Bountiful, Beautiful

On Sunday we lucked out in the weather, and got half hour between storm cells to check up on the garden and hopefully harvest our first large crop of vegetables.

We had not been able to go to the garden for two weeks, and thus Doreen had solely been caring for the garden with lots of TLC; daily watering (when it was actually sunny), weeding, and keeping a close eye on slugs. She noted that our copper mesh surround we installed seemed to be keeping them out, so now our battle was with those remaining on the inside of the plot perimeter. More beer traps were maintained and some more mesh were put up around new tender plant sprouts, such as the beans and zucchini. Unfortunately, the beans were too far gone to save :( Doreen will sow some new seeds this round, let's keep our fingers crossed!

June 2ndJune 24

We were surprised to see how well all the items came out... well, minus the beans that is, they didn't survive the slug attacks. 25 min into our harvesting, we heard thunder rumbling closer and closer, thus we knew we had to get out quick. We rushed to fertilize, and wash up our harvest and got out just as it rained 'cats and dogs'. phew!

La Dolce Vita Garden: 1st major harvest slideshow on Flickr

SLUGS

The evil antagonist of our garden!!! SLUGGIE mwaaahh hahahahaha


Doreen had emailed us to let us know that she had to empty out a lot of the slug traps we've had set up with yummy Sleeman's ale. The were full of drunken and drowned slugs.. which I'm sure died a happy death or we'd like to think that.

So this evening after dinner, Jason and I decided to go out there and go water the garden and thin out the remaining plants that we did not get around to last week. When we got there, it was just before the mosquito hour, and holy moly, were there A LOT of SLUGS!!!!! We went round and round picking them off of marigold plants/flowers and ones trying to make their way into the retained plots. Luckily, they liked the marigold more than the plants! So the marigolds give them selflessly in our mission to grow vegetables, thank goodness for them.

Within 20 minutes, all the grass gnats came out, and it was hard to weed and thin and not breathe in a bug or two... gross! And in reaction to all the gnats, the spiders came out too, to get their meals. I was a bit icked out I have to admit, but I survived and managed to thin out the rest of our beets and re-translplanted our extra swiss chards into the Rhubarb section, as it remains unused for the time being.

Ok. To help save time, the below is a brief photo listing of what's growing and going on... oh, and our dill herb is growing strong too, but I forgot to take pictures of it.

Radishes!! 2 weeks old plant! I think by next week, we'll be eating some of our own produce :-)


Kale


Itty bitty Carrot plants taking a stronger hold, and fighting off the wild grass and weeds.


Daisies that grew on it's own outside of our retaining walls. First photo is from 1.5 weeks ago, and the second from this evening, in full bloom. The plant itself gained about 1/2 foot in height as well.


Ruby Red Beets, doing well.. minus the slug bites. We thinned these out today to promote healthy growth.


Ruby Swiss Chard doing very well after last weeks thinning.


Pole Beans fighting hard to do well against slug bites. These are only about 10-12 days old!

Phases of growth

Swiss Chard

weeks two, three and a half, and then at five weeks.

More weeding and Thinning...

Here's a photo of some lovely bush flower out by the gravel entrance/parking area of the community garden.


It was a beautiful day, and I had bought some pepper plants that needed to be transplanted to our garden. There are two banana peppers and one Caribbean hot pepper (the picture on the tags really looked like scotch bonnet peppers, we shall see). I've got them slotted in between the bean poles, to make use of every nook and cranny we have left.


We sowed the zucchini seeds today as well. They had to be sowed into dirt mounds that were 2 foot apart. We planted for 6 plants, which we are hoping that 4 will take strong hold - this will provide plenty of zucchinis for us.


We also transplanted 4 tomoto plants at 3.5 weeks old to see if they will take hold. The seeds were incredibaly profuse in germinating, and of the 48 seeds sowed indoors, about 45 grew! So needless to say, we have A LOT of tomotoe plants. We'll be giving some away to friends with veggie gardens too. Our tomato plant is the Tiny Tim cherry tomato variety.


Jason giving the plants and flowers a good soaking with our newly purchased water sprayer head... sure makes it easier than trying to use our fingers or thumb to create some sort of assymetrical mist.

Today we also had to thin out the Swiss chard plantlings to 4-6" apart. It felt odd to pull out healthy looking seedlings, but it had to be done, otherwise they will fight for nutrients and space, and we wouldn't get very large vegetables in the end.

Weeding in the rain

It was a drizzly and wet day today. We weren't sure if we had waned to stay, but since we were there and the plots really need some weeding, we did stay for about 2 hours. By the end of that, we were ready for a nice hot shower to warm ourselves up.

Some of the seedlings were hard to distinguish from the weedlings. Plants that did sprout up by this point: Carrots, Dill, Kale, Beets, Swiss Chard (green and Ruby variaties) and radishes.


