Square Foot, Raised bed organic gardening

Maple syrup season is over.  We got more than ever this year, maybe a gallon or so.  Enough to freeze a bit for later anyway.  We’ll get into that this winter, over some ice cream.

So we’ve got our square foot garden in again.  Once again, we took our compost heap for the year and I shovelled it into the middle of the raised garden.  Cover it with dirt, and it’ll be perfect black by next year at which point I’ll repeat the process.

My spouse gave us some marching orders this year – no vines or climbing plants. So no cuke’s in the garden this year.  We ended up with 3 types of lettuce (romaine, leaf, and  a mixed blend), spinach, beets, carrots, onions, radishes, beans and peas and….wait for it…..peanuts.  Now I’m no Jimmy Carter peanut farmer, but Junior saw the seeds in the store and decided to try it.  As I’ve maintained throughout the years on this blog, the fact that a 14 year old boy has any interest in this at all is crazy, so hey, if he wants to plant peanuts, I guess we’ll try peanuts.

Stuff’s coming up like crazy so we’ll have lettuce this week.  Not sure why but the radishes are growing all leaf and not much root.  The leaves are 8 inches high and the roots are tiny stalks.  Beats me.  Oh well.

Maybe I need to zen out on the garden  instead of thinking about things like why my radishes are growing all top instead of all bottom.  Sure enough, the internet comes to my rescue – I can buy Buddha statues online for my garden.  And if that’s not enough, I can buy incense to burn in my garden buddha.  That should help me relax over my radishes .

I was chatting to a buddy of mine last week who runs a garden tool shop.  He’s a great guy, so I told him I’d pass along a blurb about his shop, to all of my visitors.  So without further ado here it is:

Since 1914, Rittenhouse has been supplying the highest quality tools and equipment to professionals and people who are serious about gardening. Rittenhouse is currently a 3^rd generation family owned and operated business proudly operating in St.Catharines, Ontario, Canada.

Each year, we travel the globe in search of the newest and best products available. Once we find garden tools that we like, we bring them home for testing. Our tools are tested for quality and durability before we make them available to our customers; if it’s something we would want to use ourselves, we wouldn’t want to sell it to you.

We feature over 11 thousand parts and products on the Rittenhouse website, which is one of the largest Ecommerce sites in the industry. We offer a pleasurable and secure online shopping experience with a number of different online payment options. We also feature Rittenhouse products on Amazon and through the Sears Canada website. Our staff is experienced, knowledgeable and customer oriented. It is their goal to help you find just the right tool for the job and answer any questions you may have.

If you’re serious about gardening or landscaping, be sure to visit www.rittenhouse.ca, and check out our full range of products. We look forward to serving you.

Sorry, haven’t posted much, been awful busy.  The garden was a success this year.  We had a ton of cucumbers, some squash, radishes, and absolutely the best and sweetest carrots I’ve ever had.  The corn sucked, it didn’t really grow so we composted it.  And like last year, junior was eating half the stuff right off the vines.  The neighbours also helped themselves to our beans and peas while we were on vacation.
We changed the garden this year to have less plants that were larger (i.e. potatoes). That strategy was successful, almost everything grew very well.  You may remember last year many of our plants didn’t grow because other plants were shading them. For next year we’ve decided we’re going to remove the vines as well (cucumbers and squash).  They grew very well, we had a ton of cucumbers and gave away lots.  Unfortunately the vines spread out all over the lawn.  I don’t mind, but my wife says they look like heck, so get rid of them.  Ok Boss.

See you next year!

I hope to get some pics up soon, but the garden is growing strong.    We’ve harvested a bunch of radishes and lettuce, and everything else is making the garden look like a jungle.  Beans and tomatoes are starting to flower, cucumbers and squash shouldn’t be too far behind.  The radishes are up like 8 inches, expect I’ll have to pick the rest of them shortly and plant some more.

We had a problem with slugs eating the beans.  The solution?  Corn meal.  Place a couple teaspoons in a can and lay the can on it’s side in the garden.  No more slugs.  No idea how the corn meal kills the slugs, but it works well.

While we’re eating great organic vegetables now, fresh from the garden, we occassionally get to eat ‘organic’ meat as well.  IMO the very best is wild raised (and properly conserved and managed!).  I went fishing on the Rideau Lakes this weekend with my good friend David Ross, as we do for one weekend every year.  Caught some bass, a crappie, and a couple of pike.  Not only is it a lot of fun, but you can’t get better, fresher meat than right out of the lake – chemical free.

