Tag: butternut

Categories
Autumn

It’s been a while!

It’s been a while since I wrote a post. Summer time got very busy and while the garden kept growing, I didn’t get to update as much as I had hoped. Here’s a run down of how things went:

Hanging sugar peasThe sugar peas grew really well in the hanging basket and gave us several harvests – it seemed to just keep growing more and more pea pods! However, we have to make sure we’re at home when they’re ready to be picked!

 

 

 

Swiss chardThe Swiss chard grew well as cut-and-come-again baby salad greens, but I had a mid-summer infestation of leaf miners. These little pests bore tunnels between the top and bottom layers of the leaf, and cause a fair bit of damage! I had to keep cutting and throwing out the leaves with the leaf miners to get rid of them to prevent them from turning into moths which would then lay more eggs in the soil. I broke the cycle by the end of August, but by then some of the plants had bolted. Next year I’ll plant fewer plants and let them grow larger. I’ll also use a row cover to keep the moths away!

Butternut squash   Butternut squash - female blossom

I only ended up with one (small) butternut squash – barely 6 inches in length. The photo above is a picture of a female fruit-bearing blossom. I had to hand-pollinate the blossoms with the male blossoms because I only had one plant and the flowers opened one at a time. Next year, I don’t think I will grow squash again.

Kale & Gai Lan seedlings

I had also planted some kale and gai lan seedlings in mid-July for winter gardening, and set them out in August to get acclimated to the outdoors. However, they got decimated by cabbage moth larvae – big fat green caterpillars!

 

 

So I wound up direct seeding my pots on September 10th with kale, radishes, gai lan, Swiss chard, and beets. We had an amazingly warm and dry September, so luckily most of the seedlings had a great start! More on that next time!

Also, I’m hoping to get into a community garden plot next year, so I’ll be able to have a proper garden! I’ll still grow in the containers on my patio, but having a garden plot will allow me to grow a bigger range of veggies!

Categories
Spring Vegetables

Patio overview

I should have posted overview pictures of my patio at an earlier date to show the space that I have to work with. My patio is roughly 8′ x 12′ in the inner courtyard of our ‘U’-shaped building on the main floor of the east arm of the ‘U’ (the top of the ‘U’ faces north). I only get about 6 hours of direct sun at the height of summer on the outer half of my patio.

These pictures were taken 3 weeks ago on April 20th (facing west). The first photo is taken from inside my bedroom looking out toward the patio.

Three weeks later on May 13th, pots have moved a bit and things are a lot more green!

Moving from left to right on the patio (and in the photos): 1. Toy choy is in the long grey-brown container on the ledge; 2. hanging in the top left is the trailing Oregon Sugar Pod peas; 3. butterfly bush is in the white ceramic pot on the ledge on the left; 4. columbine are the pink flowers; 5. crocosmia are the tall spiky leave in the dark brown ceramic pot; 6. Swiss chard are in the smaller clay-coloured pot; 7. the larger clay coloured pot (with white rocks sitting on top of soil) is the future home of butternut squash; 8. the smaller clay-coloured pot sitting on a pedestal is the Little Marvel bush peas; 9. lavender is in the white ceramic pot on the ledge on the right; 10. rosemary, thyme and oregano are in the dark brown ceramic pot; 11. above the herbs in the long container sitting on the ledge are beets and radishes; 12. the grey-brown long container sitting next to it holds chives and mint; 13. the black pot at the very right of the ledge holds Skimmia; 14. on the patio table are mescluns and squash seedlings that will go to my dad’s garden.

Categories
General Update Spring

Harvest time and update

I made my first toy choy stir fry this weekend almost 6 weeks after planting my first toy choy seeds on March 20th. In truth they could be a little bigger before harvesting (they were about 2 inches tall), but I actually needed to thin them a little and decided they shouldn’t go to waste, so I made a chicken stir fry.

    

The beets and radishes are growing well and I have started to thin a few radishes. These were sown in mid-April, so about 3 weeks on, this is what they look like. The radishes should be ready in another 2-3 weeks, while the beets will be another month or so. The beets, like the Swiss chard, seems to have multiple seeds in one pod, so I had to thin the double beets.

 

The mesclun mix is also growing well, and I transplanted the stray lettuce that was growing amongst the buckwheat. I’ve been thinning out the mesclun every few days, as they can grow to be full-sized heads of lettuce if I let them. I’ll try to keep them around the size of the plant in the foreground so the plan is that we’ll have salad greens once a week or so.

 

The Swiss chard is a bit of a mystery to me. I wonder if I should have just direct-sown them into the pot rather than starting them indoors and transplanting. They started out quite tall and spindly, though they are starting to grow their second and third sets of leaves and beginning to look like Swiss chard. However, they are still very floppy and fall over whenever I water them. I’ve since sown a few more seeds in case some of the transplants don’t make it.

