a weekend of "selfless service"

This past weekend my good friends Avo, Edie and Diane came up to the farmhouse to help me out with their skills and company for a spell of "selfless service" as Alex would say. The big project was to rebuild the pumpbox by the pool. The plan was to use the original pumpbox as a template for its replacement.

The old box was falling apart but seemed upon closer inspection to have been built well. (When the box was originally built the pool people got the address mixed up and actually built it at the wrong property. They only realized their mistake when the owners came home and told them they had never ordered the work - although they did appreciate the effort!)

The corner of the lid broke off last weekend

 The plywood had warped over the years pulling the screws out in the process

The first step was to buy the materials; lumber and hardware. But before that a sustaining lunch was in order.

Diane and Edie admire the beautiful spread they have laid

The only real stumbling block Avo anticipated was how he would cut the notches for all the pipes that feed through the box. We bought a drywall knife but, not surprisingly, it didn't really cut it on 5/8" plywood. So, in true country style, I called my neighbour, Charlie, to see if he had a jigsaw he was willing to lend us. He came through so off we went to his workshop. While Charlie did locate the saw, blades were nowhere to be found. Luckily a neighbour of Charlie's, Larry, was at the farm cutting the  grass. Larry did have blades. So after nearly an hour at Charlie's, Larry's workshop was the next stop. This was the most beautiful, well stocked and organized workspace. Someone could spend many happy hours there and the evidence was all around in the form of plane mobiles made from pop cans and innumerable woodworking object d'art.

By mid afternoon we were back at the house ready to start. Avo worked single-handedly to cut all the lumber making a schematic for reference and labelling each part alphabetically for help in assembly.

Plywood beginning to be cut into the necessary proportions

Any job is made so much easier with the proper tools so Thea  takes a discriminating look at the selection

Avo using the jigsaw to cut the first notch

He scores!

In the time honoured tradition of adapting materials at hand for other uses,  the cooler finds new life as Avo's work saw.

While Avo worked in the garage Diane vacuumed the pool and I weeded.

Diane taking five from vacuuming

After inadvertently running my thumb down a rose cane, Edie got an opportunity to perform a little surgery to remove thorns from my left thumb.

As long as I can't see what's happening it will be fine....

By late afternoon it was time for sustenance in the form of appetizers by the pool.

Compliments of Diane; rose wine, smoked salmon, crostini, olives and Edie's traditional offering of Brie  

Cocktail hour also included podding the peas for dinner and the freezer.

Diane and Edie looking conspiratorial, or are they simply podding peas?

The next day it was time to start taking down the old pump box. Avo took many photos to make sure we had something to consult once the old pumpbox was disassembled. And then it was time to start assembling it.

Nailing down the battens

Avo worked tirelessly and with great patience (and very little help). My fractured wrist meant I was able to do very little "heavy lifting". There was a bit of a challenge removing the back of the old box but ultimately with a little bit of "brute force" it came off.

The erection of the new box went amazingly smoothly thanks to Avo's unfailing good humour and his alphabetical labelling of all the individual parts.

The two more difficult (because of access issues) sides are up

And now the four sides await the two part lid

The next morning was devoted to final details; securing the chains for the lid, adding the trim to the top of the box, securing the latches.

Avo attaches the chains to the lid

We made a small miscalculation buying lumber and so the box awaits four additional battens.

Avo signing his name to his creation!

This blog is dedicated to Avo, with thanks!!

weeding

It seems that this time of year the major preoccupation is weeding. Every time I return here from the city, (what a mistake it was to come on the Friday of a long weekend - the drive took 5!!! hours) as soon as I've unloaded the car, I take a walkabout the garden. I'm always excited to see what has changed. And disappointed in equal parts to see how all the work I did the previous weekend seems for nought. The lawn is like a hayfield, the pool is green, the bottom covered with silt and the vegetable and ornamental beds alike are filled with weeds.

