Harvesting Spinach in March

 My fall crop of Olympia Spinach (Pacific Northwest Seeds) was seeded in small pots last August 1^st.  After four weeks they were transplanted into the finished snap pea part of the old bean bed.  Fall Spinach and Lettuce  They were interspersed with Encore Lettuce Mix (Johnny’s Seeds) and were nicely established in the bed by fall  

In late October, just after the tomatoes were finished in the greenhouse, I Rolled the greenhouse Can I Move? one set of beds south in the garden, in line with my next year’s rotation.  The greenhouse cleared the lettuce and spinach without any damage.  The two crops were now in the greenhouse for the winter. Well, almost.  Each bed is 12.5 feet long but the greenhouse is only 12 feet.  I forgot to anticipate that and so lost one row of spinach to the greenhouse sitting on it.

We got only two modest pickings from the lettuce that fall as well as two cuts of spinach before the frosts came and stopped everything.  (this year I’ll start my spinach and lettuces a week earlier, about July 24^th.)  The frosts killed the lettuce as expected but left the spinach.  

We had a good supply of frosts during the winter months but only one 7-day long Cold Snap -- in the second week of February, with the lowest high of -3.5°C and lowest low of -8.4°C – a nice mild snap.  Up until that cold snap the spinach had survived quite well and since I had everything to gain, I covered the spinach with a foot of stockpiled maple leaves. 

 

The leaves came off as soon as the snap was over and now the spinach is ripe for another cutting.  I harvest the leaves individually with a scissor.  There will be more coming.

Happy Gardening.

Successful Record Keeping

 Twenty years ago, as an amateur astronomer with a new, bigger telescope, I had to decide whether to go digital or stay analog / hard copy with my atlases and observing logbook.  And I struggled.  

My digital attempts just didn’t work for me.  I scribbled onto loose notes in the dark while observing and then had to type them into my database / spread sheet at home.  Other observers had their laptops on site, blaring light – destroying their night vision / dark adaptation and wrecking dark conditions for the rest of us.  My current software wouldn’t ‘wrap’ notes. Things backed up and updating my digital log was a sad chore that fell way behind.  When the software changed was I going to be able to use my older versions? 

Looking back, I’m so glad I stayed with old fashioned, paper star atlases and handwritten logs.  It takes a major house fire to lose hard copies but only a computer glitch, upgrade, or crash to lose digital ones. A Kindle library is handy but inaccessible once the power goes out.

I’ve stuck with paper sheets for my Record Keeping of my gardening as well.  Each year I keep five kinds of records and they’re kept in different, and convenient, places. 

1) Seed Inventory.  Ultimately done each winter before or after my seed order.  I record Name, Seed Company, Date of Seed, Germination Rate: Company’s and Mine.

2) Seed Planted.  A record by date of what I’ve sown, usually indoors, how many seeds and pots, when it was moved outside, transplanted, that kind of thing.  It’s a great resource for looking back to see when each variety was seeded and how successful the timing was.  I even leave circled anecdotes for corrections for the next year’s timings, pot sizes, problems, etc.

3) Garden Map:  Up to 3 seasonal diagrams to show what went into each bed.  What amendments went in to fortify the bed and when, number of plants, or rows of varieties, important seed and plant spacings, when sown or transplanted, and number of square feet planted.  The smaller scale spring and fall maps show where the fall rye was planted and where the chickens have been and for how long.  

These diagrams are important and handy in planning rotations and successions and recalling and comparing dates.  The rotational goal is to not grow the same crop in that spot for at least four years.  Once again circled anecdotes for changes or improvements for the next year are a help.  This Garden Map sheet hangs near my tools so I can update it as I accomplish the different chores.  

4) Harvest Weights.  Most everything that is picked is weighed and recorded by variety in columns.  This sheet is taped to my inside garage door leading into the basement.  I weigh produce in the garage, record it with the pencil hanging on a string, and at the end of that season’s picking for that variety, I tally the total and write it in bold.  These records inform me where I’ve been successful and where productivity has gone down, especially when compared to pounds per square foot of bed space.  I currently have 6 years of harvest weight sheets on the door and a glance gives good comparisons of what happened previously.

