Butternut Squash in the Compost Bin

About 5 years ago I had an extra tomato plant and nowhere to put it.  I finally decided to try it in one side of my compost bin.  I was astounded with how huge it got and how productive it was.  I've grown something in the compost bin every year since.  The last 2 years I tried cantaloupe which was marginally successful.  The vines were delicate and I had quite a battle with wood bugs.  This year I've decided to plant a couple of butternut squash plants.

I started the seeds a month ago from the last 3 seeds in my Waltham Butternut Squash package.  I hadn't realized I had so few seeds.  Fortunately 2 of the seeds sprouted, and I decided that today was the day to plant them.

One side of the bin had finished compost in it.  There were some self-seeded plants growing which had to be pulled out first.  Luckily for us, there were several potato plants which yielded tiny baby potatoes - and we enjoyed them with our dinner tonight!  The compost was surprisingly dry.  We have had quite a warm, dry spring, but I had no idea that it was that dry.  A thorough watering moistened the soil.

Waltham Butternut Squash

I dug 2 big holes, watered them well, then backfilled so that the soil around the plants would be thoroughly moistened.  The plants were popped in, protected with water bottle sleeves and container soil was added around them for weed suppression.  And another thorough watering.  Another day I'll mulch the compost with shredded maple leaves.

May is an amazing month for flowers.  The rhododendrons are mostly finished by the end of the month, but the the peonies and bursting into bloom.  Above is a closeup of Bowl of Beauty, which certainly lives up to its name.  Having grown bomb varieties for so many years and endured the staking required to protect them from the rain, I now really appreciate varieties like Bowl of Beauty which look gorgeous and are not as labour-intensive.

The Winter Bed

This has been an awkward year for the garden.  Just when it was starting to kick into high gear, life got in the way.  What with one thing or another, there just hasn't been the time to devote to the garden.  And this year, the name Messy Gardener really applies!  The vegetable beds have not been weeded properly and I haven't been able to take full advantage of the produce.

Today, however, it was time to start thinking ahead.  Time to get the winter garden in gear!  The bed that had the onions has been designated as the winter bed.  After the onions were harvested, I turned over the bed - and discovered that the cedar trees around my garden have managed not only to find a way in, but have widened those cracks and taken full advantage of the lovely soil in the bed!  It took a lot of hard work to cut the roots away and pull them from the soil, but it was finally done.  The combination of a very dry summer and cedar roots had left the soil very dry, so I've been watering this bed to prepare it for the plants to I'd planned to install in it.  A lazy woman's purchase 6 Red Russian Kale and 6 Red Sails Lettuce were bedded in as well as multiplier onions from this year's crop.

Kale and lettuce plants for winter use

This bed was also designated for garlic.  I went in with my daughter to buy fresh garlic bulbs to augment three of the best bulbs from this year's harvest.  First the soil was prepared - a good litre of my homemade fertilizer was worked into the soil.  Then the cloves were planted with the new varieties - Spanish Roja, Leningrad and Czech - being labeled for future reference.  There are now 52 potential garlic bulbs nestled down in the soil.  Then the whole bed was mulched with what is left of the SeaSoil and watered well.

Bright Lights Swiss Chard

In spite of my neglect, a number of things are doing well.  This has been a good year for the Swiss Chard.  From only about a dozen Bright Lights and Silverado, we've had lots of meals and it should do well through the winter as well.

Cantaloupe

There's one enormous cantaloupe and a number of smaller ones.  I won't be growing them again, but we'll enjoy what we have for this year.  I'm not sure what I'll grow in the compost bin next year - perhaps squash.  The Waltham Butternut has been excellent this year and if it gets the benefit of a compost bin next year, it should be even better.

Liberty Apple

Now that we're in September, the apples are coming ripe.  Our favourite has always been the little Liberty tree.  Beautiful crisp, tart little apples with brilliant red skins.  This tree was originally nearer the house.  Overshadowed by big trees and well nibbled by deer, when my husband suggested moving it, I didn't give it much hope.  It's thrived, however, and every year is so loaded with apples that the branches touch the ground, even after rigorous thinning in the spring.