My two varieties of peas are really starting to do well. The Little Marvel that had struggled with our cold, wet spring is starting to fill in, though again, I may have to sow one or two more seeds. And the Oregon Sugar Pod in the hanging basket is also doing well. I notice they have tendrils for gripping and climbing, but I’m hoping the vines will trail downwards. I’ll have to keep an eye on them and train them to trail (if possible!).

The squash seedlings I started indoors for my dad’s garden, Baby Blue Hubbard squash, are doing well… almost too well because they’ve started blossoming already! I have moved them outside to start hardening off the stems and readying them to be transplanted soon. The early butternut squash are also being prepared for transplanting too.

 

The buckwheat has also struggled with the cold spring, and they never really did a good job as a cover crop because they didn’t flourish. However, they will still work as green manure, adding nutrients and improving soil composition as they break down once it is turned-under into the soil. After rescuing the errant mesclun, I turned the buckwheat under to prepare the soil for my butternut squash experiment. Buckwheat can apparently break down within a few days, but I will give it a week or two before planting the squash. I’m also tossing the thinned seedlings into this pot for additional compost.

Aside from veggies, my flowers are doing well. Still no sign of blossoms on the crocosmia, but the columbine is in full bloom now and I’ve spotted a few pollinating insects checking out the flowers. I also have an alpine columbine that is a dwarf version planted in the same pot. I thought it was done-for as it has struggled in past years, but lo-and-behold it is blooming this year! As well, I have FINALLY seen the first sign of life of the butterfly bush (Aesclepias), so now I know they won’t generally pop up until the first two weeks of May.

Categories
Garden Stuff Vegetables

Light reflection for lower light areas

I was looking through the West Coast Seeds catalogue at the books they carry, and one caught my eye because it mentioned techniques to reflect light for small gardens. Although you should first and foremost make sure you can meet the light requirements of the plants you are growing and not rely on reflected light, reflecting additional light to your plants can help boost the intensity of the light that is available. A quick web search turned up a number of suggestions:

  • Use light coloured mulch (including white river rocks, pine shavings, white plastic) or large white pavers or stones around the base of plants to reflect light upwards.
  • Place white coloured garden decorations or pots throughout your garden, strategically positioned to reflect light to the plant (be careful not to create more shade).
  • Paint surrounding areas white, such as walls and fences, if possible. Because I live in a condo, I do not have control over the colour of our building exterior. However, I do wonder if the sunlight reflected from the windows on the other side of our courtyard make a difference in my garden.
  • Try mirrors or foil to reflect light, but be careful as these can focus sunlight too much and burn your plants. I am using the flat side of tin foil behind my peas to try to reflect light and warmth to them
  • Plant white, yellow or light green flowers and foliage around your garden which can also help to reflect light to other plants.

I have lined the outside of a long, dark green planter with the matte side of tin foil and a white pot surrounding my container of Little Marvel peas.

 

 

I also have a number of larger, light coloured stones that I collected from a river and that were once decoration in my fish tank. I have scrubbed the algae off and will use these around the base of my butternut squash plant. I know that I marginally have the minimum light requirements to grow a butternut squash plant, so I went into this with the mindset that this would be a bit of an experiment.

 

Some resources to check out:
.
Fresh Food from Small Places book

How can I reflect more light onto my outdoor garden?

Vegetable gardening (see section on Container Gardening)

Categories
General Update Vegetables

General Update – I’m addicted!

I’m officially addicted and can’t seem to stop planting things. This weekend I even went over to my dad’s garden (dragging my accommodating hubby along with me) to weed, till, and plant some side beds. Now he’ll have some buckwheat and a blend of wildflowers that will attract bees to pollinate his garden.

Below is an updated shot of the seedlings in my Aerogarden. The butternut squash (at the back) and Swiss chard (in the middle) were planted on Easter Monday night (9 days ago). I need to get larger peat pots because the butternut squash seedlings are quickly outgrowing these small ones. I already see roots poking out the side walls! About 2 days ago, I planted two more pots of swiss chard (1 ‘Bright Lights’ and 1 rhubarb chard) and two pots of baby blue hubbard squash (which will go to my dad’s garden). Those are the pots with the little domes over top to help keep the soil moist. In the close up shot you can see the different colours of the Swiss chard stalks.

The Toy Choy sprouts continue to grow. You can see some smaller seedlings coming up from when I had thrown more seeds into the right-hand side of the planter 2 weeks ago. Yesterday I added some more seeds to the left-hand side of the planter. This is so that I hopefully have some good successive crops because I really do love baby bok choy stirfry!

My peas are really starting to do well. The Oregon Sugar Pod in my hanging basket is doing great! I think I may pop in a couple more seeds to fill in the gaps. It will be a good time to top up the soil too! I also found this great swivel connector that will allow me to spin my hanging planter around to share the sunshine evenly.

