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

making maple syrup

One of the highlights of the month of March in our part of the country is making maple syrup. It is widely acknowledged, and has even made headlines in the news these days, that last year was terrible for maple syrup. Expectations are that this year will be a much better season. Ideal conditions for the sap to flow is daytime temperatures around 5C with lots of bright sun and overnight temperatures dropping down to -5C. When that happens the sap rises during the day and the trees can be tapped and some of the sap collected.

Making maple syrup can be done using anything from very basic homemade equipment to expensive, highly sophisticated equipment using reverse osmosis and everything in between.

A few years ago I helped a neighbour make maple syrup at the farm she grew up on. Sue and her brother Ivan use mainly home made equipment but well thought out. They hang buckets on the trees and empty the sap into a reservoir tank on the back of the tractor. The tractor is driven just up the hill behind the sap house and sap is fed through hoses powered by gravity down to the evaporating pans. They have two boilers, one outside and the other in the sap house. Each boiler is topped by a series of four evaporating pans decreasing in size and each one at a slightly lower level. The sap starts in the largest and highest pan and is then ladled through each of the pans until it is almost finished in the final and smallest pan. This smallest pan is then poured into a pot to be finished on the wood cookstove. The syrup is then filtered and jarred.

Ivan's tractor just above the sap house

The system of four evaporating pans with the homemade ladle, this boiler is in the sap house

Sue ladling sap into the final evaporating pan on the outside boiler  (notice her sleeveless top )

My daughter, Alex, decided this was her year to make syrup, not as a helper, but as the top gun. She is using the trees and saphouse at friends of hers, Dave and Amanda, who have a beautiful farm about 50 km west of our farmhouse.

The first step was to go to Dave and Amanda's and tap the trees. Alex had picked up a beautiful antique drill but after the exertion of tapping two trees by hand she was relieved to be able to borrow Dave's  power drill. The drill bit for tapping trees is 5/16" but with an unusual head.    

Alex's next challenge was getting wood for the boiler. Slab wood is used and she was able to buy cedar and hemlock from our neighbour, Ivan. She cut it to length in situ with our chainsaw and then stored it at our place. When the time came to start making syrup she loaded the wood into the back of her truck and supplemented that wood by cutting up a dead elm which had come down last fall in our front yard.

Alex beside the truck filled with slabs of cedar and hemlock

The appropriately outfitted lumberjack working on the dead elm

Scylla and Thea show a keen interest in this aspect of the process 

Once weather conditions are suitable it is time to collect the sap. The general ratio is 40:1 ie. 40 litres of sap produce 1 litre of syrup. Alex had collected a number of 5 gallon buckets. The first lesson we volunteers learned was that filling those buckets close to the top and then trudging through knee high, very wet snow was not going to happen. So with more modestly filled buckets, we spread throughout the property collecting from the woods, down the lane, back by the hoop house and ultimately made our way to the sap house.

Making the trek over to the sap house

Josh with his 5 gallon pail filled with sap and the sap house in the background

Diane and Josh making their way out of the woods

The tapped maple trees along the lane

Dave's father makes syrup professionally but the system at Dave and Amanda's is closer to "backyard" syrup making. The boiler is an old oil tank and the evaporator pan is the bottom half of a milk-holding tank. The boiler is fired up and the sap is poured into the evaporating pan. Because there is only one big pan Alex faced a couple of challenges that had been eliminated in Ivan's 4 pan system. To prevent the temperature from dropping too much whenever fresh (and therefore, very cold) sap was added she put it in a couple of big coffee tins to preheat on the boiler before being added to the evaporator pan. And because there is just one very large pan there is a greater chance of the almost-syrup scorching when the sap had reduced substantially. When the level of sap in the pan is much lower it is transferred into a big canner and reduced further at the other end of the boiler.

The boiler is fired up

The evaporator pan filled with sap

Our chili and rice lunch warming up, two pots of almost finished sap and on the right, beside the evaporator pan, a couple of coffee tins preheating fresh sap before being added to the pan.

