Found this interesting article about Companion Gardening, which is based on the idea that certain plants can benefit others when planted in close proximity. (kinda like people. lol.)
'Morning, everyone. Sitting here on my day off with my coffee (decaf) and my cat, surfing the net.
Found this very interesting article titled: Why not start a survival garden with straw bales? Good photos.
http://www.directive21.com/blog/2011/08/why-not-start-a-survival-garden-with-straw-bales/
Pressure canning is fun and easy as long as you read the instructions that comes with the canner. I printed off a copy of the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning to help fill in the gaps and has lots of recipies. Here's the link,
http://buelahman.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/complete-guide-to-home-canning.pdf
I planted my apple trees in the fall, I think that's when your supposed to plant them.
This one and the Ball Blue Book Of Canning is also on my show blog...
Here is the link to my download page...
http://denobpprn.blogspot.com/p/downloads.html
This blog will soon be closed as I am in the midst of planning a new, independant show, but I will try to keep the download page on the new site.
The straw bales are probably a great way to start a new garden space, after a few years in the bales you'll have nice soil underneath. Better than raised beds too, bales will hold a lot of moisture from rains.
I did build a raised bed around an old tree stump, using it as a hugelculture base. Damn sight easier than digging out the stump. And made a cold frame over the raised bed for winter stuff. Collard greens do OK all winter long. Expanding the garden a bit at a time.
For us northern gardeners I found smaller tomato species do better than the larger ones, ripen faster in our short season. I still grow the big ones (Brandywine!) but they struggle to ripen in time.
Or put them in containers you can bring inside for the first bit of frost.
I made self watering planters of 55 gal barrels. Just enough so you can still drag them indoors.
I have some pics here, I can detail the construction if you're interested.
http://s828.photobucket.com/albums/zz206/Indyyeti/garden/
For us northern gardeners I found smaller tomato species do better than the larger ones, ripen faster in our short season.
What smaller tomato types do you prefer? Do you start yours from seed or do you buy plants locally? If you buy locally where from...I'm in Hamilton.
I'm the lady you're stuck behind in the grocery store with the over loaded cart filled with cases of tuna, peanut butter, huge bags of rice and the weary looking husband
I'm not Perfesser but have grown tomatoes for over 13 years: we grow Early Girl and cherry varieties like Tiny Tim or Sweet 100 for eating, and Roma varieties for canning: Roma VF always performs well. We also grow at least one heirloom variety each year as well.
Due to our short growing season in Alberta (can't put tomatoes out till first week of June and still have to watch frosts, then we get frosts again as early as late August) we start all our seeds indoors under fluorescent lights. Two batches, mid-February and mid-March for prolonged harvest (stretches out the canning chores!) I have bought plants from time to time (particularly one year when all my own plants died from damping-off) but prefer my own starts.
I started like everyone else, buy plants at the garden center. They'll be proven hybrids that will probably work out well for you (produce well) but they may not be bred for taste and you can't trust the seeds to produce true.
Later you'll find a few that you really like (Brandywine!) that you'll grow just for the taste alone. If you buy some heirloom tomatoes at the market, find ones you like and you can save those seeds and they'll reproduce just fine.
Cherokee is one I grow, funny brownish colour with almost tiger stripes on them but tasty and uniform growth. Some kind of vine tomato too, forget the name. Looks like a huge cherry tomato about the size of a golf ball.
The cherry tomatoes I grow are from plants my parents and grandparents grew, no idea what they are but they're delicious and sweet.
Hamilton has a great micro climate so close to the lakes. Maybe a bit cooler up on the mountain.
Humidity is a problem though, don't crowd your plants, they should get a decent breeze or you might see fungal problems like powdery mold.
It's important to find plants that are bred for your area and climate. Buy some from a local grower, find out what kind. DAM seeds is out by Dundas I think. They should have a ton of info on their website.
Once you figure out that everything you touch doesn't die and get the hang of caring for plants you'll find it easy to start your own seeds to get a jump on the season.
For a complete beginner, start small.
Get a couple of plants of something you like to eat. Lets say tomatoes.
Just care for that one small plot, put it near enough that you'll go look at it every day.
