Thursday, August 26, 2010

Birds and Bees


Both birds and bees are important to your garden. They pollinate crops and flowers, as well as prey on detrimental pests.

More Tromboncino Zucchini


It's still amazing us, such an interesting looking plant.

Saving Seeds

There are a lot of seeds you can easily save yourself to plant next year. At the end of summer you can see the seeds forming and drying, soon to fall to the ground. At our garden we have already saved some radishes, broccoli, kale, peas, and beans, and stored them in a dry place in paper bags or envelopes to plant when we need them again.

After the petals fall we will collect seeds from flowers as well, like Calendula which is a beneficial companion plant for repelling insects, and is a versatile herb commonly used as a remedy for skin problems. Calendula is an annual so it needs to be re-planted each year. This is what our Calendula looks like in 3 stages from flower to drying seeds.


Monday, August 16, 2010

What a Zucchini! Plus Purple Potatoes



Yesterday we couldn't believe the size of our Tromboncino zucchinis. We found this climbing zucchini plant at West Coast seeds and it seems to be the answer to growing zuchini in small spaces, and just look at how neat they look!



We Harvested a bunch of purple potatoes too, so beautiful, they're almost irridescent!


The next thing we'll be harvesting lots of will be tomatoes, just lookj at the plants in bed#10, and this is just one plot.

And soon it will be time to do a bunch of seed collecting so we have seeds saved for next years garden.

Monday, August 9, 2010

Reaching for The Sun



The squash and beans have really taken off at The Cambie Square Garden. The squash have grown all over the hedge lining the garden and we keep finding the fruits hiding in little pockets here and there and the beans are getting so tall that some have grown up the lamp post to the point that we cannot reach them any longer We also have a sunflower that is trying to reach up to the sun.

We did a little cleanup of the garden as well, removing the old pea plants that have finished for the year so we can plant more winter crops. We found a few aphids and removed them to prevent them from spreading to other crops.

Holy Corn and Potatoes Batman



This weekend was the first rain we've had in Vancouver in weeks but we still had a great turnout at The Cambie Square Garden on Sunday. Noone even minded the rain and worked away together to harvest quite the bounty. We harvested lots of potatoes and corn and some really beautiful carrots too.