It's Wednesday, let's see what's growing on!

Don't be mistaken, Living Green in a Colorful World is not a "gardening blog"  but spring has me buzzing the organic garden like one of the newly awakened bees I see exploring the yard.  So I'll try to limit garden posts to my Wednesday, What's Growing On posts, with an occasional extra post if we've done something really exciting in the garden. 

That said, here's what I have to report from the veggie patch for this week:

Ben and I finally came to an agreement on the placement for the new boat garden.  We placed it with bow up against a large boulder and to the left of where Ben and Echo are standing I moved some earth to create a terrace step down to the already established part of the garden.  Ben brought home several yards of soil mix already and he used some to fill this boat planter.  The boat will be home to our Roma tomatoes in June, but for now I've planted some Walla Wallas along where the boat benches are and I'll throw in some lettuce and radishes that should be ready for harvest just in time to make room for those tomato starts.

On the other side of the boat where I made the terraced steps, I stacked up some of the soil along the bow.  Then I transplanted some garden herbs (mint, oregano and lemon balm) in there.  I then stacked rocks over the top of the soil mound to prevent erosion.  Today I noticed that the herbs are starting to pop out from the cracks between the rocks.  Just as I'd hoped!

Did I mention my new outdoor sink for washing veggies?  Well it still needs to get cleaned up and the water will have to get hooked up later (we'll be using a reclaimed water system of some kind), but the sink framing was built by Ben and custom sized for me!  Yay!  Finally a shorty sink for a 5' 3" me! This is a 100% green project right here.  The sink is reclaimed from the trash heap and the water used for washing will be recycled into the garden as irrigation.  Along with that, the compost pile is right nearby, so prepping my veggies will be a breeze and it will keep dirt out of the kitchen pipes and the home septic system!  The added bonus, I have a kick ass view of the Hales Passage to enjoy while doing my garden chores.  Island life rocks!

One of the joys of the garden is the interaction with the local fauna.  I was excited to snap some photos of this pileated woodpecker that came for a visit.  These large and strange birds often hop about our backyard from tree to tree searching for grubs and insects to eat.  They even eat from our suet feeders which I fill with my own homemade suet treats that include local and native bird foods such as berries and rose hips.  They tend to be pretty camera shy and quick to startle, so I feel lucky to have snapped these shots even if they are a little on the blurry side.  In the background, you'll note our fern fronds are just coming open.

Spring Work Out

It feels so good to be outside in the sunshine and I'm already feeling my muscles growing too!

My easiest compost ever bin last summer

Remember my post about the easiest compost ever?  I swear by this method!  Everything from fern fronds & grass clippings to egg shells & cilantro stems make it into my compost bin and magically with no mixing or moving, I get a tube full of black gold each spring! 

Now that my tube of compost is ready for use, I just pulled off the wire frame to harvest my black gold. Theres always a layer at the top that is only partially decomposed, but that's ok.  This layer along with all the worms inside of it is removed and placed in the bottom of the empty wire bin where it will jumpstart this years compost.  All the enzymes and microbes that aide in decomposition are already in that partially done layer.

I'm thrilled that I wound up with a lot of ready to use compost!  It was about 8 wheel barrows full of 100% free organic soil amendment! And with no backbreaking work or constant turning.  I just stack it in, water it when it's dry and let mother nature do her thing.  You just can't beat that! Composting is the epitome of the old saying "waste not, want not".

Beautiful black and rich.  Last years waste will

feed the plants that will feed us this year!

If you've been following my spring garden frenzy, then you know that I've run out of room in my garden beds for planting anything else.  Soon Ben will be building me some more recycled beds and bringing home a few yards of 4 way organic soil to fill them, but the sun is shining and I just can't wait.  So I took a look around the yard to see what I might repurpose for planting in some odd shaped areas of my garden where buiding beds would be difficult.

First I found the top half of an old plastic compost bin.  The bottom section had split open and was not really good for anything (that's why I'm not using plastic for my bins).  It seemed like a great candidate for a garden container.  I drug it down to the garden and found a spot for it, next to my ugly but useful recycled laundry bin planter.  I filled it with compost, leveled it out and planted another type of carrots inside.  It might not be pretty now, but it will be gorgeous when those carrots come up!