I posted a few days ago that I replanted my Little Marvel peas because only one out of about twelve seeds sprouted. That was a little disappointing and I still don’t know what happened. However, just a few days later and I can already see some sprouts beginning to pop out (the white things in the foreground below) in front of the lone seedling from the first round of planting.

I wasn’t supposed to add another container to the patio – this is what I said last week after I bought a 24″ pot for the Swiss chard – but I’ve added another one. But in my defense it is small (8″) and is meant to be a decorative but edible feature that will sit on our patio table. And I had the seeds already from last year, so I couldn’t let them go to waste, could I? I’ve planted a mesclun mix of mustard greens with a few spinach seeds thrown in for good measure. These will be ‘cut-and-come-again’ salad greens for when I have a hankering for fresh salad.

Below are photos of the buckwheat (29 days) and beet & radish (4 days) progress.

 

Categories
Garden Stuff General Update Spring Vegetables

General update – Seedlings!

I went away for the Easter weekend, during which we had sunshine and warm temperatures. The weather, and likely just the few extra days, have led to seedlings in the garden!

 

Toy choy

 

 

 

Buckwheat

 

 

 

Oregon Sugar Pod

 

 

Last night I also pulled out my Aerogarden to start seedlings that will go outside in May. The Aerogarden is a counter-top hydroponic system for growing tomatoes, herbs, salad greens and flowers. I’ve tried the tomatoes and herbs, but I find it is better used as a seed starter rather than growing the seed pods they offer. It takes a fair bit of electricity to run this because it has a water pump (24/7) and lighting (17 hrs/day).

I have started ‘Bright Lights’ Swiss Chard (3 pots x 4 seeds) and Early Butternut Squash (2 pots x 2 seeds). I’ll also start my Baby Blue Hubbard Squash that will go in my Dad’s garden too, but have to pick up the seeds first.

Categories
Garden Stuff Vegetables

Peat Pots

I thought I would give these peat pots from West Coast Seeds a try this year, instead of peat pellets or small plastic containers. In the past I have found that my peat pellets sometimes go mouldy, so perhaps these will be a bit better. The point of using these is so that you minimize shock when transplanting by not disturbing the seedlings’ roots. I plan on starting my squash seeds in these, so I’ll fill them with Sea Soil and hopefully I’ll have plenty of healthy Butternut and Baby Blue (Hubbard) squash seedlings.

*Just a note: I will try growing a Butternut squash plant on my patio, but not the Baby Blue Hubbard as they can be very big. My Baby Blues will live in my dad’s garden, which has a lot more room and a lot more sunshine!

Categories
Spring

First day of Spring 2012

To be grown in my garden
To be grown in my garden

With the little bit of sunshine we had this past weekend my gardening bug has already bitten me. I was out on the patio prepping some of my containers.

I cleared out my long, shallow plastic container (approximately 24″ x 5″ x 8″) that held my Parisian Ball carrots, similar to this little round variety. They grew pretty well last year, but took a long time to mature, so I thought I would try something else early in the year. I still have the opportunity to start carrots later in the season so that they grow into the winter time. I have been collecting eggshells all winter as a soil amendment, so I added a few scoops of crushed shells to the existing soil. I think this will help lighten the soil up a bit as well. In this I’ve planted Toy Choy (baby bok choy) seeds, as they only need a shallow container and cool temperatures. These miniature Asian veggies should mature in 4-6 weeks (barring any unseasonable snowfalls).

I’ve also got a large, round plastic pot (approximately 24″ in diameter, 24″ tall) which held my miniature watermelon last year. I had a bit of a mis-hap and snipped the main stem when I was trying to cut back the leaves, so I can’t report how well it could have fared in a pot. Generally I know that watermelons are not ideal for pots, but I thought it may work if I had just one plant with really good compost. This year I am going to try growing one Butternut squash plant and train it up a trellis or obelisk. It’s a bit of a risk for several reasons (less than ideal sunlight, chance of powdery mildew, squash plants spread like crazy), but I’ll keep the vine trimmed and leaves tidy, and hope for the best. It is still about 6 weeks before I need to plant my squash seeds, so I have amended the soil again with eggshells and planted some Buckwheat seeds as a quick growing cover crop. These should hopefully start sprouting in a week. I’ll turn them under in about 4-5 weeks to create some ‘green manure’ in the container.

Aside from that, I am also thinking of trying to grow some dwarf bush peas in a small container, so I have moved the snapdragons that have been calling my 12″ round container home for the last several years. No soil amendment yet though. As well, my Crocosmia have been popping up out of the soil for a couple of weeks now, but I’m not sure if my pink Calla lily or my Butterfly bush survived the winter, as I’ve seen no signs of life yet. On the other hand, my Columbine has been growing like mad since early February! Generally I keep these flowers around for attracting bees and beneficial insects that may have no other reason to visit my neck of the woods.

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