Mountain-Toes Gardening

At this point, we’ve had peas in the ground for about four days – and as of yesterday, some rows of carrots, kale, spinach.  We’ve had early radishes, spinach, and lettuce growing in the greenhouse for some weeks now.

I tilled up a potato block in our larger garden.  This year I’m going to be trying several new varieties that have good reputations for being blight resistant.  Last year, on our place and on a nearby organic farm, late-blight problems got going in the Russet spuds – formerly thought of as our standby “old reliables.”  I’ll be treating the seed spuds with an Actinovate dip just before planting.

In the spirit of spring, here’s a fun video – a time-lapse look at how tomato plants develop…

Time-Lapse Tomatoes

I’m happy to say that right now our indoor-started tomatoes, sweet peppers, and jalapnos are all looking pretty glorious.

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It does feel good to see the ground again.  Our snow has pretty well gone, and whereas we weren’t seeing much cover crop or bare soil six days ago, we are now.  And while temps in our solar-heat-only greenhouse still dip a touch below freezing at night, if we don’t remember to encourage as much breeze as possible during the day the g.h. temps can get up to 35* (C) or more while the sun’s up!

Our big veggie garden, fall-rye cover crop, with a swath of mulched garlic

Among this year’s big themes is that of dealing with plant diseases. Specifically, I mean ones that have become common in the Slocan Valley and Central Kootenay – and which have, yes, assaulted our gardens here on our place.  New for us, and not welcome.  I have a strategy to deal with both late blight (which obliterated our tomatoes and our potatoes last year) and clubroot (which in the last couple years stunted our broccoli and cauliflower heads).  More about this in upcoming posts.

Among the seedlings, Jupiter sweet peppers are up and doing well, as are jalapeno peppers and Early Girl vine tomatoes.  Lettuce starts were looking lush enough that they went into the greenhouse beds today to grow into big salad leaves.  They’re joining a bed of kale and one of spinach inter-planted with rows radishes.

A few lettuce starts - just before planting out

What’s typical, weather-wise, any more?  I can’t really say.  Gardeners seem to be agreeing that this years is running late, but mainly due to a hefty snowfall and the slow reappearance of the ground.  Different from last year when the snow stopped early but there was a three or four week delay because it was just cold or cool for so long.

Will we ever get mid-summer heat with warm nights?  We’ll see… but it does force us to think more about what varieties (e.g., with corn) make sense to plant.

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I’m getting our seedlings going for eventual transplant into the greenhouse and garden.  For now, they’ll have a nice temporary home in the south of our house.  Under grow lights, and with a pretty stable temp.

As planting proceeds, I’m mixing the growing medium (“soil”) using my customary formula.  It’s more or less like what  Shane  Smith recommends Greenhouse Gardener’s Companion.   Two parts coir, two parts worm castings, one part perlite.

Photo: Joel Russ

It was a grey morning today (Friday), so mixing the soil and planting the little seeds was enhanced by some music I had on the sound system – my iTunes clicked onto “shuffle” with tracks coming on by Molly Johnson, Tedeschi-Trucks, George Benson, Tuck & Patti, Gene Hardy, Fred Neil, and Feist, among others.

I like getting the seeds going.  Really feels like a way to hail to warm spring (which I tend to feel is closer to us, at this point in March, than it was at this point last year).

Today’s planting included Jupiter and Jalapeno peppers, along with Ishikura green onions.  Things that take a while to develop.

Starting the gardening process is always an upbeat and hopeful thing.  (“These things we do to keep the flame burning…” as Bonnie Raitt sang.)

The real challenges will come with later gardening stages, as the Central Kootenay region has had major problems with some airborne and soil-borne fungal plant diseases in recent years.  Our gardens have gotten their share of those, but we’ve not let ourselves be driven to commercial (chemical) methods of fighting back.  I’ve got some strategies for dealing with these threats, and I plan to post about them in the future.

