Saturday 28 April 2018




A few more updates from May 5th:

Yes, those little green shoots are the first leaves of garlic to emerge.

The bulbs were sown last November, and covered over with spelt straw to keep them from freezing through the winter.

Many gardeners leave the straw on until harvest, and allow the garlic to grow through it.  For a couple of reasons, I take much of it off and re-use it elsewhere.

More to follow...



Back in the indoor nursery, the delicata (winter)  squashes are also germinating.

The Butterscotch squash is due to be sown in about three weeks.  I have staggered the planting between the two in hopes of getting the delicata to flower and produce fruit first, so that the seed is not cross pollinated with our other variety, Butterscotch.









I have cleared some spare (unlit) shelves in the indoor nursery to make way for some plants from outside.

With a couple of cool nights on the way, I will have to bring in some plants such as tomato seedlings fro the unheated outdoor nursery.

At this time of year, there is very little nursery space.








The outdoor nursery is doing just fine, even with a predicted plus 6 tonight.

The temperature should remain about 10 degrees in there, not the best growing temperature but well within the plants tolerance level.

A few crops such as celery are intolerant to temperatures below 15 degrees, so even though they are more mature than the tomatoes and peppers, they remain within the indoor nursery.














Hello everyone:

Before getting onto the post, I have a couple of announcements:

I will be closing sales soon.  If you are interested in purchasing a share of the harvest, please contact me very soon.

If you have been in contact with me but are waiting to determine what your plans are for the summer, I can hold your place until a later date.

I will be sending out our first e-blast of the season within the next 48 hours.  If you do not see it, check your spam box.  If it is there, adjust your email settings accordingly.

If you do not have it at all, please contact me and I will check to see if I have you on this year's list.

!!!  VERY IMPORTANT  !!!

When communicating with me by email either for requests, notification of absences, sending in recipes, etc, PLEASE use a separate email with a specific heading (eg "absent for next delivery").

If you add your email to a chain of emails, it is possible I may not see it.  I want to spend my farm time doing farm work as much as possible - growing and tending your food and improving the farm and my farm skills as much as possible.





And now for the post for April 28:

It's been a very, very busy week here at Whitsend.  Monday to Kingston for a chainsaw safety certification course, Tuesday fieldwork until 4 pm and then off to Ferguson Falls for a National Farmers Union meeting, Wednesday out in the field all day and then raking the lawn after supper (A silly task, but while living off farm, I have to maintain the 'suburban standard' method of yard treatment), lot's of shopping and computer chores for Thursday, in the field all day Friday except a quick jaunt over to Farm Credit Canada Corp. to drop off an application package, and then off to Julia's birthday party Friday night.



And sowing more seeds...

And doing some engine maintenance on the tiller...

And repairing a leak in the outdoor nursery...

And electric fence maintenance...still unresolved, can't figure out where the short is occurring...

And sowing more seeds and promoting the ones I sowed last week...

And closing a sale...

This is what you pay me for.


Field work will continue Monday, the beds are getting cleaned up and prepared for the first direct sowing of peas and spinach and carrots...









Jen from Sysabee and I have trading documents all week, trying to figure out why her version was not functioning on my computer.  Now that that is fixed, I have started tweaking the request page.

Time is running short, so I will be distributing this very soon.  (one last test to run to make sure the glitch we had doesn't translate onto other customers computers).

Customers will receive a page detailing the season's crops they can expect in their baskets, and some options they have for choosing crops.

Please fill this out as much as you want to (there are three questions that must be entered - name, basket size, and a box to tick indicating you have read the document.  Even if you are ok with whatever you receive - many of you are - please send it to me anyway, I will be using the printed out version to track what you are receiving throughout the year.

After we have this system up and running, attention will turn to developing an online tool to accomplish this request system.  I expect this will take the better part of the year.  The goal is to try this out a couple of times during the season, and then have it up and running for next year.

This is new territory for me, so I have no idea how long it may take.




The past week I have been putting some of the hardier plants (onions, leeks, parsley) in the outdoor nursery for the day and then bringing them in for the night.  They get better light here than under the grow lights, and besides, the space under the lights is limited, and with so many other plants coming along, there just isn't enough room.

