Building the Tomato Support

With the hot weather we're currently enjoying, I do my gardening in the cool of the morning and save the afternoons for sewing.  This morning, it was high time to finish the tomato framework.

Since we vegetable garden in concrete raised beds, there is no depth of soil to take stout poles to support the growing tomato plants.  Most tomato cages are simply too small - even the biggest ones - and I was still left with drooping plants and sometimes broken stems where they fell over the wire of a cage.

Then one day I had a brainwave!  Why not build a bamboo framework to support the whole bed.  On its own, a bamboo pole is not much support, but when part of a structure, it gains strength.  And it worked!

Looking down the bed through the structure.

Over the years I've improved on the structure, with this year being no exception.  As I stated in the last post, I put 10 poles in the tomato bed, one for each tomato.  The pairs were topped with curves of plastic water pipe.  This gives a bit more strength to the structure and if need be, I can drape clear plastic over the bed in times of rain.  The main poles were purchased from Lee Valley and are metal coated with plastic so they'll last for years.

Closeup of the lash work

Today I lashed bamboo poles about 2 1/2 feet up the main poles.  Then I lashed more poles diagonally down the structure - that's this year's innovation, which should provide the strength of triangles.  I use hemp string to tie the pieces together.  At the end of the season, it's easy to cut the structure apart and if any string is missed in the cleanup, it will simply rot away.

The finished framework - potting shed in the distance and peppers to the left.

I'll add another section to the framework about another 2 1/2 above this first section if it's necessary - last year I did fine with just one section as all of the tomato plants, like this year, are determinate and don't get too tall.

Sweet Million in a half-barrel

The one tomato not in this bed, a Sweet Million, received my tallest tomato cage and 2 Lee Valley poles to anchor the cage in a half-barrel planter.  I have one more half-barrel planter waiting for a tomato which I hope to buy at jollityFARM tomorrow.

Bonica Rose

And of course, although vegetables are my focus these days, I do have a few flowering plants.  Above is a Bonica Rose.  This rose is in a bed that I'd hoped to grow rhubarb in.  Cedar roots have foiled the plan, but Bonica seems to not mind the intrusion.  Not a scented rose, although literature will tell you that it is lightly scented, nevertheless, it's welcome in my garden because of the profusion of small pink flowers.

Plan 2015

Today it suddenly occurred to me that it might be a good idea to have a plan for the garden.  What a novel idea!

The first step was to go up to the garden, pen and paper in hand, and sketch out a rough plan of the garden.  Most of our beds are concrete and so are permanent installations.  The perennial bed in the centre of the plateau and the asparagus beds are also permanent installations.  Our original wooden beds have just about outlived their purposes and are rotting away.  Two half barrels will also have limited life.  Then there are tire stacks which can be considered transitional as well.

Sketch done, I made a better job of it in the house and scanned the result.  Then out came the seed packages to make sure I have everything accounted for.  And here's the result:

Gardening Plan for 2015

One half of the asparagus bed will be dug up this year as it's nearing the end of its productive life.  These were our first asparagus plants and are about 15 years old.  We'll replace them with new plants and then next year or the year after, do the same to the other side of the asparagus bed.

Beds 10, 11 and 12 will be dismantled after this growing season and at this point we're thinking of replacing them with 3 4x4 concrete beds.  Between 11 and 12 there's the top of a massive rock which prevents us from constructing one long bed.

I've left one 4x4 bed and 2 tire stacks empty at this point as you always forget something.  And in half of the compost bin this year, I'll grow Waltham Butternut Squash.  They should be very happy!

So that's the plan.  We'll see if I actually follow it!

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.

Three Sisters - Year 2, Planting Beans

Today has turned out to be a gorgeous hot day - in spite of the weatherman!  We were forecast to be cooler today and indeed, this morning was breezy and cool, but the wind died down and this afternoon it's lovely and warm.  As we're expecting at least a week of nice weather, time to plant the rest of the beans.

This year, I'm not planting nearly as many beans with the corn.  I have the Italian heritage beans planted in two spots elsewhere, but this year I'm planting Fortex beans in with the corn.  This is a bean I've grown every year except last year.  It produces an abundance of filet beans about 10" long which freeze well.  While the vines are vigorous, the leaves aren't nearly as large as on the Italian heritage beans and since I'm only planting 6 beans per bed, there shouldn't be nearly as much strain on the corn.

The corn germination has been quite disappointing.  As noted earlier in this blog, I usually start the corn in the potting shed and transplant it.  A mouse (or mice) destroyed all my Bodacious seedlings so I've had to plant directly outdoors and then didn't have enough corn seed left to completely plant the beds.  A final row was seeded with Peaches and Cream.  I now have 34 Bodacious plants and 15 Peaches and Cream.  As I'm not saving seeds, there should be no problem growing the two varieties together.

Bean seeds protected with a water bottle collar

To plant the beans, I pulled back the Remay cloth and seeded 6 Fortex beans per bed, 3 on each side.  Four of the seeds were protected with water bottle collars and 2 were planted without.  It's an experiment!  As I pushed each seed into the ground I could feel how hot the soil was - perfect! While planting the seeds, I discovered an extra butternut squash plant.  I had seeded 2 seeds per pot when I started them in the potting shed and once they were up, discarded the weaker one.  I guess a seed was late coming up!  One of the beds has a bare spot at a corner, so - waste not want not - I transplanted the little squash there.

Three Sisters beds with the transplanted squash seedling in the closest bed bottom right

Now the Three Sisters beds are complete.  For now it's just wait and watch.  For the next little while, I'll continue to cover the beds with Remay cloth at night and remove it during the day so that the soil can get nice and warm.  Next year these beds will be dismantled as the wood in these old beds is rotting.  We'll replace them with one big concrete raised bed but this time without a bottom as cedar roots don't seem to have reached this far - yet!

