Looking Ahead

You'd think winter would be the furthest thing from my mind in the middle of July. Here in Toronto we just survived our first heat wave of the summer and it was a doozy- temperatures in the mid 30's with humidex values making it feel more like 45 C.  Thankfully I managed to escape the worst of it by running away to Sarnia and living at the beach for most of the week. I have the Russian to thank for keeping the bins on the roof watered while I was away. All looks well up here!

Amazingly the garden in ground needed NO watering- the new raised beds worked even better than I envisioned! The combo of  the  rotting wood I added to the bottom layer, and the buried seeper hose hooked to the rain barrel provided enough moisture that everything stayed lush and green even through 6 days of record temperatures. Turns out those huglekultures really do work!

So why on earth am I thinking ahead to cold and snow? Well for the first time ever my gardens are producing more than we can eat fresh. Yesterday I picked a mess of beans and there are more to come. The zucchini, which are loving life on the roof, are providing a fruit a day. We've been eating onions for weeks, the garlic are almost ready to be dug and the edamame should be ready anytime.Which means  I'm running out of room in the fridge and I need to be preserving some of this goodness so we can enjoy it when the gardens are long buried under snow and ice.

The garlic is easy- as the greens die down, I've been digging up the bulbs and leaving them to cure in the sun porch. I've even braided a few!

Normally I would just freeze any excess beans and edamame  Freezing is my preferred method of storing many vegetables - if you freeze them as soon as they're picked and do it correctly, it keeps the texture and flavour better than canning. However an inadvertant thaw/refreeze would turn them to mush and we've been experiencing rolling blackouts ever since the big storm that hit Toronto at the beginning of the month.. So I'm thinking I will pressure can the string beans and I need to look into how that can work with edamame- likely I will have to shell them first.

In the past I have a had difficultly growing zucchini, which was frustrating, given its reputation for overabundance. This year I am pleased to have a glut and for now at least we've been eating them as quickly as they appear but I suspect that may pale soon. Since it's never been an issue previously, I'm not exactly sure how to preserve them other than relish which I'm not a fan of, or use them in baked goods. Suggestions welcome!

Raising the Beds

Like most people, every year I feel the need to improve my gardens; to grow more and have better results that I did the previous year.  Last year I extended the backyard garden right to the edge of the yard and  finally ran out of room to expand any further in any direction. But as the space expanded so did all the surrounding trees so I still had issues with not enough sun, and being so close to the alley and not fenced in, I've had a lot of problems with dogs and the occasional human wreaking havoc in my veggies. Building a ladder  up to the flat roof gave me better options for my sun loving favourites so a good portion of the veggie production now happens up high. There's still critters to contend with up there, raccoons and squirrels for the most part but there's less plant damage and lots more sun.

April 17 2:20pm

I wasn't prepared to totally abandon the earthbound garden tho, so when an opportunity for a lot of free lumber came along, I jumped at the chance to build some raised beds. The wood is from a old building that is being renovated near by and it was destined for landfill, so I feel doubly happy at being able to create something useful and repurpose some lovely old boards that have survived close to 100 years!

The Russian helped me build two overlapping boxes and we have enough left for a cold frame. To fill them I'm using a combination of hugelkulture and lasagne bed techniques. The bottom layer is composed of sticks and chunks of rotting wood, followed by a layer of partially composted materials. Then a layer of mixed soil and coir, and a top layer of mulch, likely straw.


For now I'm only filling the larger bed in this manner- the smaller box currently contains the garlic I planted last fall so I don't want to bury them completely. That bed will get filled in slowly over the summer with compost.

 The soaking hose is laid out on top of the bottom layer and will be hooked to the rain barrel as usual. If it works as planned, the water will seep out right at the plant roots where they need it and the rotting wood will retain the excess, making it available as it decomposes. None of the water will be lost to evaporation and this should help the plants stay evenly watered, no matter what the weather.

 The larger bed will be for beans of all kinds- it gets better sun than the small bed so I may even include a tomato or two. I've also earmarked a corner for an asparagus crown. The smaller bed has garlic already up as mentioned and last week I planted 4 rows of onion sets in between the garlic rows. Before the trees begin to fill in with leaves , this bed gets a decent amount of sun but it will be mostly shade during the summer months so I'm not sure how the onions will fare. I plan to tuck some root veggies (turnips, beets, carrots) in between the rows of both beds and see what works. Gardening is always one big experiment!

Having raised beds won't change the lack of available sunlight but I'm hoping they'll allow me to take advantage of the early spring and fall growing when I do have more light. By using plastic sheeting to warm the soil earlier in spring and potentially, hoop houses to extend growing in the fall, I may be able to make this garden a bit more productive than I have previously. To aid in this plan I have taking photos and noting where the sun is at different times of day which I can use to plan better for next year!

April 22 8:45 am Full Sun

Progression

Like most aspects of the internet, the blogosphere is not immune to trends. In my daily blog perusing I often find certain topics will make the rounds and it can be interesting and informative to read different takes on various subjects. Lately one of the most popular subject seem to be hugelkultur - you can read some great posts on it here and here. I was intrigued by the idea of hugelkultur and after reading several posts about using woody waste to build soil fertility and enhance moisture retention, it dawned on me that I have been doing a variation of this all along!

When we first looked this apartment, one of the things that sold me on it was when the landlord mentioned that there was a garden in the back yard and I was free to use it. We moved in Nov 1 2008 and I soon discovered that his idea of a garden was to dump about an inch of top soil on a former gravel driveway, but at least it wasn't a paved parking lot like my previous apartment!

2009

Trying to build up enough healthy soil to grow vegetables when you don't have access to much in the way of resources, nor the funds or means to acquire some from elsewhere can be a challenge. In the spring of 2009, my first post about this garden talks about  a few of the things things I did to build up the soil, from free compost courtesy of the city, to zoo poo that we scavenged from the High Park Zoo. One thing I didn't mention was gathering the mess of fallen leaves, sticks and bits of wood to make a pile where the garden ended ( it's just visible in the photo). I left that pile there to break down over the next year, adding mulched leave and some compost occasionally.

2010

In the spring of 2010,  I covered the whole pile with fresh compost, moved the bricks to include it and gained about 2 more feet of gardening space. I raked a new pile beside the new composter and repeated the process for the following year. The decomposing pile wasn't very aesthetically pleasing though, so over the summer I  planted some sedge grass and other grasses on top. The grasses grew very tall and lush; this served a dual purpose of disguising the pile, and also acted as a mini hedgerow to deter wandering dogs from trampling the rest of the garden.

2011

 In 2011 I repeated the process again, moving the composter down a few feet, and creating a new pile of woody compost. I dug the grasses that survived the winter out of the previous bed and plopped them on the new pile and my garden grew by another 2 feet. Extending the bed closer to the laneway also allowed me to grow more things that required full sun. I left room at the foot for the garden for garbage and recycling bins which keeps people from discarding things like dog poop in my compost or worse.



This year I have moved the garden down yet another foot but I have reached the end of expansion. Our laneway was redone last fall and the lower section of every driveway was covered with asphalt. The last woody compost pile now butts up against the pavement. To make it a bit more like a real hedgerow, I've planted a raspberry cane and moved the rhubarb which was not looking very happy in its spot under the tree. I moved the grasses to the edge as well and I think they'll stay there for good. I kinda like my mini thicket

2012