A couple nights back, I forgot to bring the onions in at the end of the day, and was greeted the next morning with some very sad onions - they were all limp and laying down.  The min/max thermometer indicated that the low reached plus one inside the outdoor nursery.



As onions have such a long lead time and must be planted within a certain window of time in order to bulb, I set about my scheduled tasks for the day wondering if that was it for the onions and leeks.  Green onions and parsley could be re-planted, but that would put a lot of pressure on the nursery with the squashes set to be planted soon.  I kept telling myself of the resilience of young plants and all of the fail safes I had in place for moderating the temperature change...







...three days later and almost all of the onions have stood back up and continued their leaf growing.  I lost a few (less than 2 per cent) and assume these ones were probably weaker in some way than the others, and may not have performed as well during the season anyway. Not everyone makes the team, as I sometimes say.




I mentioned in our last or second last post that the hotwax peppers (sometimes referred to as the "somewhat hot" peppers) had failed to sprout a week after the green  peppers.  I checked the package and found that the seeds were three years old.  I double checked my notes from previous years and found that three year old pepper seeds usually had a slightly lower germination rate, but certainly not zero per cent.  I recalled one of my mentors (Dick, I think) suggesting that field seed sometimes germinated slowly if it was old.  So I continued to tend the seedling tray and finally I have been rewarded.



Almost all of them emerged throughout the week, and I now have a decent compliment of mildly hot peppers to compliment our green peppers and super hot peppers.

Had I been less experienced, or not blessed with good mentors, or impatient, I might have given up!





The beds are finally dry enough to do a lot of work on.


Having permanent beds with grassed paths provide an advantage that they are ready for planting sooner than a bare field.  The grass turf can be trod upon much earlier than a soil path, which would get gouged up with deep footprints were I to be walking on it the day after a heavy rainfall.







For comparison, here is part of the new field.  The grass seed was sown late last fall and has yet to sprout.  The established beds pictured above are about the same elevation as the beds pictured to the right - you can see how saturated the soil is where the water is pooling along the fence.












Having permanent beds has many benefits; one of which is that they are ready to go as soon as they are thawed out.

(I have a couple of posts from the years 2012 to 2014 that go into this in more detail.)




Old weeds that survived the winter and some quack grass rhizomes that were missed last fall teased out of the soil.

Aerating beds to stimulate aerobic bacteria, which in turn work on turning simple nutrients into complex molecules that the plants can  use.

Cultivating beds to disturb any fresh weeds that may be trying to sprout, and breaks up clods of soil so there is more surface area exposed to the air.




Saw our first toad of the season while doing this work.


The list of tasks is seemingly endless.  It is exhilarating work, with a little foreboding on the horizon - what if I can't get it all done in time?  As I prepare the beds, I try not to think of the plants back in the nursery.  Once I sow seeds there, the clock is ticking.  Five weeks after sowing lettuce, the bed in the field has to be ready to receive them; four weeks for kale and pak choi.  And the sowing date for the squashes is soon upon me...





I made a mistake in the nursery last week while sowing the tomatoes.  I had been counting pepper sprouts to see if I had enough plus a few for my projected needs.

I then started sowing tomatoes, but I suppose my mind was still thinking peppers (12 plants per row, two rows per bed).

I was happily sowing tomato seeds at a rate of 12 plants per bed (only one row for toms) and didn't think much of it while marking off the number of seeds used in my production binder.


I realize many of you city folk may not know the difference between a pepper plant and a tomato plant, but there is a significant difference in size.

I planted twice as many tomatoes as needed.

So, I will have lots of plants to choose from (I'll take the healthiest and most vigorous growers); and then sell off as many of the sprouts as I can.  Customers can have a couple if they want to try their hand at growing these too.

I'm sure my mentors might be appalled at this waste of seed, but this is the sort of mistake I don't mind...far better too many than too little.  If this is all I have to fret over, then I must be in fairly good shape.




Bob









Sunday 15 April 2018





April 15 2018

Hello Everyone:

Not much that can be done at the farm today.  Eastern Ontario is getting the freezing rain for the next twenty four hours and we are no different in that respect.