5)  Watering Record.  With so little rainfall in my climate in the summer months, especially July and August, I print out a spread sheet grid that lists all my vegetables, vines, berries, grapes, trees, ornamentals, and flowers and on it I mark which day each was watered.  One sheet per month.  It is updated in the house each day when we take a load off our feet and a glance at it quickly shows what is in need of watering next day.  

Rainfall is recorded in mm. and helps guide when manual watering can be delayed.  This Watering Record list is handy when sharing the watering chore with my Lovely Wife or if we’re gone for awhile and we have our son drop by to look after the watering (and chickens) for us.

These five kinds of record sheets are clipped together, stacked with each of their own kinds from previous years.  That makes it easy to check what had happened in the years past.

I could get by with just one or two of these records – maybe just a map of the rotations and my watering record.  The least important one could be the seed Inventory, but that one is done in the winter and helps get the gardening planning going.  However, for optimum production, at least four of them are necessary.  

Without Successful Record Keeping I think I’d be doing the same things each year without ever optimizing my production.  There would be no evaluations, little fine tuning, no adjustments in timing, and little improvement in my gardening.  

My goal has been to learn how to grow good vegetables effectively.  I grow many things not because I can’t currently afford to buy replacements but because I want to know how to grow them when the time comes that I really need to.  And to share my knowledge when that time of need comes to others.  This gardening skill is sharpened with Record Keeping.

Happy Gardening.

The Ides of March

This is when things finally start happening outdoors in the garden.  

There are always things that are ongoing – there’s still some of last year’s great carrots, parsnips, beets, and rutabagas in the garden stored under that foot of leaves and harvested as needed.  

In the greenhouse the spinach that was started last August and the greenhouse was later rolled onto is really starting to grow again and the kale plant is greening out nicely.  My young onion plants are doing well in their pots in the greenhouse.  

Indoors the Tomatoes and Peppers are starting under the grow lights.  Spinach and Lettuce have been seeded inside as well.  Soon I’ll seed the Brassicas indoors.  The grow lights are firing up right now.

But outdoors, the Ides of March is when things start to happen. 

 

Fall Rye.  All the beds with Fall Rye growing in them are now cut with shears (or lawn mower) and covered with black plastic.  I have many 5 foot by 12.5 foot pieces of black plastic that cover one 50 square foot bed nicely and are held in place with rocks around the perimeter.  This will mostly deaden (almost kill) the rye and in one or two months, depending for which crops, the rye will be stunted enough to either pull and toss in the compost box or till into the beds.  It had managed to get back up to 7 inches tall after being cut once in late fall.  Even taller, more advanced, inside the greenhouse. 

 

I won’t cover the two fall rye beds where the chickens’ run will stay for the summer.  I’ll let that rye keep growing and mowing it until the two hens are moved there, then they’ll tear it up.

Garlic.  The Red Russians are up and 7 inches tall.  March 15^th is when they need to be top dressed for their strong growth ahead.  Steve Solomon mentions the need for any root crops that are to be fertilized with fresher manure must be fertilized at least 120 days before harvest.  It’s a health-safety thing.  Harvest is about July 15^th so mid-March is when the fertilizing is done.  

Last year I used Alfalfa and Soya meals with fair results but this year I’ll go back to my old standby: Chicken.  I have some nicely composted, year old, organically fed, free run layers’ bedding from my brother-in-law’s farm and it should do quite nicely.  It was really stinky when I got it a yard of it a year ago.  I turned it 8 times over 3 weeks and then let it settle down and kept the rain off it the rest of the year.  It smells much nicer now but still has some zing.  I top dressed my 17 garlic plants occupying 12 square feet with 3 gallons of that composted chicken manure and scuffled it in.  That might be a bit much but it should be fun to see how tall and big they get.

Strawberries.  Mid-March is when I top dress my strawberries as well.  I’ve been using Alfalfa Meal here. (from Otter Co-op at $17 for 20 kg or 44 lbs.) It seems to be faster acting than Soya Meal and I don’t need long lasting, just a good boost to get lots of early leaf growth before blooming.  The bigger the plants the more berries we’ll get.  I have a one third cup measurement which works for two plants and the total Alfalfa weight comes to 2 pounds per 50 square feet.

