FarmCity Food Garden Construction

Welcome to FarmCity Food Garden Construction

Whether you have a large backyard or a small balcony, Vancouver-based FarmCity Food Gardens can help you get started growing your own organic fruits and veggies. We work with you to design, build and maintain your urban food garden. Get in touch to see how we can get you growing!

The Tiny Butts of Chickadees - Attracting Birds, Part I

We posted a little while ago about pruning, as a winter chore for those who can't wait until spring to get into the garden.  Another chore you can do is to clean out your birdhouses before nesting season starts - coming up soon!   We've mentioned the benefits of keeping good populations of birds around your garden.  Many birds - such as chickadees, nut hatches, bushtits, kinglets, and others - eat massive quantities of pests like aphids and caterpillars, particularly during nesting season.  So providing them with nesting boxes, and then taking good care of the boxes year to year, is only for the better.

Below, on the left, is a basic FarmCity nesting box, opened for cleaning to rid it of pests such as lice and fleas, which if left to accumulate from year to year will weaken the next year's hatchlings.   

Before I go into details: if you're squeamish about the idea of the fleas and lice, by all means, wear rubber gloves.  I've done this bare-handed for years - because I'm so irrevocably macho even in my love for baby birds - and I've never had any problems.  Doing it in winter is probably the key.  

To clean it, I usually take the box down from the tree, but it can also be done with the box still suspended, like in the first photo.  Open the front - at least on FarmCity boxes - and remove last year's nesting material.  (Note to macho self: try hard not to cry at this point.  The sheer kindness and care with which the bird-parents have lined the box in the softest moss and down is always very moving).  Throw out the nesting material.

Then wash the box either with water and bleach - or to avoid using such a chemical, I use boiling water.  If you use bleach, rinse the box out with plain water afterwards. The main idea is to clean every surface in some way that will kill any unwanted critters, while not leaving behind toxic residues.    We build our boxes with small drain holes at the corners, both to help the box stay dry while the babies are in it, and to aid drainage when cleaning.  

The picture on the right, above, shows the nest, and the tiny depression, maybe 1-1/4 inches (3 cm) across, where the eggs sat.  Chickadee mums must have puny bums!

Leave the box sitting open awhile to dry out, then close and rehang it.   Next post: more strategies for attracting birds!

 

 

Winter Chores - Pruning

If you get impatient waiting for the gardening season to drag back around, there are still plenty of garden chores to be done in winter.  Over the last few months, I've been slowly doing the annual pruning that's needed in our yard - shrubs, trees, hedges, and vines.  Our old pear tree was neglected for a number of years, and I'm still getting it back into shape.  This includes cutting back the suckers sprouting out the top, and removing branches that cross others, as well as those growing from the undersides of branches.  It looks bare here, but will soon be rich with foliage and by late summer, with pears.

While I was pruning, I found a half-eaten treat that a squirrel left at the top of the tree:

We still have the bay tree and the grape vine to do.   Though the bay was sharply pruned less than a year ago, it has grown ambitiously.  It needs to be cut back - with care - from that power line!  I have also found that annually thinning out the interior branches of the bay, and generally opening it up to air circulation, has helped it fight off a mildew and mealy bug infestation.  

The grape vine draping over the line has to go, too - it got away on me last summer.   I save the grape for early spring - the optimal time for pruning it:

Year-Round Harvesting in Vancouver

Fresh lettuce in January - thanks to our row coverings!  Using the technique outlined in an earlier post - using rebar, PVC pipe and plastic sheeting to make mini-greenhouses over our beds - we have been expanding our winter gardening ideas, and are now harvesting sweet, succulent lettuce in the middle of winter!  

Reading this mid-winter, you might look out at the pouring rain, and think, "No way I'll garden in the winter!"  But it's actually easier than in the summer!  Weed, prepare, and seed the beds in late August (earlier for the broccoli and other brassicas), and build the row covers.  In the first few weeks we watered a little, using a drip hose - but once the fall rains come, the ground gets so saturated, you don't even have to water all winter!  

Here's one covered bed, taken in late December, with various lettuces and other greens:

We've also been able to harvest sprouting broccoli (in the foreground) and kale throughout the winter - rather than only in early spring.  And out in the uncovered garden, our cabbages are overwintering as usual. 

I'm also throwing in a photo of our covered garden last August.  We built a super-sized cover (really, an ad hoc greenhouse) over some of our tomatoes, to protect them from the blight.  The greenhouse spanned two 5-foot wide garden beds with a path between - and was high enough to stand up in.  We left the ends open so it wouldn't get too hot or humid in there, but even so, the added heat really sped up the tomato ripening.  Lazy about weeding, we also grew an extraordinary crop of chickweed beneath the tomato plants.   We fed it to the chickens, of course!

Winter Warnings!

They say it's going to be a hard winter this year, what with La Nina and so on.  So we've been planning how to help our winter plants to make it safely through the cold months.  Above all, we're concerned to cover them - both against frost and snow - so we've devised an easy DIY solution for covering whole garden beds.

The photo shows our kale and cabbage plants under a framework of PVC piping and rebar. We'll cover the frame with floating row cover - a white fabric that lets in light, but that hopefully will keep the plants just those few degrees warmer to make the difference between freezing and survival.

We cut the rebar to 2-foot lengths (or if you don't have a saw, you can buy it already cut, in some stores), then sink them into the ground on opposite sides of the bed - leaving about about 8 inches of rebar aboveground.  Then we test out the length that the PVC pipe (3/4" internal diameter) needs to be to fit over the rebar - and cut it to the correct length (any saw will cut the pipe, so you should be able to do this part yourself!).  Then settle the piping over the rebar, to form the arches.  

Because we are concerned about snow as well as frost, we also decided to tie a pole along the length of the bed, from arch to arch at the height of the arches - to keep the fabric from collapsing on the plants should it eventually snow.  

 Who knows whether we'll need it this winter!? 

Above: One of our cabbages as of October 15th. 

Preserving: Dilly Beans!

We've got a bumper crop of beans this year - and one of our all-time favourite preserves is Dilly Beans. Crisp, deeply dill - and if you include the chile pepper, with a real kick at the finish!  Our neighbour's kid loves them so much, we've promised him his own jar for Christmas!

Pack 2 pounds of green beans, standing up, in sterile 500 ml (1 pint) jars.  Be sure to leave 1/4" of air at the top.  

Into each jar, put:

    1 small chile pepper (optional)

    1 clove of garlic

    1 head of fresh dill (or 1-1/2 tbsp dill seed)

Bring to a boil:

    2-1/2 c. water

    2-1/2 c. vinegar

    1/4 c. salt

Pour the resulting liquid over the beans (leave 1/4”).  Seal the jars and process for 15 minutes in a boiling water bath.  This last part is where the food is genuinely preserved, free of bacteria, for safe long-term storage: don't skimp on it!

If you're not sure about this part, there's lots of good information online that can help you decide on what equipment you need, basic sterilizing processes and so on.  One very thorough website that explains everything beginners and veterans alike need to know, is at Hobby Farms.

The beans can be eaten immediately, or of course stored for later consumption.  Dilly Beans also make great gifts, either on their own, or as part of a larger gift basket!