Square Foot, Raised bed organic gardening

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.

I’ve had enough.  The potatoes, which I planted dead center in the garden overshaddowed everything.  The few things that were growing, were growing straight up in an attempt to get sunlight.  The radishes?  18″ leaves with a root the size of a pencil. The lettuce and swiss chard were sickly, and the carrots basically quit growing.

So I didn’t just trim the potatoes - I massacred them.  Trimmed every one of them off completely, right to the ground.  Now the sun can get to the rest of the plants and hopefully we’ll get some harvest.

Next year, potatoes are going in their own garden, seperate from everything else.

Actually, I was discussing this with our local bookstore owner and she mentioned the tire method of growing potatoes.  You plant the potatoes inside soil filling an old tire.  Then as the plant grows, you add more soil and more tires.  The potatoes grow new potatoes along their stem, so this continued burial of the stem apparently leads to more and more potatoes.  She claimed 20-30 potatoes per plant.  I may try that next year, but I think I’ll build boxes if I do, not tires.  A stack of old tires in the back yard won’t fly with the spouse.

The potatoes have completely overtaken the garden and have stopped much of the other crops from getting any sun.  So I finally broke down and cut down the rogue potato plants.  These are the plants that grew from potatoes we had thrown into our compost.  I did leave untouched the potatoes I planted.  The radishes, carrots, and lettuce just weren’t growing.  So I trimmed the plants and put them into the composter.

Junior and I also put cages around the two tomato plants.  We crushed some of the branches because we left it too long.  Not to worry, my lovely wife and daughter went out later and fixed our mess for us.  No flowers on the tomato plants yet but some buds just starting to show.

As for the radishes, it seems to me that we should have had a bumper crop by now.  They’re so fast growing and we’ve had some almost ready to pick for a couple of weeks.  But every time I check, nothing worth picking.

I mentioned this over the supper table one night.  And surprise, surprise, we HAVE had radishes that were big enough to pick.  It turns out my 12 year old son (if you’ve been reading this blog you’ll know he checks the garden morning and night) has been picking them.  The radishes get big enough to pick, out they come, rub on shirt to get the dirt off, and pop into his mouth.

How about that?  Most folks have a hard time getting 12 year old boys to eat any vegetables.  I’ve got my 12 year old sneaking vegetables :).

Sorry no pics recently.  I’ve got to coordinate my blackberry camera with the cord with my computer.  Right now the cord and the camera aren’t at the same location.  I’ll get that done soon.

And it needs to be done soon - the growth in the garden is startling.  It’s like a rainforest.  Everything is growing like nuts - particularly the potatoes.  They’ve taken over and are dwarfing the other vegetables - the garden is dominated by potato plants.  I’m a bit concerned that they may block the sunlight from some of the other vegetables - but then again this is still very much a learning experience.  So next year I may just not plant potatoes.  The potatoes are probably approaching 18″ high right now.

Still, everuthing else is growing like wildfire too.  Tomatoes don’t have flowers yet, but are getting bigger. Beans, peas, corn, squash and cucumber all growing rapidly.  The swiss chard is growing but was a bit sparce so we replanted some more of that.  And the radishes were a bit sparse as well so I put some more of those in the ground too.  I actually planted the next batch of radishes around the green peppers - the advantage of square foot gardening is that you can double up plants like that.

The second crop of radishes has already sprouted as well.  I planted them a lot less deep so I think I may have planted the radishes and carrots too deep the first time.  Lesson learned.

This week we’re going to buy some of those tomoato cages and stake the two tomato plants.  I’m also going to put a tomato cage around the peas which are starting to climb.  I had originally planned on building a small trellis for the peas, but a tomato cage seems like a lot less work.  So cage it is.

As for harvest - we’ve had some already.  Junior, who continues to check out the garden twice daily, has managed to find two radishes that were big enough to eat.  One last week and one the week before.  Out of the ground , rub on shirt, eat ( no problem because of course these plants have no fertilizer, herbicide, or anything else on them other than dirt and water - another advantage of doing this ourselves).  But here’s the cool part; how difficult is it to get a 12 year old boy to eat vegetables?  My 12 year old is anxiously awaiting more - looking forward to beans, peas, more radishes, carrots…and I personally can’t wait until we have sweet corn we can harvest and make a meal of.  If we pulled the vegetables from a can and put them on his plate he’d have to be pushed to eat half of them.  Now he’s pulling them out of the ground and eating them before anyone else has a chance.  You want your kids to eat vegetables? Have them participate in growing their own.

That reminds me of a story from when I was in university.  My buddy had planted - for no known reason - some peas in a planter at the end of the driveway.  We were university students, so odd behavior required little explanation at the time.  Anyway, the peas took off that summer and were dripping with pods.  We’d grab a couple every time we walked by and munch on them.  So, the doorbell rings one day and it’s the neighbour.  She’s holding a bowl, wants to know if she can pick a bunch of peas.  No problem of course but she explained further. Her youngster wouldn’t touch vegetables.  But those peas growing next door?  Loved them - he’d been pilfering some of them too.  So she harvested a bunch, and I guess her kid had a meal of vegetables that night.  So got a kid that won’t eat vegetables?  Get them involved in a raised bed garden/square foot gardening and watch them them act interested in eating vegetables.