My strawberry bed is always a new bed since I’m dodging the strawberry root weevil, and my method is 4 plants to each 4 foot row across the bed with 12 inch wide landscape fabric strips between each row.  The strips are held down with 6 staples made from coat hanger wire and I remove the two end staples and pull up the fabric from half the row.  I sprinkle the Alfalfa, gently scuffle it in with my hand cultivator and replace the fabric neatly tucked under the existing leaves for a nearly weed free experience the rest of the season.  

The extra work now with the fabric is slower going but worth it.  I’ve nothing more to do with that crop, other than watering, since my Lovely Wife does the fruit picking and I just sit back and enjoy eating the fine crop in early July.

Happy Gardening.

A Favourite Tool: My Knee Pads

Back in the 1980’s I had a problem sitting.  I even ate my meals lying on the floor.  No, it wasn’t hemorrhoids, it was a bad back.  I remember stacking pills just to sit through a movie. (It was the western, Silverado, and I wasn’t in good enough shape to do a proper body count).  After weeks of no improvement, I waited patiently like a good Canadian for more weeks, and I finally got to see a surgeon who got the ball rolling after even more weeks.

I got to participate in the beginning of New Technology.  For the very first time my surgeon and his resident used twin stereoscopic microscopes!  The resident later exclaimed while waving his hands: “You Could See Everything!”  So, instead of a seven-inch incision they used a four inch one and instead of a seven day hospital stay it was a four day one.  They removed my lumbar 5 disc.  

Nowadays they roll you in for day surgery, make a couple of tiny holes, send in a scope and snips and nip off the bulge on the disc, then send you back home the same day.  At least my operation wasn’t during the dark ages just a few years earlier where they’d borrow a piece of bone from somewhere else and fuse your spine at the missing link.

They kept me in the neuro ward and the staff liked us back guys because we felt better after we woke up (less pain) whereas all the other patients felt worse.  My back steadily improved and I returned to work, having only missed four months including an illegal wildcat strike a phone in sick event, (which was a Godsend since I only book sick when I’m sick and would have been in trouble with my union brothers).

From those days on, I’ve always had the back of a 65 year old.  But it worked and it didn’t hurt if I was careful.  A visit to someone’s place and I still always head away from the couch and towards any hard chair.  Now that I’ve finally caught up with my back’s age we’re aging together again.  And we’re not getting any younger.

With that disc missing, squatting in the garden is now mostly out.  I can do it, but I’ll feel it later.  Kneeling in the path and turning isn’t as easy as it used to be but kneeling it will be.  And to do that comfortably I use my Knee Pads.

Nothing too technical, just good thick heavy foam with single Velcro straps.  Eventually the Velcro gives out before the rest does, so I keep extra pieces of Velcro for replacement.  My Red Green Handyman’s method of stitching in replacement Velcro pieces isn’t duct tape but an office stapler.

Eventually there is a strap or pad failure and at least one knee pad must be completely replaced. (hence the two different colours of my current set).  I even wear them when up my orchard ladder in the winter while pruning my fruit trees and vines.  They keep my knees nice and warm while leaning against the cold metal ladder rungs.

As I’m getting older I’m feeling my gardening movements more and more.  But that’s par for the course when closing in on the finish line.  Gardening keeps me loose and in half decent shape when you include lots of walking.  And at the end of the day when I’m stiff and sore there’s always that other Favourite Tool:  the Hot Bath.

Happy Gardening.

A Favourite Tool: My Drill Spade Bit.

Starting plants indoors requires a lot of containers.  I have no intention of purchasing pots at the local nursery, so I like to use whatever I’ve saved from my recycling bag.  Cut down four-liter milk jugs are a great source of seed starting and growing containers.  

I do have a collection of nice commercially made pots which I reuse many times for certain plant sizes at different times.  I also have some small yogurt containers that are the perfect size for some plants (like onions). Repurposed containers are also great for giving away surplus transplants – I don’t need to ask for the container back.

It is important that these containers get holes punched into their bottoms for proper drainage when watering.  