One bed of tomatoes I tied in and weeded this morning

A few years ago our tenant farmer at the time seconded the haying to a friend of his. Mike Smith was English, a sheep farmer and newly emigrated to Hastings County. I was out in the new bed I had made in the field, picking potato bugs. I had decided to try a no-till approach and in the spring I had mown the area to be planted, then covered it with layers of wet newspaper. I laid the seed potatoes right on top of the newspaper and "hilled up" by adding layers and layers of fall leaves.

As Mike swung by as he was cutting the hay in the field he stopped to introduce himself. I was thrilled when he said he knew I did everything organically. I don't ever seem to get enough compliments so I eagerly anticipated what he had to say. Was it the directness of my gaze, the clarity of my eyes?? Well neither actually. It was the proliferation of my weeds - only someone who didn't use herbicides could be as rich in weeds as I was. (But, nevertheless, he claimed, it was intended as a compliment...)

We had someone visit once who exclaimed, "Eileen, there's so much grass in this bed!" I could never understand that remark. Didn't he know that the weeds and quack grass kept me awake at night - when there was nothing else to?

A new bed of meadow rose that I transplanted last fall. It doesn't look like much now but

this is the original planting Alex gave us a few years ago. 

As per usual I have a list of about two dozen things to do this weekend. But since I've got a serious gardener and plant collector coming to visit on Monday I have shifted my focus from the vegetable beds to the ornamental beds. So after cutting the grass (no serious rain despite the prediction) and vacuuming the pool, disappointingly green after all my efforts, I have spent the day weeding. And that is literally, since I woke up at 5:30 and am just now making dinner at 8:30!

I have a theory that if you start by weeding the front of any mixed border it immediately looks better, despite the lushness of unwanted vegetative growth in the back. I think it is because without weeding, the border looks flat and two dimensional. Yet once the front is weeded the eye can see three dimensions, undulations and different textures and shapes.

The "white" bed - not yet weeded - impossible to discern any details

A little vignette with rose campion and campanula weeded this afternoon 

the purple and orange bed edged

Many people like to weed as the sun starts to set. The shadows are long, the birds have returned from their afternoon siesta, there is often a breeze and a certain stillness as the day settles in to become night. So, after picking potato bugs, I made my way to the vegetable garden in the field to pick the first snow peas and weed the sauteing greens. I know  the bed still doesn't look so great but I cling to the notion that the mulch of pulled weeds keeps the ground moist and the greens feel liberated from all the competition from the huge variety of competing weeds.

the sauteing greens feeling they can breathe just a little easier  

If one happens to have a friend who is willing to lend a garden-gloved hand to do some weeding they are worth their weight in gold. Last weekend my friend Diane turned her hand to weeding the succulents planted at the base and above the boulders by the pool. She has started the process of transformation - nothing less.

Diane with appropriately coloured gardening gloves 

And so, I know how the rest of my summer will go - weeding and more weeding. I always have a goal to have actually finished weeding all the mixed borders and perennial beds by the time frost comes. It has never yet happened. But they say "How can you know where you're going if you don't know where you want to be?" Maybe this year...

The "grass filled" yet still weeded  bed in the foreground, the long mixed border in the background

more than one way to skin the cat

Maybe I have a bit of gardening ADD. Or perhaps it's trouble committing. Or it could be I'm just a dilettante, a born dabbler. There are so many different approaches to gardening organically; biodynamically, Ruth Stout's no-dig, straw mulch philosophy, permaculture. Both of the latter promise less work - and there's no argument with the attraction of that. But I seem to experiment with a bit of all the methods - and anything else that seems worth a try.

Biodynamic agriculture encompasses philosophy and ethics in its approach to sustainable agriculture. Soil, livestock and crops are seen as interconnected and symbiotic. Ideally a biodynamic farm would be a closed, totally localized ecosystem. Manure from the livestock would feed the soil which would provide enhanced nutrients to the crops. Weeds and unused or unwanted produce would go into the compost which would provide additional nutrients to the soil. And the cycle would continue round and round.

