Garden

July 11, 2006

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Growing More-erer Food

Because I am afflicted with the disease commonly known as “Can’t-Walk-Past-Plants, Most-Especially-Plants-on-Sale”-itis and because an entire kitchen garden that was non-existent a few days ago doesn’t seem to be enough today; I done went and bought me some pathetic-looking transplants. But wait, they were only fifty cents! Except the tuberous begonia — that was two bucks.

It went like something like this: I was walking past the Loblaws (Canadian supermarket chain) where I was lured by a sign hanging over the garden centre stating, “The Sales Have Begun!”, to which my mind responded, “I may be able to squeeze a few more plants in. This is last, last call. I can’t NOT see what they have. And I need more soil amender.”

In fact we’re so far into summer that this week is sort-of like last call in a city like Montreal where the bars stay open late followed by another round at a skeezy after hours bar where libations are surreptitiously purchased from some dude sitting on one side of the room and mixers are purchased legally from a station marked “Canteen” on the other side. And to be honest grubby is kind of how I felt buying fifty cent hybrid peppers from the garden centre of a popular chain supermarket when the remaining 99 percent of my plants are homegrown heirlooms or purchased from small, organic growers. But when that last call panic sets in I can be swayed to the dark side by just about any sad looking thing with a sale tag. Plus I am going to save these plants from the dumpster and grow more food! Right?

Here’s what I got:

Tuberous Begonia – I could have cared less about tuberous begonias until I learned that the petals of hybrid varieties have a sour, acidic taste that makes a juicy substitute for lemons. Now I’m a champion for tuberous begonias everywhere. I chose a variety with golden orange flowers.
Sweet Pepper ‘Orange Grande’ – This one had a fair-sized pepper on it. When buying sale plants try to avoid plants with flowers and fruit since the stress of living in a tiny pot results in plants that have put all of their resources into reproducing. I chose mine because it had the healthiest, lushest looking leaves of the bunch. The pots were fair-sized making peppers a good choice regardless. Peppers aren’t heavy feeders and can take a bit of abuse. Tomatoes on the other hand were just plain done. I had to pull myself away knowing that nothing was going to save them now.
Sweet Pepper ‘Sweetspot’ – Okay, how could I not buy a variety called ‘Sweetspot’? I am immature.
Zucchini ‘Goldrush’ – It didn’t look any worse than the plant I just transplanted from my shady plot so why not?
Columnar Basil and Genovese Basil – One can never grow enough basil. I am convinced this is true.

I picked the pepper off as soon as I got it home. Part of the strategy behind Project Save the Hybrids is to get them on the road to producing healthy leaves and establishing roots. Allowing the pepper to continue forming would be diverting energy into the wrong place.

And yes I did purchase bags of soil amender; mushroom compost to be exact. Unfortunately it was not on sale.

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July 9, 2006

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Project “Grow More Food”

It’s time for me to face the cold, hard truth; my plot at The Parkdale Community Beer Garden is officially crap for growing veggies. With every new year I have found that while my soil continues to improve, the light on my tiny plot has been slowly declining. A couple of overhead trees have been growing larger and lusher turning what was a garden on the cusp of partial sun to a garden that is definitely partial if not pretty much (look I’m not yet willing to go there yet) shade.

Partial, sorta, almost, maybe, probably, SHADE.

I finally emerged from the safe and comforting bosom of denial this week to admit that I wasn’t going to get much of a yield this year. The zucchini growing in the plot is a fraction of the size of the plant that is not only flourishing but currently producing fruit in a container on my rooftop. Same goes for the lemon cucumber. Don’t even ask me about the peppers, all of which were positioned in the absolute brightest part of the garden. Even the greens are spindly, pathetic versions of their true selves. I had such excitement for the ‘Romanesco’ broccoli! My beautiful ‘Armenian’ cucumber seedlings seemed to be absorbed by the soil. I have had to face and accept what I have probably advised gardeners about a thousand times over this year alone: know your conditions and grow plants that suit it. Don’t fight nature. Most edibles just don’t do well in shady spots. Grow a woodland garden and get over it. Or a boatload of mint and sorrel. Actually the nasturtiums appear to be kicking major ass and I’ve got enough oregano to keep myself and everyone I know in organic, dried oregano well into middle age.

And there is another up side here. While I was coming to terms with my dilemma I noticed that my neighboring plot — the large one, with the best sun exposure — had gone untouched this year and was quickly becoming a borage, calendula, cilantro, and assorted weeds factory.