And finally, on the flower side, the autumn crocuses are in full bloom.  They are always such a surprise!

I'm hoping that next year's garden with be able to benefit from more care than this year's garden got.  And with gardening it's always, "Next year, I plan to......"  With a garden, there's alway hope.

The Dog Days of Summer

Our weather pattern in the Pacific Northwest seems to bring us hot dry summers and this has been definitely one of them.  The water level in the irrigation pond has dropped alarmingly, but there still seems to be enough water for the garden.  Nothing is particularly pretty right now.  Plants are getting tired and many are reaching their maturity.  The tomatoes have stopped flowering in the heat and are concentrating their resources for the fruit that is already there.  Onions and garlic are finished - plants pulled up and the bulbs are drying for winter storage.

The one plant family that is thriving in the heat right now is squash.  The leaves do wilt in the heat of the day, but I can't believe how many butternut squash are hiding under the leaves.  It looks like a bumper crop!

Two butternut squashes hiding in the cotoneaster

The vines have snaked their way all over the garden - even down the hillside to the pond where I located at least 3 nice-sized fruits trying to hide in the cotoneaster that cloaks the bank!

Waltham Butternut Squash

All are a good size and I can see that we won't be able to cope with them all - the family will have to help out!

Cantaloupe

Even the cantaloupe in the compost bin is doing well.  I'd given up on it as I hadn't seen any fruit forming, but a careful check today amongst the leaves has disclosed at least 5.  This year I plan to keep a watchful eye on the cantaloupe as last year, afraid to pick too soon, they were almost overripe when I finally summoned the courage to pull the fruit.

Every year when the end of August rolls around, I find myself longing for the cooler days of fall.  By then the need for watering will have eased and it will almost be time to start again - planting the garlic!

Things are exploding!

We are in the middle of a little heat wave.  People in regions that are used to hot summers will laugh but 32C is pretty hot here on the coast!  The garden, however, is loving it.  I'm out there watering twice a day just to make sure that everything is happy.  This year I've abandoned my watering systems in favour of hand watering.  Now that I have more time to devote to the garden, it makes sense to pay more attention to what actually needs the water.  Early in the morning when the garden is still in the shade seems to be the best time with a selective top-up in the evening.

Copra Onions

I think these must be the best onions we've ever grown.  It's only the first part of July and already they're bulking up nicely with no sign of slowing down.  This bed had tomatoes in it last year, received lots of SeaSoil and had a good dusting of homemade fertilizer before the seedlings were transplanted.  We only lost 2 seedlings and none of the plants show signs of going to seed, which is the result of a cool, wet spring. So far this year, we've been fortunate.

Corn and beans!

The Three Sisters Garden is a veritable jungle!  There are only 4 squash plants in the beds this year and all are positioned to sprawl out of the bed - which they are definitely doing.  I see lots of little Waltham Butternut Squash forming.  The Fortex Beans are scrambling up the corn stalks and they're a much better choice than the Italian heritage beans, having smaller leaves.  Hopefully they won't break the corn stalks.  The Italian heritage beans are starting to form flowers, so it won't be long now before we can have beans for supper!

Sweet Millions

The tomatoes are also very happy with the heat.  Sweet Millions has fruit starting to change colour.

Classica Tomato

All of the tomatoes have heavy crops and I can see some busy times ahead processing the bounty.  Both Classica and Health Kick have lots of tomatoes and while both are bush varieties, Classica seems to be a bit more compact and the fruit are more elongated.

Cantaloupe

I placed a piece of fencing behind the cantaloupe which is growing in the compost bin.  This way, the vines will climb up the fencing and the fruit will be much easier to find and keep clean.  Here, too, small fuzzy balls are starting to take shape.

I pulled out the snow peas yesterday and we carefully removed the zig zag fence so as not to damage the sunflowers.  Several were staked as I'm not sure how stable they will be now that the fence has been removed.  Then I transplanted 2 of the peppers to this bed and today seeded kale for a fall crop.  If the wood bugs leave the seedlings alone, I'll transplant them to the small bed that had Seiglinde Potatoes in it.  When the garlic has been pulled - in a week or so - I'll plant a fall crop of snow peas in their place.

