Dither, dither, dither.....

I drive myself nuts.

A spring update with pictures is long overdue. I don't have the pictures handy right now, it will wait. But I have not blogged anything for ages and am in the mood for a quickie post. 

We had a decent April. The weather was coolish, but the snow was gone by the beginning of the month. Now the May panic is upon us. Don't get me wrong, I love every minute of it. It's just that I would like to have four hands attached to a well-organized mind, and 7 free days a week of 48 hours each. 

The young woman who I was hoping to work together with seems to have changed her mind. At least, she has not returned any of my increasingly urgent phone calls. 
Not a big problem, though I had been looking forward to playing in the garden together. I messed myself up further by making a few time consuming commitments, never mind the details. One has to be a member of the community, or what's the point of life?

But what drives me nuts more than anything is my own ineffective ways. I should be further ahead by now. I stand around a lot wondering. What do I do first? Should  this perennial go here or there? Every year I plan to figure this out in winter. It doesn't work. 

The main dilemma concerns the boards around the veg beds.
On the one hand, I love working in the well-defined space, especially for the mixed "square-foot-style" beds. On the other hand, the older beds, banged together by son Alex with free slabs in the spring of 2009 are now falling apart. In some places where yours truly has sort of fixed them they are all higgledy piggledy. 

I keep waffling between 3 options: 
*fix them with old boards that are lying around. Saves money, costs time, results will be imperfect.
*get new lumber and do it right. If so, use same layout or make two shorter beds?
*just revert to unbound beds and use the new weed wacker to keep the grass short in between them? The cardboard plus wood chip mulch has all but disappeared under fresh weeds.

At least I found out the lumber yard will cut boards the right length, that is a huge hurdle cleared. 

I will start by planting. The peas are in, the covered beds below the greenhouse are planted and there are lots of starts in the greenhouse. Right now I am leaning towards option 2, and get the makings of one bed every time I go to town. 

And now.....the sky is blue, the weather will be warm and sunny for a while. I am feeling great, yeeha! Last year at this time I had to nap after two hours of dirt play.  I have had my coffee and the day is all mine. I have a freezer full of ready-to-go meals made on rainy days, so I can keep going till I drop and still have decent food at the end of the day. OUT with me!

This is the year of no excuses.

The first pot with leeks has sprouted. I am trying something new this year. Leek and onion seedlings don't mind being cheek to jowl in the starter flat. And they always end up having these scrunched-up roots. This year I am growing them in 2 gallon pots. It liberates scarce room under the grow lights, and the roots can go deep. Last year I learned to make holes for leek babies using an old broom handle as a dibber. Why did that take me 40 years to figure out? It worked beautifully and made it so much easier to space them correctly.

After the aborted (but still worth while) season last year this will be the year of no excuse. I am trying to figure out why, after 30 years of un-interrupted residence, we are not sitting on a thriving homestead. Let's see. We have never had the ambition do have animals other than chickens. The perfect beast for this land would be sheep. Way too much hassle for my taste. In earlier years there were children to raise, and later there were jobs. I have never been one of those people who can just go-go-go. I need sleep and empty space in my life. The spouse did build a greenhouse back in 1992 and has done the odd bit of fence building, but more to keep the peace than because he is interested. There was a long period when many efforts were being sabotaged by deer. It took a while before we came to terms with the need for a Fort Knox style fence. 
It took a ridiculously long time before I realized that fruit trees need the same babying as veg beds.

This is my year for getting it all together. With food prices rising and the economy in shambles I feel more urgency than at any time since the seventies. My health is back. I have a greenhouse. I will not waste garden time on plants for sale. I will not spend time getting ready for the farmers market, attending it and resting from it. Never say never, but not this year. I can spend a bit on infrastructure. .

I am going quite nuts making plans. Here is the list, not in any order. Much of it will require some help from younger, stronger persons, but once it is done it will make gardening easier as we age.


Get the veg section of the fenced garden in boarded beds, with mulch from the pole yard in between the beds. 
A friend has cedar to be milled, and will cut boards into 2x12s of the exact lengths. 

