Hello everyone.

Lots of progress over the past two weeks.  The days have been very long, and a few details have been missed.  Overall, the field is managing well.


The nursery is proving very difficult to keep cool enough to germinate lettuces.  We may notice as the season progresses that lettuce may become less available.  I will be looking to other crops to fill out the loss of leaves, but the options are limited.  More as this topic develops...





This is the second year of bringing these beds into production.  This season, I have planted the green beans, romano beans, and some of the potatoes here this season.

Potatoes and beans are great crops to use in newly developed beds as they are considered "cleaning crops".  The hilling action and heavy leaf cover prevents weeds from establishing.

I chose beans to fix nitrogen to allow the beds' fertility building process to start.





I planted potatoes are good scroungers for nutrients and will tolerate the weaker soil somewhat, though the tubers will not yield as heavily as they would in a richer bed.

The other beds in this section  are getting a cover of oats and a small amount of black peas; as these mature, they will be re-incorporated into the soil and replaced by a succession of buckwheat.

The buckwheat is very efficient at retrieving phosphorus from deep in the soil.  When the buckwheat starts to mature, I will cut it down and re-incorporate it into the soil to bring the phosphorus back up to the root zone for next years crops.

The potatoes are emerging.

The weeds in this picture are still young enough to disrupt with the hoe, though I will have to move quickly...

While the potato establishes itself, I'll cover it to prevent the potato beatles from getting at them.

These are my first attempt at romano beans, a crop requested last year by one of our customers.

They look good so far.

I have no idea what to expect from new crops so I prefer to plant a small quantity to "trial".

Next year, leaf crops will replace the beans and cabbage or root crops will follow the potatoes.  The beans and potatoes will be planted where the oat/pea/buckwheat cover crops are growing this year.

Crops planted to develop fertility are referred to as "green manure".

This fall, I'll scrape away many of the weeds on the paths and sow rye and clover.





Covering the paths is a great way to suppress the weeds, grow a source of plant material for the compost, and prevent soil erosion.




This is what the end result of all this work will look like in another year or two, depending on how well the paths establish.

Here you see the clover path with it's white flowers, as well as a few seed heads of the rye.

And blemish free kale.










Nitrogen fixed by clover in the path and peas in the bed.  The will soon be a great bed for leaf crops.

The peas will be done by early July.  At that time, the pea plants will be removed and sent to the compost.

The few weeds that have evaded my hoe will get cleaned out, last year's compost applied and worked into the soil.

This activity will bring some of the weed seed bank up to the surface where they can germinate.



I'll pass the hoe through once a week to disturb the freshly sprouted weeds.  After three passes, most of the seed bank will be exhausted, and then I can plant a fall leaf crop.






Fertility building continues after the bed and path are established.  After my third pass with the hoe, leaf beds receive a top dressing of compost.

Ideally, I apply the compost just before some predicted rain, but in this case I turn on the irrigation tape.

After the soil is thoroughly moist, I work the compost into the surface.

Most food crops have relatively shallow root systems, so keeping the compost near the surface ensures that the plants can easily retrieve their nutrients.



Over the course of the year, and through next springs melt, the remaining nutrients will leach deeper into the soil.  That is one of the reasons why I plant the deeper rooted fruit plants the year after the leaf crops.

Celtuce, or Chinese lettuce, has edible leaves and stalk..  I trialed celtuce for the first time last year and grew some very leafy plants, but the stalk was thin.

Suspecting that the vigorous leaf growth was a result of placing celtuce in leaf beds, this year I planted it at the base of the tomato and zucchini (fruit crops).

It appears that my hunch may have been correct.  The celtuce planted in a fruit bed looks like it is growing a thicker stalk.

Another week or two and we'll know for sure.

However, I am wondering why the stalks are so short, I was expecting a little longer.  


No shortage of things to learn.

Flea bane, one weed that I tolerate and promote in the growing field.  There were two plants in the field that i was aware of last year.  I made a point of avoiding them while mowing pats last year, now there are several plants out there.

