Monday 25 June 2012

Farm/Garden Work/Stay

Every time I go to the farmhouse I make a list (partly for the gratification of crossing items off!) of about two dozen chores. And when we leave there are always at least six things that I didn't get around to. It has taken me way too long, but I have finally realized that the nature of such a big property is I will never finish everything that needs to be done.

So I am going to open up the possibility of people joining me for a work/stay for a couple of days. The chores would mainly be weeding, picking potato bugs, with a little bit of harvesting and planting thrown in for good measure.
View of the garden north west past the pool to the corner of the field

We have a 5 bedroom 1865 farmhouse on 13 acres with a 40 foot heated pool. I would hope for 4 to 6 hours of working each day which would leave lots of time for swimming, walking the paths through the wooded area, reading, napping or exploring the area.
The house with vine covered pergola
The pool

If anyone is interested, a Thursday to Friday night or Saturday morning stay would work the best.
Path past the restored brick outhouse to the pool and wooded area

We do have two dogs. They basically just seek out the shade in the dog day afternoons or keep an eye on me as I work away. Although in the cool of the early evening they love to catch the cuz or "squirrel".
Planting a new bed with Thea and Scylla
And I would, of course, serve "farm" meals using produce from the garden and locally sourced eggs. meat, cheddar cheese and chicken.
1830's belfries from a church in Belleville reincarnated as an open pantry 
 Just email me if you're interested in a visit!

Tuesday 19 June 2012

observations of the vegetable garden in the final days of spring


Even though the summer solstice is still a couple of days away it feels much more like July than late spring. High heat, punishing humidity but there's lots of rain. So everything is still green and there's lots of moisture in the soil. It has been a little difficult to know when to plant things this year when the weather has been so crazy; summer in March, cold and rainy in May and now high summer in June. I always do successive plantings but this year I just keep planting over and over again figuring at least some of the sowings will work out.

Something interesting has happened with the potatoes. The first to be planted were the Dark Red Norlands and French Fingerlings. They were planted in the new bed that hadn't really been prepared after the original tilling. So Diane and I placed the seed potatoes in shallow trenches with cardboard between the rows to keep down the weeds and a mulch of leaves I had collected in the fall. The Yukon Gold, Blue and Banana Fingerlings were planted a week later in a portion of the new bed that had benefitted from an extra week under the black tarp. These potatoes were planted in deeper trenches and I'm hoeing the soil between the rows to hill up these potatoes. This past weekend as I was checking for potato bugs and their eggs I found about 9 out of 10 plants in the second plot had clusters of eggs on the under side of the leaves and I discoverd about 10 potato bugs amongst the 5 rows. I crushed the eggs with my fingers and deposited the adult bugs in glass jars. The potatoes with the cardboard and leaf mulch had absolutely no bugs or eggs! Really interesting. It's too bad there are so many variables; planting time, different types of potatoes and the mulching method. So it's hard to be absolutely sure what to attribute the huge difference to. But definitely worth keeping in mind for other years.

Potatoes mulched with cardboard and dead leaves
Potatoes planted in trenches and hilled up with soil

Another interesting contrast is the difference between the sunflowers I transplanted on the south end of both potato beds. The first ones were planted south of the cardboard mulched potatoes. They are in the shadow of the bigtooth aspen for the first half of each day. The sunflowers at the end of the other bed were planted a week later but get full sun all day and are probably twice as tall and much more vigorous.
Sunflowers with full sun are at the bottom and the ones with  a half day of shade are above

Fava beans in boom
The fava beans are in full flower and the peas in full bloom. Most of the pea blossoms are white but there are two particularly beautiful pea flowers; one is the mauve and yellow bloom of the Golden Snow Pea from Terra Edibles and the other is a ballet pink and fuchsia blossom form the purple snow pea called Desiree.
The heirloom Golden Snow pea in bloom

The aptly named snow pea Desiree
The first tomatoes are already blooming and have been tied in to their supports with strips of old sheets.
Indeterminate heirloom tomatoes tied in with strips of old bed sheets
Tomato in bloom

The first beets are looking healthy and the seeds planted two weeks ago have germinated.
The first beets on the left,  beet seedlings on the right with an edge of chard at the bottom

The pole beans have all emerged and every day you can see a gain in height. Very soon they should start to wind their way around the bamboo pole teepees.

The pole bean Violetta di Trionfo
Cranberry Pole Beans at the base of the support and, sown a week later,  a row of bush beans  on the right

The cucumbers are just trying to adjust to a more brutal life buffeted by the elements after their coddled infancy in pots sheltered by the gazebo.
Climbing cucumbers planted at the base of a twine support
Peppers in the hotbox
Eggplants in their hotbox
 And talk about a sheltered life; finally there are the eggplants and peppers basking in the heat of the hotboxes.