The phases of the moon are used to dictate ideal planting times. A waxing moon has increasing light and promotes balanced leaf and and root development. This would be a good time to plant above ground crops that produce seeds outside the fruit - like lettuce. During the second quarter moonlight is strong so vegetables whose seeds are inside the fruit, like tomatoes or beans, benefit from planting at this time. The third quarter, the waning moon, has decreasing light but increased gravitational pull which helps to draw moisture up from the soil so this is the ideal time to plant root crops - like beets.

All this actually does make sense and is pretty time honoured, way before Rudolph Steiner ventured along and came up with a fancy name like "biodynamic" farming. But for me there are obvious difficulties since I don't live here full time. And when I am here it always seems my to-do list is endless and my time finite. So the luxury of timing plantings with the waxing and waning of the moon is beyond my time limitations. Not being here full time also precludes having livestock. But I do get my annual dump of manure from my tenant farmer, who raises beef sustainably.

Ruth Stout, who was born in 1884 and lived to be 96, practised gardening using a thick layer of mulch for years before she wrote her book, How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back; A New Method of Mulch Gardening. She advocates using at least an 8 inch layer of any rotting vegetable matter. Many people use straw but she says anything will work as long as the mulch is thick enough to suppress the weeds. The decaying matter also breaks down, enriching the soil and making it friable and rich in microbial life. When I weed I generally lay the pulled weeds at the base of the vegetables to conserve moisture. I have started buying straw bales from Charlie and have used it the past few years to mulch my tomatoes. I have always used grass clippings to mulch my lettuce. And this year Alex and I cut up a fallen cedar tree so I collected all the cedar leaves to use as mulch for my beets. Since I use essential cedar oil as a bug juice for blackflies I thought just maybe the cedar would be a bit of a natural insecticide for the vegetables. Each fall I collect bags of leaves from Rosedale sidewalks or the from the dump here in Madoc and store them over the winter to use to mulch my potatoes the next summer.

Winter squash seedlings in a hill of manure surrounded by a straw mulch

Heirloom shelling beans planted last week nestled in a bed of straw

Potatoes under a thick mulch of autumn leaves 

I can attest to all of these mulches as great soil enrichers but they aren't all that great at suppressing the weeds - but I'm sure it is simply a matter of not enough matter.

Tomatoes struggling with the weeds coming through the too thin straw mulch

Ruth Stout leads naturally to permaculture since she is considered a towering inspiration to its practitioners. The idea behind permaculture is that as many features of the garden are permanent or perennial. The permaculture garden has full size trees at the extremity to provide shade and shelter from strong winds, next there is an understory of perhaps fruit or nut trees and then shrubs, probably fruiting (currants or raspberries, for example). Within the garden itself there are vertical features (like kiwi plants or pole beans) and the beds are often laid in tear drop shapes radiating from a centre. There are as many perennial crops as possible, Jerusalem artichokes for example. Paths are mulched to suppress weeds and ultimately become permanent features.

I love my rhubarb, a perennial, one of the few plants we inherited with the property. Egyptian onions, a gift from my mother's garden, are truly self perpetuating. This time of year, the ones that have escaped being pulled for scallions, send up a stalk with a flower at the top. That flower contains little onion bulbils that are broken off, ready to plant for a fall crop.

Egyptian onions about to flower

We have planted an heirloom apple orchard and quite a few years ago, a double row of butternuts. Last year I planted three red currants and three black currants and 20 raspberries. This spring I added 3 haskaps and 3 shrub cherries plus 25 table grapes. So I am all for the diversity of the permaculture garden. But in the deep freeze of January I can't seem to let go of the fun of redesigning the beds for the next summer's crop rotations - the whole new garden each new rotation creates.

I always like the duo of spinach seeded at the base of peas, two crops that like to be planted as soon as the soil can be worked.

