Today we had a work party in the field. Jessica and I were joined in our toil by Terry and Yoko, who are living on the farm and working alongside us. I am thrilled to have them along on our agricultural journey, and they deserve their own blog post, which will hopefully be forthcoming. We [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Joy
- Published:
- April 26, 2012 – 9:17 pm
- Author:
- By Ryan Nassichuk
Most of the 24 overwintering broccoli plants we sowed last June were killed in the flood, but a few made it through alive, and these precious survivors are now providing us with great harvests of sweet, delicious buds. Pictured at right is ‘White Star’, a late variety. A solution to the flooding problem is decided [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Plants, Winter Gardening
- Published:
- April 25, 2012 – 9:12 pm
- Author:
- By Ryan Nassichuk
The garlic pictured at right is growing in a bed that has never been dug, forked, or tilled. Granted, this bed hasn’t been a bed for very long, but still. Last May the bed was formed by us creating a thirty-three-foot long by three-foot-wide mound of turf pieces stripped off a different part of the [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: No-Till, Reduced Tillage, Tillage
- Published:
- April 21, 2012 – 11:22 pm
- Author:
- By Ryan Nassichuk
So much is happening on the farm right now that I’m too tired to blog about it. In April the land quickly turns bright green and it feels like everything needs to be done all at once.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Fruit Trees
- Published:
- April 20, 2012 – 9:30 pm
- Author:
- By Ryan Nassichuk
Two of my favourite clients have a beautiful, vigorous eight-year-old sweetshoot bamboo, Phyllostachys dulcis, groowing in their front yard. I have admired it for years, and today I was kindly offered a piece to plant here on the farm. This is one of the bamboo species commonly grown for edible shoots in asia, and I’m [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Bamboo
- Published:
- April 16, 2012 – 10:16 pm
- Author:
- By Ryan Nassichuk
We’ve gotten a lot of enjoyment out of our crop of overwintered ‘Rossa di Verona’ radicchio. While none of the plants formed heads in the autumn (I suspect I sowed it a little too late for that), they did produce large harvests of beautiful, delicious leaves, and some of the plants look like they might [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Plants, Winter Gardening
- Published:
- April 14, 2012 – 10:42 pm
- Author:
- By Ryan Nassichuk
This morning I was surprised to see a river otter fishing for goldfish in the little pond in the corner of our field. It crunched them down noisily and seemed very pleased with itself. Later, I went back to the pond to check on it’s progress, and found it rolling around like a playful puppy [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Wildlife
- Published:
- April 12, 2012 – 9:59 pm
- Author:
- By Ryan Nassichuk
Our large garden is moving in a small farm direction. This afternoon another section of the field was stripped of turf and loosened, the first step in the thirty-seven step process Jessica and I use to transform fallow land into vegetables. We’ve assigned this latest section the romantic, whimsical name “section 4-A”. Doug Peters, who [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Machinery
- Published:
- April 11, 2012 – 10:52 pm
- Author:
- By Ryan Nassichuk
- Published:
- April 9, 2012 – 10:25 pm
- Author:
- By Ryan Nassichuk
A shocking amount of rain fell from the sky yesterday. It looks like we’re in for another “worst spring ever”, the fourteenth consecutive worst spring ever since I started keeping track of them back in 1999. Our field is flooded, again, but soon it will dry up and we’ll forget all about the slow start [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: flood!
- Published:
- April 3, 2012 – 9:01 pm
- Author:
- By Ryan Nassichuk
Husband – “Honey, I just read that the skilled plantsman on Quadra Island who writes that blog we both enjoy so much [www.ryansgarden.com] will be visiting our city [the Greater Vancouver Regional District] for a few days soon [late April/early May 2012].” Wife – “Does he do horticultural consultations? If he does [he does], we [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Doing Consultations, Visiting my Family
- Published:
- April 2, 2012 – 7:14 pm
- Author:
- By Ryan Nassichuk