 

You never know what might make a good garden bed. 
This container lived it's first life as a compost bin,
now it will get a second life as a carrot planter!

I still had loads of compost, so I took the wire mesh tubes from last years failed potato tower experiment and carefully cut them in 1/2 to form 6 good sized containers.  These would fit perfect in the sloped corner of my garden.

 

This wire tube tower for potatoes was too tall last year.

 

That's more like it!  Now these shorter tubes I can work with. 

Each tube became 2 - 18" tall planters.  These are perfect for this spot because I can mold the shape a little bit before filling them.  Then I found some old plastic woven bird seed bags I've been saving for a project and cut those down to line the bottom of each of these new planters.  I cut drainage slashes in the lining and got to work filling each plant tube with compost.

8  loads full!  I highly recommend a 2

wheeled barrow like mine for ease of use.

Eight trips to the back yard with my wheelbarrow and I had created a whole new planting area from recycled and repurposed items I already had!  I love recycling in the garden!  

The mesh planters are full and ready
for seeding.  And now a wasted space in my
garden is going to be a productive.  Yay! 

I decided to go ahead and try potatoes in these again now that they are a bit smaller.  I have several different types of spuds that have sprouted in my cupboards that should work. I placed 3 little papita starts in each tube.  I don't know if they'll all grow, but at least some of them should.  I know potatoes grow in compost bins all the time.

Red, white & russet potatoes from the kitchen get

replanted here  along with an onion and some garlic

centers that need planting.

Oh I almost forgot, each day when the sun is out I'm opening up my boat/greenhouse to get some direct sun on the soil and the plants.  I've also placed my jugs of water strategically throughout to absorb the heat of the sun durring the day.  In the evening I'll recover the boat and those recycled containers of water will radiate the warmth back into the greenhouse. 

Those empty jugs from our ceasars and screwdrivers

become passive heaters in the greenhouse

I bumped into my neighbor Leslie as I was out enjoying the sun. She's also been hard at work cutting back her fern fronds and generously offered them to me for my garden mulch. Thank you Leslie! I think I may have enough fronds to fully line the non-growing areas of the garden now! It sure makes the garden area look nice too. A few hours of work in the sunshine and what a payoff!  I love it! 

Winter wonderland?!? It's more like spring has sprung

Ok I have to start with an apology.   If you are burried under a foot or more of snow this February, I am sorry to tease you with the joys of spring here in Washington.  If your in the other Washington (DC) you probably hate hearing about our early west coast spring weather, but think of it as a preview of days to come. 

The cherry trees down at Beach School

 are awash in pink blooms

For the last several days we've had daytime temps in the high 50's and low 60's here.  The sun has been shining and the plants around here are starting to burst with spring color. It's glorious to be able to pull on my boots and head out into the garden to tend to chores that normally wouldn't be done until Mid-March at a time of year is usually filled with longing looks through seed catalogs and garden magazines with anticipation of the garden season ahead.

Home made scalloped potatoes with

cheesy spring chive topping

Instead, this year I've already used fresh chives to cook with and we've even given the back lawn it's first mow and spring fertilizing!  I've been hard at work cutting back last years growth from my ferns.  It's not absolutely neccessary to cut back your ferns, but I like to do this each year (usually in March) so that as the new growth occurs I can watch the caterpillar like fronds climb up from the base and open into their beautiful chartreuse green glory.

Last years growth is here

Now it's gone but it'll be back!

In years past, I've always added my fern fronds to the compost pile.  They are a great early spring "green" addition to the pile and will heat up the pile as they break down.  This year I've decided to try a little something different.  This year I'll use the fronds as a mulch in my veggie garden.  

My vegetable patch is strategically placed in the front yard along side of our driveway.  This is the one spot in our yard that sees sunshine morning through afternoon.  Because we live on a rocky hillside, all of our soil has been imported into narrow raised planting beds that Ben made for me.  Each bed was made from off cuts from our friend Scott's sawmill, so nearly everything is reclaimed and recycled. 

