Front yard environment

Mike and I have been pretty serious this last year about reducing our environmental footprint. We are done most of the easy "change your light bulbs" stuff, and much of the medium "compost" stuff, and we are starting to move into the deeper and more challenging commitments, also know as "that really weird environmental stuff." One of our big changes in that direction has been growing as much of our own food as possible.

Our garden, square foot beds and greenhouse have been a part of that transformation. Our next stage has been reducing our grass in the front yard to reduce the need for watering. We've been avoiding fertilizers and chemical weeders for about 5 years, and our grass shows it. Mike also under waters it because he secretly hates large front lawns.

Anyway, we had our second half of the retaining wall built last weekend and started to lift the turf. I first tried this method when I was 8 months pregnant with Leora (in Meadow Lake). You cut up thin strips of turf, maybe no larger than a brick. Then you pick up two of the strips and alternate scrubbing and banging them so that a lot of the dirt is removed from the turf. This has two advantages:

1. You keep a good chunk of your top soil so you don't need to buy more
2. There is a theoretical possibility that your compost pile can keep up with all the turf you are adding.

I made Mike dig some last week in a rainstorm, but this weekend we had great weather, and girls and I dug up the remaining grass in our bed on Saturday. The bed has kind of a strange shape (Jaime says its phallic, but it might be her preoccupation) because we had to dig it to cover the tire tracks in our lawn.

From Garden june 26

After we dug the bed, we added 4 wheelbarrows of compost and 1 large bale of peat to improve the soil and I was ready to plant. We put in two saskatoons and two blueberries as foundation, then build the bed around it. I added 5 tomatoes we'd been growing on the deck, romaine lettuce, basil and a variety of perennials and annuals. I also dug up and transplanted perennials from the backyard.

My mom is planning to send me some bulbs for the fall and I left room for them, but I am really pleased with the result. It looks like a flower bed (which it partially is) but also acts like a vegetable plot (although a sparsely planted one). I am going to keep working on this principle as we lift more turf over the next several years.

On a side note, the back yard garden is doing really well. The peas are now flowering and we are eating lots of strawberries. Mike is relieved to see baby apples on the tree and we've been eating lots of lettuce. I think we'll eat our first zucchini this week. Click on the link under the picture to see garden pictures from this week.

From Garden june 26

At play. . .

Who says a Wendy doesn't know how to play? I have been having so much fun in my yard this week. The pictures show me harvesting lettuces and loving up some of my favorite early summer flowers including:

• three types of iris
• three types of bleeding hearts
• Blue bell flower
• clematis
• chives
  

Mike has been hauling rocks like a crazy person and also bought us a 27 year supply of straw at $2 a bale. We put the straw on the strawberries and raspberries to deal with the lack of rain. I think it looks pretty good, although I am not wild about the extra straw storage behind the garage.

We have had 4 days of plus 30 weather and things in the yard have really responded. The tomatoes and peppers are starting to flower and we have our first baby cucumber and spaghetti squash. Mike and I are like a couple at their first ultrasound. We keep looking at baby veggies and wondering if they are just female flowers or actually germinated. Mike has lots of little cherries, which he feel good about.

In addition to gathering rocks, Mike has been out raping and pillaging the landscape in my name. He has returned with a sucker Saskatoon (we hope) and some year one roses from the bush in our park. He also got another cherry tree from his uncle Kent. I am not sure where he envisions all this going, but for now it is some is living in pots on the deck. Our plan to divest large chunks of the front yard of grass will likely provide a home for many things, although the soil will really need some compost.

We put up our pool this weekend and had our first swim today with the girls. Since its really hot out and we are trying to avoid using our air, the dip before bed is a big help.  It's been hard to cool the house without the cats escaping because Merry has figured out how to open the screen door by hanging off of it. We have jury-rigged an elastic system that currently contains her.

In 8 years. . .

From Garden 2002

Here are some pictures of our yard over the eight years we've owned our house. We moved in during Aug. of 2001. In that week, Liz got married, Mike went to Italy with Brad, and Greta and Rob stayed with me. I made them move the derelict compost bin and I dug weeds (lots of weeds). The first 14 pictures are of 2001 http://picasaweb.google.com/LeoraWendy/Garden2002#. This folder of pictures also contains the yard in 2002, the first year we worked on the yard. Mike laid the new patio and we built the swing set. There are also pictures of our first garden.

You can also see. . .

• Our yard in 2007
• Mike and Dad building the greenhouse
• Current pictures include fruit, veggies, our new rock wall and our dry compost.

We are pretty excited about the new wall, which is composed of free rocks we just had to hall. The James side would be proud.

Another cold Sunday

Yesterday there was a delightful high of 8 degrees, but today we are heading out into the garden in bold defiance of our bitter spring. We've been forced to water with the hose, as the spring has been mostly dry in addition to cold. When Mike turned the compost yesterday we found that it was doing virtually nothing because it was too dry to rot much, so we had to water it.

We are currently eating:

• Spinach
• Herbs, especially mint and basil
• Rocket
• Rhubarb
• Romaine
• Chives

Mike made a great batch of stewed rhubarb yesterday and we had it on our blueberry pancakes. I'm mixed into Mike's homemade yogurt. It's great that way.

