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Tagged: Fall and Winter Vegetables, Plants
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Tag Archives: Plants
Clubroot is the Worst 0
Clubroot, which sounds like an old-fashioned name for a minor STD but is actually a nightmarish disease affecting brassicas, has infected some overwintering-type broccoli plants in part of the garden. This means that we won’t be able to grow brassicas in that area for many, many years as clubroot is notorious for laying dormant in [...]
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Tagged: Diseases, Fall and Winter Vegetables, Plants
Iceberg Lettuce Update 0
Many people get all negative when they talk about about iceberg lettuce. I get enough vitamins, and I think it is crunchy and charming and have been meaning to try growing it for years. A spring sowing this year was decimated by wireworms, but a late July sowing immediately adjacent to a row of chard [...]
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Tagged: Fall and Winter Vegetables, Plants
Beets and Chard 0
Beets and chard (I refuse to call it “Swiss chard” for a variety of reasons) are different varieties of the same plant species, Beta vulgaris. As such, I suppose it isn’t all that surprising that I recently discovered a chard type growing in a planting of beet types. It will be interesting to see if [...]
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Tagged: Plants
We Heart Radicchio 0
Lately, whenever I am in the field, I ask the following question: Will the radicchio make hearts this autumn? Last year I sowed it too late, in late July, and it made plenty of leaves, but never formed hearts. This year it was planted a few weeks earlier, and I have high hopes that it [...]
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Tagged: Fall and Winter Vegetables, Plants
Lettuce and Chard 0
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Tagged: Fall and Winter Vegetables, Plants
Napa Cabbage for Fall Harvest 0
We’re growing Napa cabbage (also known as ‘Chinese Cabbage’) for a fall harvest this year. In prior years we’ve always grown this wonderful vegetable for early summer harvests, from April sowings. Slugs and cabbage root maggots have been problems for us in the past, and I’m hoping that the fall crop will be less troubled [...]
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Tagged: Fall and Winter Vegetables, Plants
Autumn Fennel 0
This autumn we’ll finally be successful with Florence Fennel, hopefully. This year we sowed the seeds on the first of July, into 2-inch pots. I planted them out three weeks later, in a fennel-broccoli interplanting. If all goes as planned, we’ll harvest the “bulbs” (the aren’t really bulbs, in the same way that onions aren’t [...]
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Tagged: Plants
Onion Harvest 2012 0
Rain is looming, so we pulled the rest of the onions today. More exactly, Jessica pulled the rest of the onions today. I took some photos and prepared some land for a final sowing of fast autumn brassicas. The onion crop exceeded all of our expectations.
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Deciding How I Feel About Growing Onions 1
For years I struggled with onions. I now know most of what I was doing wrong, and this spring I avoided most of my past mistakes. Growing onions from seed can be a long, slow journey, but now that my methods have been refined somewhat, I have decided that for me it is a journey [...]
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Tagged: Plants
Leeks, Four Months Old 0
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Tagged: Plants
Tomato Progress Report 1
I have decided that I am pleased with Jessica and my decision to not erect any supports for our determinate tomatoes this year. We are finally harvesting good quantities of our earliest variety, ‘Latah’, and have found that they are perfectly manageable without cages/string/sticks holding the plants and fruits up off the mulch. In other [...]
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‘Rosalind’ Broccoli 0
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Tagged: Plants
The 2012 Garlic Harvest 3
Over the past several days Jessica and I (mostly Jessica, to be perfectly honest) pulled all of this year’s crop of garlic. We grew a little over 1000 plants this year, and are very happy with the way the crop turned out. Of the 14 different varieties we grew, there are only a couple that [...]
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Climbing Quickly Now 0
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Tagged: Plants
Onion and Shallot Progress 1
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Tagged: Plants
Rainbow Chard 0
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Tagged: Plants
Celery and Scallions in Bed Together 0
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Tagged: Plants
The First (Almost) Ripe Tomato of 2012 0
I’ve received a tremendous amount of gardening advice over the years. As I listen to this advice, my brain automatically sorts it out into different categories. I find I rely on this categorization of advice to avoid falling into the trap of never trying new things because so and so said they’d never work. One [...]
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Tagged: Plants
Cabbage Succession 3
Cabbage is delightful, but having too much ready to harvest at once can be a drag. For this reason, we staggered our plantings this year, and sowed several different types. Most of this year’s cabbage harvest will be in the autumn and winter, with just a dozen or so cabbages heading up right now for [...]