1 of 3 loads I cut back so far. 

There's lots more to be done.

The only problem with the location of our beds has been that originally this was just a weedy parking area.  Each year new weeds are springing up between the beds.  To counter this, I've been laying down newspaper layers and cardboard between the beds and then covering those with straw that we have to purchase.  This is where the fern fronds come in.  This year I'm taking those old fern fronds and using them in place of the straw between the garden beds.

This is experimental as I've never done it with the fern fronds before, but my thought is that they will make a nice walking area between the beds and as the cardboard and fronds break down, they will amend the soil in this area.  Plus having all the area mulched helps to conserve water evaporation from the soil and will encourage worms and other good life in the soil too!  I'll let you know how it works out.

Saturday in the garden.

I know many of you are still buried under the snow storm.  Maybe a little more about my organic gardening will tide you over until you can get out and dig in your own dirt.

We've had an extremely warm winter this year.  Great for our heating bill, but not so great for the nearby winter olympics in Vancouver BC.  We're all in more or less the same weather area and the shortage of snow up north has kept us from freezing down here.  Anyhow, I've been watching the signs of spring for a few weeks now.  I held off on making any plantings because the calendar kept telling me "not yet Christi, it's just too soon."

Today I finally told that calendar to shut up!  It was a beautiful sunny day and by jove I was going to get in my garden to plant something!

With my seed stash in hand, I headed down to our little enclosed garden and threw open the gate then I got straight to work.  I pulled open the plastic cover on my boat garden and cleared out a few small weeds, cleaned the dead growth off the herbs, pulled out the brown leaves from the strawberries and planted 2 short rows of lettuce.  1 row is "salad bowl" and the second row is a mix of romaine with red and green leaf lettuce. 

The boat garden revealed - garlic, strawberries, fennel, lettuce and carrots

Next I focused my attention on an empty bed that held multi-colored carrots last year.  It is really important to rotate your garden crops to keep down on disease spread, so this year I planted 2 rows of my home grown organic onion sets and 3 intesively planted rows of peas from some seeds that my mom saved for me from her garden last year.

Now I was on a roll!  I still had 2 open beds ready for planting, so I went back through my seed stash and found a few more candidates for an early spring planting.  These beds grew my lushious tomato crops last year, so this year it would need to be something else. 

I decided 1 pea planting just won't be enough for me, especially since last years peas were devoured by our local deer (before we got the deer fence up).  I found a packet of Gray Dwarf peas in the mix.  These are really good.  You can use them as pea pods or as green peas, so I planted 1/2 of this open bed with the gray's, the other half I added 3 short rows of Olympic spinach, 3 short rows of Gormet Mix radishes and 3 plantings of Brussels sprouts.  Yummy! 

It doesn't look like much now, but in a couple

of months this intesive planting will be in full

production!

Feeling good about my progress, I decided to leave the bed unplanted for just a bit longer.  I threw the plastic cover back over the boat garden and called it a day.  Boy it sure was nice to get out there and get something new in the ground.  I'm glad I left the 1 bed empty, so that the next time I get the urge to plant I've got a whole bed ready for me!

Seed Starting in the recyclers garden

Winter is the time of year where all green gardeners spend a lot of time spent pouring over seed catalogs and day dreaming about how perfect next years garden can be.  New and interesting varieties of our favorite vegetables tempt us from the glossy pages.  As spring approaches, alot of us northern gardeners begin to calculate when to start our seedlings indoors to get some extra grow time in the garden.

I'm no exception.  I've been dreaming of rainbow colored swiss chard and white carrots along with purple tomatoes and basil (wouldn't that make an interesting pasta dish), but I may just go back to my tried, true and delicious varieties from years past.  Either way, I'm planning how to get some of these plants started early while still being friendly to the environment and my wallet.

Yesterday I was surfing around the internet and I found a great how to video to make your own seed starting pots from recycled newspaper.  Just be sure to use only the black and white section because the color printed papers can have heavy metals in the inks and you won't want that leaching into your food. 