Spinach growing at the base of climbing peas

This year I've also tried a couple of new things. My farmer friend from Haystrom Farms told me last fall that I shouldn't even consider growing arugula without a floating row cover - a total waste of time. Well them's strong words. So since I had a lot of trouble with arugula last year, every thing from poor germination to quick bolting and terrible insect problems, I figured if a floating row cover was my magic bullet I would come out shooting.

Arugula tucked in under a floating row cover 

The other big experiment is sweet potatoes. I've come to love sweet potato fries.  Like potatoes, when grow conventionally with pesticides and herbicides, sweet potatoes take in all the chemicals and concentrate them in the flesh. So these are two of the vegetables that are really a good idea to buy organically grown. But growing them is a work in progress to say the least. Earlier than any other vegetable, I started them in January. I've been documenting the various stages ever since figuring sweet potatoes deserved a blog to themselves - that is if I have any to harvest. Time, and more time, will tell.

Sweet potatoes in a raised bed under black biodegradable cloth to warm the soil

I love vegetable gardens with paths but I prefer to take my inspiration from the French potager rather than the weird teardrops of the permaculture garden.

The original vegetable bed with greens on the left, potatoes on the right and tomatoes at the base of the teepees

Paths mulched in straw in the new bed in the field, this one with peas and spinach

What can go wrong will go wrong

I came up to the farmhouse this week knowing I had a few gargantuan tasks ahead of me; learn to use the lawn tractor, vacuum the pool which is masquerading as a pond and use both the push mower and the lawn tractor to cut the lawn and the paths into the field and throughout the vegetable gardens. All this seemed like a good excuse to invite Pam to join me. I know she loves to get out of the city every weekend and I also know she has a 20 year old Ford Ranger pickup which she very happily bought from a young man in Cambridge who did all his own repairs. For Pam, the ultimate mechanical DIYer, that is a badge of honour and integrity.

When I arrived on Wednesday pressure in the pool pump was at 25psi, the equivalent of 200/120 for a human being. I managed to bring it down to acceptable levels by vacuuming and doing an extensive backwash. Again, not all that different from bypass surgery.  But the unexpected wrinkle occurred when the lid of the pump box came off in my hands. The hinges had finally pulled right out of the rotting wood.

I had picked up the push lawn mower from the Farm Supply in town on my way here so next up on the agenda was to take advantage of the respite from the steady rain and do a bit of grass cutting. I couldn't believe it when, fresh from the shop (we had taken it in because Christopher had put in chainsaw oil instead of 10W30) the mower wouldn't start. It just didn't seem to be able to engage. Matt, from the shop, swung by later that evening and figured it was the regular gasoline with ethanol that was the culprit. I was skeptical because that is what we always use. But, bottom line, we both agreed it definitely wouldn't start. So he kindly put it in the back of his pickup truck promising to look at it first thing this morning so I could pick it up before early Saturday closing.

Meanwhile we had picked up a new battery for the lawn tractor which Matt very generously connected for me. The first step in the process of learning how to use the Big Red Tractor.

Fast forward to Saturday. Pam had arrived the night before with three!! dogs.

Pam with Lucy and Scylla. Riley's asleep in the truck and notice Koko on the roof!

First up in the morning was figuring out the lawn tractor. I left Pam to it, manual as backup, while I did a bit of gardening. Unfortunately, when I checked to see how she was making out, I noticed one of the front tires was flat as a pancake, the whole machine resting on the rim.

Scylla checks out the disabled beast

When I went into town to get the lawn mower, for the second time in two days, I was also carrying the flat tire and the cotter key that needed replacing, the empty gas can to fill with premium gasoline and three empty chlorine containers. It turned out the problem with the push mower was that mice had almost, but not totally, eaten through the wire connecting the spark plugs. Having developed some "trust" issues lately, just to be sure, I tried starting it while Matt was fixing the tire. Good to go, strike one more thing off the list.

With the Honda Fit laden with the push mower, 50 litres of chlorine and 10 litres of gasoline if I had just had a tank of oxygen I could have had a real blast.