I may not enjoy the hot, hot days, but the garden certainly does!

It's All About The Food

I have to start with a small back-story.  Many, many years ago I attended a friend's "kitchen-themed" shower.  I’d spent a lot of time over my present, picking out a collection of things I knew a new housewife would need – seasonings, baking powder, baking soda – things in that vein.  When she opened my present, the bride-to-be glanced at me with a smile on her face and said fondly, “Ah, practical Pat!”  At the time I was a bit insulted, but now I know that’s exactly me.

Concrete raised beds can grow a lot of food

When we first bought this property and started landscaping the grounds, it was esthetics I was concerned about.  My husband and I were both working and with the travelling time, there wasn’t much left for gardening.  I planted perennials and shrubbery.  Eventually we began thinking more about providing some of our own food and quickly learned that our rocky property wasn’t ideal for vegetable gardening.  Concrete raised beds became our way to get around the negatives of our property and the multitude of cedar trees in the forests surrounding us.  Lots of information on how we built these beds can be found on this blog. 

Some of our own potatoes - German Butter and Pacific Russet

As time has gone by, growing our own food has become the focus of our gardening.  We are fortunate to have access to lots of irrigation water – an extremely precious commodity on the Gulf Islands – but it has made clearer where our priorities lie.  Landscaping has shrunk to what shrubbery can survive without watering.  The majority of our efforts have gone into practicality – what we can eat.

Today’s climate situation has made that even more important.  British Columbia, Canada has come to rely too much on other areas of the continent to provide our food.  Now that those areas are experiencing weather hardships – drought, unseasonable cold, unseasonable hot and floods – it’s more than ever vital that we get back to supporting ourselves.  Unfortunately, a lot of extremely valuable farmland has been turned into housing and has now vanished.  At one time, British Columbians produced the vast majority of what they needed.  Now only a tiny portion comes from home with the rest being imported from the United States.  How are we ever to get back to being self-supporting?

Lettuces and swiss chard not only taste good - they look good, too!

We think it’s important to take on some of this burden ourselves.  We need to either grow our own if possible, or support those locally who can.  On our little island, a excellent little market garden, jollity FARMS,  has been created in the last few years.  Right now they are selling subscribed boxes to locals and the excess produce at the farm a couple of days a week.  They not only sell vegetables, they also sell bread and meat that they produce as well.  If we weren’t growing our own, I would definitely be subscribing!

So how can we help ourselves? 

A cascade of Sweet Million cherry tomtoes

Start by growing what is most useful to you.  Do you eat a lot of salads?  Lettuces and green onions take up very little space and look attractive.  A small investment yields a big return.

Herbs in pots on the deck

Use up every little space.  Pots on a deck can grow vegetables and herbs.  These days, plants are developed especially for container gardening.  Tomatoes are even grown in hanging baskets! A friend sent me a picture of a square planter that had a colourful variety of lettuces in it.  Very pretty and very practical!

A variety of pepper plants

Grow what works for you.  Can’t grow spinach?  Wood bugs eat mine as soon as a seedling pokes its head out of the ground.  Try swiss chard instead.  Or start the seedlings elsewhere and transplant as soon as they can withstand the bug onslaught.

Cantaloupe!

Think outside the box.  A friend found some large rope-handled plastic tubs on sale for a terrific price.  She drilled holes in the bottom and is growing a wonderful crop of potatoes in them.  We turn half of our 2-bin compost box over to something each year.  This year it’s cantaloupe again, and we’ve used it for tomatoes and squash in the past.

Copra onions take up one full raised bed

Think about winter storage.  We grow our full year’s worth of onions in one raised bed.  Same for garlic.  Some crops can be left in the ground and harvested as you need them.  I leave my leeks out and use them until spring.  Other friends leave potatoes and carrots in the ground – which you can in our mild climate.  I imagine they probably stay in much better condition that way.  Perhaps a mulch on top would help, too.

