The Garden is In

We just had a pretty busy Sunday planting the main vegetable garden. An overcast day with moderate temperatures was forecast but, of course, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky for much of the day and it was scorching hot, again.

Here is a general overview of the main garden layout (five 5x12' and six 5x5').  What you don't see is the bed beside the garage and the asparagus bed.  The furthest row of four beds (top right) belong to my neighbour.

We went ahead and planted 42 tomato (beef steak, roma, cherry, brown and black cherry), 4 zucchini, 24 swiss chard, 5 groups of cucumbers, 3 butternut squash, 5 muskmelon (cantaloupe), a whole bunch of onions, 1 pumpkin and a row of leeks (the first time). Last week I planted two rows of green and yellow beans and 17 sweet bell and 4 hot pepper plants. Throughout the spring I also planted 4 potatoes, 2 rows of carrots, 4 rows of peas and 2 rows of peanuts.

There is a tab at the top labelled May 27, 2012.  Clicking on the tab will take you to a page containing crappy photographs of the newly planted beds.  Like I mentioned, it was a very busy day and I was cranky because of the heat so I rushed the photos.  In the next week or so I will take some nicer photos so we can better compare month to month.

Is That a Vineyard?

Yep!  I planted my 12-grapvine vineyard on the weekend, woot!

More than a month ago I prepared three, 40’ x 18” rows  spaced 8 feet apart in a little-used area of our backyard.  I dug up and rototilled the rows and also incorporated some mushroom compost to add more organic matter to the loamy natural soil.

Most of my cuttings have been hardening-off outside for three weeks and many had pretty good root development.  Unlike my vegetable transplants, I did not add compost to each hole but I did add a small amount of bone meal pellets for the roots.  I installed some stakes made of scrap 1.5”x1.5” spruce and will simply train the vines up the stake as they grow.

Concord cutting.

Very nice root development on the Concord.

Planted Concord with stake and wood chip mulch.

My backyard vineyard.

I planted the following varieties:

- Four plants of Reliance which is a red table grape.

- Two plants of a white (green) table/wine grape whose name is just a number.

- Two plants of a white (green) table/wine grape from a friend of the family.

- Two plants of Marquette which is a blue wine grape that Fred is predominantly growing.

- Two plants of Concord blue wine/table grapes from my main vine along the garage.

I have not started my trellis yet.  The engineering of a solution to a unique problem and time mean putting this off until  late summer or fall.

A History of Garden Theft



My subdivision is no different that most parts of the Ottawa Valley in that wild life is very abundant and includes deer, wild turkeys, rabbits, coyotes, etc.  Although garden predators make frequent appearances in the back yard, Homer and Cosmo successfully keep them just far enough away so they don’t do any damage to our garden; but our neighbours do get hit from time to time.



Turkeys.



Turkeys























A young deer looking for some pine needles.



"Just open the door already!"



That being said, historically our garden has still been subject to garden raiders.  Pillagers who take every opportunity to snatch tomatoes and peppers, ravage the peas, munch on beans, chomp on the tender tops of lettuce and asparagus.  This breach of trust is not perpetrated by disgruntled neighbours but by two, very guilty gate keepers…

Now wait!  Before you get swayed by innocent-looking photographs and jump to their defense, please read their list of offences:

• I used to grow strawberries…but didn`t see the point of growing a nice crop of berries and maybe eating a couple;
• Homer only eats ripe tomatoes…Cosmo will also eat green ones;
• Last year Homer did not get the first ripe tomato of the season….yay for us;
• Tomato plants leave very distinct green smudges on blond fur, especially on the face;
• If the pea pods don’t come off easy, just rip out the entire plant;
• Although Cosmo loves beans, Homer doesn`t…funny that!
• Cosmo eats all varieties of peppers, even hot cherry-bombs;
• One day while harvesting some veggies I put the basket down and turned by back for a nano-second.  When I looked back, Homer was lying down with a large carrot between his paws looking at me with absolutely no remorse.  With good manners he calmly took a bite, chewed and swallowed before taking the next bite.  The first carrots of the season are just awesome.
• Homer will eat asparagus...trust me, he is NOT eye-balling my gloves... bugger got one just after the picture was taken.