Tuesday 12 June 2012

good bug, bad bug

The garden was incredibly fragrant this past weekend and just abuzz with birds and bugs. I think the normal succession of blooming has been compressed this year and so we had the Preston and Korean lilacs in full bloom, as was the golden mock orange. The bearded irises were on their way out but the old shrub roses, especially Mme. Hardy, were just coming out along with the white peonies. It seems to me that, in other years, these plants would be blooming over the course of three or even four weeks
Bumblebees working the lupins

Tiger swallowtail at the mock orange
Monarch at the Preston lilac
Monarchs at the golden ninebark
It was a pollen feast for Monarch and Tiger Swallowtail butterfliesand bumble and honey bees, dragonflies were busy (but not enough for my liking) catching mosquitoes and deerflies on the fly and, unfortunately, the potato bugs were hard at it on the potatoes and tomatoes. The house wrens have built a nest in the new bird house, and we thought we saw a Northern oriole. There were swallows, catbirds and hummingbirds galore.
Potato bugs much too busy for my taste
And the resulting eggs from their efforts
Old tuna can with the bottom removed, intended to thwart the cutworms
Monarch larva on the parsley
They always talk about how Monarchs lay their eggs on Milkweed, which we have in abundance. So it's interesting to find this larva on the parsley.

The paradox of creating a garden is that one works so hard over so many years to create an oasis of beauty and productivity and then there seems to little time to sit back and take joy in all the other creatures that find you have actually been kind of successful.


urbanlocavore on Cooper Road CSA



Kristin Neudorf published this lovely post on her blog http://theurbanlocavore.wordpress.com/ on CSAs in the Toronto area.


Cooper Road CSA



Eileen’s garden in Madoc at the height of the 2011 season.
Cooper Road CSA.  Eileen Fawcett’s enthusiasm for gardening is the driving force behind Cooper Road CSA, a small operation that serves the Riverdale neighbourhood of Toronto with produce from Eileen’s own garden in Madoc, Ontario.  Because its a relatively small operation, there’s a lot more flexibility than with the more conventional CSA models.  Eileen spends her weekends tending the vegetables in her 1-acre garden in Madoc, and sends out an email to her customers on Monday mornings letting them know what’s going to be available at the end of the week.  Rather than buying a share at a set cost for the whole season, customers order week by week, depending on what’s available and what they need (the minimum purchase is $20).  On Sundays Eileen wakes up at 6 am to harvest the produce, and then brings it to Riverdale when she returns to Toronto on Sunday evenings.  Eileen’s CSA has evolved organically over the years – initially her gardening efforts were actually devoted to ornamentals, and over time she became more interested in vegetables, eventually leading her to plant her own garden and explore other organic and local food initiatives.  She’s now partnered with other farmers in the Madoc area to provide additional produce that she doesn’t grow in her garden, like asparagus and eggs, bringing her customers more variety in their weekly food deliveries.  For more information visit Eileen’s blogcooperroadcsa.blogspot.ca/ or call 416-463-5462.

Tuesday 5 June 2012

salad greens in the garden



This cool rainy weather has been very good for the greens in the garden. They're really looking very beautiful and healthy.
The greens bed June 3. The Russian Red Kale from last year is in bloom on the right.
Many of the lettuces I grow are heirloom open pollinated varieties. They are really very obliging if you let them bloom and go to seed. Then in the early spring there are all kinds of volunteers that come up exactly when the timing is best. Lettuces for spring are often the leaf ones ranging from the purest chartreuse, like Black Seeded Simpson, through different shadings of both red and green to the deepest wine red.
Black Seeded Simpson - always the first to plant in the spring.
These heirloom lettuces with their delicate leaves aren't meant for shipping and keeping well so they're a bit tricky to harvest and keep at their best. The best strategy is to harvest early in the morning before they absorb the sun's heat and still dew covered, wash immediately after picking in cold water, spin and immediately put them in the crisper portion of the fridge.
Red Oakleaf
I like to add manure and compost to each row or transplants or seeds, water in and then immediately mulch with grass clippings to maintain cooler soil, keep the moisture in and the weeds down.
Red Deer Tongue, an heirloom bibb lettuce

Merveille de Quatre Saisons, an heirloom leaf lettuce
Later as it becomes time for the summer lettuces the best for withstanding heat and resisting bolting are the red ones and sometimes the romaine (or cos) and bibb types with their more fibrous leaves.
Lolla Rossa

Prizehead, an heirloom leaf lettuce
The peas, spinach and fava beans
But there is a place for hybrids, some bred for  heat tolerance and others for new variations like the Bordeaux spinach with its red veins.
The new hybrid spinach, Bordeaux with its red vein
And soon the whole process will start again as these first lettuces bolt, bloom and go to seed and its time for the summer lettuces.