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This point in winter, just after the Solstice and during the general holiday season, always seems to me to be the most contemplative time during the year.  At least in terms of my life as a gardener.

Oh, yeah.  I’m still digesting the experience of last year, thinking about what I want to do in the upcoming year.  And how to improve garden results next year.  And how to deal with specific problems.

River, reflections, snow and ice in the Nature Park

At this point, all our outdoor planting areas are covered with about 30cm of snow.  It’s a little warm out today (meaning just above freezing), but the general trend is naturally toward deeper cold and deeper snow.  On Christmas day, before joining a local family in the early evening for supper, we took a walk in the Winlaw Nature Park, where we could see the ice creeping out from the snowy shore onto the surface of a placid stretch of Slocan River.

Looking at some pictures I shot on that walk, the snow (and implied cold) evoked thoughts about what’s going on in the soil beneath.  I found this page (by Norma Evans, Peterborough Examiner) on this particular subject and felt like sharing it.

Winter curtails our outdoor gardening activities, but it provides certain benefits, too.

Joys of the season to you.

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There is “gardening” in the literal sense of the word, and in the metaphoric.

In the literal sense, for me right now it consists of harvesting the last of the lettuce and kale from our sun-heated greenhouse.  There’s no supplementary heat in there, and considering that our nighttime temps have gone below -12, it amazes us that we’ve still had lettuce growing.

A small bowl of our winter lettuce

Besides that, I’ve got a multi-faceted research and dialogue going on about dealing with a couple of common Kootenay food-garden plant diseases, namely blight (of solanaceous plants) and clubroot (of cabbage-family plants).  For instance, I’m collecting info from on-the-ground ag and gardening people about blight-resistant potato varieties.  Many of the old standbys – and many of the pleasing and exotic varieties more recently cultivated in our region – were ravaged this past gardening season.

Prior to spring 2012 planting, I plan to publish the results of my research, in brief practical form, here in Mountain Toes and over in Gardening in the Kootenays.

The metaphoric sort of “gardening” that I do in the winter is proceeding, too, in these cooler months.  Gardening in this sense is “self cultivation.”

I’m writing some short stories, and have a number of them in second draft.  And I’ve been getting a bit of exercise doing the firewood splitting and snow shoveling our home place requires.

The fun aspect that I look forward to every year, XC-skiing in the open areas around and near the valley bottom, hasn’t been great, so far.  Several times, what snow has fallen has melted to slush.  I look forward to a build up of fresh snow on the base of the sketchy layer we now have.  Yeah, it’ll be nice to have some good snow.  And to have some sunny, blue-sky days, now and again, to go with it.

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My gardening involvements at present consist of managing and harvesting lettuce and other leafies from our sun-heated greenhouse.  On the mental-work side, there’s planning for next year’s planting, and also researching information about how Kootenay food gardeners can succeed in the face of challenges like solanaceous blights and clubroot!  (These pursuits are ongoing, and I’ll be blogging about them.)

But, as I said from the beginning, my blog is also about how a long-time rurally based Kootenay resident looks at the larger world.

So topic jump to:

OSE, open-source image

All of us humans have our relationships with technology.  In my life, prominent aspects of this include not only computer stuff but also rakes and rototillers, trowels and trucks, weedwhackers and welders.  (Oh yeah, X-C skis and bikes.)  Many of these techs enable a lot of building and maintaining  (e.g., carpentry, stone masonry, plumbing, and house/shop electrical work). And also enable exercise and fun.

My habitual sphere of interest is background to why I’m moved to share this page about the work of a guy, Marcin Jakubowski, whom I’m inspired by!  His work brings together food-raising, sustainability philosophy, engineering, physics, hands-on fabrication, communications, and business models.  There are three short & interesting vids on this page.  See what you think.

(This is Marcin’s ongoing, earlier-established site.)