Sit for a few minutes and study what's happening. Are the leaves a little more limp than yesterday? Stick your finger in the soil, how does it feel? Warm? Soft? Moist? Soggy? Dry? Coarse?
Watch the first buds come out, the flowers, that first green pea that gets bigger and turns orange, then red.
See how it reacts to hot days, cool days.
You have to wait a long time for tomatoes so get something else in too. Green onions are good, collard greens are the easiest I've seen to grow. Radishes are one of the earliest to harvest.
Start small, plan for success, gain confidence.
Then learn some tricks so you work even less at it. You don't need all kinds of expensive do-dads and gizmos, nature has been doing this a long time.
Then you can expand some while not getting overwhelmed by the workload, a mistake most new gardeners make. Expand slowly.
Start a compost bin/pile.
Good plants are all about healthy soil. Deep mulch means no weeds to pull, moist soil that's warmer at night, cooler in the heat, less or no watering.
I don't even till the soil anymore. I just keep a deep mulch of leaves and grass clippings that decompose slowly over time to nourish the soil, just like nature intended.
I do look for and scavenge any good organic matter to compost, kitchen scraps, leaves, clean grass clippings, pond weeds. That gets spread over the mulch every fall.
90% observation and contemplation, 10% action.
That was way longer than I had planned.
We are building a permaculture raised garden bed system, and trying to redesign the overgrown forest into a similar permaculture forested setup. Currently we are cutting and making paths, using these cuts to be separated into three piles, building material, garden material and firewood.
Seeds are some Canadian Tire stuff to replace the costly non gmo seeds that the mice seemed to love for a snack. I will be bringing up some metal containers to house all the seeds soon!
Quite a bit of your scrap wood could be used as hugelculture material. The idea is you bury wood under your garden. In your case you could line the bottom of your raised bed with it. As the wood rots it becomes a giant sponge, soaking up water that your plants can use later. Pine and cedar not so good. Pine and cedar needles definitely not as they make the soil too acid. Another possibility is to put a raised bed over top of a stump cut close to the ground. Damn sight easier than pulling the stump.
I found a great site for biointensive gardening - it tells you how to make your own soil from compost, and how to grow plants closer together thereby increasing your yield. The PDF is free to print out, the author simply requests that if you print it out for handing out to others that you print all pages. It should get those green thumbs itching to get into planting!!
http://www.growbiointensive.org/PDF/FarmersHandbook.pdf
Russell Coight....outback legend
I'm getting itchy about the garden, I so want to be out there and start into it, but still just starting things in the house, doing bits in the green house but at least the greens are taking off now in the cold frames and in the hoop house.. Another few weeks and I will be able to plant a few things outside, and by next month winter sown seeds and overwintered things will be starting to grow under their beds of cover..
http://livingmydreamlifeonthefarm.wordpress.com/
I heard the Peepers tonight(those frogs that go peep peep at dusk). Spring is just around the corner.
Composting
We need some experienced people, to talk about composting. To many people toss out valuable garden nutrients. I have a few apartment friend that have a roof top garden that will collect vegetable scrapes from people on their floor for their compost. They made a bargain with the apartment manager for the rights to have a garden on the roof. The manager get free veggies once a week in the growing season. Basic rules that I follow in composting. 1st NO Meat scraps, that will lures rats, raccoons and other pests. 2nd, no seeds from fruits or veggies, or you’ll have a garden in your compost. 3rd, No acidic’s, that means any fruit or veggies with a high acidic content. These acids will kill the microbes that break down the veggie matter. 4th, Turn the material at least once a week, twice if weather is very hot. That it, that is the basics for a good compost.
"We 'Prep.' to live after a downfall, Not just to survive."
For sure no meat, fat or bones in compost.
I put seeds in, once they sprout they're just greens anyway. Except mango pits, they have a half life or something. Always like a rock.
All other fruit and veggie scraps go in. Never heard that about the acid fruit before. Grass clipping and leaves round it out. No layer more than 2" thick.
I don't turn mine but I should to get oxygen in.
I saw some guy had a perforated pipe in the center of his pile to get oxygen to the center, good idea I want to try.