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Tagged: Fall and Winter Vegetables, Plants
Summer Squash Beginning to Bear Fruit 0
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Tagged: Plants
Three Beet Varieties 1
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Tagged: Beets, Pictures of Jessica, Plants
Rust Fly Update 5
Our carrot rust fly border might have been effective. It is, however, a little tricky to say definitively that it was a success, as we aren’t sure we have a population of carrot rust flies in our immediate area to protect against. We have, however, harvested about a third of this year’s first 150-square-foot planting of [...]
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Tagged: Keeping Carrot Rust Fly Away from our Carrots, Plants, Pseudoscience
Section One, Cleaning 2
Today I was going to post an in-depth photo essay I’ve been working on concerning peas, pea supports, and collapsing walls of nine-foot-tall sugar snap peas, but Jessica is coming home this evening after four days off the island, and I’m listening to Boredoms and trying to clean our home. Why is it so [...]
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Tagged: Cleaning is Tedious and Difficult, Plants
Pole Beans Starting to Climb 0
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Tagged: Plants, smalltalk about the weather is the worst type of smalltalk
One Month of Cabbage Growth 0
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Tagged: Cabbage Time-Lapse (CTL), Plants
Storage Onions 0
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Tagged: Plants
Tomatoes and Space 0
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Tagged: Plants, Proper Plant Spacing for Healthy Root Development (PPSHRD)
Kohlrabi is Beautiful 0
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Tagged: Plants
Lettuce Mix 0
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Low-Tech Berry Propagation 0
This afternoon I potted-up about sixty rooted berry cuttings. They included the following delicacies: Red currants, black currants, white currants, jostaberries, black gooseberries, red gooseberries, green gooseberries, and goumi. The cuttings were taken in February and early March, five or six stuck into each one-gallon nursery pot. Today, roughly one hundred days later, I separated [...]
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Tagged: Plants, Propagation
Kale and Green Onions 0
This interplanting has worked well so far this year: Clumps of green onions, three plants in each clump, clumps five inches apart, in rows on either side of a single row of kale. The kale plants, about two feet apart down the centre of the three-foot-wide bed, will easily take up all the space in [...]
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Tagged: Plants
‘Joi Choi’ Pac Choi 1
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Tagged: Plants
Nabai Queen Pac Choi 0
After years of consideration, I finally ordered some seed from Agro Hai Tai this spring. They offer many delightful vegetables whose seeds are very difficult, if not impossible, to acquire elsewhere in Canada. Pictured at right and below is ‘Nabai Queen‘ Pac Choi, planted in a very dense row at the edge of a bed, [...]
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Tagged: Plants
Young Red Cabbages 0
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Tagged: Plants
Young Lettuce Mix 0
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More Miniature Lettuce 0
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Tagged: Plants
Stirfry Clearcut 0
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Tagged: Plants
Ten Bean Teepees 0
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Tagged: Plants
Miniature Lettuce 4
We’re growing a few different miniature lettuce varieties this year. Pictured at right is ‘Tom Thumb’, which apparently dates back to the 1800′s. It is growing adjacent to a row of Sugar Snap peas. I’m excited about cute little lettuces. I’m excited about growing them next to rows of peas, as we’ve had all sorts [...]
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Tagged: Plants
Young Daikon After a Rainstorm 0
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Tagged: Plants
A Chance Variegated Tomato 0
One of our tomato seedlings is variegated. It is a ‘Latah’, our favourite variety, grown from seed produced in isolation from all other tomato varieties here on the farm last summer. I view this variegated specimen as a gift, and will grow it in isolation in a pot on the deck of our yurt. My [...]
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Tagged: Plants
Beets and Peas 0
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Tagged: Plants
Tomato Planting 2
I started planting-out the 2012 tomato crop this afternoon. We’re planning to grow just under a hundred plants in the field this summer. Most of the crop consists of varieties we’ve had repeated success with in the past: Latah, Ropreco, Galina, Sweet 100, Yello and Red Pear. In addition to these, a few new varieties [...]
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Tagged: Plants
A Young Joi Choi 0
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Tagged: Plants
Baby Leaf Salad 0
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Garlic Progress 0
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‘White Star’ Overwintered Broccoli 2
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