May Updates!

Wow, where has my time gone? As soon as the weather peaked and the night became warm, rain was cool and plentiful, the plants have exploded to life, and I've been running, stumbling behind that train to catch up ever since.

I've been working in the gardens 3-4 hours a day during the week and 6-8 hours on the weekends. It's given me a new perspective on manual small scale farming and the labour it must have taken new Canadians settling in these lands over a century ago. Clearing fields of rocks and noxious weeds, clearing whole forest sections and stumps, making way for new crops. Most of all, I'm brought back to the thought of a long hard day's work, sweaty, coated in a layer of soil-dust, unable to take a running shower, use electrical appliances and carry a laptop to bed and watch netflix. With the Internet alone I can order seeds, and supplied at my fingertips. A friend of mine joked that, you can essentially stay on your property without having to leave as a productive farmer, sell your eggs, produce, meat and products, pay for a simple living and continue to produce. The process does seem so simple, I'm shocked that more institutions like rehabilitation centres, prisons, and schools can't at least feed themselves with this system. They're starting, and the wheels are in motion.

We as a society have pushed gardening to the fringes, the work of big machines, immigrant workers, hippies, and or hobbyists, non-academics. Micro-farming is so often coined "a movement" or a hobby, a project, and I agree, but it should be a true pursuit of health, and a common skill for all. I also hear "gardening and vegetable gardening is a hobby for retirees or the elderly", I'm 22 and many of the nation's up and coming movers and shakers on urban agriculture and food gardening are under 35. More and more often I feel like all of our societal issues can be resolved using interdisciplinary education, intergenerational mentoriship, community and a dash of gardening.

Enough ranting... you're here for the photos, and ideas, and to see what I'm growing! May has been bizarre, our harsh winter has proved how far it can stretch its long cold hands into the late summer, plants who survived many a winter before have perished and new unpredictable victors have emerged stronger than ever.

Juvenile robin perched on my table saw... Robins are my
number one strawberry eaters, I'll have to watch out for this little one.

The massive tomato project is well underway after a few big hurdles. I started the seeds at home in mid-April, I then brought the sprouts to a shared greenhouse where I work and volunteer part-time. Unfortunately the greenhouse was unventilated and super hot, even though we still had a bit of snow on the ground. All of my tomatoes were fried. A week or so later I brought them home and tried again under my limited grow-light space. I have since moved them outside and they're doing great! The other tricky part is that my homemade labels written in black sharpie have rubbed away and only a few written in blue are left. Next year I'm buying printable labels and growing more so I can sell more extras. Space for these 75 varieties continues to be an issue, I have started planting them between my perennials.

Starting over with my tomatoes (May 18th)
They'll be ready for planting starting in June.

My raised bed garden is bursting at the seems (I literally have to fix that) and full of fresh spring veggies. My new plastic DIY greenhouse went on, but strong winds sent it for a ride around the yard, so I didn't get much use out of it, hopefully it will still come in handy this fall.

The strawberry patch received some much needed fixing, and newly installed predator protection from birds, chipmunks and squirrels alike. In the past I used bird netting and I had to free a robin each day, and it did nothing against rodents. This year a finer hardware cloth barrier around the entire bed should do the trick. Later this year a second 4 x 4 bed is going in and I ordered some strawberry seeds from swallow-tail gardens, they all have pink and light pink blossoms. Although I did stop in at Walmart last week and saw a whole table of reduced 50% off blueberries. Possibilities continue to be endless.

The mineral bed at the end of the deck is planted, I made three pea tee pees for my heirloom yellow and purple peas, unfortunately the purple peas have shown a very poor germination rate and I'm at that point where I want to plant again... but there's still a chance they could come up. In sad news my striped japonica maize has also not come up. They're wasn't any animal diggings around the seeds, so I'm a bit baffled, other corns planted at the same time are coming up and still nothing from the ornamental corn. I don't want to waste much more time waiting for the corn to sprout, when I have so many other varieties to plant.

Corn ready to be planted! Space is still an issue... 

So far the garden harvest has been greens, spinach, radish, herbs, and eggs as always. I'm clearing more garden space in weeks to come and planting more exciting things, can't wait to take more pictures and show you more updates. Happy Spring!