This year's Three Sisters Garden

Remember to put back what you take out.  Intensive gardening can be hard on the soil.  You need good quality compost and organic fertilizer of some sort to replenish the nutrition.  This year I’m also applying a liquid fish fertilizer to my crops and have already noticed a difference.  My Three Sisters Garden also fulfills this as the beans put nitrogen back into the soil.  The vegetation gets chopped up and composted at the end of the season.  We also collect leaves in the fall, which are run through our shredder and then used as mulch.

I apologize for the long lecture, but this subject is very important to me.  We need to rely less on others to feed ourselves.  If we don’t, the end results could be catastrophic.

Cantaloupe!

I had originally been going to post about disappointments in the garden and cantaloupe was going to be the star of the post.  I'd Googled "cantaloupe+harvest" to see how you tell when they were ripe.  Apparently the stem starts to separate from the fruit - much as a cake will start to separate from the pan when it's baked - but I hadn't seen any of that on my cantaloupes.  I did pick one when I started to see a little bit of yellow on the netted skins - but it was only partially ripe and totally tasteless.

Then I noticed that one was starting to rot, so a few days ago, I picked the last 2 cantaloupes and brought them in the house.  I'd been going to chuck them, but decided to cut them open first.  Surprise! Beautiful, deep orange inside - and deliciously sweet!

Okay, maybe I will grow them again next year - with some changes.  I'll start them a bit earlier and coddle them in the potting shed longer.  When I plant them out - again in the compost bin - I'll protect the tender stems with water bottle collars.  The damage that wood bugs did to the stems this year probably set the plants back quite a bit.  And I might grow 3 plants instead of the 2 that I grew this year.

This year's crop was certainly pretty meagre when you consider the time and effort that went into producing 2 small fruits, but they weren't taking up room in the garden, so perhaps they're worth another try.

Three Sisters - Judgement Day

Although it's been a lovely warm September day, fall is in the air.  The corn is long finished and the beans have all but stopped producing.  Squash vines are dying while the fruit on them is ripening in the sun.  It's time to take a good hard look at how the Three Sisters garden worked out this year and to decide on what changes should take place if I decide to repeat the experiment next year.

Today I took apart one of the beds, all except for a butternut squash which was still growing in the bed.  I was careful not to uproot the cornstalks around it; I just cut them down.  Everything else, irrigation line included, has been removed from that particular bed.  Two very large wheelbarrow loads were removed to one side of the compost bin.

I think that overall, the experiment was successful.  There are definitely things which need tweaking, however.

The corn component worked out very well.  With the strength of the bean vines, it withstood the wind and wasn't blown over as corn has been every year in my garden.  We certainly enjoyed feasts of fresh corn from our garden!

Beans set aside for seed ripening in the sun

The beans were immensely successful - in fact much too successful.  They broke down the cornstalks, luckily after the corn had been mostly harvested.  We had enormous harvests of beans and were very pleased with the quality.  When I took apart one of the beds, however,  I discovered masses of beans which had been hidden in the jungle.

Spaghetti squash

The squash component has been the least successful.  Those plants which were placed directly in the beds with the corn and beans were definitely over-shadowed and didn't produce much.  The spaghetti squash which was planted in the bed between the two corn/bean/squash beds fared much better and there are lots of squashes ripening from this one plant.

Will I do another Three Sisters garden next year?  I think so.  We have plans to replace the old wooden beds with something more durable.  What will I do differently next year?

As I did this last spring, I'll start the corn in the potting shed and plant it out when the night temperatures are about 10 C.

When the corn is about 6" tall, I'll plant the beans outside protected by water bottle collars so that the timing is better and the corn has a chance to make some height before the beans start scrambling up the stalks.  And instead of the 16 plants I grew this year, it'll be more like 8.  I think I might grow more bean plants separately so I can keep better control over the production.

The squash is a puzzle, though.  I'm not sure how I can grow good squash plants in my restricted raised bed situation and next year it might be a Two Sisters garden!  The squash might be planted in one of the new 4x4 beds so that I can ensure that it gets the proper care.

