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Tag Archives: Plants
Garlic Progress 0
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‘White Star’ Overwintered Broccoli 0
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 [...]
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Tagged: Plants, Winter Gardening
Overwintered Radicchio 0
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 [...]
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Tagged: Plants, Winter Gardening
Broccoli Stalk, Crimson Clover, Grass 0
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Tagged: Cover Crops, Plants
Comment Problems and Komatsuna Flowers 1
WordPress seems to have made some major changes to the comment settings of wordpress blogs without any forewarning. People are having trouble commenting on my blog. I’m having trouble commenting on other peoples’ blogs. It’s a mess. I don’t usually get all that many comments on this blog, so it took me a while to [...]
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Tagged: Plants
Garlic Wakes Up 0
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Tagged: Plants
Cover Crop Presentation 0
Reminder number two: Next monday I’ll be giving a presentation about cover crops to the Quadra Island Garden Club. Non-members are welcome to attend for a very, very reasonable fee – Just two dollars! Where else can you buy one hour of Ryan Nassichuk (maybe more if I’m feeling particularly wordy) for just two dollars? [...]
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Tagged: Cover Crops, Plants, Workshops and Presentations
Apple Training/Found Chili Sauce 1
Each March, for the past three years, I’ve worked on training a client’s apple tree against a driftwood structure. The tree is finally taking the shape I desire, and I’ve been enjoying the process tremendously. It is slow-motion plant bondage. Also, while driving to our client’s property this morning, I stopped the truck along the [...]
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Tagged: Fruit Trees, Hot Sauce, Plants, Pruning
Purple Sprouting Broccoli 0
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Tagged: Plants
Jessica Made Us a Beautiful Fluorescent Light Propagation Cabinet 1
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Tagged: Plants
Learning Restraint 0
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 [...]
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Tagged: Plants
From the Bottom Up to the Top Down 1
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Tagged: Plants
Stellaria media 0
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Tagged: Plants
February Stir-Fry Ingredients 0
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 [...]
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Tagged: Plants
A Late Planting of Leeks 0
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 [...]
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Tagged: Plants
Mizuna in Rye 0
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Tagged: Cover Crops, Plants
Kale and Clover 0
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Tagged: Cover Crops, Plants
Fruit Tree Pruning in Powell River 2
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, [...]
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Unprotected Greens 2
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. [...]
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Tagged: Plants
The First Harvests of 2012 1
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, [...]
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Tagged: Plants
Back on Quadra Island 0
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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An Unusually Early Snowfall 1
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Tagged: Plants
A Wheelbarrow Load of Late Carrots 0
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Tagged: Plants
The First Frost of Autumn 2
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Tagged: Plants
Turnip Parenthood 6
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Tagged: Family Memories, Parenting, Plants
Fall and Winter Vegetables 0
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Tagged: Plants
Hairy Vetch as a Winter Cover Crop 0
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Tagged: Cover Crops, Plants
Winter Radicchio Report 0
The Rouge de Verone radicchio I direct-seeded on the 3rd of August hasn’t formed heads yet, which is a minor disappointment. The spinach and romaine lettuce I planted in the same bed grew beautifully, and have now all been harvested, and now I’m left with a bed of immature radicchio. My plan had been to [...]
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Tagged: Plants
winter peas as a leguminous cover crop 0
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Tagged: Cover Crops, Plants
Autumn-Sown Fava Update 0
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Tagged: Plants
Mache/Corn Salad as a Cover Crop 0
In early September, I broadcast-seeded some mache/corn salad/Valerianella locusta into a small section at the end of one of the main beds. This section had been growing lentils, which we cut down and harvested in late August. Currently, about two months later, it doesn’t look like the corn salad is doing much to suppress the [...]
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Tagged: Plants
Beets for Winter and Early Spring 3
Pictured at right are some of the ‘Lutz Winterkeeper’ beets we harvested today. They were sown on the first of July. The roots in the photograph are the grade-A specimens, which we have now packed in sand for winter and early spring use. Smaller, less-perfect specimens are being eaten now, rather than stored, as they [...]
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Tagged: Plants
Oats for Beauty 2
My limited experiences with oats as a late-summer-planted cover crop have led me to conclude that they (usually) don’t survive the winter, an attribute that makes them a desirable part of no-till and reduced-tillage crop management systems. They are also much more beautiful than the more commonly grown fall rye, with a more graceful, taller [...]
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Tagged: Cover Crops, Plants
‘Ching Chiang’ Bok Choi 0
The bok choi pictured at right has started to form flower buds, which is somewhat disappointing. I had hoped it would wait until spring to begin it’s reproductive cycle, as we plan on constructing a low polytunnel over it’s bed for winter protection. It is ‘Ching Chiang’ from West Coast Seeds, flanked by ‘Tyee’ Spinach. [...]
