Growing Into Sustainable Agriculture
Today was the first appearance at the Saskatoon Farmers’ Market with produce. I had the camera with me but completely forgot to take a picture. I took a few beet greens, spinach, swiss chard and mesculin mix. Not a huge bounty but it was good to at least get a little bit of a feel for what the market will be like.
The pea plants have now started to blossom and form the first pods. The rain that came down a week ago has really helped for things to move along (including the weeds). Hopefully now we will start to see some greener photos instead of the barren plots that seem to be the feature so far this spring.
lay back and groove; take a holiday
After about 3 months with basically no rain the sky finally decided to open up and let out some moisture.
I actually had a small group of volunteers out early in the morning to help with some badly needed garden maintenance. Unfortunately we got kicked out of the garden rather early in the day. Fortunately it was rain that made us leave. Unlike the past where I ‘ve been forced to stop working due to lightning storms with no rain.
I had quickly spread white dutch clover in all the main walking paths just prior to the rain so I’m hoping the seeds will germinate quickly now (I wasn’t having much luck with what I had tried as a cover crop before). The rain today was a great settled rain turning on and off periodically. With my sandy soil I don’t think it is possible to get to much water. Hopefully my dugout will also revive a little.
Late in the night I ventured out to try and find cutworms with a flashlight. Wherever I learned that cutworms come out at night to feed and you can find them with a flashlight probably wasn’t referring to Saskatchewan the night before the summer solstice. Sunset was officially around 21:30 but twilight hung around long after that to the extent that even around midnight it still felt like there was a hint of light glowing on the horizon (and it wasn’t the city). Reminded me of working in the arctic. Anyway, I didn’t find any cutworms out for an evening meal at the time (I did manage to dig a few up though).
Still no rain of any consequence. Here I am watching what looks to be a single rain cloud moving off in the distance, completely bypassing the garden. There were a few drops a couple of days ago but only enough to dampen the surface. The lack of rain has meant a lot of running the sprinklers lately (especially since it has warmed up) but keeping up with watering everything a proper amount is getting hard to do.
Another weekend has come and gone without me being at the market. I’ve missed the early season crops now but hopefully will get there soon with other produce. I’d say some of the problem was my own inexperience and the other part of the problem was the weather (cold and dry). I’ve learnt I really need to invest in some row covers both for germinating early seedings and for keeping bugs off the plants (two things that got most of my greens and all the kale I planted).
(Check out Trent’s new blog for his bakery; link is in menu to the right)
An article from the Star Phoenix
This week made me wonder how anybody managed to survive growing their own sustenance. Here is a little rant about what I am trying to overcome:
After a good weekend (a week ago) of planting and garden maintenance…
Monday night started things off with a frost that froze over 50 percent of the tomatoe plants I had set out (even after I had raced out and covered them all).
The lettuce I planted basically failed to germinate (not exactly sure why; maybe to cold). I’ll be planting more again soon.
The spinach came up in patches but I don’t have enough to take to market (plus something is eating parts of the leave, I think it’s the ants?)
The kale I planted had come up but got decimated by flea beetles and there are now no signs of growth.
The broad beans that were looking very healthy got struck down by cutworms. The worms ate right through most of the plant stems just below the surface. I’m not sure how many will survive even after I spent a full day digging in the soil and “removing” every cutworm I could find.
The bees have been attacked by ants and are under serious stress right now. When I get a chance I’ll try and move them somewhere else.
Average night time temperatures are around 3-5 degrees with daytime highs barely reaching the 20’s making for slow growth and what appears to be poor germination (for me at least).
And to finish all that off it hailed; twice; yesterday; the first real moisture to come from the sky in about a month (and even that wasn’t very much).
That was the bad and ugly. The good is I took one more step up the learning curve.
That is farming.
Things have got very busy now with planting, weeding, preparing plots plus generally trying to figure out basically how to grow each variety; how to harvest, wash and store the vegetables; how to transport everything to the market; how to setup for the market… this list continues.
