Vegetable Garden Experiment

Public Enemy #1 and natural barbed wire

wfjohn — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 03:41:18 +0000

So I’ve come across my first issue that can move. The “pods” that I came across are likely some sort of fungus (thanks Seaton for the comment!) that isn’t going to do any major damage.

However, the slugs have found my lettuce! Here is one I found today:

Now don’t get me wrong, I have a soft spot for slugs in certain situations … but not when it comes to my garden. I want Nina and I to enjoy our lettuce, not this guy. In terms of what to do … I don’t have a great answer yet. I would prefer not to kill them with poison … or at all really. We’ve heard that broken egg shells act as a natural deterrent so are going to give that a try. They don’t like the sharp edges. Below is a shot of our natural barbed wire. Who knows if it works. I wonder why they wouldn’t just avoid the shells. Who knows?

Strawberries

wfjohn — Mon, 24 May 2010 17:19:43 +0000

Not 100% of the garden was planted from seed. I have 3 cherry tomato plants that I bought as seedlings and I also bought a hanging strawberry plant. It’s amazing how much easier it is to deal with things when you’ve got a timed irrigation system. The strawberry plant was a decent size already when we got it but it has been doing great and the strawberries are already ripening! Check it out. Delicious.

Carnage, “starters” and a mystery

wfjohn — Mon, 24 May 2010 17:16:27 +0000

Unfortunately I took down my tarp before I could get a shot of it … completely forgot. Believe me it was a thing of beauty. Unfortunately a lot of plants had taken a bit of a beating by the time I put it up. The worst I think is the daikon which was coming in beautifully but has been injured. Here’s a shot of it … you’ll see the little seedlings falling over etc. I’m not quite sure what to do. I’m hoping that they are resilient to get back growing again. Arugula was also looking a bit rough the past couple of days.

My bet is that they recover. These plants have amazed me in their ability to grow so I’m giving this daikon the benefit of the doubt.

I’ve mentioned before the “initial” leaves that grow followed by “true” leaves. I am really amazed by this. From what I read the initial leaves store “food” for the plant to base it’s initial stages of growth. Here are two excellent shots of it. I had shown one of spinach that was hard to see but here is a cilantro seedling and carrot seedling. They both have the same initial leaves but the true leaves are the classic form you would expect from each plant.

So now on to the mystery. I am patiently waiting for my first pest infestation and I’m not sure where it’s going to come from … I just know that it will. We have slugs around here that spent some time last year trying to eat my radishes so that’s what I’m expecting. Yesterday I came across these “pods” in the garden … near the Sui Choi cabbage (which is looking great). Here’s a photo:

Now I have no know idea what these are. They look like some sort of a cocoon. Maybe this is where slugs come from? I haven’t seen any slugs or anything else around the veg. I also haven’t seen any attacks on the seedlings so it’s a mystery. Maybe I’ll send this photo to some gardener friends and see what they have to say about it. If anyone knows please let me know! (and if there’s anything I need to be worrying about)

Growth and Rain Issues

wfjohn — Thu, 20 May 2010 05:44:29 +0000

So I haven’t gotten anywhere learning about thinning just yet but I think that things are too early for that. I must say, there is a lot of growing happening in the garden now. Even broccoli has come up and a lot of things are starting to look like actual plants. The spinach seems to have actual spinach leaves showing up. I’ve read that often vegetable plants grow “starter” leaves (I forget the technical term) and then the second batch are actual mature leaves. There’s a shot below that you can see it a bit bit in coming days I’ll post a better version.

Here’s a funny shot of some lettuce growing towards the sun. The beds are beside our garage and have a shade tree on the other side. Funny to see the plants grow on an angle towards the gap to the sun! The second shot is the spinach … it’s really stretching for sun!

Here’s a shot of the peas that are coming up. I’m super excited about these and they seem to be coming along. They are peas that won’t need to be staked and are supposedly pretty easy to grow. We’ll see but so far so good!

The weather has unfortunately turned a little in Vancouver and we’ve had some rain and are expecting 2-3 days more of it. I’m worried because a lot of the plants are very very small and fragile. I don’t have covers (not surprising given this is a complete experiment from scratch) but I’ve decided that I would put a tarp over top of as much as I could tonight. The plants seem to have taken a bit of a beating today and I want to avoid it as much as possible. If it’s not sunny there’s no harm I figure since they don’t need the water due to the irrigation system. I couldn’t take a shot of the tarp because I was putting it up in the dark tonight. I could only cover 2 of the beds but that’ll have to do.

Still have my to do list about thinning and fertilizing but can’t think about it until the weekend.