The right amount of water is a skill that is learned with practice.  If the potting soil gets too dry, the water may not be absorbed and just run off down the inside edges of the container and out the bottom.  If the potting mix is too wet, it stays muddy and the seedlings drown.  The best way to remedy mud is to sit the pots on some newspapers or rags to blot up the surplus moisture through the holes in the bottom.

To avoid too wet or too dry I find the best watering is done in two or three passes.  Whether in pots or in the garden beds, applying a gentle amount of water over all the containers or areas and then returning for a second and third application once the first pass has soaked in.  Young seed beds could be watered with just two passes if watering a bit more frequently and once one gets the hang of it.

For watering the smaller seedlings, I have a plastic pop bottle with a couple of holes drilled in the cap.  I use a bigger juice bottle with a drilled cap for larger plants and a full watering can for the biggest pots.  

For many years I used one and two-litre watering cans for all things indoors and just held my finger over the spout to restrict the amount of flow.  But that took two hands, so now I can use a capped bottle in one hand and move lights or foliage around if need be with the other hand.

A good-sized transplant can dry out the potting mix even when watered daily and can leave the centre of the root ball dry.  I find this happening in the greenhouse with the biggest plants in containers waiting for setting out into the garden.  To remedy this, I just sit the pots or containers in a tray of water and let the potting mix soak up all the moisture through the bottom holes. 

The holes are also good for soaking up water an hour before transplanting into the garden.  This assures the root ball is totally moist before it goes into the ground.  When transplanting there’s no worry of over soaking the roots since the new garden bed’s soil will wick away any surplus water once it’s transplanted.

(That was a side trail on watering.  Now back to making holes in the new containers.)  

To punch these important holes in the bottoms of the various containers including the cut down milk jugs I use a woodworker’s drill Spade Bit. That’s the flat one with the slender shaft and a small sharp point in the middle of the flat business end.  I hand hold the bit and it pokes the point through the pot and then stops when the main part of the bit meets the bottom. 

My Lovely Wife has tried other tools to make the holes; usually things found in the kitchen like pens or pencils or knives or scissor blades, but those tend to overshoot the hole-making and can be messy as well as possibly bloody.  

I find my Spade Bit to be the tool of choice for making the important holes in the pots.

Happy Gardening. 

Starting Peppers: Pre-Sprouting Seeds

Europeans are amazed that we eat our peppers green.  “Why wouldn’t you wait until they’re ripe?  You don’t eat your tomatoes green do you?”  Just as there’s a difference in taste between a green versus a ripe tomato, there’s a difference in taste between a green versus a ripe (Red, Orange, Yellow) sweet Pepper.  

To get a sweet pepper to fully ripen, I need to start them early – the beginning of March. Years ago, I would start my pepper seeds in seed flats like my tomatoes and wait.  And wait…. for them to come up.  So now to start them effectively I prefer to pre-sprout my pepper seeds.  I find by pre-sprouting them I can also select the strongest, most vigorous seeds to make it up through the soil.

I soak about one and a half times as many seeds as the number of plants that I want to grow outside plus a small buffer that can be given away or selected out.  My method is to lay the seeds within a wet, folded paper towel and place it flat within a sandwich bag.  The paper towel is folded only once.  This is placed in a bit warmer than room temperature place if possible.  

If I have a grow light on, I can often find the perfect place resting somewhere on the fluorescent grow fixture – not too warm and not cold.  However, my pepper starting time falls just before the grow lights come back out.  My seeded onions left for the south garage window or the greenhouse about four weeks ago and the lights with their stand were taken down for over a month.  So my next best place for warmth is up above the cupboards above the fridge in the kitchen.

The seeds must be checked each day and checking the paper towel is simple.  There’s no need to unwrap it, just hold the sandwich bag to the light to look through the paper towel to discern any sprouting.  As soon as the tips of their small rootlets start to show, they must be planted in flats or small pots. 

This is after 4 days -- no sprouts seen.

 

This is 12 hours later.

I use the point of a Bic pen to make a hole in the potting mix and carefully slide the seed, root point down with the seed casing on its edge (vertical), not flat (horizontal).  One could even use tweezers.  As with most other non-spherical seeds, it is easier for it to push up through the soil with the seed casing on its edge.  