Three Sisters Year 2

Last year, the Three Sisters garden was quite successful and so warranted trying again - with some changes.

This year, I planted the corn in the potting shed as I've done for years now.  As can be seen from earlier posts in this blog, mice have decided I'd given them a banquet!  I therefore had to plant the seeds directly in the garden and after trying twice in the potting shed, didn't have enough Bodacious corn seeds to fill the beds.  Unable to find any of that seed, I planted a row of Peaches and Cream.  It will be a week later than the Bodacious, but this year I'm planting my rows in diamond pattern so hopefully if they tassel out at different times, there won't be much of a problem with pollination.

Remay protection on cool days and at night

The first seeding of corn is up and about 4" high.  I'm covering it at night with Remay cloth and opening it up during the day.

Remay off on sunny days until the weather is reliably warm.

At the same time that I planted the corn, I set out 3 butternut squash plants.  2 of these are at the south ends of the beds and 1 is in the centre.

Bodacious corn seedling

As I said above, the corn is about 4" high now.  When it reaches 6", I'll plant the Fortex beans and protect them with water bottle collars.

So what am I doing differently?

Last year the beans were so lush and heavy that they broke the corn stalks.  This year, I'm growing Fortex beans in the corn.  It's not as big-leafed as the Italian heritage bean which I'm growing elsewhere.  I planted it at the same time as the corn last year, but this year, I'm giving the corn a head start - which I was supposed to in the first place.

Last year, I grew too many squash plants and the ones at the back of the beds didn't do nearly as well as the ones in sunnier spots.  This year,  I'm only growing 3 plants and all are placed in the sunniest spots.  In addition, I didn't seed corn to the end of the beds at the inside where the 2 beds meet.  Hopefully this will give the squash enough room to grow.

I grew zucchini in the tires at the back of the bed last year.  This year, the zucchini is planted in a concrete bed in front of the Italian heritage beans seeded at the bean rack.  I'll plant impatiens in the tires as they like a bit of shade - and we always need flowers in our lives!

Planting Potatoes

I haven't grown potatoes in a number of years and never plan on growing them for storage.  We do love baby potatoes, however - steamed with parsley butter, potato salad, etc. - so this year we decided to use one of our 4x4 concrete raised beds for potatoes.

4x4 Bed Prepared

After the bed was made, the soil which went into it was plain sifted soil from a trench that brought water up to the potting shed and this half-filled the bed.  There was definitely nothing special about that soil!  Last week, I added a wheelbarrow load of Sea Soil, another of compost and about a litre of homemade fertilizer which was worked into the soil.

Chitting Potatoes

Today the weather is sunny and warm so I decided to jump the gun and get the potatoes in.  I'd purchased a small bag of Pacific Russet potatoes and set them in my sewing room to sprout.   This is called chitting.  I traded some of the potatoes with my daughter-in-law for Seiglinde potatoes she'd purchased at a Seedy Saturday and these will go in another small bed once they've sprouted.

Ready for Planting

Two of the Pacific Russet potatoes were cut to portions of at least 3 sprouts and this gave me the 9 I'd need to plant in the bed.

Planted and ready to be covered.

They were planted 6" deep.  Once they break the surface and start growing up, I'll add more soil - or compost or chopped leaves.  New potatoes form between the seed potato and the top of the soil so the more stem length you provide the more potatoes you can expect.

Potatoes planted, there was now time to look for more Spring signs.

Rhubarb thrusting through the leaf mulch

Crocuses opening their faces to the sun

Making a 4 X 4 Concrete Raised Bed - First Try

Many years ago, our dear neighbour, Ken, gave us the forms he'd made up for pouring concrete raised beds.  By the time we'd made 6 beds, the forms had seen their best days, but there was still some life in them so we passed them on to friends.  Ken's ingenious plan used long, thin boards, joined by metal corner pieces and kept in true with metal snap ties which had been cut down for the purpose and joined the inside to the outside.  U-shaped pieces over the tops kept the sides from bowing out when the concrete was poured.  These forms produced beds with an inside measurement of  3.5' wide by 14' long and with 4" thick walls.  Since there are cedar trees nearby, drainage pipes were installed under the sides and then concrete bottoms were poured to keep out the invasive roots.  This is what we've been gardening successfully in ever since.

Ken's concrete raised bed forms

We now have a little more room on the plateau since my husband pulled out the black currant bushes.  We never got enough currants to do much with - the birds were well fed!  The space provided isn't big enough for Ken's forms, but my husband thought there'd be room for a few 4'x4' beds (again, inside measurement).  Since we had quite a bit of fir milled from trees on our own property that now had powder post beetle in it, he used this wood to make the forms.  It's not good for anything else but firewood now!

Forms ready for filling

The pour went well - we used 5 wheelbarrow loads to fill the sides.  Since the lumber used was 2x6 and the sides 4' long, we didn't need all the strengthening material in the sides.  The bottom would be poured later.

Almost filled

The problem arose when my husband went to take off the forms.  We'd had lots of rain on the forms after the pour and the wood swelled.  The outside boards came off easily - the inside ones not so much! A few chips resulted from the effort of prying loose the inside boards.

Forms off - just the bottom to pour

My husband plans to make different forms for his next attempt and will use 3/4" plywood for the sides this time joined by metal L-brackets.  When we pour the next bed, we'll finish the bottom of the first one.  We're hoping to be able to fit in 4 of these new beds.  We also plan on making a portable cold frame top that we can move from bed to bed.  This will help extend our growing season.