First Food

The first food is ready to come out of my 2012 garden! Rhubarb 'Strawberry Red' is up and almost completely red. I planted two in 2010 but today I can only find one. One is enough for us though and the second was really bought as back up. I plan to make rhubarb vinegar, rhubarb freezer jam and if I am really lucky, rhubarb crisp. Of course, that is all assuming I can get the stalks from the garden to the pot without eating them all. Hmmmm, maybe I need to look harder for the second plant after all...

Oh, the weather!

 

There are days when I wonder how I became a gardener in Zone 3. How can I love something so much that is so dependent on the weather when I live where it is winter forever, it seems? I have been busy reading about how to diversify my greens in the kitchen garden, advancements in urban gardening and now, most importantly, how to protect my early flowers from frost. I have been doing all of this reading in preparation for the coming garden season and in anticipation of spring. Little did I know that winter is just arriving! We have had the most wonderful, mild winter in Saskatchewan this year. Last week the snow finally arrived and has not stopped since. The temperature is beautiful though so we have been in a cycle of melt, freeze, melt, freeze, melt, freeze.... which is great for ice photos of the trees but not so great for the spring flowers. I think they are likely getting confused. I hope I don't lose too many of them. The freeze/thaw cycle here can wipe out whole gardens if the temperature drops at just the right time. I am ready though. All of my sheets are steps away from the garden if I need them after the first buds pop out. This is a year when the Boy Scout motto is well advised - be prepared!

Compost Simplified

The first few years I was gardening, I fed my plants with mixes I bought. I was diligent about buying the right mix for the right plant. African violet food, rose food, food for annuals and food specifically for perennials. Some were liquid you mixed and watered with, some were granular for mixing into water and some were granular for mixing into the soil. Slow release. I spent a small fortune in the two years it took me to realize that the same three nutrients are required by all plants and the balance of them in the plant food really didn't matter that much.

Plant nutrition can be really complicated. There are micro vs. macro nutrients, essential vs. beneficial elements, and soil pH. This can be further complicated by soil pH, in that if the pH is less than 4, the phosphorus will be chemically locked in the soil which makes it unavailable to the plant. Thankfully, I have found it can be simplified. What we need to remember as gardeners is that the plant uses nitrogen for stem and leaf growth, phosphorus for flower and fruit growth and potassium for roots. So if you are feeding flowers, you want a higher phosphorus number and if you are feeding root crops, you want a higher potassium number.

Over the long haul, I have discovered that making my own compost solves every problem I have had in the garden. If you use a good balance of different things in your compost, you end up with a good balance of nutrients in your soil. The trick is to keep the compost material diverse. When I first started composting, I had trouble keeping it free flowing and easy to stir. Everything I added, it seemed, was wet and heavy. That too, is easily solved. Keep your compost a good balance of wet and dry material and you will find success. I use a layer of green (wet) and a layer of brown (dry) material and just continue to build and stir, always leaving a dry top layer.

A few other tips: keep the top layer a dry layer to eliminate smells coming from the compost, grass clippings can be green or brown depending on the level of moisture in them, do not compost meat or bones if you do not want insects or smells but all waste vegetable material are excellent additions. If you have never composted, do not let the complications scare you. Just try it. A good compost pile does not smell and produces black gold for your garden that has no chemical substitute that will perform as well. If you are just getting started, Organic Gardening has a good, brief video to help you select your compost ingredients. I encourage you to jump right in and try it. I know I was sorry I waited so long once I spread the first results in my garden soil and witnessed the difference good compost can make. Much better than buying something in a bottle and environmentally friendly too - no chemicals and less landfill. Happy composting!

Everything Cucumber

I have only grown cucumbers once, for a lot of reasons. First, they are a vine plant and need something to climb or somewhere to sprawl. Second, they take a lot of thought. You have to think about what you are going to do with them. Do you want to pickle or eat them fresh in a salad? If you are going to pickle, do you want big pickles or tiny ones, sweet or dill? There are so many kinds of cucumber and each of them, by claim, are best for each specific use. It seems so complicated when I am getting ready to plant.

This year, I am breaking out of that box. I have a kitchen garden chain link fence they can climb and all my years of flower gardening have taught me that it is really not necessary to do every single thing that is recommended to get a good yield. I have also decided that I will worry about how to deal with the harvest when it is harvest time. This year, I am not going to think myself out of cucumbers. If you want to join me in planting them, Mother Earth News has an article here on everything cucumbers.

Protecting your Garden

I have often posted about the adventures of my pets in my garden. Although there is some work involved in having so many dogs and cats AND a large garden, it has been well worth it for me. One of the big benefits of all my cats and dogs is that wildlife, generally speaking, stays out of the yard. We get the odd gopher or two and Hannah brings me mice that are no longer alive but we are not overrun with anything in the rodent family. This year I am starting my new kitchen garden and it will have an 8 foot fence around it because I need to keep my animals out of it as well. Digging in my flowers is one thing, digging in my food is quite another!

If you have wildlife bothering your garden, Organic Gardening magazine has a good article here on protecting it from wild things.

My Grandmother

We have been picking raspberries for over a week now and the rhubarb is ready to harvest as well. As soon as the heat wave breaks, I will bring it in and turn the stove on. Whenever I bring food in from the garden, I think of my grandmother. Her name was Myrtle but everyone called her Myrt and Miles had a 'Myrt's Cafe' sweatshirt when we were younger that she found a delight. It was appropriate because my grandmother ran a canteen for years at a local bakery. When I think of her, I think of warm blankets, soft pillows, sheets that smell fresh from the line and food. Mostly food. When I was young, I would visit her in the summer and spend everyday with her at the canteen. When we were not there, we were in her kitchen making homemade soup, pies, tarts, buns and anything else she was serving that week. Saturday's were always pies and tarts. All the kitchen counters and the table would get cleared, cleaned and promptly filled with flour. Flour everwhere. Her hands, her hair, her apron, the floor and my face. It seemed that flour was always flying as she rolled, flipped and rolled the dough again. By early afternoon the house would fill with the smell of apple, cinnamon, cherry and lemon eventhough the pies were always a little shorter on filling when I was visiting. One the of the best parts of Saturday was taste testing and then, of course, licking the spoons! My grandmother gave me the gift of appreciation for food fresh from the garden.

Food!

I have always been a flower gardener and still consider myself as such. This year I added food to my garden and was surprised to find that it was as easy as growing flowers. This was the first of my potatoe crop to be made into a meal. It was yummy! I had success with everything I planted so I am going to expand that next year with the addition of a fenced kitchen garden. Although the dogs did not bother potatoes, onion and chard, I have a feeling they may feel differently about carrots, spinach and lettuce. Add to that our visitors from this morning and I think the kitchen garden will need a fence.