And on a squash note, the cantaloupe is starting to ripen in one side of the compost bin.  I got 6 cantaloupes from the 2 plants.  And here, as well, I have plans to grow cantaloupe again next year, but with changes.  I'll grow the plants in the potting shed for longer and I'll put a water bottle collar in place while they're still tiny.  The wood bugs had quite a feast on the young stems before I protected them this year.  I'm sure it set them back more than a bit.

All in all, the Three Sisters garden was successful.  With minor changes, I'm sure it'll be even more successful next year.

Cantaloupe and Onions

Sounds like an odd combination, doesn't it?  However, those are the crops that capture my interest today.

Cantaloupe vines climbing the walls of the compost bin

I seeded Tirreno Cantaloupe this past spring, gave away 1 and planted out 2 in the compost bin.  They got off to a slow start because resident wood bugs in the bin were feasting on the stems.  I protected the plants with water bottle collars and they eventually thrived.

They spill out the front as well!

Now they are busy escaping the compost bin - spilling out the front and climbing up the walls.  And there are nice little cantaloupes forming.

Tirreno Cantaloupe

Little football-shaped fruits are hiding under the leaves.  I've counted at least 4 so far and there are probably more.  They are quite toasty in the compost bin as they're protected from breezes there, but get very hot and droopy in the afternoon.  I hose them down to help out a bit, but so far this doesn't seem to be affecting the fruit production.  I'll have to do some research now to find out when they're actually ripe as I've never grown cantaloupe before.

Copra Onions curing in the sun

It's been an excellent year for onions.  Only one plant went to seed as opposed to last year when over half of the plants did it.  Last week, most of the plants had drooped to the ground, signalling that it was just about time to harvest.  I pushed the rest of them down and today I pulled them up.  They look to be in excellent shape and have good size.  They'll cure in the sun for a couple of days (unlike garlic which needs shade while it cures) and then I'll move them into the potting shed until all the roots and leaves are dry.  We store our onions in a vented bin cabinet that my husband made just for the purpose.  Copra is a great onion for storing and lasts well into the spring maintaining excellent quality.  This year I think I only had to buy a couple of onions!

Mid-July Update

Well, maybe it's a little bit past that, but so many things are happening that it's time to record the progress.

In the Three Sisters garden, there's a lot of progress.  Beans are running wild!  If fact they've broken the tops of a lot of corn plants and are reaching desperately for more support.  Thank goodness most of the corn has been pollinated and is developing well.

The beans themselves are quite attractive with purple blotching on the skin.  This might make them difficult to find hidden amongst the thick foliage of corn and beans.  These are a heritage Italian bean - name unknown.  They are delicious and I hope they freeze well.

Most of the cobs on the corn are swelling.  A few have silk that is starting to dry up so it might not be long before we have to start the water boiling!

And as for the squash, I have no idea what on earth I will do with all of them.  The spaghetti squash, in particular, is going to have a lot for me to deal with.  It has vines snaking out all over the place, each one with at least 3 squash fruit to it.

The tomatoes are starting to ripen.  Little Gold Nugget is always the first to ripen although we have eaten a couple of Sweet Baby Girl.  Because these two cherries are so tasty, productive and early, I will probably always have at least one of these in the garden.

Beth's Big Fat Tomato is setting fruit now.  When I was pruning, I inadvertently snipped off a fruit truss!  Fortunately, there are many more to take its place.

Some of the onions are starting to fall over.  This signals that they are approaching harvest time.  Only a few of them are at this stage, though, so we should get some good size from the crop.  So far (touch wood) I've only found one that has gone to seed.  Our spring was warmer this year than last when over half the onions went to seed.

One of the crops I'm most excited about is the cantaloupe.  I'm growing 2 plants in one side of the compost bin as it worked really well for tomatoes one year and crookneck squash another.  At first I was afraid the delicate little plants wouldn't last as wood bugs were munching at the stems but I put a clear plastic water bottle collar on each plant and they are now thriving.

Tiny little cantaloupes are now forming and given the richness of their home added to the protection and heat they're receiving I'm hopeful that we'll get some cantaloupe to eat.

All in all, I'm pleased with the way the garden is developing.  Only the garlic is smaller than I'd hoped for, but then it didn't get any of the SeaSoil.  Everything else is thriving.  So far - best garden ever.