I have decided to turn each 21x3 bed into 2 9x3 beds, with a walk space in between. The older one gets, the more one needs to be able to minimize steps. When I am in form it is nothing to have to walk around, but there have been bad hip days when short cuts become important. I will lose some square footage, but the soil can be used for beds in the still to be developed sections inside the fence. 

Install one of the gates that were made for the chicken run in the North side of the fence. That will make it so much easier to bring inputs from outside into the garden. 

Move the row of raspberries to fruit section, at right angles to the veg rows, once they are done for the summer. Get more lonicera bushes and plant, likewise with wolf berries and blueberries. Collect cardboard like mad and build hugels. Tame the blackberries and red currants. Make cuttings from currants, consider moving red ones to section below greenhouse next to the black currants.  Deer don't seem to eat them.


Get a water catchment and storage system, using the metal roof of the chicken barn. Summer, once it sets in, can be dry, but you won't believe how much rain can be collected in a single thunderstorm. We used to just put containers under the roof. I want a cistern, with the possibility to gravity feed. This will require installing eaves troughs. I have no idea  how to go about that, or how that affects the sliding off of snow in winter. Look into drip watering systems. Must do research. 

Get electricity to the chicken coop. I really want to have eggs and manure again. What stopped me was the hassle of frozen water in winter. Install bigger windows in the chicken coop. There is something to be said for just letting them stay indoors, safe from the many predators. They have a dirt floor, lots of room, and get green goodies. After some thought I decided against meat birds this year. I will just try to get a few year-old laying hens again. Re-build the run? I have not yet decided, but will not give it priority.  Start new worm bin. Look into outside possibilities.

Remove the forked fir that is shading the greenhouse too much. Seed lettuce starters every week.
To be continued.

Wrestling with soil science.

I am laboriously working my way through Steve Solomon's newest tome, "The intelligent gardener". The subtitle is "growing nutrient-dense food." It was inspired by the work of Michael Astera, author of "The ideal soil." Visit him here: http://soilminerals.com. I had earlier bought Astera's book, and got bogged down soon after learning that cation does not rime with nation. I intended to work my way through the basic chemistry book that is floating around the house, never got around to that, and life was kind of strange last year. It is still on the to-do someday list, but I won't lose sleep if I don't get around to it.

Steve's book was written in collaboration with Erica Reinheimer, an active and helpful member of Steve's group at yahoo who balanced the soil in her own gardens. Steve's chatty style makes the material easier to digest. 

The first part is a rebuttal of the Gospel according to Rodale: just keep piling on composted organic matter, and all will be well. This is the message of piles of garden books written since WW2.

NOT, says Solomon. Perfect nutrition depends on minerals in the right proportion. If the minerals are not in the soils which grew your organic matter, they won't be in your garden. That makes perfect sense. I have always used some rock dust and seaweed for that reason. I figured the plants would grab what they needed if the full spectrum was available, much like my body uses my fave super food.

After reading "Gardening when it counts" I started concocting  Steve's Complete Organic Fertilizer, the original version.
I loved knowing I did not have to rely on my sloppily made compost for nutrients. Even badly made compost, given enough time, turns into lovely smelling stuff that improves tilth if it does nothing else. But I was aware that much of my heap's nitrogen might have gone up in ammonia. Liquid diluted fish fertilizer does a good job of feeding plants, but administering it takes time and it  has to be repeated. The organic ideal is to feed the soil, not the plants. I loved COF, GMO soy meal and all. (one group member has used it in his garden and fed it to his worms for years without ill effect)

But now the plot thickens: in order to get the maximum nutrition the soil has to be tested, and a fertilizer concocted tailored to one's particular ground. I would just ignore the idea as too much fuss and bother if the group members who have done this were not all raving about the results. What really pushed me over the edge was the taste test done by Mary Ballon, right here in the Kootenays, albeit one valley to the East. Mary used to run West Coast seeds, she is not just any gardener. Mary grew some carrots just the regular organic way, and some with the customized formula based on soil tests. In a taste test the 'custom carrots' won hands down. 