A couple of years ago the true cost of their garden raiding ran up to about $1000.  You see, grapes were growing low on the grape vine but both boys basically ignored them so I never thought anything about it.  But that changed when, in the fall, I removed all of the tomato plants from the garden.  I suppose it was only natural for Homer to find something else to eat as he polished off all the grapes that were low enough to reach, causing his stomach to bleed (grapes are toxic to doggies).  A night in hospital, a huge bill and a lot of stress later, he was ok.  The grapevine has been pruned to 4’ above the ground ever since.

Although I haven’t needed to erect a tall fence to protect against deer like many gardeners in the area, I do put up a light-gauge plastic fence around each bed which keeps the thievery down to a minimum.  We do have a wireless invisible fence to ensure the boys stay on the property but the best-fit setting permits about 50% access to the garden.  So, the small fences will just have to do.

But after all my complaining the fact is the boys do a great job preventing the deer and other animals from destroying our garden so I guess we can afford a few veggies as a reward from time to time....I just wish they wouldn't think of it as a buffet.

Watering #1 – The Garage Bed and Water Barrel

Throughout the years, I’ve spent a fair amount of time experimenting and developing my garden watering systems.  My main goal has been to water the garden efficiently in order to waste as little time and water as possible.  Secondary goals are to use systems that are simple, tidy and healthy for the plants.  Because this is a fairly involved topic I will break it down into a few posts.  This post discusses only the garden bed beside the garage.

A large eave overhangs the garage bed which actually intercepts a lot of the direct rain.  This, along with the facts that it is south facing and bordered by a stone wall, means it dries out quickly so it needs to be watered more frequently than the main garden beds.  It’s important to note that sun and heat also make this bed my most prolific producers of tomatoes and peppers.

Cosmo garding his peppers.

Since there is a downspout at the end of this bed, i installed a convenient water dirverter which feeds the rain barrel.

 

I drain the barrel using a thin, 1/2” PVC trunk line (from Lee Valley) with holes punched into it every dozen inches or so.  The photos below show little streams of watter squirting out from the hose -- the rain barrel will take about 30 minutes to drain.

Because it can be many days between rain falls, I also lay out 1/2" soaker hose with a quick-connect.  This balanced approach to keeping this bed properly watered works really well.

I place the hoses immediately after planting in order to avoid damaging the plants when they are bigger.

Grapevine #4 -- Caterpillar Infestation

Today I noticed that my Concord grapevine was infested with caterpillars.

What caught my attention were leaves that were obviously munched on.  After quick investigation I found many dozens of small leaves that were curled up and 'stuck' together (Picture 1) with a web-like material.  When I opened up the nest of leaves I found a single, 1 cm long, fuzzy green caterpillar and lots of black specs which could be feces or eggs but I'm not sure.  The second picture below shows a caterpillar at the end of my thumb.  The form of their nests reminds me of a tent caterpillar but I'm not sure what these ones are.

I immediately hit them hard with an insect-repellent soap solution.  This took a while since I opened up each nest and drowned the buggers.  I hope a couple of applications will do the trick as this will be quite labour intensive.

Please post a comment if you know what these things are and if I should do more than spray with a soap solution in order to prevent further damage.



Potatoes

I plant a few potatoes every year.

Last Year

Last year at this time, my dad was in town visiting from Prince Edward Island which is famous for its potatoes.  I purchased my four customary seed potatoes, two Yukon Gold and two Russet.  While we were planting, my dad asked why I wasn’t cutting them into pieces like the farmers.  The reason is since I only grow four plants I wasn’t worried about the additional $0.25 for whole seed potatoes.  We got to talking though and I got to thinking, “Is there a meaningful difference between planting a whole versus a half seed potato?” and "What effect does fewer 'eyes' on the seed potato have on yields?".  So I devised a very simple experiment.  I would plant one whole and one half seed of each variety and weigh the results in the fall.  Well, there was no discernible difference in the size or fullness of the plants of each variety and the whole seed potatoes yielded 6 lbs each and the half seed potatoes yielded 5.5 and 6 lbs each.  Essentially no difference.