The fully loaded (not in the normal car sense) Honda Fit

I got back to the farmhouse an hour later, we ate a quick lunch to relieve our hypoglycemia and once again approached the Big Red Tractor. Once Pam had gotten the wheel (now sporting an inner tube) replaced, she suggested we start by labelling the various gears and levers with "translations".

The tubeless wheel now sports a brand new inner tube

Labelling the gears

Then me seated on the beast, manual in hand, with Pam to guide, spot and generally reassure, I got started. Having finished no one would mistake the lawn for a bowling green but it is cut and I do now know how to use the lawn tractor - teaching the old dog yet another new trick.

Unlike Pam, I am clearly a fan of manuals

There's usually no one to take pictures so please excuse the over (or in this case, under) exposure of me

Unlike in my motorcycle riding days in high school,  here you don't  lean into the curves

Someone who used to be a friend once said of me that I was "quick to tears but very practical". True but I would have preferred it had been "quick to tears and very practical".

                                                       This blog is dedicated to Pam.

The Big Red Tractor, Lucy and Pam

Heirloom lettuces and "Winter" spinach

Growing vegetables is always a challenge - swings in temperature in the spring, drought or deluge in the summer, getting the right balance of "good" and "bad" insects. And, for me , the additional challenge of not living full time where my garden is. A greenhouse would be nice, but without someone there to regulate temperature and humidity, that is out of the question.

But, not to be daunted by the difficulties,  endless experimenting may just pay off occasionally.

I think the one success I can make a claim to, year in and year out, is spring greens. I just love heirloom lettuces. I love them for their variety and their beauty,

Red oakleaf on the left and Black Seeded Simpson on the right

from back to front; Bibb, Marveille  and Green Oakleaf

 everything from robust oval leaves as in Bibb

Bibb

to the chartreuse green frilliness of Black Seeded Simpson

to the Impressionist looking wine and green of Marveille de Quatre Saisons.

Then there is Freckles, the green Romaine with red spots. But actually, Freckles is a Romaine type, and this is clearly an oak leaf. So maybe I've inadvertently created a new lettuce. How about Comedo Oakleaf (I know, who knew, but look it up!)? The other possibility with open pollinated plants is that they can cross breed, taking characteristics from each of the "parent" plants, in this case it would be Freckles Romaine and Green Oakleaf, and create a new plant. But the seed from the new plant, let's say  our Comedo Oakleaf, would not come true. And thus a hybrid has been created. The progeny could reflect any combination of characteristics from the two gene pools that created it.

Green Oakleaf

and its sister, the Red Oakleaf.

But the other reason I love heirloom lettuces is that they are open pollinated. This means if you let them flower and then go to seed, those seeds will produce the exact same plant when germinated.

I always try to collect seed, but I'm not organized enough to label the plants before they flower. Despite the difference in their appearance at the beginning of the season, by the time they are setting seed all the leaves look the same and all the flowers are a pale yellow daisyish shape.

But sometimes the lazy way turns out to be the best too. For the lettuce seeds that escape my attempts to capture them when conditions are exactly right they start germinating. They do this at different rates, and because they have withstood the tortures of winter but have also been coddled by a blanket of heavy snow, they are tough and independent little foundlings. No matter what vagaries spring brings they thrive and grow strong and true.

After a few weeks I start transplanting them into orderly rows with lots of compost and manure added to each hole and a bed of grass clippings to mulch them. No matter how early I plant seeds, whether started indoors in flats or direct seeded into the garden, these lettuces just never seem to have the strength of character the foundling self-starters do.

Direct seeded Lolla Rossa on the left and various self seeded lettuces on the right

The other experiment which has worked out well for me is to plant "winter" spinach. I sow the seeds in the late fall. Sometimes they will germinate in the late autumn, sometimes not, but by spring I have a full crop of spinach which has done its work producing leaves and is just starting to go to seed when the first seeding of spring spinach has just started to produce its secondary leaves.

"Winter" spinach about to go to seed

Direct seeded spring lettuce