Sunday 24 February 2013

The Makeover

So, as I mentioned, this year I am planning on turning my farm into something much prettier, for my daughter's wedding. This is a massive task, as you'll see.

Thankfully I'm being helped by Google. Even if their overhead photos of my place are pretty awful.


Believe it or not the white blob is a barn/barnyard, and the black smudge below it is a large pond. The house itself is invisible, but you can see the front drive - where that ends, obviously is the house. The curved line on the left of this picture is the stream that runs across the back of our property. We are only concerrned with the front of the property, as most of it is pasture and (beyond the stream) swamp, and the scrubby edge of woodland. 

So this is the area where the work will be done:


You can see pathways etc. I'm going to use this to create an accurate plan. I'll show you that later on.

What Google have done well is drive up the road and take wide-angle photos of the front. So these are the "before" photos.


You'll notice particularly in the second image that it's very "natural" or "rustic". In other words, there is a lot of long grass and little else. Close to the house you'd see flowers, but we want a bright show from the road, as well as all over the property. (You can click on all the photos for a bigger image). 

We also want to make a feature of the pond. It's about 40 feet across with an island in the middle. I have managed to establish a few hollyhocks on the island by throwing seed bombs, but this year somebody has to swim out there and actually do something impressive with it. As it's full of leeches we can't get any volunteers, so I assume I'll be buying an inflatable sunbed thingy. 

#1 priority is to grow things up the fence all along the left-hand side of the front. Probably sweet peas, morning glory, mirabilis etc. But it's VERY soggy there, so it'll be tricky. 

#2 is to paint the barn and sheds a nice country green. 

But there's a lot more. I'll present the ideas a bit at a time.

Monday 18 February 2013

Pests and Diseases

As soon as I say "organic" (and mean it) I am immediately asked what I do aboust pests and diseases. The answer is not much.

There are products sold in stores labelled organic that some gardeners use. I don't. They cost more than they are worth.

There are "recipes" you can find online to combat specific problems. I can't comment, as the only one I ever tried was soap spray for aphids and it was a waste of time.

There are easy companion plantings that keep some problems to a minimum, and a row of marigolds near the broad beans is much more inviting to the nasty black aphpids than the beans.

I suppose I'm lucky really, we don't have major problems here. When the caterpillars get on my brassicas the numbers are small enough to just pick them off. We've never had cutworms, and the major caterpillar problem went away when I dug up the roses and burned them.

My biggest issue is tomato blight, and that can be minimized by harvesting early, never planting them in the same place twice, and in fact if you grow them in a container with non-affected soil, you can avoid it entirely.

In fact the problem critters in my garden are much bigger. My own chickens stole all my peas one year, and I've had sheep in the garden on a couple of occasions. For the first time ever we've seen rabbit tracks on the snow this winter, so I may get visitors this summer. At least I don't have to contend with deer. They are too shy, thankfully, to come that close to the house.

So why am I writing this at all, if I have nothing to offer as advice?

Well, I'm not absolutely certain, but I think it's possible that our approach works. Perhaps the reason we don't get a lot of pests and diseases is that we don't interfere much with the balance of nature here. If something does look sick we burn it fast before it spreads.

That may not be much help to you if you have inherited infected soil, or your neighbours have created a problem by spraying everything. I'm sorry if you find yourself in that position, it really sucks.

But if you have the opportunity to grow things in a rather more natural way, I recommend doing it. Long-term it seems to yield better results.

While I'm here, I often get asked about the safety of manure. With the exception of rabbit manure, which is a magical garden ingredient if you can get some, all manure should be left to mature before use. Anything harmful in it is long gone by the time you put it on your garden.

What I'm trying to say, is that I have found, that by interfering as little as possible, I have had better success. There will always be exceptions to that, but it reminds one of drugs that cause side-effects that need more drugs, and so on, until there is complete dependency on cures. When it's a human being we don't really have the optrion of tossing them on the bonfire and starting over, but my approach to a diseased plant is to do just that. There are plenty more.

Friday 15 February 2013

Cucumbers

Somebody mentioned cucumbers. I am very, very good at cucumbers. We concentrate on the mini ones used for pickling, and grow hundreds of plants, but the same applies to all types, and indeed, up to a point, to its relatives...........