So below is a little summary of where each of the eight plots are at. It feels to me that I am behind by about a week or so, but of course having no history on a full growing season it is hard to tell.
The corn will be planted within the next week once things fully warm up. As you can see it is currently growing grass very well. I disced it once to try and kill off some of the growth. I’ll probably disc/till the plot before planting. I know this isn’t the best plan for quack grass control but if I don’t it makes it very difficult for anything to get started. I will look too cover crop this plot in hopes to smother out some of the quack grass.
Planting potatoes turned out to be a bit more work then I had anticipated. Digging holes or a trench for 200 pounds of seed potatoe by hand was going to take a long time. I eventually used the plow that I recently acquired to rip the trenches and dropped the potatoes into them. I thought I’d get more rows of potatoes then I did but all 200 pounds are now in. I may look to buy some more earlier maturing potatoes if I can get the chance. My plan is to mulch this plot for weed and moisture control.
The squash plot was planted two days ago. There is a mix of patty pan summer squashes and a few zucchini type squash. I haven’t got the winter squash seeds in yet but will this weekend. I had disced this plot about a week before tilling it. A lot of the grass had died or was starting to die before the tiller went through so I’m hoping not to see as much grass come up. I will also plant this with white dutch clover to help control weeds and improve the soil.
The roots plot has the carrots, beets, onions and a bit of garlic. Constant weeding is required in this plot and soil moisture is a bit of a concern, especially since it has been very dry and windy lately. I was worried my first planting of carrots weren’t going to come up but I have recently seen signs of life. To my surprise the bit of garlic I planted in the spring is actually doing very well (hopefully it stays that way).
The majority of the beans plot still needs to be prepared and planted. There is a row of Windsor Broad beans in and growing. They look ok but may have been set back a little by last nights frost. Some areas of this plot have the best looking soil in the entire garden and not much for grass growing either.
This plot will have tomatoes, eggplants and peppers; provided the transplants will survive. I started a lot of plants under grow lights but have not been able to keep them in good shape for various reasons. The two and a half rows that I have managed to get into the garden had to be covered for last nights frost. Unfortunately I probably lost about a third of my plants that were set out due to freezing. I’m glad I managed to cover them however, otherwise I would have lost them all.
I was really hoping to have lettuce, spinach and a mesculin mix to take to the market starting the first of June. This will not be the case for me this year however. Spinach has come up all right but it was set back a little again due to the frost. I did not have luck germinating lettuce and will likely have to re-plant the strip. The mesculin mix is starting to come up however I have a problem with bugs eating anything in the Brassica family. The best looking thing in this plot are the peas which are still kicking after several frosts, dry weather and general lack of attention.
I had originally planned to grow cabbage but was convinced not to bother considering my close proximaty to all the canola fields which are breeding flea beetles. So this year I am going to plant most of this plot to yellow clover in order to improve soil quality, grow a green manure and help smother out some weeds. I have planted kale and a bit of Bok Choi. I will likely try and cover these strips as a test to see if I can keep the bugs off.
(If this plot plan looks familiar it is because I have basically copied the example give by Eliot Coleman in his book “The New Organic Grower”)
I didn’t really want to post this picture because many of the plants don’t look overly healthy, but for the record… The weather kept dropping to freezing temperatures around 5 to 7 below and I did not have a heated outside structure to put my plants into. This became a problem about two or three weeks ago when I ran out of grow light space and everything started to get really leggy. I transplanted everything into bigger pots and had to keep the house lights on to try and give everything a little bit of light. On the weekend however I managed to move a lot of the plants outside to get real sunlight. Now hopefully they will start to toughen up a little in preparation for their next move into the garden.
I somewhat underestimated how long it would take me plant a couple hundred pounds of seed potatoes. With the arrival of a two blade plow to the arsenal however, trenching was the solution. The potatoe plot is in an area of the garden that previously did not have the soil broken in so there are massive root systems to deal with. The plow manages to turn the roots over and also leave a deep enough trench to drop the potatoes into.