This herb was once used as a strew on earthen floors to drive off fleas, so I suspect they would work equally well in a stable or hutch.

I had three primrose plants in the lower left portion of the rock garden last year.  It has established so well that the Nicotiana has been pushed back among the red opopeos.  Opopeo is very tall, ans so will rise up above the white nicotiana when it finally grows.

Planning a perennial garden requires looking into the future and trying to predict how they will look.








Annual flowers.  If you are a beginner with growing flowers, i would suggest zinnia's.

They have been reliable producers for me each of the three year's I have grown them.

If I can do it, anyone can...

"You can judge a field by it's cover"

Hello Everyone:

I anticipate a number of visits to the website over the next few days, and so will take this opportunity to make a few thoughts known.

Herbicide.  I hear a lot of argument from both sides and very little genuine debate, which I find tiresome and not constructive.  I have a studied opinion on this topic which has changed back and forth over the years.

Wild Parsnip.  I believe this weed has to be controlled (I don’t believe it’s possible to eliminate it completely), but I also think there may be means which have more long term local economic benefits than spraying.  Other jurisdictions have done this successfully from what I have heard. 

City communications regarding the parsnip control program.  Some say the cities messaging is ambiguous, others say it is clear.  I think this alone illustrates it is not a clear message.

The wild parsnip eradication program is a hot button minefield.

It touches upon the herbicide vs. anti herbicide debate, the wild parsnip eradication vs. promoting wildlife debates, organic vs. conventional farming, freedom to work ones own property vs. responsibility for the property rights of ones neighbors. 

With so much potential for controversy, I think the city should be absolutely clear with its messaging. 

 I applaud the city for trying to save a small amount of money by reusing an old flyer for a program that has evolved, but in this instance, I believe greater care is required.

I hope the city has learned from this and we can move on.

The best thing we can all do for now is pray for a bit more rain.

Bob Whitmore

I'll be taking this note down in the next couple of days.  It is not what i want to focus on.

Outredgous...the star of this weeks harvest.  A mild flavoured open leaf romaine type.  

The first round of peas are just starting to flower.  Fairly good timing, there will be a small handful of peas next week (my lunch; or taste testing if you will).  By the time our weekly harvest resumes on the 21st, the first two beds will be in full flush and i will be practicing my picking skills. 

By the time the peas are finished, the bush beans should be starting.  

  

My fourth attempt at eggplant.  Year one, they died upon transplant.  Year two, they produced no fruit as the flowers fell off.  Year three (last season), I coaxed some small fruits off of them.

Shall we get the long, slender fruits this season?

This is why planting heavy feeders in well developed beds is important...

It is said that one should reserve the best beds for onions.

Onions (and other aliums such as garlic) have very short root systems.  As such, they do not tolerate competition very well for water or nutrients.

As well, their fine leaves cannot compete for sunlight.

Being a long season crop with a lot of complex chemistry going on inside them, they require a very fertile soil.



When choosing where to plant the onions and garlic, the first consideration for me is the rotation pattern.  According to some growers, the rotation pattern is responsible for up to eighty per cent of the growing fields fertility development.

The next consideration I use is what crops were in the bed the previous year (some crops are better at suppressing weed growth), how much disturbance did the bed receive over the past season (again, related to which crop was there  - eg, harvesting carrots will stir up more of the weed seed bank than say harvesting beets).

And finally, how many applications of compost did this bed receive in the previous year?




Another crop I hope to improve upon this season, the celtuce, or Chinese lettuce.

Last season was the first try at this crop.  The leaves of celtuce are edible, but the stalk is the main attraction.

Last year, I planted this in leaf beds, and the result was a leafy plant with small stalks.

This season, I opted to plant these in a fruit bed, which would have been a leaf bed last season.  The leaf crops will have taken a lot of the leaf building nitrogen out of the soil, allowing the plant to feed on the other nutrients to build up a rich tasting stalk.

Here is the start of the third round of carrots...which colors this season?

