Soils

It's official, spring is on its way. As you flip through seed catalogues or take stock of your own seed collection and plan this year's garden don't forget the first step in gardening - assuring healthy soil.



Here is a site with a good list of different soil tests you can do to see if your garden is ready Dave's Garden

Ways to improve soil included adding leaf litter (hopefully you did this last fall, and your leaves are all molding and breaking down nicely) - shredding leaves with a lawn mover is also great. Sea weed collected and rinsed to remove salt can add valuable nutrients back into your soil. Again, shredding would be useful. You can add well-rotted compost and/or organic fertilizer before you plant your seedlings out in March (too early and the nutrients will leach out with rain). The jury is still out on Dolomite Lime, with local master gardeners suggesting only adding the amendment if a soil test shows low pH.

Happy preparations!

- marnie

School Garden Start-up Guide

Are you interested in starting a school garden but don't know where to start?

SPEC has recently released our introductory guide to starting a school garden: SPEC's School Gardens Start-up Guide

We are also working on more resources so visit www.spec.bc.ca regularly for updates.

- marnie

Planting Garlic & Quote About Eating

Happy Thanksgiving weekend.

Take a look at this article on garlic (It's time to plant!)

And here's a nice quote, fitting for the weekend ahead:

“Eating is the taking into our beings the offerings of those who have worked to bring it to us and the offering of the Divine, whose creation it and we are. Eating is not an act to be taken lightly. All that is involved demands respect and attention – mindfulness. Grace before meals is appropriate, no matter what our religious convictions, as a centering process. Eating is a rite, especially eating together. A lot has happened to make this eating possible. “A lot has been sacrificed,” as the pig said to the chicken after the bacon and egg breakfast. At least let us revere this with our attention and conscious enjoyment. People will eat less and enjoy more if they always sit down to eat, take a moment to say grace or focus on what they are doing, smell, look, appreciate, eat slowly with small bites and much chewing.”

Sylvia Mangalam,
Founding member of the Food Action Committee, Ecology Action Centre

- marnie

September Harvest and Fall Planting SPEC Rooftop

Summer seems to have ended but our rooftop garden is now ready for winter.

We harvested lots of onions and carrots.


As well as many red and green tomatoes.



Tomatoes need to be harvested, even if still green. If left on the plant during cool temperatures and rain they will develop blight and turn black instead of red. Wrap your green tomatoes in newspaper and store them in a cool dark place until they ripen.



Tomato plants were then removed and put in our yard waste bins for composting (blight may spread in a cold composter, but in Vancouver yard waste is mechanically composted using heat).

We also planted some more fall crops (many winter crops should be planted in July or August, but due to extreme heat on our roof in these months not many seedlings were started successfully)

We planted overwintering broccoli starts, kale seeds and garlic after amending the soil with compost from our worm bin composter.







Garlic is grown by separating the cloves of the garlic bulb and planting pointy-end up roughly 4 inches deep in the soil. Each clove will form a new bulb. We simply bought local organic Red Russian garlic from a nearby grocer.

Happy autumn!

- marnie

Summer's End

As the summer winds down:

We dry and collect seeds to use again next year or for winter crops (some seeds are very easy to save and others take a bit of effort but you can replant most things from your garden for free if you save your own seed).

Compost plant debris left over from the growing season

And plant winter crops that will continue to grow for the cold season to produce food early in the spring, like broccoli, kale, and brussel sprouts.

Tomato Harvest Time

The beginning of September means lots of tomatoes are ready for eating. We have so many beautiful ones. Tiger tomatoes, and Sun Drop cherry tomatoes are the ones we have mostly harvested so far.


We've also harvested more Tromboncino zucchinis.



A pile for each gardener to take home.

Mushroom Patch Experiment

This week we tried planting a mushroom patch from 'mushroom spawn'.


It comes in a bag and needs to be layered with straw or hardwood chips and covered with cardboard in a moist cool place in the garden.


First we dug a space 10 inches deep to grow them in.


Laid newspaper down in the space.


Then layered the mushroom spawn with layers of straw and hardwood pieces.


Watered it, and covered it all with sheets of cardboard.

In a few weeks, once we can see the mycorrizae, we will add 2 inches of soil on top. It will be next spring before we have any mushrooms.

This type of mushroom creates a mycorrizal network of roots underground that feed beneficial nutriets to nearby plants. Plus they are edible and apparently delicious. So we hope they grow.

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.

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.

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.

July 18@ Cambie Square Garden

The corn was even taller this week the cobs are starting to form and the beautiful corn silk is showing. Lettuce is still going strong but with the heat and wind the peas did not fare so well this week. There was also a lot of nibbles on the beets; we are assuming from a rat. We harvested many radish pod for both eating and seed saving for next year. The garlic was also ready, we harvested ½; some will be eaten and some saved to plant this fall.

July 4th @ Cambie Square Garden

Everything is growing well at Cambie Square garden the corn was over 2 feet tall and the tomatoes had many flowers. The lettuce and peas are plentiful with even a few beets and very colourful dragon carrots. The radishes have also started going to seed, we picked a few because they taste so good on salads.

Summer is finally here and we'll have corn soon

The sun is finally shining in July and the corn is huge, the beets are delicious, and the sunflowers are blooming next to the new garden sign. Soon we'll have lots of tomatoes and squash too as we've got lots of flowers now.

We've found that the tomatoes shaded by trees have done better than those in full sun and that radish seed pods taste delicious. We've also found that beans and corn grow really well together, the climbing beans just grow right up the corn as it gets taller, they were made for each other!

SPEC Rooftop in June

Here are some photos of what's happening on our rooftop garden at SPEC.

Strawberries!

Nasturtiums - both the flower and leaves are edible

this broccoli has a great start

these tomatoes are loving the heat on our rooftop

garlic in the vertical planter - the scapes will soon be snipped and sauteed

lettuce starts to replace those that will soon come out.

It's not all problem free - aphids looove fava beans

a chemical free way of dealing with the problem is to spray them off with a strong stream of water

this gives our beans a fighting chance, so that hopefully we can harvest them in the next weeks



happy food growing!

- marnie