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Tagged: Plants
Italian Dandelion Flower Buds 2
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Tagged: Plants
Autumn Broad Beans 0
For years I’ve been hearing about how well fall sowings of broad beans work in our coastal climate. For years I haven’t gotten around to trying this out. This year is different, as I’ve reached a new level of seriousness with regards to broad beans. About two weeks ago I sowed a 100-square-foot trial bed [...]
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Tagged: Plants
The Results of a Late July Sowing of Turnips 0
In late July I sowed some ‘Purple Top White Globe’ turnips for our turnip-loving friend Bruce. If I were in charge of naming this type of turnip, and it may be worth noting that I do one day intend to be in the sort of person who feels eligible to name turnip and other vegetable [...]
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Tagged: Plants
Autumn and Winter Vegetables 0
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Tagged: Plants
Red Buckwheat Seeds 0
It has been my experience that buckwheat occasionally forms bright red seeds. While the overwhelming majority of buckwheat plants produce seeds that start whitish, and ripen to a brownish hue, on in a great many plants tend to produce seeds that are not white at all. They are easy to spot.
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Tagged: Plants
Eager Chive Seedlings 0
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Tagged: Plants
Dill Seed 1
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Chard Undersown With Crimson Clover 0
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Tagged: Cover Crops, Plants
Winter Crops 0
Pictured at right is the section of field we brought into cultivation in early June. Aside from corn, this section is occupied by cool weather crops for fall, winter, and early spring harvests. A partial list of the vegetables in the photograph: Sprouting broccoli, carrots, collards, chard, spinach, bok choi, raddichio, lettuce, mache, dandelion…
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Tagged: Plants
Winter Pea Cover Crop 0
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Tagged: Plants
Cosmos sulphureus and Cosmos bipinnatus 0
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Tagged: Plants
Fordhook Giant Chard 0
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Tagged: Plants
Part of the Garden, Viewed from Above 0
The garden is partway through it’s autumn march into cover crops and mulch. Pictured at right is the first section we developed, back in early April. Most of the summer crops have been harvested, replaced by rye, buckwheat, winter peas, and oats.
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Tagged: Plants
Fall and Winter Spinach 4
Over the years I’ve grown more and more impressed with fall and winter spinach, and less so with spring and summer spinach. While I have grown good crops of spring-planted spinach before, I’ve often felt rushed to harvest it before it begins bolting, it’s unpalatable response to the increasing daylength of summer’s approach. I find [...]
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Tagged: Plants
Phacelia and Clover as a Winter-Killed Summer-Planted Cover Crop 3
In late July I pulled up a spent crop of peas and planted the bed to a mixture of crimson clover (Trifolium incarnatum) and phacelia (Phacelia tanacetifolia). The phacelia has already formed flower buds, and I expect it will begin blooming within the next week. My hope is that both these species are winterkilled, and [...]
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Tagged: Plants
Perhaps the Corn Will Ripen After All 0
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Tagged: Plants
Before the Fourth Picking of Ripe Tomatoes 1
Our ‘Latah’ tomatoes have undergone four major pickings so far this year, and are still producing very healthy quantities of ripe fruits. Pictured at right is a healthy plant about to have all of it’s ripe fruits harvested.
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Tagged: Plants
Roger’s Pears 1
This photo is of one of my grandfather’s espalier’d pear trees. His pruning technique is flawless, and the results speak for themselves. If you are reading this, great job, Roger (of course I know you aren’t reading this, because you think the internet is “a bunch of bullshit”).
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Tagged: Fruit Trees, Plants
Winter Vegetables 0
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Tagged: Plants
Fast Bok Choy, 36 Days 0
I’ve had mixed results with midsummer sowings of bok choy – My experience as been that many varieties bolt far too soon to be of much use, while others produce variable crops over variable timespans. On the 20th of July I sowed an experimental patch of ‘Ching Chiang’ Shanghai-style bok choy, and am very pleased [...]
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Tagged: Plants
Corn, 69 Days Old, Will it Ripen? 0
The corn I planted in early June has just started to form male flowers. At this point, it is hard to know if we’ll have a harvest or not this year. It doesn’t really matter to me if we don’t, because the corn is beautiful and I like watching it grow. Next year I’ll plant [...]
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Tagged: Plants
Crimson Clover as a Living (and Dying) Mulch 0
I undersowed our june-planted sprouting broccoli and collard plantings with crimson clover one week ago. I broadcast clover the seed, then gently scratched it in and patted it down. After keeping the beds moist for four days, it began to spout, and today things are starting to green up under the brassicas. My hope is [...]
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Tagged: Cover Crops, Plants
Flax 0
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Tagged: Plants
Carrots for Winter 2
I never used to plant much in rows, generally favouring more finely-engineered grid patters for the smaller gardens of my past. Now that I have more space, and am using hoes and weed knives for weed control, I’m finding myself using string lines and rows more often. It makes me feel very conservative and old-fashioned, [...]
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Tagged: Plants
Phacelia tanacetifolia 0
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Tagged: Plants