The other day I was riding my bike past one of my favorite vegetable gardens and noticed that the usually overflowing yard was empty. And just like that I rode past the next day and discovered the gardener in the yard planting tomatoes. I thought to stop and chat but was instead struck with the idea to plant the abandoned plot. Sure it’s late for tomatoes but I had a few in containers that I had been saving for something else and they were larger than transplant size so it why not take a chance?

I pulled out and dug up the roots of everything you see in the foreground.

My plan of attack was simple: remove all weeds, keep calendula, cilantro, and SOME of the borage (I also discovered garlic chives in there), amend soil (ongoing as my compost reserve was limited), transfer the most hard-up plants from my plot, plant some seeds, and do the whole thing without spending any money.

Stage one of the transformation took most of Saturday. I set out with my favorite cultivating tool removing the weeds that had grown more than knee-high. The sun was brutally hot reminding me for the umpteenth time why this kind of gardening work is done in the spring on an overcast day! But the blaring heat was also a reminder of why this plot is so much better than mine. Sun and heat loving tomatoes, and peppers will thrive here! I will have my ‘Romanesco’ broccoli! There is still hope for the zucchini. I’d be so sick of beans between the plants happily growing on my rooftop and the beans I planned to plant that I’d be having green bean-related nightmares come September.

I required a staking system for my tomatoes but didn’t want to do single stakes like I’d be doing in my smaller plot. It was fine in a plot where the sunny side was at a premium, but I hated the Vlad the Impaler look all those stakes created. Plus I found it annoying if not kind of creepy that every photo of me in the garden looks like I’ve got a stake protruding from the top of my head. It reminds me of that scene in “The Exorcist” where the priest sees a picture of himself with a line through his neck. I liked the idea of adding some height to the garden but didn’t want to spend money purchasing new bamboo stakes when I already had perfectly good (but thick) stakes kicking around. My solution was to set the stakes up like I had planned to do with bamboo but they were too thick to tie, and I didn’t have any tools available for building. As a solution I McGyvered a broken tomato cage over the stakes to keep them in place and braided the top wires together to prevent poking someone’s eye out. It’s not the most attractive “garden architecture” I’ve seen but it’s solid. I sowed assorted ornamental lettuce seed at the base of each tomato plant for added appeal.

It’s hard to see in the pictures but I did remove a hefty batch of borage. I’m allergic to the prickly plant so while I enjoy it’s beauty and the cucumbery flavored flowers, I’d rather use that real estate for peas and peppers. I did manage to transplant everything from the other plot that was faltering, amended the soil, sowed quinoa, shungiku, edamame, bush beans, peas, and assorted greens. I have plans to add basil and onions but I had done as much as I could take in one day.

My upper thighs and arms are killing today proving once again why gardening literally kicks ass.

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June 28, 2006

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Off the Cuff Edging

Guest post by Renee Garner

Never one to adhere to tradition, I have started swallowing my grassy yard up with perennials and edibles. Several factors have prevented total success with the work so far, though, and a major one has been communication between my spouse and myself. This was especially apparent one evening at dusk when he felt the urgency to mow the yard. Around 6 PM he revved up the mower and began the attacking the grass voraciously; the most recent planting escaped both of our minds. The next morning I proudly surveyed the landscape, until my eyes happened upon the shredded stalk of my blackberry bush. . . and the rose vine. . . and the oriental poppy. . . and. . .

Well to be honest, I was in no position to complain. He couldn’t see well at that time of the day and I stayed inside lazily reading a magazine with a fan keeping me cool. This humid Southern weather envelopes us for a period stretching sometime from June through October. I had no interest in pitching-in by going outside to coach him along. So, I figured, the price to pay for that luxury was a couple of plants mowed down to a severe state of pitiful.

Last year I was decidedly more creative with my resources. Was it cooler, or was my endurance higher? Though expensive if you consider the price of a bottle of wine, I took my ever-growing collection of wine bottles out in the yard and began picking away at the rocky soil, trenching a line for a glass bottle border; the image is of the area mid-process, a very long process I might add. Or, considered in another light, not long enough drinking and too long working.

Immediacy was a major goal. Plastic was to be avoided at all costs. Gayla’s Willow Edging came to mind, but with the temperature averaging in the high 90s, I was more in the mood to brainstorm in air conditioned comfort than forage for twigs. Enter the hardware store. At the opposite end from the nursery, towards the lumber, where DIY items may necessitate a more thoughtful approach, but productivity ends up much cheaper.
Lo and behold, surveyor’s stakes ($6 for 20-25) and lattice edging (around $1 for a 10-foot strip). The thick flat strips meant less time in the heat, the stakes, well, they’re meant to be pounded into the ground. Thanks to the heavy and constant rain we’ve been having, the ground was soft enough to make the task even easier. I took a hammer and started each stake, placing them about 2 feet apart. I then took a sledgehammer and pounded them further into the ground to the desired height (I used 5 lattice strips tall), and began weaving away. The result is fairly sophisticated for my haphazard gardening style, but it’ll save my plants from being coupled with similarly-priced mundane plastic edging!