Cucumbers are related to gourds, melons, zucchinis, pumpkins, and squashes, and they all look very similar as seedlings and small plants. They've been around a long time and can be found mentioned in Sumerian mythology.

We know them best in three forms:

1. The smallest varieties, which are primarily pickled.
2. Ridge varieties ("slicer" cucumbers) which are simply larger versions of these, with a tough skin
3. "English" cucumbers (which actually come from Syria), less bitter and with an edible skin.

You may notice a bit of bias there. I consider the skin of the ridge cucumber to be inedible, and in actual fact, I never use them at all. Like most things it's a case of what you are used to. I grew up with English cucumbers, while in some areas of the US, I'm told they are expensive and/or difficult to obtain.

The English cucumber is a wee bit trickier to grow, as it needs more heat. In cooler climates they are a greenhouse-only crop. If you want them straight like the ones you are used to buying you must grow them as a hanging vine, on strings, a fence, or a strong mesh. They will grow just fine on the ground but will curl.

Otherwise these are very undemanding plants, and will grow from seed simply dropped into a hole in the ground you can make with your finger. You don't need rich soil, it will just give you more leaves. But you do need space if not growing on a trellis, they sprawl. I've had plants reach 6 feet across.

Plant directly in the ground after the last frost date. Or start in a pot indoors (see previous blog) 2-3 weeks before that. Water WELL. These are thirsty plants. At full maturity I give each plant an absolute minimum of a litre (quart) of water a day. Never let them dry out.

Be careful when weeding or hoeing. Even if you plant the seed deeper than recommended, the roots will be very thin and delicate. There is a very sudden noticeable difference between the sturdy stem above ground and the whiskery roots below. You can encourage longer roots by using very well tilled soil, but you still have to be careful not to accidentally pull them out when working around them. If you accidentally uproot it, the chances of it recovering after re-planting are iffy.

At harvest time be prepared to check for ripe cucumbers daily. They grow very fast and they also hide under the big leaves. If you are growing pickling cucumbers, be prepared to do regular batches. After picking they go limp and wrinkly quite quickly even if refrigerated - I'm quite disgusted to see them being sold like this actually. When the time is right I'll post my customary world-class pickling recipe on my food blog.

This is a FUN plant, great for a beginner (even a child) and the leaves are interesting enough that you could grow one in a flower garden, just because. Certainly, if the only place you have to grow it is in front of your house, there's no reason why not. Because of their vertical ways, these also make great balcony plants.

Cheating

The absolute bestest thing you can invest in to make gardening easier is a greenhouse. A nice one will only cost you about $10,000 after all.

Yeah.

So, what else? Well, we have on two occasions bought white car covers to use as greenhouses. They work VERY well, cost a fraction of an actual building (we paid no more than $300) and we have recommended them to many people. Unfortunately we have lost both of them to the extremely windy conditions up here. The first one actually took off, and ended up in the field across the road. The second one, firmly anchored this time,  just disintegrated gradually from the constant strain on the seams. We may or may not try again, but there are other ways.

We did once also build a small lean-to greenhouse from wood. It cooked everything. Temperatures inside got so hot in late afternoons you couldn't even enter it. We made the foolish mistake of using plain glass, like the greenhouses we'd known as children in England. NO. In an Ontario August you need diffused light. We could have painted the glass white, but it was too small anyway, so we took it down, and tried the car covers instead.

I am still planning a large, wooden, solid greenhouse, and will get there eventually, but my experiences so far have taught me that really all you need is:

a) A structure, any size.
b) A cover that lets light in, but not too much.

You could use a milk crate and some grocery bags taped together. It would be ugly, but it would work.

If you have lots of money to waste you can buy all manner of mini structures with covers that will do the same job. They will be far prettier than the milk crate/grocery bag combo, and your neighbours will be less likely to say rude things about you, but they won't actually be superior. Our Mennonite neighbours use old feed sacks over wire frames to make rows of cloches, and it doesn't look bad at all. They pull the sacks back as the season/day progresses, to prevent overheating. I might try that.

Another way to get a head start on the season is to start plants in pots/trays, put them out during the day and take them in at night. I did that one year and drove myself crazy because I had over a hundred trays. It's far more doable if you only have a few. Again, the Mennonites have a method here. The trays are all laid out on a small wagon, which is pulled into a shed at night.