Radish seedlings in the foreground.



Swiss Chards with their baby leaves. As you can see, the seeds get planted close to buffer the possibility of failed seeds.



This is a baby Radish plant. The seeds were only planted 6 days before this photo. In two weeks we should be able to see the radish bulb itself, and a week after that, harvest time!!



Our green poles with freshly planted pole beans. We've planted green beans and yellow wax beans. Can't wait to see these grow up the poles!



Green and Ruby Swiss Chards, and Marigolds to help keep insects at bay. Unfortunately, it seems that slugs like to eat Marigolds, and in this area of the garden, as we are right by the waterway, there are way too many slugs! At least the slugs are eating the flowers :) and not the seedlings.

Butterfly Lavender

A beautiful and warm Sunday, and beautiful sakura blossoms bloom at the entrance of the community gardens.



We had bought a couple of Butterfly Lavender plants for our garden, in hopes to attract butterfly, and reap the rewards of the lovely fragrant flower heads... Here Jason plants the two of them into our garden.


With such wonderful weather, we stayed out to weed the plots and water where needed. The snow geese still were in the area, giving us some audio entertainment.

Indoor Sowing - Germinate little seeds!!

Due to some of the seeds being more delicate and needing the extra help, we sowed some seeds indoor, using a starter kit. It contains the planting container, drain pan, and dome. This helps to keep the seedlings/dirt moist and warm.



It was exciting to see the seeds germinate, and tiny little green bits peeking out of the dirt. Here are the tomato seedlings, like mini palms, at approximately 1.5 weeks.



Tomato plants at 5 weeks old, pretty much ready for the outdoors now. We tried to transplant them at 3.5 weeks, and they didn't really make it, 2 out of four parished, the other two were struggling and slugs got at them too. Now there is a semi-alive stump of one left. We will replant with these stronger and older plants next week.



Here are the leeks we sowed indoors. They were supposed to germinate at 10-12 days, but it actually took double that, and out of 24 pots, only 11 sprouted, and so far 10 are surviving. They are literally like thin wisps of long grass, fragile as can be. We will try to transplant them next week, keep your fingers crossed!!

Cultivate, Cultivate, Cultivate!!

We managed to get out today to finish up the soil preparations, as well as do some seed plantings. Between last weekend and this weekend, we've added bags of top soil (sea soil), as well as earthworm castings compost,and peat moss. This helped to raise the planting beds a couple of inches, which will help keep the plants' roots nice and warm, and well drained.

Here you can see the half way point of the cultivating process at the back bed/sub plot. I used a spade fork to turn the soil a good 8-10 inches deep, then breaking the unearthed soil clumps with the cultivator/hoe, and picking out the rocks, clay clumps (there were many) and get rid of any remaining hidden weeds and bad bugs or worms.


Here's a shot of some of the clay clumps we removed.


Then another one of us would rake the soil, to further remove clay clumps and debris, and finally smooth and even out the top surface, ready for planting.


Today we sowed Carrots, Dill, Basil, Beets, Parsley, Kale, Garlic Chives and Swiss Chard.

For where we were planting the carrots, we had to sift the top soil, as carrot seedlings are delicate and have a hard time breaking ground. This will improve their chances of surviving and growing strong and healthy!


Here you can see towards the top of the image, the sifted soil, what a difference!


After the planting of all the seeds that needed to planted in this round for April, Jason waters the beds, giving them a good long drink.



Some seeds only take 6-8 days to germinate, so we should probably see some little seedlings sprouts this weekend!! We'll keep you posted.

Weeding, Planning, and Honks!!

Today we were at the garden to finish weeding, and in the process we also had to remove the retaining wood planks to get at all the weeds invading the planting beds. This actually worked out great, as we had to reconfigure and re-peg some of the planks, to make better access to some of the beds/subplots.

It was a bit chilly with gusts of winds, but this had brought out the bald eagles, soaring high above, as well as ruffle up snow geese every so often(200 or so geese) to take feeding shelter right next to the community garden to munch on grass. I managed to walk about 20ft away from them to watch them watch me and go back to the eating frenzy, it was pretty cool.

The beginings of La Dolce Vita - a Harvest Garden...

We finally got hold of our community Garden Plot, and luckily Doreen was able to get out there first and do some of the weeding - the two front subplots have been weeded in the photo. As you can see weeds do take over quick, as do stray older vegetable plants! The tall plants you see towards the back in one of the smaller sub plots is a type of Kale, which we were lucky enough to get some of the still tender buds and leaves to try one meal of it.



The soil had a lot of heavy clay in it, 4" below the top soil, as well as clumps hard and thick as rubber within the top soil. Must have gotten some top soil from some developement site in the past, instead of nice fertile well draining soil. We've got our work cut out for us! Weed, semi-cultivate the soil, add top soil and compost, then deep cultivate...