Much more lettuce on the way.  With luck, there is three succession in this picture, starting with late June and on into the first two weeks of July.

The luck is primarily about the red lettuce seen near the top of this photo.  It is a red leaf called Merlot.

I tried it last year and it was clearly not a deep sumer lettuce, most of it went to seed two weeks before maturity date.

I planted some this year for late spring, and with luck, the May heat wave we experienced won't have  damaged it too much.

A later succession of this variety didn't make it, a combination of too much heat and possibly a less than adequate job of hardening it off.




Amazing what mowing the paths will do...a farm rises out of the underbrush.

If only the row covers were not necessary....

This is a photograph of staging a days worth of work.

Beans getting sown, beds getting cultivated of weeds, spot watering for transplants, rolling out new irrigation tape, and preparing beds for their sowing...all while weeds in new beds are suppressed by some plastic mulch.

 Another example of inter planting.  Celtuce and green onions in a tomato bed.

Tomatoes are the only crop I plant in the same bed year after year.

Typically, plants do best when rotated, but tomatoes are known to thrive when growing out of their own re-incorporated residues.

In order to complyu with organic rules (which stipulate that every bed must have legumes sown in them once every four years), and to follow the number one rule for building soil fertility, I rotate crops that are under sown in the tom beds.


Following the same pattern I use in the rest of the field (Legumes followed by leaves followed by fruits/bulbs/tubers followed by roots/cabbages), the  tomato bed pattern is dutch clover f/b green onions and celtuce f/b marigolds f/b radishes.  Clover fixes nitrogen, green onion and celtuce take up excess nitrogen, onions ward off various types of insects and condition the soil, and radishes thwart nematodes.





Lot's of food is growing in the field.  The first two rounds of potatoes are in, the first three rounds of carrots are sprouting, the peppers and eggplant are transplanted out, and even the parsnips are germinating despite the heat.

The peas are getting taller, they should be getting their first line of twine to cling to today.

However, the 'extra work' I have been awarded with dictates that the butternut squash must be planted out, and that cannot happen until the unplanned for beds are developed.






Last year's compost is ready to go into the leaf beds.  However little there is, some must now go to the unplanned for beds.

This is what someone else's mistakes do...now I have to decide weather to give my tomato plants that side dressing of compost in mid summer or give the weak soil in the unplanned for beds a boost.

The full story of developing these unplanned for beds will be documented open the page 'curious food'.

I start the season with fast growing Napoli carrots, then do a second round of Napoli a week later to ensure their is enough should the first round fail.

Two weeks after that, I plant a mixture of colored carrots.  I'll keep which colors I chose for this season under my cap for now...











And now some time to prepare the bean bed for late summer.  These are beds I started in my second year.  Owing to a number of mistakes (over a two year period), I have had to redevelop these beds a little at a time.

This season, they are ready for taking cleaning crops - potatoes and beans.

The rest of the beds in this block (reserved for fruits, roots, and cabbages) will need some fertility boosting, so I'll be planting filed peas and oats.






The peas will fix nitrogen in the soil, the oats will nurse the peas and build soil mass.  When these crops reach fruition, some will be cut off and fed to the pigs, and the rest re-incorporated back into the beds.  Then I'll plant buckwheat, a crop that has a deep tap root which brings up leached nutrients, particularly phosphorus.

The blackbirds know this is one of the two places I have been planting oats.  Whenever I start working in this block of beds, they watch.









The earliest lettuces are looking great despite the heat.  Some of the more recent transplants might not look so good at the same age, the heat has really been a challenge for them.

I started teh lettuces back in the cool of April.  Recalling last year when I started my summer lettuces too soon (they suffered in the cooler parts of May last year), I opted just to focus on the spring lettuces.

Next year I'll be planting both heat tolerant and cold tolerant lettuce next season.

By the way, this has been the driest May in sixty years.





This rock garden is getting a lot of use.  A few extra lettuces will provide me with some 'field salad' in a couple of weeks.

Each season has a different flavor; every day serves up a different accent.

Harvest starts next week...talk to you soon.