This Year
This year I again only planted four potatoes but this time I decided to experiment with four different varieties (Kenebec, Russet, Irish Cobbler, Yukon Gold).  But I hit a snag just after purchasing the seed potatoes.  The lady at the store put them all in the same bag so I’m not sure which variety is which.  D’oh!  The experiment is not a total loss though, I am confident I will be able to identify the varieties either by the plant or the harvested tuber.  We shall see!

Planting

Planting is pretty easy.  I dig a fairly deep hole in the bed and toss in a couple scoops of compost.  I place the seed potato in the bottom of the hole and level off the bed.  As the plants get a few inches tall I will draw up soil from around the plant buring all but the upper-most leaves.  This will from small mound.  I will continue to mound up my potatoes until the plants get fairly large.  The practice encourages more tuber development.

Old versus New Seeds

Common sense would dictate that new seeds will be fresher and have better germination rates over old seeds you may have stowed away in a drawer somewhere.  Today, seeds are often sealed in special little envelopes within the seed packets which are also date stamped indicating their freshness.  I have to admit, I get a bit excited each February/March when the stores bring out their seed displays.  In the past this often resulted in me purchasing seed packets before determining what I had left over from the previous season.  These types of purchases resulted in many open packets of seeds for almost every variety of vegetable.

I have always approached my vegetable gardening as an ongoing experiment using controls so I can compare different approaches under the same conditions.  My experience with using left over seeds as old as 5 years has been met with great success.

Let’s take this year’s swish chard for example.  Normally I only use a half a package (at most) of seeds per season.  This year I used up a 3-year old, open package of standard swish chard seeds.  In order to protect myself against failed germination I sowed two seeds per cell in the tray.  Turns out I got 100% germination (not too shabby), so I will have to cut off the weakest of each pair soon.

I also used one to two year old seeds for my zucchini, cucumbers and regular beef steak tomatoes, all of which came up just fine.

If you do store your left over seeds, "they" say to store them in a sealed container in a cool, dry place like the refrigerator.  Embarrassingly all I typically do is stick them with the rest of my propagation materials and equipment in the basement – definitely nothing special.  I do plan to at least put them in a container this year.

I have no doubt that new seeds or properly-stored 'old' seeds can give you better germination rates, but why spend money when you don’t really have to – use up what you have.  What do you have to lose?

Just my $0.02.

Grapevine #3 -- Early Growth

The grapevine along the garage is well underway.  All of the buds remaining after pruning have nice new growth on them and a ton of centimetre-sized grape clusters have already formed.  A closer look at my pruning job actually shows that I may have left too many buds on the vine which will result in more new growth and more grapes.  This isn't necessarily bad or good.  If the root system is long and robust then it will probably be able to handle it.  But it is possible that there could be too many clusters to produce quality grapes.  But considering my recent history I'm not too concerned.

 

Hardening Off

I plan to start hardening off most of my seedlings this weekend for planting next weekend or at the beginning of June depending on the forecast shows.

Typically I move everything from the grow lights in the basement to the window upstairs in the office for couple of days.  In the evenings I put them on my front porch for a couple of hours.  The sun is very intense here and the brick gets pretty warm and it is sheltered somewhat from direct wind.  I have found that just two or three evenings of 3 hours each is enough to prepare them for a full day.  I’m not sure how my Italian tomatoes will react so I will have to play-it-by-ear.

After two or three days of this I will move them to the front of the garage door.  This location permits me to easily slip them outside in the morning and inside at night (in case it gets cool) without lugging them in and out of the house.  Although Homer and Cosmo sniff the plants they pretty much leave them alone at this point.