As a last resort, you can protect plants that cannot be moved indoors by throwing an old sheet over them on a cold night. Unseasonably late frosts are the bane of northern gardeners, just when you think it's safe...wham. I err on the side of caution to avoid tragedies like that and wait AT LEAST until the last week of May to plant out tender things. Don't assume that just because the tomato plants are available for sake, that it's planting time. Check your own local "last frost" date.

Fortunately not everything is delicate. Peas can go in the ground as soon as it thaws out. If they get too cold and wet they will rot, so make sure it's not soggy soil, but I dare to put them in earlier and earlier, and last year we started them in March, and had our best crop ever.

Despite what they tell you, anything can be started in a pot. Even carrots. So if you have ANY way of cheating, by starting plants inside, grab that opportunity. Just make sure that when you plant out you don't disturb the roots. One way to do this is to make the pots from paper, and plant the entire thing. The paper soon breaks down in the soil. Make a few holes in the bottom so the roots can escape while that process occurs.

http://www.homemadesimple.com/en-CA/HolidayandParty/Documents/newspaper_pot.pdf

We have even started corn inside using this method, and will do so again, results were so good. Remember every week extra you get at the beginning of the season, is a week sooner you'll be eating your veggies or enjoying your flowers, and it could make all the difference if frosts come early in fall.

NOTE: I've decided to add links to other ideas as I come across them, here's the first of these updates:

http://www.soyouthinkyourecrafty.com/2012/07/cd-case-greenhouse-tutorial/

Don't forget to check the comments below for other suggestions, there are already a few, and please remember you are free to add anything yourself!

Beginners

Based on #3 on the introductory post, I'd like to expand a bit, and this is aimed at those who have little or no previous experience in gardening, want to start, and see it as a great mystery, some sort of arcane art.

Well, it isn't. It's actually all very easy. If you have a piece of waste ground, even if it's nasty clay, building rubble and so on, it will cover itself in greenness in a very quick time. The more rain you get the faster this will happen. Seeds will arrive on the breeze, or dropped by birds, and stuff will grow. If you have a piece of land, or even a bucket of dirt, just WAIT and it will give forth vegetation.

OK, you say, but that's weeds.

Let's define what a weed is. It's anything growing where you don't want it. If you were to find a blueberry bush while you were walking in the woods, you'd be pleased. You'd take yummy blueberries home. That bush is wild, but you wouldn't call it a weed. On the other hand, one of the main "weeds" in my vegetable garden, and sometimes elsewhere, is tomato plants. There are seeds in ten-year-old compost that germinate all over the place. I'm forever pulling them out.

Weeds therefore, are a matter of opinion. The point is, that they grow without any help from humans. Plants you choose do grow will need a bit more help, but it's not difficult. Life has an urge. Seeds want to germinate. Plants want to grow. OK, maybe not exactly, but you know what I mean.

What is needed to grow anything can be reduced to:

1. Light.
2. Water.
3. Nutrients.
4. Warmth.

As much of a plant's growth occurs due to photosynthesis, #1 and #3 have some overlap, but you also need soil, of some sort. Soil varies but anything that has a basic organic component to it can support green life. There are people who use newspapers, for example. If you do not have ready access to ordinary soil, you can buy all sorts of "growing mediums" (soil substitutes) such as peat moss and so on. When I say soil, really I mean soil, the stuff that you find in nature, but you can think of purchased soil substitutes if you need to.

There is this idea of "bad" soil, and "good" soil and that's reasonable. Some people have sand or clay which is lacking in organic material and/or has a structure that doesn't hold water, or holds too much, and you can improve it by adding stuff to it. The easiest way to do this is to add compost from kitchen waste, but it takes time to make, so right at the start you'll probably have to buy some.

I am fortunate to have a good deep topsoil of loam, which is the ideal soil. Where I live was mixed forest until about 150 years ago, when it was cleared for farming, and it has changed quite a bit during the time since then, from having been used as pasture/meadow. I've also improved my actual vegetable garden area myself by running pigs on it. But if you don't have loam, don't despair. There are whole websites dedicated to soil improvement, and I'm not going to bother going into detail here, just to say, it's really NOT DIFFICULT. You don't need a horticulture degree. Mix what soil you have got with some good organic something or other, and stuff will grow. Trust me.

