When I was younger I used to try to sow as many cool season vegetables as I could during the first week of March. I have more restraint now, and am slowly learning that earlier sowings aren’t always better. Most vegetables tend to grow very slowly during our long, cold, drawn-out spring season. Also, our [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Plants
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Plants
Some of the same sort of aliens who make crop circles in southern England’s grain fields have been visiting our farm, but they seem to be trying something new. Rather than flattening grain in patterns with string and boards, they show up and steal from our woodchip pile and use the mulch, and our digging [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Cover Crops, Mulch, Paranormal
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Plants
Most of the garlic varieties have pushed up through the mulch now. I am always thrilled to be able to watch garlic and mulch, the two best friends, working together. The weather forecast currently calls for snow and overnight temperatures of negative nine in a couple of days. Nine below! All the garlic will survive. [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Mulch
In March or early April we are going to have some drainage ditches dug in the field. Initially, I was concerned that our flood may be a result of my atheism, but I no longer believe that to be the case. I don’t think ours is the same sort of flood as the one mentioned [...]
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The more I grow komatsuna, the more it impresses me. The komatsuna pictured at right was sown in September, and did not have the luxury of any sort of protection over the winter. It is now starting to form delicious flower buds and seems generally unperturbed that it is growing in a bed that is [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Plants
Most yearsI seed leeks in early march, then transplant them top open ground in April. Last year, due to the delays inherent in bringing a fallow field back into productivity (and…um…chopping my foot with an axe), I didn’t get around to seeding any leeks until late June. One month later, I transplanted them into a [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Plants
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Cover Crops, Plants
I watched the documentary ‘To Make a Farm‘ the other day, and found it to be thought-provoking and, at times, inspiring. The film follows the establishment, by young people, of three small farms, two by couples in Ontario, and one by a man in Manitoba. While I don’t currently self-identify as a ‘farmer’, I believe I [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Economics
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Cover Crops, Plants
Winter-killed oats are potentially a very valuable addition to no-till and reduced-tillage crop rotations. In past gardens I’ve found that late-summer sowings of oats reliably winter-killed, leaving a light layer of decaying biomass and loose, life-filled soil, ready for planting with large seeds and tubers. Most of the bed I sowed to oats last September [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Cover Crops
Jessica and I just returned from Powell River, where we pruned my ailing grandfather’s remarkable collection of espliered apple and pear trees. They have been maintained with tremendous attention to detail over the past couple of decades, and this was the first time they have been out of his care. It was a little daunting, [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Drainage
Jessica and I hold workshops and grow vegetables on Valdez Farm, and hopefully our little seed company will one day release a catalogue. It may happen next year and it may happen five years from now. We’re not rushing it. Growing vegetables for sale was never the reason we left the city, as we’ve never [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Community Supported Agriculture
Next month, on the 12th of March, I’ll be giving a presentation at the Quadra Island Garden Club. It’s a big deal. I’ll be speaking about incorporating cover crops into vegetable rotations, and hopefully I’ll tell some jokes while I am at it. I got serious about cover crops seven years ago, and each year [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Workshops
In early September I found some old seed packets of cool-weather greens and mixed them together in a bowl. I broadcast-sowed this seed mixture onto a bed recently-vacated by a harvest of june-sown beets. I didn’t have high hopes for the bed, as I generally plant my fall and winter greens well before early September. [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Plants
The minor thrill I experience each time I harvest something I’ve grown myself has not diminished over the years, though it isn’t hard to harvest homegrown zucchini in August, and I try not to pat myself on the back too often. I feel most satisfied when harvesting delicious vegetables in late winter, when the wet, [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Plants
Jessica and I arrived back on Quadra late yesterday evening. It was night, and the first thing we did upon our arrival was to take a headlamp out to the frosty field. The floodwaters have receded, and our extensive fall planting of garlic survived the wet winter. Many other crops survived along with the garlic, [...]
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That was an interesting couple of months. I arrived back in Canada yesterday afternoon, full of inspiration for the year ahead. Jessica and I will return to Quadra in three or four days. I expect to begin posting to this blog fairly frequently upon our return. We have big plans for 2012 and beyond at [...]
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