Cold Frames

I used to use a cold frame made of scrap wood and plastic (not glass).  It worked great but no matter where I put it or how well I fortified it, mice would move in, make nests and have a field day nibbling on tender seedlings.  A disturbing side-effect was the fact that Homer and Cosmo would smell and hunt for the mice….it is never pleasant to clean up dog puke let alone puke containing a dead mouse – trust me, it’s gross.  I no longer use a cold frame but I may try again sometime in the future.

Veggie Seedling Update

My garden plan for this year includes 42 tomato plants.  However, I have planted over 100 tomato seedlings which will give me plenty of back-up for loss or damage (e.g. cut worms, frost) and I will also supply some to my mother and sister-in-law and a couple of neighbours – my extras rarely go to waste.  The tall seedlings on the left are the Italian beef steak variety.  They are definitely becoming more robust after a being spindly.

The swish chard are coming along slower than I would want.  I may have to start these a couple of weeks sooner next season.

As we do at the end of every growing season, last fall we saved some butternut squash seeds from a home-grown squash.  I planted nine of these seeds in three containers this spring but none of them germinated.  Normally we get excellent germination from seeds we recover so I’m not sure what happened; we’ll have to pay more attention this fall.  No worries though, my wife just purchased as few seedlings as they were about the same price as a package of seeds.

Cucumber, zucchini, muskmelon and pumpkin seedlings are coming along nicely.  My garden plan did not include growing pumpkins this year but my wife insisted that we plant some white pumpkins – I’m just not sure where I’ll be able to put one let alone three but I’ll find a way.  Maybe I’ll sneak them into one of the neighbours’ beds.

I will admit that, historically, I have not had good luck with muskmelon seedlings, mostly because I would over-handle them (they have very tender roots), fail to harden them off properly or transplant them too early (not hot enough).  This year my plan is to simplify my procedure – sort of.  I planted three seeds per 4” peat pot which will eventually be planted directly into the garden.  As they become established I will trim the number of seedlings keeping only the strongest/most vigorous plants in each pot.  I also plan to grow them vertically this summer.  I saw a video which shows the muskmelons vines growing vertically.  I also saw a site which the fruit suspended in makeshift panti-hose/nylon baskets.  This should save space and better protect the melons from rot, bugs and four-legged predators.

Swimmin' in the Swamp

So we took Home and Cosmo for a walk on Friday night and one of our neighbours invited us in for a drink and a look at their new house (still under a bit of construction).  We let the boys off their leashes so they could play with Sophie.  While yapping in the garage I realized that Cosmo was missing in action -- usually not a good thing.  I looked around the side of the garage and there he was lying down in a fairly deep puddle – the building lot is low and it rained a quite a bit the past week.  Then Homer saw him and took right off and dove into a deeper puddle of swampy, muddy water.  It felt great (apparently) as he was diving his head underwater like a torpedo and rolling around.  The evening ended in a shower with the garden hose.

Taking the hint, the next day I got out their pool which they appreciated a lot -- but this time with clean water!  I decided to include a couple of short videos starring Cosmo, Bacon (a co-worker`s puppy) and the pool (Homer's there too).  The second video shows what I mean about Cosmo lying down.

Asparagus

About five years ago I picked up The Victory Garden from a used book store.  It is full of great and simple gardening ideas, many of which I have adopted or inspired me to add/change things in my garden.  Growing asparagus was one of those ideas.

I chose to plant the asparagus in front of the screened porch because it is actually out of the way and permitted me to dig the bed fairly deep.  I excavated a trench about 8’ x 16” x 12” (deep).  I lined the sides of the trench using scrap, untreated spruce 2 x 4’s in order to keep the asparagus contained in the bed.  I then mixed the ‘natural’ soil with garden soil, compost and a bit of fertilizer.  I purchased 8 asparagus roots from Lindenberg Seeds in Manitoba who sent them by regular mail with no issues.  Each root set was planted in the bed about 6” deep and 10” apart.  Planting root sets instead of seeds saves about 2 years of plant development.

Each year in late April the asparagus begin to pop up.  As you can see from the photos, the thickness and size of my sprouts differs greatly.