We got stopped in the middle of the lake by the conservation boys, checking our fishing licenses.  While I’m not a big fan of fishing licenses (they’re not a license – they’re a tax since it’s only money, there’s no training or requirements to become licensed and there should be) but I want to give a big shout out to the conservation folks for doing a great job.  In most places in Ontario we have more fish and wildlife, sustained, than we’ve ever had in my memory.  Rideau lakes has bass just about jumping into your boat.  Walleye (Pickeral) and perch in Lake Erie are off the charts; we frequently go perch fishing in Lake Erie and catch plenty when years ago anything you caught there would’ve had 3 eyes and a fused spine.  And I’ve seen wild turkey from Windsor to Ottawa and further north than Barrie.  Wild turkey was actually extinct in Ontario and now they’re commonplace.  Same with deer – they’re everywhere in SW Ontario.  While we don’t hunt ourselves, if you want natural born and raised game, even if you live in an urban area of SW Ontario, it is available to you.  And that’s due in no small part to the efforts of the conservation folks.

I’m not much of a conservationist (well, I am, but not for the traditional reasons), I’m not very PC and I don’t tend to do things  in my backyard just for the planet. But I’ve still got a rain barrel.  For two very non-PC reasons.

First, it’s easier to use a rain barrel than to haul out the hose.  We keep a bucket on top of the barrel, it’s way easier to fill the bucket and carry it over to the garden than it is to lug the hose out, turn it on, coil it back up and turn it off.  So reason number one for having a rain barrel, the mother of all invention – laziness.

Secondly, all the rain from the downspouts soaks the backyard and sometimes can leak into the foundation if the end of the drain gets kicked off.  So no more leaky basement and wet backyard.  That’s the second reason I use a rainbarrel.

I don’t use them for cost or conservation, though I do appreciate that I can chirp about how thrifty I am now . And that sums up my opinion on how to increase the reach of conservationism.  Target people’s natural laziness and cheapness and you’ll have a winner every time!

Rainbarrels cost $100 and up.  Waterloo region (in ontario) has a program once a year where you can get rainbarrels for $30 a pop, and I’ve got one of them.  It involves going to a local mall at 5:30 am and waiting in line, hoping you got there in time.

The second way – and I just found this, is through Rain Barrels (www.rainbarrel.ca).  They’ve got rain barrels, available locally for $50.  And way easier than the Waterloo region program.  It seems to work like this.  Local nonprofits sign up to distribute their rain barrels.  You order yours through the rainbarrel.ca website.  Then just show up the day of the event, pay your $50 and walk home with a rain barrel.  I’m assuming that the nonprofit makes some money in the mix as well.  I’m signed up for one next weekend in New Dundee.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

If you have a rainbarrel, you need a stand.  No stand means the water doesn’t drain out of the barrel very well.  It needs to be lifted up off the ground.  But stands are $50 or more, and I’m cheap on this.  So I spent $5-$10 on some deck boards and built my own out of pressure treated pine.  8 inches high, 2 feet by 2 feet square, couple of screws and I’m done, 2 rain barrel stands.  And the green pressure treated matches the look wonderfully.  I didn’t want to go any higher as tipping of these barrels is a concern (they really should be screwed into the wall I think, though mine are not).

Well, May 24 weekend is almost here, time to start planting again.  For our second learn-as-we-go round of organic, raised bed/square foot gardening.  This year we’re doing somethings the same, some things have changed.

First, we moved the garden from our backyard to our east side yard.  The neighbour built a fence last year that shaded the garden, now it’s back in full sunlight again for the morning.  Great thing about raised bed gardening – it’s easy to move.  We just unscrewed the four boards and relocated them, screwed them back together.  Laid down some weed control fabric, then a half dozen wheelbarrow loads of soil later, all done.  Actually, we moved half the dirt (sorry, it’s ‘soil’, not dirt ). Then we emptied the entire contents of our compost heap on top (composted and not composted, both.  We just dumped it all in there.).  Then we put the rest of the dirt on top.  Might as well compost right in the garden I figure.

Then we laid out the twine in square foot sections again.

The other thing that’s the same is that my son, while now 13, is still interested in doing this.  He helped me move it and he helped me plant.  It’s hard to maintain interest at this age, the garden is still a good way to do that.