Seed depth is a tricky thing yet still a bit flexible.  If planted too shallow, the seed casing pops out of the soil attached to the tips of the leaflets too soon. The casing could be too dry and hard to fall off the two starting leaves.  If planted too deep it takes too long to come up and exhausts its energy before emerging and opening its first leaves. 

If the first leaves struggle to free themselves from the casing, my method for freeing them is to resoak the casing with a drop of water from my fingertip.  After at least 10 minutes, the casing is soft enough to be gently pulled free from the leaf tips.  Some could say that the plant lacked vigor and should be culled but I tend to blame it on my seed depth.

The planted pre-sprouted seeds still need to be kept a bit warmer than room temperature, so they go back up above the fridge.  I keep checking for signs of emersion once or twice a day.  The moment the first green starts to appear through the soil they must be placed under the grow light.  And when using fluorescent tubes, the youngest plants must be within 1.5 inches of the tubes.

I’ve always shunned the advice of planting the seeds in their own bigger pots, letting them grow into their pots without moving them.  I find this practice leads to watering and root rotting problems.  

I prefer to plant either in small pots to start or a group evenly spaced in a small flat, like a milk jug bottom, and later transplant them into progressively larger containers.  I’ll mention this more in the future.

For years I’ve only planted one variety of pepper seed.  I’ve preferred an Italian Ramshorn, three lobed variety like Super Shepherd from Stokes.  They turn red faster than most and size up nicely.  They’re also open pollinated so I’ve been saving my seed, hence the single variety.  

But last year’s plants had disease problems and the peppers were quite thin walled, so this year I’m trying something my son TOG has been growing: Kapello F1 from Osborne Quality Seeds.  (“sweet, tasty, bright red, smooth, very prolific”).  They’re only two lobed but the flesh is much thicker.  And they’re hybrid so I could try some other varieties since I won’t be saving any seed.  I might trade a plant with TOG to try something different.

Kapello F1 Pepper.  Picture taken from Osbourne Quality Seeds online catalogue.
 

Starting peppers in early March is the true beginning to growing transplants for the summer’s crops.  It’s the time of year that’s full of promise to see how it all works out.

Happy Gardening.

Water: A Most Important Part

I have a weakness for maps and charts.  The more generous might say Gifted.  I can’t walk past a map without stopping to have a look.  Years ago while out for a walk I found an old road atlas lying on the side of the road, I naturally stopped and had a look.  It had something I’d never seen before – the average monthly rainfall graph for a city in each American state.  

The atlas didn’t have graphs for any of the Canadian provinces, so I checked out the one for Seattle -- closest to me.  It visualized what I was used to: quite the roller coaster ride with our high rainfall in the late fall, winter and spring months and the fast descension to almost no rain in July and August.  The surprise came when I saw much of the US Midwest, Atlantic coast, etc. They were generally much more even and gradual curves with a gentle rise during the summer months.

Recently I did some searching online through Canadian Government sources and found the following Rainfall Data for these city airports in Canada:  1) Abbotsford, British Columbia, the centre of the Fraser Valley.  2) Winnipeg, Manitoba, in the geographical centre of Canada.  3) Windsor, Ontario, across the river from Detroit and with a rainfall curve much like Toronto’s.

Note: The Rainfall scale on the right is TRIPLE that of the next two graphs.  Therefore this curve is much steeper than the next two.

Gardening in the Fraser Valley isn’t like much of the Midwest and eastern USA, nor the rest of Canada.  We get 10 inches of rain in the month of November but less than 2 inches in each of July and August.  We need to water our crops throughout much of the growing season.  And to do that we need a dependable water supply.  But there are Green myths around.

One would think, with all that rain, we could just collect it in barrels from off the roof and use it when needed.  At least that’s what the greens will have you to believe.  I guess they’re not familiar with our unique climate nor very good with math.  Or maybe they just want to appear ‘good’ – virtue signaling. 

Working on the assumption of a garden needing the equivalent of one inch of rain per week, let’s do the math for calculating how many barrels full of rainwater we’d need for 100 square feet of vegetable beds.  

