kalegrower

I haven’t spent any time in the garden in the last month except to empty the compost into the bin and to pick kale and swiss chard. Today was fabulously sunny so I decided to go out and do a few tasks that I have been meaning to do for the last month: rake leaves from under the shrubs, rake the larch needles and weed. A change of plans was required as the leaves, needles and weeds were all frozen onto the ground, so instead I cut back some of the ornamental grasses and the plants that had been flattened by the snow, and removed the display of “festive greenery” on my front porch.

I also checked off another box on the “to do” list: fertilize! The rhododendrons, azaleas, the apple tree and the raspberries were fertilized with the appropriate fertilizers. Most of the fertilizer is sitting on top of the frozen soil but will dissolve and soak into the soil once it warms up and rains again. I also spread dolomite lime under the raspberries and spread lime in the garden boxes. When it comes to fertilizers, I really don’t feel like I know what I am doing,  so after some very superficial internet research here is some basic information about some of the soil amendment agents that I used.

Dolomite Lime: Dolomite lime consists of magnesium phosphate and calcium phosphate, and can be used to raise soil pH to counteract the acidity from coastal rains and from fertilizing with manure (both of which lower the pH).  West Coast Seeds recommends liming at last three weeks prior to planting, at least once every three years. Some websites argue advise against liming in the same year that you fertilize (whoops…good to know).

Bone meal: This slow-release fertilizer is primarily a source of phosphorus, with a nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium ratio of about 4-12-0. It is also a source of calcium. I ended up using a lot of it in the fall with bulbs. According to Wikipedia, it is a mixture of ground animal bones and slaughter-house waste products (nice!).

Fruit tree and berry food: The product that I used was from Evergro and has a nitrogen-phosphorus-potash ratio of 4-20-20. The box says that nitrogen is necessary for photosynthesis (leaves), the phosphorus is necessary for root development and to set fruit and buds for blossoms, and the potash is required for disease resistance, winter heartiness, and hastens the maturing process of the seeds and fruits and improves their quality. The fertilizer also contains other stuff like sulphur, magnesium, calcium, zinc, boron and copper.

Rhododendron and Azalea food: Also from Evergro, the product has a nitrogen-phosphorus-potash ratio of 10-8-12, and is ideal for acid loving plants like rhodos and azaleas. Fortunately, I didn’t lime any of these ones. This product also contains lots of other things like magnesium, boron, copper, iron, manganese, zinc and molybdenum. I feel like I am reading the side of a vitamin package – it all sounds good, but I don’t really know what it means.

What I also learned from reading the packages (which I should have read more carefully before going into the garden) is that the fertilizer shouldn’t be sprinkled around the stem of the plants but applied in a circle 30 cm from the stem of rhodos and 10 cm from raspberries. Learn from mistakes is going to be the theme of my garden efforts again this year, obviously.

College Highroad, December 19

Yesterday it snowed heavily and Vancouver traffic was the usual nightmare. Even though I don’t have to commute (and I am annoyingly smug about that), I find the snow distressing because of the damage it always does.

After meeting a friend for lunch, I returned to campus by bus. After making it up the big hill, the bus got stuck on the flat part of upper West 10th pulling away from the curb. The driver made us all move to the back of the bus to increase traction and then managed to escape the snow rut. As we crawled along University Boulevard I noticed the piles of broken branches under each of the trees.

This picture was taken just before turning on to my street. The snow was very heavy and wet and I could hear branches snapping. One of the lauryls was bent over (and will have to be cut off),  the Kousa in the front was split in two, and many of the lovely little evergreens in the back and the cedars on the side were bent over from the snow. I am going to wait until after Christmas to call the arborist to see what he can do.

In the meantime, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and all the best for 2013!

After a few early Christmas baking failures, I’ve decided to take a break and put my seeds in order and think about what I need to do differently next year in the garden. With the exception of fava bean extravaganza and the bumper crop of apples, this last year was a little disappointing. Even my kale didn’t grow as well as I expected. However, this may just be a matter of my expectations being too huge, because we did get lots of tasty vegetables, especially zucchini, cucumbers and lettuce.

For the last two years I followed a four-year rotation planting plan which groups vegetables by nutritional requirements. The vegetables are specifically planted in a different part of the garden each year; not only do they get the most benefit from the current soil conditions, but they optimally condition the soil for the set of vegetables that are planted there next. Over the four year course, the soil is renewed.

How this works in real life (if you garden like me) is that you end up having huge empty spaces left in certain beds, which get impulsively planted with something that is not part of the “plan” and then there isn’t space to plant what needs to be planted next.

This year the plan is to take a more temporal approach and plant things in the spring, to be replaced by summer crops and then winter crops. Surely, it can’t be worse than what happened this year. When I figure out what this looks like, I will post it here…wish me luck.

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Today I need to cut the dried hydrangeas off, so that they don’t break in the snow. I removed about 25% of the old wood earlier in the fall, so don’t want any of the remaining branches to snap off. I am also going to start liming the vegetable beds and fertilizing the big hydrangeas.

Heirloom Seed Cards from Vickis Veggies and my friend Madame Z.

My good friend, “Madame Z”, is counting down the days to the Mayan Apocalypse on December 21st, by Facebooking suggestions for how to spend each of these last days. I know that Madame Z is not at all serious about the Apocalypse because she recently gave me a fabulous gift: two Heirloom Seed Cards that she picked up at Tomato Festival in Ontario earlier in the fall.

The seed cards are from Vicki’s Veggies in Milford, Ontario, and each contain four different varieties of heirloom tomato seeds including: Red Current, Sarah Goldstar, Cheesmanni (two packs of those), White Currant Cherry Tomato, Tigrella, Una Hartsock, and Odd Shape (pink). Madame Z asked me to give her a few plants of each variety in the spring, so am already planning my tomato growing strategy.

By coincidence, the day after I received the seeds I read an excellent blog post about “Grow So Easy Organic: How to start, raise and grow tomatoes“. I subscribe to this blog, and I find that it is always a great source of gardening information and inspiration. In particular, I found Pat’s advice about planting the tomatoes up to the first set of leaves, pinching off the first flowers, and fertilizing with Epsom salts to be particularly helpful. (Click on the link above to read her blog post).

When I first sat down to write this post, one of my favorite clients called to ask me if I had time to edit a document. I said “Yes, I am just writing about tomatoes, but can put that aside for now”.  Unbeknownst to me, my client is one of the great Western Canada tomato growers and like all great tomatoes, he has Italian roots. He offered some additional good advice:

• He recommends growing tomatoes from seeds to maintain the variety. He grew two different Italian varieties from seeds this year, one variety from his mom and the other from his mother-in-law.
• It takes an extra 30 days for seeds to grow in Vancouver weather, unless you have a green house or covered garden area to work with. Next year he is going to plant his seeds in April with a cover.
• Use mushroom manure every year or two years to ensure great blooms and fruit.

Okay, I need to stop dreaming about my next fabulous crop of tomatoes, and get back to work. Thanks to Madame Z for the seeds and to Pat from Grow So Easy Organic and my client, Mr. Italian Tomato for all the great advice!