The spinach is doing really well, and we've been enjoying several other lettuces for salads. We've also been having chives and spinach in virtually everything. I've made grilled vegetable panini with the basil and feta for an extra punch and Mike made a great omelet using the basil as well. Basil often dies or grows very slowly for us during the spring. We have it in the greenhouse where it is doing well, and the one in the yard is under a cloche.

Cloching seems to be working well for the corn and are melons and gourds. Given the type if spring we are having, they should be mostly dead. The corn has even continued to grow after multiple -8 types of temperatures. Who knows if it will be too stressed to do well.

Currently flowering or up in the garden:
All the same things are flowering as last week, but the raspberries and cucumber have started. We've seen almost no bees, which is very worrisome. Mike thinks we'll have few apples. The ants have been looking after the low growing things like the cherry and strawberries, but they won't be good enough for the raspberries, so we need bees soon or there won't be much of a crop. Mike and I would also like to mulch the raspberries with straw, but we haven't found anywhere to get it.

Peas, beans, kohlrabi, beets and onions are all up. We don't have parsnips yet and the carrots are really patchy. We don't really know why that always happens - any suggestions on germinating carrots would be appreciated.

Flowering perennials

• iris (three types of bearded)
• lilac
• lily of the valley
• tea roses
• purple clematis
• snow crop
• bleeding hearts
• blue grass
• anemones
• chives

The most exciting news is that we found some free stone on Kiji yesterday and we get to go pick it up today. We can use it as a mini retaining wall in the front to solve some of the dryness issues created by the slope and the pine tree. We've been having so much fun working in the yard this year, and the rocks will help solve a problem we've been worried about. Last night Anna and Ian took the girls (thanks guys) and we spent too much time just admiring the yard and thinking about the rocks. Anna was kind enough to want to look around the yard and Ian was indulgent enough not to complain in front of us :-)

I'll post a cool series of pics of the garden past and present soon.

Asparagus

Mike and I enjoyed our first really good crop of Asparagus this year. We've already stopped harvesting it (although perhaps we could have waited a couple of weeks because of the late frost). This year I picked an average of 6 stalks a day, more if it was really sunny and warm. I've read you should harvest it slightly below the dirt level, although I am too lazy to do it.

Our asparagus lives up against the south face of a fence in the sunny patch beside the green house. It gets compost twice a year, and is often under watered, except when the splashes from the pool give it frequent drinks. The thing I like best about it is how tender and fresh tasting it is. I've been forced to conclude asparagus from the garden is the like carrots from the garden - so far superior it isn't even recognizable as the same form of vegetation. We often eat it off the plant without cooking it, and it's great that way.

Blooming in the start of June

I'm going to track the state of my fruits and vegetables this year to help myself keep track of things for years to come. Despite my despair dealing with the cold, I am excited about all the things that are blooming in the garden.

We are currently eating:

• Asparagus (just finished the last batch)
• Spinach
• Herbs
• Rocket
• Rhubarb

Currently flowering and edible:

pumpkins
squash
zucchini
strawberries
apple tree
cherry tree
chives
sage (brought out from inside)
red currents

Flowering perennials

• tulips
• iris
• grape hyacinths
• lily of the valley
• tea roses
• purple clematis
• snow crop
• bleeding hearts (pink only)
• blue grass

We haven't had any rain in a week and a half and are watering with tap water, which is too bad. We've been discussing the purchase of an additional rain barrel for next year. Mike and I are hoping to avoid using city water as much as possible.

The weeds are pretty happy with the burst of wet and heat, and for the next several weeks Keith's elms will be dropping seeds on everything. June is the worst month for weeds in general in the yard.

Slow Spring

From Garden Spring 2009

Well, it's June and you'd never know it by looking at my yard. Mike and I have embarked on an ambitious or insane (depending on your perspective) series of practices designed to reduce our environmental impact.

We began by using a grow table Mike got from a friend to start seeds for ourselves, James and Anna. Then we moved the seeds out into the greenhouse Dad helped us build last summer.
We were planning on getting the jump on spring to give ourselves a longer growing season and helps try some veggies that struggle to make it in Zone 3. In early April, we moved our tended plants out to the greenhouse only to see three weeks of temperatures 10 to 20 degrees C below normal. We planted our corn and had to cover it constantly to protect it from repeated snow and temperatures of minus 8 at night. Last week, it finally warmed up to be seasonal.

I was so excited to my plants start to actually grow (they'd been hunkered down just above soil level for 4 weeks) and we finally planted our garden. This year we are experimenting with square food gardening for the first time, so some planting is still to come.

New vegetables this year:

• spaghetti squash
• broccoli
• cauliflower
• soy beans
• rocket
• purple pole beans

Mike's experiments that I predict will die:

• watermelon
• pumpkin

All this exciting plenty has Mike and I touring the yard, ecstatically probing the dirt to see what is up. We have beans, carrots, peas, kohlrabi and beets all germinating just in time for the happy news. Great news this morning -more cold weather on the way and risk of frost tonight.