The most important thing, and the thing beginners get wrong the most, is water. It ought to be obvious, but if anyone is going to start a garden and then drop the ball, it is from forgetting to keep the plants moist. The hotter it is, the more they need. Also, plants in containers dry out faster than plants in the ground, so if you use containers you will need to water a lot, several times a day in hot weather. I should also remind anyone who likes the idea of raised beds that they have higher water needs. We grow strawberries in a raised bed, to enable us to grow it in an area that would otherwise be TOO wet, i.e. by raising it up we improve drainage. But I'm forever watering the damn thing.

Watch rain. Stand in it and watch. Watch how big the droplets are, how much they saturate in a given time, how long a shower has to be to get down deep where the roots are. Watch how quickly the soil dries out again after rain, firstly at the surface, then lower down. When you are providing supplementary water you have to provide it like rain. It's no good sprinkling a bit and calling it "watered". It has to go DOWN. Watering almost always takes longer than you think it needs.

For this reason I love sprinklers and "soaker" hoses, where I can turn them on and do something else while they work for me. If you have limited water, bear that in mind. What you really don't want to do is grow a container garden in a hot summer when there's a hosepipe ban. So think about that before you plant, plan ahead a bit, just in case. Saving rain in buckets when it does rain might help if you only have a small garden. My in-laws saved their bathwater for years to compensate for British droughts. A bit eccentric, but it worked.

Light matters. When you look at a tree growing out of a rock, albeit stunted, you may wonder where it gets its nutrition from. The vast majority comes out of the air. It's complicated, but basically plants are able to get carbon out of the atmosphere in a chemical process using light. If you like science, read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthesis
Otherwise just take my word for it. Some plants have evolved to thrive in shade, but most food plants, for example, need plenty of sunlight.

Seedlings started in insufficient light will go looking for it. They will grow tall and gangly very fast, "reaching" for light, and these usually don't do well as mature plants. That's why starting plants on a window ledge indoors is a bit hit and miss. If you are lucky to have a beautiful south-facing bay window, you may do quite well. In my house there are only two windows with adequate light to start seeds, you may be luckier.

Warmth is vital to successful germination of seeds, and subsequent growth. The reason we are able to grow as much as we do this far north, with our short season, is that plants "catch up" during our hot summer. I have more success with certain plants, for example, in a 3-month growing season here, than I did in a much longer one in my much cooler English garden. I could never get peppers to full size outdoors there, but they grow easily in the field here. So it's a balance. The time from seed to harvest is totally affected by temperature, therefore, and you can buy varieties developed for your zone, such as 60 day corn.

So let's simplify that again. If you plant it in good soil, when the weather is warm enough, and water it regularly, it will grow. Each plant has specific needs, some require other attention such as pinching bits off. But that's the basics of it. It needs what you need. Food, water, shelter, warmth, and maybe a bit of love.

The Story

I have been threatening to do yet another blog - about gardening etc - for a long time. It will not be your regular gardening blog. There are several reasons for this, and I'll list them because it will help you decide whether you want to follow this one or not.

1. We live in a remote part of Ontario, 1800 feet up. Zone 4. Very short season. And we have 14 acres. Some of it is swamp. Yes, SWAMP, on top of a hill. We face quite different challenges to those of other gardeners. We can't do anything until the snow goes, probably April.

2. We are beyond organic, by which I mean we don't use any purchased products, not even those labelled organic. If we can't make it/dig it up/grow it ourselves, we don't use it. (N.B. this doesn't apply to hardware, we don't use flint tools). I consider most of the products sold to gardeners to be a racket.

3. We don't follow trends or do scientific soil tests or anything like that. We dig holes, plant stuff, weed it, water it, in a rather basic and very old-fashioned way. Seems to work out. Nature knows what it's doing.

4. We have animals, so we use manure. We eat those animals. We take no notice of those who object to this.

5. We are realistic about stuff like self-sufficiency in this latitude and climate, so we grow what we feel like, it's for pleasure rather than any heavy heavy agenda. We do know how to switch to survival mode, if we have to, but we're really not into that.

6. We don't take ourselves very seriously.

This year is a bit different. We have a wedding here in September, for #2 daughter. So we are landscaping the place, and I will be writing quite a bit about that. I have lots of plans, and my main objective is to make it look as pretty as possible as cheaply as possible, therefore the vast majority will be done from seed.

There will be plenty of photographs, and plenty of silliness. Feel free to join us.