Once the sap in the canners has reduced even further it is time to finish it off. This part is quite reminiscent of making jelly - in all the difficult ways. The sap is supposed to be transformed into syrup when it reaches 219F. But like jelly, which should be at the gelling stage at 224F, temperature doesn't seem to guarantee chemical alchemy. Also like jelly, the syrup should "sheet" when done. This is sometimes described rather poetically as when "two become one". In other words, when you lift a spoon out of the sap and suspend it over the pot the drops, one at each outer end of the spoon, draw toward each other and unite before dropping back into the pan. Alex special-ordered a great book called Backyard Sugarin' by Rink Mann. The author describes a visual change in the bubbles when the syrup stage is reached; the bubbles become small and plentiful like in milk that is about to boil over, in contrast to the large bubbles formed when water is at a full rolling boil.

Trying to identify these various signs feels a lot more like magic than science. But then that is the charm -  and the art - of backyard maple sugaring. It's not a lab after all. Just as well too since by the end of the day white lab coats would definitely be the worse for wear - I was covered with soot; my hands, my gloves, my face, my clothes. And that, of course, was when my nose became unbearably itchy.

Waiting for the alchemy of sap to syrup on the propane stove

The final stage of bringing the sap to the syrup stage is usually done off the boiler where it can be controlled more easily. Ivan and Sue have a wood cookstove in their sap house, Dave and Amanda have a propane burner set up just outside the sap house. I was overlooking the first batch to be finished. Like a nervous parent I think I hovered just a bit too anxiously and thought it was done before it really had boiled down quite enough. The second batch, with Alex's calmer overseeing, was finished to perfection. The day yielded 5 litres of perfect maple syrup and 4 litres which, if anyone had the energy, could be emptied out of the jars and briefly brought back to the proper boiling point.

Success - a litre of 2013 maple syrup!

Starting Leeks Indoors

In the depths of winter when the days are short and the sun is weak seed catalogues start arriving in the mail. The next few weeks are marked by whittling down the wish list (I'll take this page and that page) to seed packets, selecting individual species or cultivars from the dozens on offer.

Once the seeds have arrived it is probably time to start some indoors. Seeds need to be started inside either because they require a longer growing season than we have (peppers, tomatoes, basil) or because they can be transplanted outdoors as soon as the ground is sufficiently thawed and a headstart indoors  keeps them from getting lost amongst all the germinating weed seeds.

Leeks are the first seeds to be started and the first to be transplanted outside. They can be started from mid February to mid March. Successive seedings can help stagger the harvest in the fall. This can also be accomplished by using different varieties.

Seeds are started in a soilless seed starting mix. The mix needs to have water added first - it shouldn't contain peat moss (which is a non renewable resource) but like peat moss, the soilless mix will absorb many times its volume in water. For years I have spooned the soilless mix into 4 packs and added water  to the flat which was suspended over the sink. This year I stumbled upon a much more effective and less messy way to moisten the mixture - I put the soilless mix halfway up a bucket and added water to the 3/4 mark. Then just stirred and broke up the chunks until all the water was absorbed. After about twenty minutes the mix had absorbed all the water and it was ready to be spooned into the 4 packs.

Soilless mix with water added

From 4 to 6 leek seeds can be added to each cel. They don't need to be thinnel since once they are transplanted they will push each other apart as they grow.

Multiple seeds in each cell which don't need to be thinned

Once the flat is seeded I top each cell with a small spoonful of more soiless mix and then press each the top of each cell to ensure seed/soil contact. I happen to have an old gas stove with pilot lights on all the time which gives a nice even heat. The flat is enclosed in plastic. Each day for one to three hours you remove the plastic to prevent mould and fungus from growing.

The flat enclosed in plastic absorbing heat until germination starts

It is very gratifying to start with such failsafe seeds. After 5 to 7 days they will start germinating.

Germination has just started - the seeds were planted 5 days ago

Once they start germinating it is time to remove the plastic and move them to a sunny window. By the time the soil has dried out enough to transplant them they will be close to a pencil in diameter and 68 to 8 inches long.

On left leeks planted three weeks ago and on the right 5 days ago