You'll also want to use either a comercial organic potting soil, or your own mix.  I like to add some finished compost in just to give them a little kick start of nutrients.


Then once the first frost date has passed, harden off your little potted starts and just score the paper pot with a sharp knife to give the roots room to expand then plant pot and all into your organic garden.

Still time to plant your strawberries!

Today I went to check on my secret garden.  My dear friend down the road allows me a few beds in his organic garden to plant as I please.  This year I just took 1 bed for corn.  I planted late, so the corn never fully developed, but according to my motto "nothing to waste", I cut the corn stalks to use for harvest decorations. I cleaned up the corn bed to ready it for my spring planting.  Maybe pumpkins will go in there next year or ???? 

Ben posing with my "miniature" corn

This corn got planted too late to produce

But it sure looks nice as a harvest decoration near my new greenhouse!

After that I turned my attention to my friends strawberry bed.  He has a lot of everbearing berries in there and asked me to thin it out a bit.  The great thing about gardening and friendships is that there's always so much to be shared.  Where there is bounty in 1 garden, there is often need in another, and that was the case with us.

 I thinned out some of his beautiful strawberry plants from his bed, being careful not to over thin or leave any "bald" spots.  Each little berry plant that I pulled out was placed gently in my bucket to be transplanted in my home garden.

What a beautiful and abundant berry patch in the "secret" garden

The grey clouds held on to their rain long enough for me to get home and start my new strawberry bed.  I grabbed my bucket of strawberry starts and got right to work.

It's good to have friends who garden.  These are free starts for my own

strawberry patch.  If  I had purchased these it would have cost a pretty penny.

I chose an empty bed in my garden that receives plenty of sunlight.  Earlier this year this bed had purple cherokee tomatoes.  When planting in my garden from year to year, I try to rotate crops.  This rotation of crops helps to curb transfer of diseases from one season to the next.

This little bed is in direct sunlight most of the summer, a good choice for

everbearing strawberries

Fall is the perfect time to start a new strawberry bed.  When planted at this time of year, the plants have 2 seasons to develop good healthy root systems before the plant puts its energy into fruit. 

One thing to be aware of when you plant your strawberries is the crown.  These plants grow from a base and all new leaves and berries grow out of the crown.  When you transplant your starts be very careful about the depth.  You will want to bury all of the roots, but NOT the crown.  Be sure that the crown of leaves is at or slightly above ground level.  If you do cover the crowns, you will risk the entire plant which can rot below the soil surface.

By next fall I'll be thinning my own strawberry patch and be able

to share some starts with other friends

With a little bit of work and the satisfaction of assisting a friend, I came away with a brand new full bed of strawberries.  These everbearings will set fruit throughout the spring and summer next year.  Even now, some of these little plants still have berries and flowers!

Greenhouse: Extending my growing season!

The leaves are falling to the ground and there is a new chilly crispness to the air.  Even still I'm thinking of my garden. 

A sure sign that cold weather is coming soon

I've been nursing along a couple of volunteer yellow pear tomato plants that sprouted up in my boat garden this year.  About 2 weeks ago I harvested the first of the juicy little salad tomatoes from the plants and they were delicious.  Because of our short season, these plants haven't yet hit their peak of tomato production.  I placed several jugs of water around them.  The idea is that the water will absorb the heat of the day and help insulate these plants in the colder hours of darkness. 

Here's the tomato plants with the reused jugs of water

Hoping to extend my growing season a little longer, I asked Ben to help me by enclosing the boat garden with a greenhouse.  This is a quick, cheap and easy project that we finished in a few hours.

First we took a trip into town for materials.  Whenever possible I try to use recycled materials in my garden, but this project required a few purchases.  I think we spent about $25 on the following materials:

                 *1/2 inch PVC pipe, several 8 foot lengths

                 *1/2 inch rebar stakes

                 *Heavy clear plastic

Checking the flexibility of the pipe

Now Ben is, by trade, a carpenter, so this project was a piece of cake for him.  I helped when I could, but for the most part, I tried to stay out of the way.