What’s changed is what and where we planted.  We’ve moved the potatoes, tomatoes, and corn right out of the garden.  The corn we planted against the house.  We had a spot about 3 foot long by 12-18 inches that was a former flower garden.  Actually we had sunflowers there.  Now it’s got corn.  Three rows of about 4 hills each.  Probably over planted, but what the heck.  The tomatoes are going into planters that we’ll keep on our deck with the flowers my wife plants.  The potatoes we’re going to build another box probably 4X4 or 6X4.  They were simply too intrusive last year so they get confined to their own box.

And then we planted.  Here’s our layout in an 8 X4 raised bed this year:

The layout logic was this.  I put the smaller plants to the front, larger ones to the back,so that they all get sunlight.  Squash and cucumber go to the sides as they will drape over onto the lawn.  And we picked these plants because we like to eat them.  Note that each table cell above is a one square foot section.  And as I noted, the corn is planted in another small area against the house, the potatoes will be in another box entirely, and the tomatoes are going in planters on the deck.

Now we wait!

We did it again – we grew our own maple syrup.

It’s easy, all you need is a maple tree.  Even one (we only tapped one).

Here’s how.  We visited our local TLC farm store and bought 3 spigots and three buckets.  Then I drilled 3 holes into a 1.5 foot-2 foot tree. The holes were a couple of inches deep, and 3/8 of an inch drill bit.  Pound in the spigot’s, hang the bucket and wait.

In southwestern Ontario we do this at some point in February.  The sap runs strong when you have cold nights below freezing, and days well above freezing.  Other than that there’s no magic or trick to this.

We then collected the sap over a couple of weeks and then boiled it down.  Expect this to take all day long if you’re doing it on the stove.

The result from one tree?  about 1-2 litres of syrup.  Not much, but it tastes delicious.  And of course Junior just loved doing this -checking the buckets every day after school.  And finally, it was a good excuse for a family pancake breakfast!

Well it’s mid to late October here now, got the bike on the indoor trainer, been apple picking at the local orchard a few times, and the Thanksgiving turkey leftovers are a distant memory.

The garden’s done for the season.  The last thing left is the remnants of the tomato plants, I’ll compost them this weekend.

We’re going to make some changes next year. We’re going to actually move the garden (no problem with raised bed – move the framework, move the dirt, done).  Our neighbours put up a fence that effectively shaded the garden so we’re going to move the garden somewhere where there’s now better light.  Tomatoes and potatoes we may put in their own seperate gardens as they seem so dominant.  Junior’s already looking forward to it!

Well, the garden is pretty much either at it’s peak or just past.

We got one feed of peas (they were great) and that was it.  The onions, radishes, carrots, swiss chard and lettuce were completely choked out, nothing ever happened.  We got one feed of beans, they’re done now too.

The cucumbers and squash are all over the yard.  They’ve spread like crazy and have finished flowering.  So hopefully we will see gourds and cucumbers soon.  The tomatoes are dominant, taking up probably a third of the garden (and that’s two plants). We had a feed of fried green tomatoes but I was the only one actually interested in eating them.

Junior has picked about 4 green peppers – they’re not ripe yet but he’s anxious.  He just appeared in the kitchen one day, proudly displaying the peppers.

The corn is only about 2 feet high but there’s quite a few cobs growing.  If they continue, we’ll likely have enough corn for one, maybe two meals.  We’ll see!

One thing we’ll be doing differently next year is planting the tomatoes and potatoes in a seperate plot.  I’ll also be spacing stuff out a bit more – it’s surprising how well stuff grows in these boxes so it’s not hard to over do it.

We’ve obtained our first real harvest!  On the weekend we cut enough Swiss Chard to have a bit with dinner.  Not much, a few forkfulls for each of us.  Tastewise – it was great; but really not any different than storebought.  In this case the benefit is intangible, it’s knowing it was fresh and grown without any additives.

We also picked a bunch of the Romaine lettuce.  We didn’t eat it that night and by the next day it was wilted, so that landed in the composter.  More is growing though, next time we’ll pick it when we’re ready to eat it an not before.

Carrots are still weak, probably due to being overshadowed by the potatoes before the cull.  I pulled all the radishes because (again I thin becuase the potatoes overshadowed them) they were all leaf and no tuber.

The tomatoes are flowering.  The beans are flowering (and growing like crazy).  The peas are flowering.  The peppers actually have little peppers on them!  Corn is up to about two feet high, and the squash and cucumbers are really starting to spread though they don’t have flowers on them yet.  Overall the garden continues to look more and more overgown and lush all the time.  I’m surprised at how much stuff is growing so high in such a small space.