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June 20, 2006

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Feed Them to the Squirrels

Gardening is all about experimentation and adaptability. You can try and lock down a “method” but nature has its own ideas. Every gardening season is different for one reason or another. Often times it’s large and subtle differences in the weather. Some years it’s a freak plague of aphids from the sky, a raccoon that has decided to obliterate the corn, or like this year, a family of baby squirrels.

About a month ago we discovered baby squirrels nesting underneath the roof of our building. My first reaction was “aww cute” followed by the realization that I was going to be providing the cuteness with their own personal cafeteria! I get the odd squirrels visitor every spring and over time I’ve learned to deal with their ways. They are generally most interested in digging in the fresh soil, likely looking for that peanut they buried last fall (I did in fact find a whole peanut this year). I put homemade water bottle cloches on the young seedlings and chicken wire cloches over larger plants to prevent digging damage and the occasional nibble. Both barriers work well and stave off a lot of potential damage. By the time the plants have grown too large for the cloches, the squirrels have moved on. While they often come back in the late summer to take bites out of the tomatoes, the number lost to the squirrels is minimal. A certain amount of crop loss to critters is an accepted part of sharing space with living beings.

I suppose this year isn’t any different, it’s just that I’m feeding a family of squirrels instead of one rogue squirrel so the damage is greater. And since this group have clearly found Eden, they aren’t planning on leaving anytime soon. Their tastes are so bizarre and varied I can’t predict which plants to protect and which to leave. They have no interest in the lettuce but have chewed off all the flowers in my succulent window box. They can’t be bothered with basil, but ate an entire eggplant (my ‘Turkish Orange’ no less!) seedling and a pepper plant.

I started two types of peas back in April: a snow variety with pretty purple flowers called ‘Carouby de Maussane’ and a dwarf variety I have grown several times called ‘Tom Thumb’.

'Tom Thumb' Pea Plants

The ‘Tom Thumb’ plants have been thriving and providing me with lots of tasty snacks. The other variety would be thriving if not for the squirrels! When I first noticed the nibbling I thought perhaps it was my cat. She has an appetite for strange vegetables (radishes and edamame) and the container was propped up against the railing where she often sits and surveys “her kingdom.” I noticed that the nibbling started once the plants had grown tall enough to reach the rim of the railing. So I moved the container and still the nibbling continued. A month has passed and the ‘Carouby de Maussane’ peas are incredibly haggard and sad. They produced one flower, which produced one tiny pea that was promptly nibbled and left to hang on the vine.

'Carouby de Maussane' Pea Flower

Meanwhile the succulent lettuce plants growing underneath remains untouched! And the ‘Tom Thumb’ peas are left untouched! They dug up and destroyed an entire dwarf cucumber plant, and left containers of swiss chard. I don’t get it!

Pea plants chewed by Squirrels

Well today I confirmed the culprits are definitely the squirrels and not my cat. I caught one using a deck chair as a prop to reach the tops of the peas. Thankfully I am also growing ‘Carouby de Maussane’ peas at my community plot where they are in a spot a little shadier than they would like, but are growing without interference from critters. It’s interesting, but I have far less critter issues at my community plot where plants are growing in an area heavily populated by all sorts of wildlife than my rooftop deck that is stuck in a typically urban landscape without even a single tree nearby.

Squirrel eating peas

What to do about squirrels is probably one of the most popular questions I get when I am out giving talks or demonstrations. My answer is often that barriers methods are the best bet since they keep critters off your plants without hurting them in the process. The city is often accussed of being a place uninhabitable for wildlife. Growing an organic garden is one way to encourage wildlife and combat that assumption. So when I think about it, would I rather a critterless world or a few damaged plants?

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June 15, 2006

5 Comments

Following the Status Quo: $16,565.00

Guest post by Renee Garner

Office Manager may sound like a hefty title, for those not in the know, but really I am just a glorified secretary. Sure I have a degree, but that doesn’t equate to a high paying job in my chosen field: art. So I make enough to live off of but not much more and that means I can’t afford a landscaper to come out and neatly tend my flocks of daffodils. And really, just to be honest about things, I wouldn’t want one to, either.

