Saturday 17 June 2017



Hello everyone:

Lots of progress to catch up on.







The garlic continues to grow well.  I anticipate scapes later this month.  

The green garlic that was delivered in your first basket is grown from the really tiny seed cloves.  If planted with regular garlic, these plants would probably yield small bulbs.  So I use them for the spring garlic, planting them much closer together.  





Between improvements to the nursery and a little more knowledge, I have had better success germinating lettuces in the hot weather than the past few years.  Still not up to the standard that I expect, which means I am going through a lot of extra seed.




How much there is to learn!  It's taken me a few years how to do perrenial herbs effectively.  Finally, the oregano is reaching a good quantity, and I add a couplek of plants each year to augment the stems that I let go to seed.

The next bit of knowledeg to add to my notes this season is cutting back the the rest of the plants to keep a consistent harvest window.  Seems quite straightforward, though I usually tend to us the research time  in the winter for big picture topics, such as soil fertility etc.  So most of my little details are trial and error learnings.  


Speaking of little details, I had success this season germinating Stevia, a herb native to Argentina that is grown for it's intensely sweet flavour.  Here is one of the six plants (from 10 seeds) that survived to transplant.  I'm hoping that by the middle of next year I will have enough of this to at least give a sample.

Because the transplant is so small, I have outlined it with a couple of stones, just so I don't forget it is there and weed it out.

After all, it's a rock garden.







This is your cherry tomatoes - as of this writing, the photo is about 4 weeks old.  The first couple of plants are just starting to flower as of this week.

Gold nugget is a 60 day tomato.  I started these back in March, and transplanted them during the first warm break in May.  I anticipate all of the plants will be in flush about late June - the first few plants will have to cover everyone for a couple of weeks.




Gold Nuggett will be finished by mid August; by then Gardeners delight (small red cherry), Moskvich (medium size red table tomato) and Great White (large heirloom tomato) will be in production.   I have tripled our tomato production from previous seasons - assuming all plants continue to thrive..





I'm still hoping that this is my breakthrough season for the eggplant.  It has not liked the cool weather, so I keep it covered at night.  I chose a slightly sunnier location, and tried to place it in beds that are quite rich (bulb onions get the top spots).

Another trick I am trying on one of the two beds this year is to prune back some of the leaves.  I hope this leads to a larger fruit set.







Still on increasing fruit yields, here is the first of two successions of zucchini this season.  In previous years, I tried to keep zucchini and cucumber going all season, but I have founds that the plant tends to tire out mid summer and yield goes down.  So I have planted a few extra plants for later in the season to make up for this.







You can't fool all the eaters all of the time, but this season I have a disappointment for the crow.

Last year, I was using oats for pig forage and also a a soil building cover crop.  The pair of crows that have claimed our field (as there own)  were quite capable of finding the seed and consuming it before it germinated.

I planted twice a much, but that just attracted a pair of black birds.





I finally used IRT mulch to cover the seeded areas, and discovered that a - oat and pea seeds can germinate in darkness; and that the birds "knew" that the seeds were under the cover and would pluck under the edge of the cover to get at the seeds; or waituntil the wind blew hard enough to expose some of the cultivated soil.

However, this year I am just using the IRT mulch as a weed suppressant until the crop is ready to go in.

Crows are smart birds, and I have spent many hours wondering how I can train them to hunt the mice, another unwelcome visitor that has so far eluded my best efforts.

More photos to follow, talk to you soon

Bob