Stay tuned for a huge long weekend Sprouts gardening post! We’ve been busy bees in the garden digging our raised beds for our large plot as well as planting. Think good thoughts for our transplanted tomatoes, we’re off to survey the damage and see if they survived the late fall-like storm we had this week!
In the meantime, here’s a great link with a lesson about watering! http://planetgreen.discovery.com/home-garden/city-girls-guide-country-gardening-watering.html?campaign=daily_nl
April brought us some very chilly weather, lots of torrential rain and wind on our gathering days, so there hasn’t been much to report! On with May now, and it’s time to get serious about gardening. We should be able to get our hands in the dirt for the first time at our plot on the Seventh Day Adventist upcoming this week! We’ve built a cucumber/melon a frame trellis and we’re working on 2 tomato trellises for the salsa garden that we’re planting at the CRC garden.
This past Monday we firmed up our plan for our SDA plot. We’re going to try out a “Three Sister’s Garden” for a third of our garden space to teach the children about companion gardening. It combines corn, beans and squash in mounds that are placed a few feet apart. We’re planning to devote a good patch to potatoes and onions, have another row for beans, and the lots of little plantings in between! Since this is our first year to try out this scale of gardening, we’re willing to give anything a go! Thanks to Pastor Ernie for tilling the soil this week and preparing the garden for our arrival!
As far as seedlings, everything is chugging along. The tomato seedlings have been moved to an unheated greenhouse and we’re currently treating a puzzling case of something we haven’t figured out yet –
We’ve ruled out early and late blight, and it doesn’t look like Septoria Leaf Spot. It resembles more of a leaf spot that you’d find on roses. So far we’ve removed all of the leaves that seem to be affected and sprayed with a homemade solution of baking soda, water, and dish soap. We also tried today a weak spray of Grapefruit Seed Extract because it’s a good fungicide, anti-bacterial, and anti-viral, so we need some good thoughts that the seedlings pull through! Other than those leaves, they are thriving well.
The past few weeks we got a start on melons, zucchini, squash (all kinds), sugar pumpkins, basil and cucumbers. Check back with week for a picture update on everything to do with our gardens!
It was a beautiful morning on Monday when 9 families descended upon Wendy Devlin’s farm in Wildwood. Wendy generously offered a tour to our group and everyone had a wonderful time!
Next month is planting month, and we’re looking forward to everyone getting their hands in the dirt and creating their own edible family box!
Family Gardening Program News: It’s a busy time right now for our gardening program! We’ll be building tomato trellis structures this week, as well as finishing up amending the soil for our raised beds. The peas are in, and the sunflower starts can be added to the beds this upcoming week. We’re happy to have any novice or experienced gardener families to join us!
I thought I’d include some links to help sort out growing tomatoes! Tomatoes come in 2 types- the bushy determinate tomato and the vine like indeterminate tomato.
Don’t forget that there isn’t a garden meeting tomorrow morning (because of the first Sprouts class!) but we will be getting together to do a trellis building day the following week (and some more planting as well!)
We couldn’t have asked for a better day to get down and dirty and work on our final clean up at the CRC garden! 6 families attended this morning, the children played beautifully and we got quite a bit of work done. We also set our Mason Bees out for the year. Though a few of us have “raised” them at home, this will be the first year for a set out in the garden.
We finally got our peas in the ground, and cleaned out the 2 growing beds so that they will be ready to plant come May. We’re also itching to get our hands in the earth at the amazing plot we’ve been given over that the SDA Church on Manson.
Just a reminder for those who will be participating in the Sprouts Preschool program, you should have received a newsletter about the Program and will be getting another one shortly detailing our plan for our first group on Monday!
Click Here to learn about the Mason Bee and the vital role they can play in your home garden!
It’s finally warming up!!!! Our frost free date is estimated at April 15th, and we’re almost there. Looking ahead to the forecast for the next 2 weeks, by the end of this week the weather is going to bump back up and through seasonal temperatures! Here are some starts that you can get going for April:
Outdoors:
Beets
carrots
broccoli
cabbage
radicchio
cilantro
Swiss chard
fennel
kohlrabi
lettuce
leeks
onions
scallions
spinach
turnips
Indoors – Eggplant and melon
This is definitely a busy month for gardeners, and the same can be said for our Sprouts Program. Last week we planted all of our March/Early April starts. We’ve got zucchini, squash, cukes, pumpkins and other seedlings waiting to sprout. Now it’s a weather game! After an amazing February, March brought cold, and wild winds. Considering the number of babies and small children, we’re playing a waiting game to have a nice Monday to get in the garden clean up and start planting.
Exciting news! The first of the six week Sprouts dates is coming up April 19th! Liz and I will be sending out a newsletter to all of the participants this week detailing the schedule and events. If you’re not involved in the preschool themed program, but would like to get out and learn more about gardening and food sustainability, we invite you to come by all of the rest of the Mondays! Just contact the Family Place for more information.
Thanks to Amy Price for drawing an amazing logo for us from Liz’s concept! It embodies everything that we want to convey for the program.
We spent a good full morning starting to get our beds ready for growing at the Community Garden today! With one staff and 5 families helping out we made great progress!
The first step was digging up the Jerusalem Artichoke Maze and harvesting the roots. Thanks to Alyssa, who took them home, washed them and weighed them up as 32 lbs!!! Our first harvest!!!! Now the goal is to figure out some great recipes for them…
We checked out our lasagna garden bed that we designed last fall, and it was amazing. A natural red wiggler farm! We can’t wait until it’s time to plant the cucumbers and melons for that bed.
Next week, weather dependent, we’ll be preparing our 2 raised beds for planting, and possibly transplanting the tomato starters in to larger containers. Join us in the morning if you’d like to be a part of the fun!
I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the different varieties that we’re growing this year!
Let’s Start with Tomatoes:
Doucet Early Market Quebec Tomato: Small 2-3 inch flat fruit with bright red colour. Semi-determinate vines ripen very early and continue to produce thru the season. Keeps well on the vine. Meaty texture. Balanced flavour. A Canadian heirloom.
Savignac Tomato: Indeterminate. Savignac has performed well for us in cool, wet conditions. A Canadian tomato, it is also known as ‘Dufresne’ and was given by Raymond Dufresne of Joliette to Frere Armand Savignac in the 1930’s. Despite soggy, cool conditions that stunted most of our tomatoes and inhibited fruiting, Savignac was one of the first to fruit and ripen. It produced prodigious amounts of medium-sized, rose-red, round fruits that were juicy and sweet. Perfect for fresh eating or canning.
Dufresne Tomato: Well, we had a separate package of seeds – we’ll see if it turns out to be the same as the Savignac!
Quebec 314: Large Cherry – Nice round red fruit, with a sweet and rich flavour, and full season production that starts early. A Canadian heirloom
Saltspring Sunrise: Determinate. Bush. The late J James of Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, Canada developed this very early variety. Long term Seed Guardian David Frith describes it, “Fruit varied in size from 50-200gms (quite a useful attribute) and were of good flavour. Eaten as a salad tomato, but were delicious baked in a dish of mixed vegetables Mediterranean-style.” Mark Moran commented, “My wife considers this to be the best cooking tomato she has ever come across. Incomparable flavour, and no blight too! I had to fight to get these tomatoes away from her to get the seed!”
Powell River Family Gardening 