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As everyone realizes, growing plants on soil means that the plants will draw out nutrients from that soil.  Some soils start out in fertile condition, offering a high level of essential nutrients – and some don’t.  But in any case over time, there will be a draw-down of nutrients – mainly nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, calcium, and sulphur – but “minor nutrients” like copper and boron, as well.

Photo: Joel Russ

Every year, we’ve been adding organic materials to our topsoil.  Given the fact that we’re not currently raising livestock on our place, we judiciously use the manure that we acquire, spreading it completely over our smaller “salad garden” and placing it into the rows in the large garden.  On both, we apply mulch (mainly straw), in broad coverage in some areas.  And in some parts, I’ve been planting fall rye to add organic matter.

To supply extra nutrient to the roots of plants, we sometimes use supplemental materials (like compost we make, or rotted manure) or diluted brews (like fish emulsion mixed in water) in the rows we plant.

I have to say we’ve become a little cautious about the fish emulsion, at least in the later part of the gardening season.  Friends of ours in Vallican were using it this past year and found that it attracted a bear or two in early summer.  And the intrusions occurred despite the fact that their place, like ours, is fenced to keep the deer out.  The bears became pretty troublesome.  And this fall we had one climbing over the fence to get to the ripening corn.  Not an attraction we want to enhance.

This fall I used an inexpensive NPK soil-test kit, bought locally, to test soil in our gardens for nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium.  I tested the soil from spaces between rows, since I knew we tended to use extra amendment materials within the rows we’d planted in the spring.  Nitrogen turned out to be pretty low, and phosphorous – though it varied according to places from which each sample was taken – was pretty low, too.

For the phosphorous, I’ll spread phosphate rock, a commonly available soil supplement, on the gardens next spring.  It’s generally acknowledged that nitrogen is the essential plant nutrient most frequently deficient.  This page discusses some of the options available for organic supplementation of soils: feather meal, composted manure, alfalfa meal, and vermicastings.

At the moment, I lean toward the idea of using alfalfa meal, due to the fact that it provides other nutrients, including minor or micro nutrients, in addition to the nitrogen.

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We’ve harvested garlic, onions, pears, apples, squash, hot peppers, and a few other things in the last ten days.  I’m now getting a jump on some of the autumn work, since I will be away for some of the early part of the season.  We’ve got fall leafies growing in the greenhouse.  I put in next year’s garlic, planting about 330 cloves – which should turn out to be enough for our household and to give away or trade to friends.

Initial germination of fall rye

Fall rye has become my preferred cover crop, generally speaking.  You can easily find the seed for it locally.  Planting early, like I’ve done this year, I can get at least one cutting from it before the snow comes.  The cut grass will eventually rot into the soil surface.

I broadcast my rye about a week ago.  I put fifteen pounds of seed into about 1400 sq ft of garden space.  This was on portions of the garden that I’d harvested and cleaned-up, after which I’d rototilled and then raked the soil.  On days when it wasn’t raining, I gave the patch a good sprinkler watering.  The picture shows the preliminary germination.

In the spring, after the snow goes but a couple weeks before planting, I’ll give the rye another cutting.  Then I’ll till the ground, which will place the rye and its roots mostly under the surface.  The accumulated growth – having drawn nutrients from the air, and having processed minerals from the soil -  will decompose, adding organic matter and plant nutrients to the topsoil.  It’s a good contribution, though soil amending doesn’t end with a “green-manure” or cover crop.

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In a small way, I’ve resumed my informal experiments with volcanic-rock dust or powder as a soil amendment for plant starting.  I reported on some results with the powder in the spring (see my post of April 26).  In that case, I was starting several kinds of plants using a bagged potting soil we bought.  I used the soil (or “growing medium”) unamended, in sets of matched starter trays, except for those trays in which I’d added about 15% volcanic rock powder to the mixture.  All those seedlings were started under grow lights.