Harvesting is simple.  With a sharp knife I simply cut them at or just below ground level.  I will make sure that I leave 1 or 2 sprouts from each root set and allow them to mature into the large ferns so that the plant can continue to grow.  The ferns can grow 5’ tall….check back in late summer for photos of the ferns.  You have to be careful when harvesting because the sprouts are rather fragile.  In the photo on the right you will notice two thick but very short sprouts….I accidentally broke these off while cutting the others.  We get about ½ dozen bunches like this each season.

We simply rinse them, brush with olive oil, season with salt and pepper (sometimes oregano), and throw them on the barbeque for about 10 minutes.  If you think that the thick shoots would be tough and woody … you would be wrong.  Cooking them like this even makes the thick ones tender.  As far as taste goes, I have not eaten store-bought asparagus with as much taste as these….yum.

Veggie Seedlings

I start a number of my vegetable plants during the last week of April in my downstairs grop-op.  I typically grow from seed all my tomatoes, zuchinni, butternut squash, swiss chard, cucumbers and pumpkins.

Normally I sow a packet of tomato seeds in a 4`` square container.  When the seedlings develop their 2^nd set of leaves I transplant them into individual cells of a seedling tray and bury them as deep as possible.  Although this method requires an additional step, the results are really worthwhile.  Roots will sprout from the entire length of the stem creating a larger root mass which will result in a more robust plant.



Kumato brown tomato seedling with 1st set of leaves.

 

Italian beefsteak tomato seedling with 2nd set of leaves and more.



Tomato seedling with visible roots.



 

Tomato seedlings buried as deep as possbile in seed tray.



This year, I planted beefsteak, roma and large cherry varieties that my wife`s sister brought back from Venice, Italy.  I also planted some regular beefsteak, brown Kumato and brown cherry tomatoes. 

I think the Italian tomatoes are going to be interesting as I never had a variety sprout as fast and vigorous as these.  The seedlings below grew about 3" in 2 days and as a result are rather spindly.  I suspect they will become more robust after transplanting into the cell packs.  Stay tuned.



Sharing

Sometimes they do.....

Sometimes they don't....

Grapes Part 2 – Propagation

As I alluded in my first post about grapes, I propagated new shoots using fresh cuttings from this years pruning.  My best reference for the procedure was Fred from work; he has a lot of experience in propagated vines and is in the process of completing a vineyard of about 80 vines out in Osgoode.  But if you don`t have access to a Fred, the following is what I did to propagate my new vines.

While pruning the vines I pile the cuttings so that I can identify their bottoms (closest to the main branch) and tops (the tip of the cutting).  I trim each cuttings so that only three buds remain – making the top cut at an angle helps to identify the top.  I cut the bottom of the cutting very close or through the bottom bud.

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Callusing is Key

To ensure your cuttings will develop roots you have to callus bottom buds.  The callus will appear as a bright white, fine, granular growth rimming the cut you made.  Roots will spawn from this callus.

 

Once a number of cuttings were prepared, I soaked them in water overnight with the bottoms submerged.  The cuttings were then bundled, wrapped in wet newspaper or paper towel (but not dripping wet) and placed in a dark plastic bag.  Heat is required to speed up the callusing and root development – simply place the bag in a place that has a constant temperature >80°F.  I placed mine above the television as it gives off a lot of heat -- many website references mentioned the top of the refridgerator.  After 2 to 3 weeks, the bottom buds will begin to callus -- some will have already spawned roots.  Because I was impatient I did not wait for all the cuttings to spawn roots; I planted each cutting in a container with one (sometimes two) buds above the soil level being careful not to damage the buds or roots.

I used black pails (with holes drilled in the bottom for gentle bottom watering) and a mixture of potting and garden soil.  I placed about 6 cuttings in each pail.  As long as they are placed in a warm spot (south facing window), it didn't take long for them to sprout leaves.  I`ll plant these babies towards the end of May when all chance of frost is gone.

Mike