Pepper seedlings from a week ago
That isn’t to say that I have been away from the farm.  The green and very hot peppers are sprouting, the onions have surpassed my minimum needs for the season, and the rest of the plants are growing well (The moderately hot peppers appear to have lost their seed viability - the seed was somewhat old but I had presumed they had one season left in them.  I over seeded as one does in these situations, and have received just one sprout...more on this the next post).








I was out earlier to the nursery to ensure that the plants don’t dry out as I expect the roads will be treacherous at least for the early part of tomorrow.  With the heat on, the seedling trays require a water top-up once every 36 hours.  I can’t over water in advance (that would cause other problems) and so I have to make the forty minute round trip on days which one ought not to be driving. 

Ice storms are by far my biggest worry for weather at this time of year.  The nursery can probably take about 24 hours without power, and a typical power outage is usually no longer than a couple of hours. 

However, if a lot of lines go down across the city, our farm neighbourhood will likely be a low priority. 

Knowing that slowing down the rate of temperature change is the key to helping the seedlings through a period of time without heat, I place a few thermal masses in the nursery.  Water is an excellent thermal mass, and there are always several gallons stored in jugs.  Today, I placed several bags of soil that I thawed out in the outdoor nursery the past few days.  This soil is quite damp and will release it’s heat into the nursery should the temperature start to drop.

With all this down time from the farm, I can catch up on reading:


Free ranging poults at Elmtree Farm
Gene Lodsdon’s , “All Flesh is Grass” (Swallow Press, 2004) is one of the two current books I’m going through.  Gene works a cattle farm in Ohio and has successfully experimented (and continues to experiment) with small herds that are sustained by pasture farming, as opposed to strip grazing or other conventional methods.  Aside from his thoughtful observations on agriculture generally, I look at some of the techniques he uses to pasture cattle without resorting to planting amounts of corn or grain, silaging it for the winter, and spending money on feed and tractor fuel.





These are techniques that I can translate into pork and bird production when/if our farm moves to a permanent location.


I highly recommend this book to anyone considering free ranging livestock on any scale; it was one of the first I picked up when taking the first timid steps to buying a pair of pigs.


Another author I have returned to recently is Joel Salatin.  His books “Folks, This Ain’t Normal” and “You Can Farm Too” were inspirational when I started my farm journey.  Something had pricked my memory a while back when I was thinking about heating a pig hutch during the winter months, and I recalled some notes in one of his books how he buried silage corn under layers of straw in his barn.  Silage gives off heat due to the fermentation process, which moderates the temperature enough to keep the pigs warm.




Now I hope at least some of you are wondering about that buried corn with happy warm pigs nearby.  Joe states that all pigs have a sign on their foreheads that reads “Will Root for Corn” and they are quite happy doing this.  In fact, looking into the window of that barn on a minus twenty day in the Shenandoah valley and the pigs appear to be in a porcine heaven – sprawled asleep on the warm straw or alternately rooting up the tasty cobs.




Side note about accompanying photo:

To keep my 2016 pigs pigs happy and curious (and to dismantle an old hay bale I wanted to incorporate into the soil), I would stuff apples into the edge of the bale after breakfast time.  They would finish their mash and then gallop over to find and tear the fruit out.  This had the added benefit of keeping them preoccupied so I could do a perimeter walk to inspect the electric fence or clean their water trough.


I have a few questions about this method (how is the corn replenished – I imagine bringing several hundred pounds of corn into a pig barn would cause a riot of excitement and a trampled farmer, and what state the pigs’ livers are in come springtime, not to mention what this might do for breeding sows. 

So I have to go through all of Salatin’s books to find the chapter that deals with this topic, and I get a refresher on his pasturing techniques and a lot of the other interesting innovations that I could adapt for my own uses whether for vegetables or animals.

I’ll recommend Joel’s books, but beware...I might compare him with the phrase “the Noam Chomsky of agriculture” – a relentlessly scathing whit and intelligent critique of the current food chain and it’s scientists, apologists, myth sustainers and snake oil peddlers.  I get a lot of my own ideas when reading about how he has DIY’d his way through a problem (be it reducing workload, expenses, or other farm challenges).  But like Noam Chomsky, a little too relentless for me to read in one sitting.