About a week ago, I again used starting trays (“six packs”) and matched the basic growing medium, the watering regime, and the lighting on the experimental and control trays.  However, I made up my own starter medium as follows: 50% sphagnum peat moss; 30% worm castings; 20% perlite – well stirred.  This, in itself, is a pretty rich mix because of the worm castings.  One of the trays contains this mixture as such.  The other has this mixture with about 12% volcanic rock powder stirred into it.  I made up only two trays, and identified each one to be able to interpret my results.

The tray on the left has the volcanic powder in it

With each of the six packs, I filled each of the cells as close to the same level as I could.  I planted each cell with two radish seeds from the same packet.  I kept the trays on a bench in our greenhouse.  Then I was careful to keep the watering and the light exposure the same.  Seed germination took about 48 hours, on average – and the germination rate was pretty much the same, comparing the two six packs.

The picture, taken eight days after planting the seeds, pretty much tells the story.  The seedlings with the volcanic powder in their growing medium are clearly doing better.  I’d estimate the difference in vitality and growth to be maybe 20%, at this early stage.

With my spring-time experiment, the difference seemed more marked – probably because the commercial growing medium was very basic and not high in nutrients (such as those the worm castings provide to the new mixture).  With the spring experiments, the seedlings growing in the medium that included the volcanic rock powder did twice as well, in my assessment, in terms of vitality and size.  However, I judged this difference not after eight days, but after a month or so.

Once again, I’m impressed with the benefits of this powder.  I sourced sample amounts from a Victoria-based company called Paramount Growth Holdings.  They do not have the rock powder on the market, as yet.  They state that their rock powder registers a high paramagnetic value.  I can’t define this for you, and can’t discuss the product from that standpoint.  But my own trials display the value of using the powder.  I’d buy it in big sacks if I could get them.

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Here’s a handy little garden tool that can be made in a home shop. I designed it as an alternative to the common three-fingered small garden claw.

Experienced gardeners know a number of tools and pieces of equipment can be valuable for dealing with garden weeds – examples being the rototiller and hoe for the broad-scale work. But a lot of the work of weeding gets down into small spaces right around the desired plants in your vegetable or decorative beds. The tool I made digs right in there!

The business end of the tool is made from 1/4″ mild-steel rod. I cut a piece about 8″ long, heated about half of it into the glowing-orange heat range, and used a piece of 2″ diameter steel pipe as a form for shaping it. Having clamped the section of pipe into my bench vise, I used a hammer to coax one end of the hot steel rod into a sort of question-mark shape (reheating the rod as necessary).

I used an oxy-acetylene torch for the heating, though you could use a blacksmithing forge for the purpose.

After making the basic shape, I heated the very end of the rod and hammered it to a taper, which causes a slight flaring at the tip end of the profile. So, once the taper was basically established, I did a bit of grinding (using a bench grinder, and a belt grinder) to remove any burrs and to give final shape to the tip.

When I was satisfied with the shape, my focus shifted to making a handle. I chose a piece of ash wood – a 5″ section of an old broken shovel handle. I shaped this into a comfortable handle using a coarse belt on my belt grinder. Once I was happy with the feel of the shaped handle, I drilled a 5/16″ hole about 2″ into the appropriate end, and cleaned it out well. I coated about an inch and a half of the shank-end of the shaped steel rod with a fairly thin layer of epoxy glue, and pushed it fully into the handle. Excess oozed out of the handle, so I cleaned that off. Then I let the glue set and cure for about 48 hours.

Once the bond is strong, common sense can be applied to any clean-up the finished tool needs. I rubbed some vegetable oil into the handle so that it would have a bit of resistance to the moisture that’s everpresent with both sweaty working hands and garden soils.

I wasn’t sure just how much use this tool would get. But I now find myself using it about three times as much as I use a standard garden claw or a trowel. A person who was helping us for a few days with weeding our gardens – and who had her choice among maybe a dozen tools – said this one-finger gadget wound up being usually her tool of choice. Actually, she said I should patent it… but clearly, the concept of this thing is way too simple for that. Make one yourself.

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