Ideally one would have test plots, one with COF, one without, everything else the same. One with COF made with regular agricultural lime, one with Dolomite, and so on. I am afraid I just don't have the required temperament to do the science. I am all in favor of it, that's not the point. I am just too fuzzy around the edges to do it. It's a Moon in Pisces thing. After some forty years of failing to live up to my own ideal of a well-organized, record keeping gardener I am ready to admit that it is not likely to happen in this incarnation. Michelle and I made a big batch of old-style COF with Dolomite lime last fall, and I already can't quite remember what went into it. I know I splurged on some guano, did we add that or not? Bone meal? 

We will throw the concoction on and hope for the best. Most problems with long-term use of COF occurred after more years and in other soils and climates anyway. It is hard to imagine getting too much lime on the acid sandy stuff I have to work with. An overdose of magnesium, naturally occurring in Dolomite, tightens soil. I should be so lucky. But we will take samples, and do the math and consult with the group. It will be interesting. I have put "new clean trowel" on the shopping list. The first samples can be taken in the greenhouse.

Meanwhile, reading this book has the reverse effect on me that garden books normally have. Usually a good garden read has me itching to get out there. After this one, I feel like, "Oh goodness, that is so complicated, do I have to?" The answer appears to be yes. 

2013: Hibernation is over, let's start planning.

It may not be quite Imbolc yet, but I can see a patch of blue sky from the window. Our winters here are dreary.  High pressure ridges that bring clear skies in summer just result in inversion and valley cloud in winter. The Dark Time, Halloween to Imbolc, is just that. My energy tends to slump in the absence of light. I don't feel sad/depressed, just lazy. The first hint of spring in the air changes everything.

Today the mountain tops are visible, it is still light at 4.30 and the gardener juices are stirring, pumped up by a post about planning from a favourite garden blogger, Erica Strauss of  http://nwedible.com.

Readers, I am embarrassed to admit how much I am learning from this young woman. She has been gardening less than 10 years, while I have 4 decades of grubbing under my belt. But she has a gift for organization that I sadly lack. I shall make grateful use of her talent.

My dear departed friend Beth James, in whose memory I give away Red Russian kale seedlings every year, used to make notes about farm activity and weather every day, in a big 10-year garden log book from Lee Valley. I have considered getting one like it, but the thing is expensive and I know what I am like. I would mess it up and leave a lot of pages blank on days when I didn't get around to it.

Erica has created a downloadable garden planner/record keeper that is only $16. It is good for years, a thing of  beauty as well as utility. It is infinitely adaptable to an individual's style. In other words, as casual or anal as the individual user makes it. I cannot imagine myself jotting down every penny spent on a package of seeds, and the prospect of planning for projects with detailed notes merely results in paralysis. But I will love a generous pile of garden planner sheets with the handy little squares so I can make endless changes. 

There will be a bit of money this year to buy boards and to hire help and get some long-postponed infrastructure work done. At the end of this summer I really want to have the entire top veg garden organized in boarded up beds made of sturdy 2x12 boards, I want electricity in the chicken coop, and a water catching system using the barn roof and the trailer roof. 

We'll start on paper. Life is good.

Brussels Sprouts at Solstice!

Sorry about the fuzzy quality of the picture, I must have used the wrong setting. But we get the gist, right? The best Brussels sprouts we have ever grown, and we had a whole bed of them, 12 uncrowded plants. It was a co-operative effort. I had good plants to set out, thanks to the greenhouse. 

Floating row cover in the early months protected them from the worst ravages of the cabbage moth, though it doesn't do much against slugs.

During the long months when I was out of commission they were watered but received no other care. In early September my helper Michelle gave them a thorough weeding and a generous top dressing of COF. The plants were healthy but the sprouts were still small. In October the drought ended. While I was away in the Netherlands on family business the garden got lots of rain and the sprouts grew some more. By mid November they were quite respectable. We have been enjoying them for weeks. I harvest them by sawing the whole plant off at the base, so I can take the sprouts off without freezing my hands.
Today the last container was prepared according to the recipe from "Vij's elegant inspired Indian cuisine." I made a big batch and took it to the Solstice gathering in the big crock pot on a bed of brown Basmati rice. It was a big hit, a good way to honour the last fresh garden food.