Even though Canadians went Metric [hork and spit] years ago, I prefer to work with inches and gallons since each of my 4-foot-wide beds are 12.5 feet long equaling 50 square feet.   Canadians are more bilingual than we think – we work with both systems of measurement all the time without hardly noticing it.  

Our jug of milk is 4 litres which is very close to 1 US gallon, give or take. Same with a pail of ice cream.  Our produce and meat is still advertised in both pounds and kilograms but weighed in kilograms.  Most other weights are sold in grams but we all know one pound equals 454 grams and one kilogram equals 2.2 pounds.  Our craft beer cans come in 355 mils (12 US ounces) 473 mils (16 US ounces) and 500 mils (half a litre) with bomber bottles at 650 mils (22 US ounces).  That would confuse anyone but a Canadian.

Our thermometers have both scales and the weather is listed in Celsius but I still watch our indoor temperatures in Fahrenheit.  The construction industry is still using 4 by 8 foot sheets of plywood and 2 by 4’s that are 1.5 by 3.5 inches dressed and come in 8, 10, 12,…  foot lengths so the vast majority of tape measures used are in inches. 

Our railways are still on miles and miles per hour but after our Gimli, Manitoba ‘Sully’ equivalent, Gimli Glider , the airlines could have stayed there too but didn’t.  With today’s constant access to computers any measurement can be cross referenced with any other.

So, how many rain barrels will it take to water a 100 square foot vegetable bed (or in my case two 50 sq ft beds) with one inch of water in a week?

Note: I only water my beds with a hand wand, therefore I water only the beds.

100 square feet = 14,400 square inches.  1 inch deep = 14,400 cubic inches.

1 US gallon = 231 cubic inches

1 blue barrel = 50 US gallons = 11,550 cubic inches.

14,400 cubic inches = 1.25 barrels.

But that’s just for watering two 50 square foot beds.  I have 16 vegetable beds, not counting the two that the chickens are currently in.  Then there’s the 12 more beds growing my grapes, kiwis, raspberries, rhubarb and asparagus, plus even more square footage for my fruit trees.  Then there’s my Lovely Wife’s flower beds, and our ornamentals (rhododendrons, hydrangeas, azalea, clematis, lilac, forsythia, and a massive wisteria) plus a big walnut tree.  

In one week I’d go through more than 40 barrels worth of water.  In July and August we get almost no rain.  Therefore, using rain barrels in my climate is total Green-Washing Bunk.  A Fraser Valley Gardener has to have a real water supply.  

I rarely water my lawn but now with chafer beetle larvae around and the crows and raccoons digging up the lawn in search of them, I do occasionally water it to keep the lawn more healthy and less vulnerable.

Thankfully my water bill is quite manageable.  We get a good amount of snow (often 6 feet) in the nearby mountains and our city’s mountain reservoir lake is well supplied.  We’re on city water meters and get billed every other month so the neighbours keep an eye on their water usage and the reservoir isn’t abused.  We can only sprinkle our lawns 4 hours per week but there’s no restrictions for fruits, vegetables, and shrubs.

Even in an emergency year, if the reservoir wouldn’t handle our needs, I did the math for temporary personal water storage with an 18 foot circular, above ground swimming pool, 4 feet deep.  That only amounts to 152 barrels, -- less than a month’s normal usage, but with much conservation and letting the fruit and nut tree crops succumb, we could possibly make it through the dry summer.

I’ve dreamed of my own well.  We sit on an aquifer that’s only 35 or 40 feet underground.  The legal hoops to get one drilled would be daunting, the cost not cheap with the large rocks imbedded in the gravel layers, and the well would be a bit too deep to physically pump by hand in an emergency.

My son TOG has experimented a bit with low water usage growing using much wider spaced plantings and black plastic mulch coverings.  But I’m a backyard gardener and wide spacings aren’t a practical option.  My sandy soil is also one that dries out more easily and needs replenishing very regularly.

So, if you’re scouting out a new place to garden, be sure you have a viable water supply.  Rain barrels don’t work in my climate.  Water is a Most Important Part.

Happy Gardening.