So with no offense, Bill Alexander, I dismiss your $64 Tomato. No tomato should cost $64, even in the quest for a perfect garden, if you are willing to invest yourself in your garden. Hopefully then your tomato will be sentimentally worth as much, if not more, than that, but will have a similar or lower price than of the Styrofoam-like grocery store variety. Mr. Alexander, I believe you are proselytizing a myth of the rich, that gardening should be cookie cutter perfection, and an investment in the landscaper’s moneymaking dream machine.

While the book may be humorous and witty, let us not forget that it concerns gardening with a goal free of mistakes. While the story inevitably teaches us about healthy mistakes, and gives us morals, I wonder how satisfying a garden can be if you pay a designer $300 to plot the layout. Who can pay nearly $9,000 for construction?!? I scoff at plants that cost $15, why would I want a bed worth more than my car? I understand the value of a garden. When forced with a choice, I’m much more inclined to spend $20 on plants and a six-pack from the store than I am to spend an equal amount getting into a club and buying a couple drinks. Well, maybe if Menomena came back around. . .I digress.

But the beauty of my job is that I get off at 3 in the afternoon, with plenty of post-work plant time. Since I don’t use my creative skills at work (unless you count these stolen moments blogging! Please don’t tell!) I use them in my yard, much to the disdain of my neighbors, who would rather my tomatoes cost $64. Which brings me back to the concept of money.

One of my most valuable resources has been dubbed “the midnight lumber sale”, also known as “the five fingered lumber discount.” There is new construction all around my house, and I am willing to bet there will be construction within spitting distance for another several years. Hammers echoing in the neighborhood at 6:30 AM are not my favorite sound, but I am indebted to those brand new condos, for they have been the suppliers of the goods used to build my raised veggie bed. And without that, I would have no place for my free manure (well, $3 in gas to pick it up) that I found on Freecycle! I did ask for permission before trifling through the riff raff, but for the most part you can tell which piles are good and which are trash. Need I remind you, dear friend, we want to sort through the trash and not the good building materials, because that would be stealing, and stealing is worth its weight ten-fold in bad karma points. However! In the trash pile you will find glorious resources aplenty, and with a little creative ingenuity, you too, can build the garden of your dreams. From the demolition phase, I loaded up on concrete blocks, 2 x 4s, and a picket fence that now gives my beloved pups a yard to run around freely in. Now in the construction phase, I have scored some beautiful and fairly large rocks for my shady woodland garden. I have also gotten piles of untreated lumber to build my raised bed with! Total costs: I’m gonna guess high and say $40 for bagged dirt and compost of the cheapest variety I could find at my local gargantuan hardware store. $0 for lumber and since my lumberyard is essentially spitting distance, no cost in petrol. I can go ahead and add in another $12 investment: black rolling trashcan, which is now my portable compost container, but I bought that with a Target gift card, so technically it doesn’t count. Just to make Bill not feel so bad, I’ll include the cost of that. So I’m up to a hefty $56.

The plants were grown from seed, which ranged in price from free (trading for variety) to $2.75 for a pack of 6 heirloom tomato seeds (way to rich for my blood, won’t make that mistake again) in any container I had lying around the house. Cloched in pop bottles a la Gayla Trail, the bottles have been recycled into another fabulous Trail idea: an irrigation system. I have grass-clipping mulch to maintain soil moisture. I did buy 5 plants because my first batch of seedlings pooped out on me when I went on vacation. I’ll add $15 for that. I can say I’ve spent less than $30 on plants. Considering I use rainwater gathered in buckets and pitchers, I’ll add another $6 so far on water, which is, again, a gross overestimate.

Since Alexander has included books and resources, I have 3: You Grow Girl by Gayla Trail (2 copies since my dog ate my first one, total including tax:32.25), RodaleÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s Organic Encyclopedia bought new 10 years ago for 21.35, tax included, and Mel Bartholomew’s Square Foot Gardening bought used on Amazon for $6, shipping and tax included.

All of these variables accounted for, I’ve spent less than $200 on my veggies. I have approximately 60 tomato plants, and if they each produce one tomato and nothing else produces, I will have $2.53 tomatoes. So, Bill, next time you diddle in the garden, think outside the box of plastic perfection, I guarantee your tomatoes will taste so much better for it. Because as far as I can figure, following the status quo to grow a ‘mater: $16,565.00; Utilizing your own resources: Priceless.

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You Grow Girl™

Books by Gayla Trail

Growing More-erer Food

Project “Grow More Food”

Off the Cuff Edging

Feed Them to the Squirrels

Following the Status Quo: $16,565.00