Up there and apples!

YEAH! I made it up to the big fenced garden with my trusty young helper. Outside on the uneven ground I use the walker and put my weight on my arms instead of on the right leg. In the house I can now walk around as long as I wear  the Zimmer splint. The wheelchair still serves for 'long distance' travel such as the long hallway between bathroom and living room. "Let pain be your guide" was the sensible advice the doctor gave me when I went for the 6 week check-up. I just needed to know if this was a "Don't do this yet!"  kind of pain, or if it was telling me to get off my butt already and get in shape. It was the former. The leg and I are working out constructive compromises.

Michelle followed behind with the wheelchair so I could sit down just in case. I hobbled all the way up, and then sat down inside the garden. I watched her weeding the double row of leeks that was about to be smothered. They will keep growing well into fall and even survive winter. They could do with a top dressing of COF, but first we have to make a fresh batch. Chris was up there too  digging potatoes. I couldn't help myself. While he was gone to get a snack I just had to grab the fork and dig up a few plants. I also yanked out a few weeds in the carrot square and removed the bottom two thirds of the Brussels sprout leaves. The next day the leg told me in no uncertain terms to take it easy OR ELSE. So I did. 

When Michelle came again I stayed below and she got to pick apples from the volunteer trees. Apart from the fact we don't like to waste food we need to get them before the bears come around. It is a good thing I could not see what she was up to. It turns out she had climbed into the trees to shake them from the top. No wonder we have such a bumper crop! There were two more pails. M. took one home and one is in the kitchen. These are not great for fresh eating and they don't keep well. We will be busy the next few days juicing and saucing. 

Too bad my sister is not here this year, she makes a mean Dutch style apple pie. This was her handiwork.
I have never understood the expression "easy as pie". 

Salvaging 2012

The last time I saw the inside of my greenhouse it was all nice and tidy and full of promise. I had figured out a perfect way to transplant leek babies: use an old broom handle as a dibber to make deep holes so the roots can go all the way down..

Notice nice endive transplants to the side. 

I did a good job getting the tomatoes started, and firmly resolved that this  year we would not allow them to turn into a straggling jungle. This year one day a week would be designated tomato day. No matter what other chores beckoned, the tomatoes would get a thorough watering, get pruned, and get tied up. Yeah, right. We know what happened to this year's best laid plans.

Fast forward 2 months, JUNGLE! I finally got a chance to visit the place. A new young Home Support Worker was sent here for 3 hours to clean. I opted for going outside instead. It took a combination of wheelchair and walker, but by golly we made it! I felt a bit like Moses: just allowed to the edge of the promised land.

Husband had been doing a great job keeping the place watered and ventilated during the day and secured at night, but the tomatoes had gotten away. I had to sit in the entrance while Michelle tied up the tomatoes and picked a huge number of cucumbers. They make a nice addition to the daily juice. I did manage to thin the cylindra beets I had planted in a large container. We had a blast. The next time I made it out there my leg was stronger and I made it all the way to the far end, just to see what was there. 

Swiss chard inside the greenhouse grew to monstrous proportions.

Husband harvested the garlic and hung it up to cure. I started out cleaning the bundles as he brought them in, but I ran out of energy.
I was still very tired for most of August. 
The garden has always been my hobby. It is joy to me, a burden of boring chores that hurt his back to him. 

In the past Old Dutch's contribution has mainly consisted of mowing the lawn and the odd major infra-structure job like fence building. Last year he did the main bulk of raspberry picking, for which I was grateful. Otherwise I have not asked for help.

This year Chris has been doing a great job keeping things alive and harvested. It has made all the difference. The freezer is full of precious frozen raspberries. We have been enjoying fresh green beans daily for weeks and frozen some. We are also getting potatoes, tomatoes, summer squash, cucumber and the inevitable kale. The salad crop, alas, went to seed and was not reseeded but one can't have everything. Overall, I am quite pleased by how much of this garden has been salvaged.