More shots then I hope of the tarp.

Irrigation and first growth

wfjohn — Wed, 12 May 2010 22:18:53 +0000

Inspired by my brother’s work in Africa on an irrigation project I decided that the best thing for us to do was try to set up some sort of drip irrigation system. Not only does a system like this have efficiency advantages but it also is something that could be set on a timer … a big advantage for Nina and I because 1) our schedules tend to be all over the place and 2) we are notorious at forgetting to do things like water plants. This is better for all parties, us and the plants.

I know very little about drip irrigation so it’s a work in progress. Fun to design and change and pretty remarkable how it works. Here’s a shot of the first cut of irrigation.

The hoses are soaker hoses so they “weep” water out slowly. Once I have some actual plants that are of reasonable size I think I’ll swap these out for more focused drip lines. But I need some growth first. The system is set to come on every couple of days very early in the morning and seems to be working well though it’s a bit unnerving that all of the soil isn’t totally wet when it’s done. From what I understand the water propagates through the soil under the surface and it does seem to be doing this when I dig down into the ground with my hand.

So, I’ll add one more photo … there is some great life showing. It’s very exciting and remarkable to me that things are coming up. This shot is from about 5 days ago. This weekend I’m going to take some more (Nina took this one) with some closeups of specific plants. I can’t believe how quickly some things grow … every morning there are new plants popping out.

To the left of the sign is the lettuce sprouting up (Salad Bowl variety of seed) and a nice shot of the soaker line. At the back there’s some spinach (Tyee) which was one of the first things to pop up. I’ll show a funny photo about the spinach’s behaviour when it comes to the sun in a later post. Pretty neat to see.

Things that are now on my mind are:

1) planting some empty spaces as it’s been about 3 weeks since my first planting

2) figuring out how and when to add fertilizer

3) trying to understand the process of thinning plants as I have fairly dense growth in the rows which I think is ok for some things (like cut and come again lettuce) but less ok for other things (broccoli and daikon).

The Plan

wfjohn — Wed, 12 May 2010 03:45:22 +0000

I figured that there were a couple of things that I needed to think about in advance. First of all I had to think about what plants to try and grow. One thing that is clear in our backyard is that there isn’t a ton of sun. I’d guess 4 hours of sun on average will hit the beds. That’s not a lot from what I’ve read. So I’m going with things that we had success with last year and were also listed on a page that Seaton gave us about shade plants. Actually a rule of thumb that she told to us is that if you are growing to eat the fruit or the root you need lots of sun. If you’re trying to eat the leaves less is ok.

That means lots of lettuce, kale, chard, etc will be grown. I’m trying a mix of head lettuce and also cut and come again lettuces … mixed greens, mesclun, etc. I am confident about the C&CA greens but the head lettuce will be more of an experiment. Radishes were a big success last year so 2 varieties are getting attempted. Beets, bush beans, peas (low growing so no trellis needed) as well. There will be some experimenting … Bok Choi, Sui Choi, Daikon radish, cilantro, broccoli, radicchio. I am not sure how those will work out but I think that for year 1 I’ll go with small amounts of many things and see what works best.

I got some graph paper and made a plan for the garden and have planted about 70% of it and will do a second round of planting in a couple of weeks so we’re not overwhelmed (fingers crossed) with food.

Photos with the next post as we have life!!! Lots of life actually!!!

The big experiment

wfjohn — Wed, 05 May 2010 03:49:49 +0000

So Nina (my wife) and I live in a duplex in Kits in Vancouver. It’s a great house with a small yard which is perfect for us. However, we never use the background and because it’s somewhat shaded the grass has a hard time growing. It gets pretty mossy because of the rain around here.

We decided recently that we should scrap the grass and try to grow some food. We had some success with some herbs and things like lettuce and radishes last summer in some pots and planters so were feeling bold.

Here’s a shot of our backyard:

Inspiration came from looking at this amazing house nearby that has a massive garden in the yard. Actually there are 2 houses … across the street from us one of our neighbours has a big tomato plantation all summer but the real inspiration for me came from this house on a nearby street that has a fantastic backyard garden. One day there was a sign up about a business called FarmCity. We were intrigued and checked out the site (please do, it’s awesome).

Ultimately we met Seaton and she designed and built our backyard, raised bed garden. She did a spectacular job and gave us some great advice for our garden (and offered free worms!)

Here’s a shot of our newly created raised bed garden:

Pretty awesome, eh?

Now I have to figure out what we’re going to plant (don’t have a lot of sun) and how to water the plants (drip irrigation?)