Farming: equal parts being, doing, and observing
My mentor Tom once referred to an old saying:  “It takes ten years to grow a farmer.”  He quickly added that after his tenth year, the only thing that changed were the nature of his questions, and he still wondered at the amount of knowledge he had yet to learn.

Well, we are just a couple of hours into this winter/spring freezing rain storm, so I might as well go back to the books for a little while – who knows, maybe Kanata will lose power and there won’t be light enough to read by later...



Progress report on the Whitsend customer request project...Jen from Sysabee and I are meeting this Tuesday to take a look at a potential draft.  Jen hosted a focus group of some of our customers last week and they had a strong preference for one of three possible formats that Jen was proposing.

I'm looking forward to see how this project is developing.

I wanted to be there for the focus group but wisely didn't ask to be included...best to get the unfiltered opinions from the folks who are going to use this.


Wednesday 4 April 2018







Early April:  Latest events at the farm:

I can hear the distant chatter of groundhogs in the hedgerows, and have no desire to have one set up lodgings within the growing field - easier to exclude rodents than to remove them.

Now that most of the snow is off the ground, time for the first field task of the season - switching on the electric fence.  This is always a milestone; a cue that the ground will be ready for working very soon.




Looks like fox tracks
Before flicking the switch, I walk the perimeter, looking for breaks in the line, twigs or other material laying across the wire, and other possible causes of electrical shorts.

While at it, I also watch out for animal signs such as prints, burrows, or unfinished meals.  One of the more unusual discoveries over the years were eggs (from someone else's farm!) buried by a fox.

After the charger is turned on, I do a second walk, listening for the tell-tale snap of any shorts my visual inspection may have missed.





Inside the nursery, the next event is the sowing of the peppers.  I start these a bit early in the season as I use a cold treatment technique that improves yield later in life.  Peppers germinate around 24 degrees.  I grow the seedlings in the warmest part of the nursery until they have about three true leaves.  After that, I move the seedlings to the coolest part of the nursery, ideally about 16 degrees.  At this time, the plants start spending days in the outdoor nursery, as they require full sun at this time, which is more light than the grow lights are able to provide.






Less than a week after sowing, the peppers are sprouting.  (pictured above).

The celery, celeriac, parsley, and onions are all coming along nicely as well.











In addition to improving yield later in the pepper plants life,, this technique allows me to transplant the seedlings about two weeks earlier than I otherwise could.  In turn, this increases the number of weeks that the plants produce.




Which means it is time to prepare the outdoor nursery.

First task is to clean it out - a sweep to get spilled soil, washing shelf surfaces to eliminate plant pathogens and all of the diseases that rodents spread about


After that, switching on the high frequency pest chaser and loading up a few mouse traps just to make sure.






After that, I start watching the temperature readings and comparing them to the outdoor highs and lows.  This usually takes a couple of days until the leaks are found and patched with old tattered row covers.

Two important concepts to keep in mind when growing seedlings in cool weather.

- Young plants are more cold tolerant than mature plants.  Plants are always in a race to beat their neighbors to the optimal amount of sunlight in the spring.  Two common strategies they use are to grow quickly, or grow early.  Growing early will expose the plants to cooler temperatures, so they have evolved some cold tolerance at this stage in their lives.

-Rate of temperature change has a bigger effect than the low temperature itself.  A plus four reading can be less damaging if the reduction in temperature is more gradual than a sudden plus 6 temperature.   I use a few ceramic tiles and bricks to act as thermal masses to release their warmth overnight.

Once the temperature is stable, cold tolerant plants such as parsley, onions, and the peppers go into the outdoor nursery, making space inside for the chard and second round of green onions.


With some time yet to go before the plants go into the outdoor nursery, I have time to make improvements.

Last year, I lost the third round of celery and a few other plants due to either too much heat or not enough air circulation.  Leaving the nursery door open is too risky, one of the local fluffy tailed rodents (or the brown and white striped rodents) might get in and dig/knock trays over/trample seedlings/do their business etc while burying seeds from the neighbors bird feeder.

Due to the limits of my carpentry skills, I had few choices.  Despite being a little awkward, I have built a screen that I can insert into the open door.

Another problem solved!

(photograph to follow)




More to post in a couple of days...