain seeds from Salt Spring Seeds, a heritage and heirloom seed supplier on Salt Spring Island, BC. I was looking for hulless grains in particular – grains that have naturally loose hulls that can be separated by rubbing or shaking. Most grains these days need to be hulled, which is generally done mechanically, though I'm sure there are many non-mechanical ways of accomplishing it, too (this is why I must spend some time visiting some traditional cultures). Since I'm interested in self-sufficiency, I'd like to grow grains that require a minimal energy investment. A rudimentary search for hulless barley and hulless oats (the only hulless grains I've yet discovered) led me to the catalog for Salt Spring Seeds, so I ordered from there.

I got the seeds a couple days ago, along with golden flax and Indian Blue corn I'd also ordered. It wasn't a new moon recently – rather, quite the opposite – but it's getting late in the season, so I thought I'd forgo the cosmic calendar this once and sow seeds anyway. Meta also thought it would be nice for some morning glories to swallow the backyard's ramshackle fencing. So I sowed.

It seems I haven't been doing a very good job getting my tomatoes and sweet peppers to germinate. In case you were wondering, none have germinated yet, and it's been several weeks for some of them. I don't know why I thought it would be okay for my ungerminated tomatoes and peppers to spend their nights at or below 10ºC. I guess I forgot to read the instructions. I read some guidelines today, which clearly state that peppers germinate best between 24ºC and 29ºC (at least above 18ºC) and that tomatoes germinate best between 21ºC and 27ºC (and never below 10ºC). Maybe that's why most greenhouses have heaters, hey? Yet the concept still seems kind of wrong to me. :) I suppose I should really just stop trying to grow tropical vegetables in Toronto.

So I sowed the last of my pepper seeds and a bunch more tomato and groundcherry seeds, and this time I've brought them inside to germinate. One of the articles I read suggests putting the trays on top of the fridge. I think I'll try that and see how it goes.