The first thing he did was to pound in the rebar stakes on either side of the garden.  Then he placed the pvc pipe onto the rebar on one side and then bent the pipe over and placed it over the rebar stake on the opposite side. 

Forming the support hoops for the greenhouse

Repeating this process, he formed 3 hoops over the garden bed.

Rebar stakes help secure the hoops in the ground

Next he added a support "beam" down the center.  Using a small drill bit, he drilled through the pipes where they over lapped and wired the support to the center of the hoops.

This hoop house is starting to take shape!

Now that this was fully supported, it was time to add the thick plastic sheeting.  We got ours in the paint department of the hardware store. 

Attaching the plastic to the frame with wire

Here's where things got tricky.  I explained to Ben that whatever method he used to hold the plastic down would have to be removable so that I could pull the plastic back in order to tend to the plants inside.  He figured out a way to wire the plastic sheeting on to the supports so that I could still open the sides.

He finished up at the last light of the day and just before the rain began.

The capsule is complete!

Some men bite their tongues when working with their

wives.  Ben's solution, Duct Tape!!!

While all of that was going on, I did some more fall clean up out in the veggie beds.  I cleared out the remaining tomato plants from my raised beds and turned the soil.  I think we have enough plastic left to enclose these for the winter too.  If that works out I'll keep planting salad greens in these 2 beds. 

2 more beds ready for winter

I've had some strawberry pots going for about 2 years now.  I've noticed that they really don't do as well in the pots as they do in the ground, so I took this time to transplant them over my previously planted garlic.  This is just a temporary spot for them to winter over.  In the spring, I will be moving all of my strawberries into their own permanent bed.

A short term solution for my berries

I love my little organic garden!  There's always something to be done out here, but I enjoy the work and it's a great hobby for Ben and I to share.

 Now with my little greenhouse, I should be able to get an extra month to 6 weeks of growing time at both ends of the season!  That could add up to 3 extra months of food production!!!  I'll be sure to keep you all posted to what kind of trials and successes we have with our new enclosed growing area.

Last chance tomatoes - fall garden clean up

I've been a mad pruner this week!  It's fall and time to clean up the garden before it gets too soggy out there.  I've got garden beds running around our house, throughout the backyard and of course my new organic vegetable garden too.  There's no shortage of work to be done. And no small amount of pruned vegetation to deal with.

I try to compost everything I can so that I can use the finished compost in the spring to fertilize my planting beds, but this year I had a lot of brush that needed to be pruned back.  This amounted to 2 full burn piles!  I'm looking forward to later this weekend having some small bon fires and getting this clean up behind me.  I might even make some smores!  mmmmmmmmm

One of my pruning burn piles

My favorite thing about vegetable gardening are my vine ripe tomatoes.  I'm monitoring the temperature each night to try to harvest them before they get bitten by frost.

My tomato plants, especially the romas,  are still full of green ones.  So far I've been extremely lucky and no frost has laid down on my yard.  Most of the gardeners that I know both here on the island and over on the mainland have already experienced their first killing frost.

Today I checked on my green tomatoes.  Those that were full size I harvested along with a section of tomato plant.  I'm going to try my grandmothers method and finish ripening them indoors. 

This green beefsteak will not have enough time to ripen on the vine

To ripen season end green tomatoes like grandma did, I cut a 4 to 6" branch connected to the green tomato, place in a single layer in a cardboard box, place one ripe apple in the same box, cover with newspaper and place in a room temperature area in the house.  I'm keeping my box atop of the refridgerator. 

Here's my yellow plum tomatoes, you can see there's still a lot of green ones!

Todays harvest

Each day, check on your tomatoes.  Use them as soon as they are ripe and toss any that turn brown or become too soft into your compost bin. 

I've pruned a lot of the foliage and the tops of my tomato plants to encourage the energy of the plant to go into developing and ripening the fruits. 

One thing I never compost is tomato plant and foliage.  The reason for this, composted tomato foliage can carry blight and the blight organism is not killed in the composting process.  Instead, to be sure not to spread disease to next years tomatoes, I am placing the foliage and stems in the burn pile.  No sense in taking a chance of spreading disease from season to season.

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