FarmCity Food Garden Construction

Good time to plant garlic!

Yep, still planting time!  It may feel as if not much grows in winter, but along with many greens and brassicas, garlic can easily be planted from September through November for harvest the following July. Plant them in a sunny spot in your garden (or where the sun used to be, now that the rains have started!  Don't fret, the sun will come again!)

Garlic Growing 101:

Soil: Garlic and onions grow well in a light, medium fertile soil that drains well.   Too much nitrogen in the soil causes heavy top growth and delays bulb formation.  This is why garlic and onions are known as a second yield crop, which means they do best when planted in an area where another crop - tomatoes or other plant that has needed a highly fertile soil - has already been grown and harvested.   For our West Coast environment, where the heavy rain means the soil is usually acidic, it also helps to amend the soil with wood ash or dolomite lime.

Planting - is just like planting all the other bulbs that you're putting in this fall!  Break apart the bulb and set individual cloves 4"-6" (10-15 cm) apart and about  2" (5cm) deep with the pointy side up. Garlic likes moisture, so if you plant the cloves even deeper, it should result in fatter bulbs.  

Again, like other bulbs, garlic doesn´t need its own bed: it can be planted in amongst other vegetables - in winter, scattered through a kale bed or interplanted with broccolis - as "health keeper."  Garlic repels slugs and snails, and also helps to prevent fungal infections in your other plants.   

Pests: Garlic is a relatively carefree with few pests or diseases.  Avoid leaving old plant parts in the ground and - as with all your food crops - use a rotation system in your garden, changing beds each year in a 3- or 4-year rotation.  We have also found out the hard way that top dressing (or probably digging in) manure is a bad idea: it apparently helps promote garlic rust, a viral infection that, while harmless to us, can slow growth and eventually kill the plant.

Garlic, the great protector!  While garlic and onions help to protect other plants, they're also medicinal herbs for us!  Besides vitamins and organic acid, they contain sulfureous essential oils - the source of that lovely garlic scent!  It's these oils that make garlic a good defense against disease: they have natural antibiotic properties, resulting in an antiseptic and disinfectant effect in our bodies. During cold season, people also take garlic pills - or just tuck into their favourite puttanesca recipe - to help fight off colds.

We like to grow "Red Russian" which has substantial purple-streaked bulbs and which can handle wet weather very well. It has a delicious taste and stores for about 4-6 month.

Below, a leek in the spring sun - another member of the onion family.

Front Yard Garden - Update

We wrote a while ago about a beautiful front yard vegetable garden we built; here are new photos showing the garden about a month later - in very early May.  We've built some climbing frames for peas and beans, transplanted strawberries, garlic and rhubarb, and (with the owners) have helped plant bok choi, pak choi, turnips, carrots, beets, lettuce, potatoes, and some herbs.  The orange thyme between the flagstones is growing well, and will eventually form one continuous seam of aromatic beauty amongst the stones!

There's still room for the heat-loving plants to go in - tomatoes, squashes, peppers, more herbs, and so on.   And of course, the greens and peas can be resewn in successive "flights" - every three or four weeks - to keep a steady supply coming for much of the summer.  

In the fall, while the last tomatoes are still ripening on the vine, the garden can be converted into a winter garden - broccoli, cabbages, cauliflower and brussels sprouts interspersed with beds of kale, garlic, onions and so on.  We can also cover one or more of the beds, and grow lettuce for year-round harvesting!

Edible Landscape Design

We've recently begun to offer full foodscaping design services, especially for clients who want to replace their front lawn with an edible garden - and so need it to look particularly nice.  

This project was for a south-facing front lawn in the Dunbar area, the yard measuring about 33x33'.  The client wanted to replace her front lawn with a system of raised vegetable-growing beds and cedar chip paths.  In such a sunny location, just about any vegetable or fruit will grow well, and you can layer the kinds of plants from front to back (sunwards to shade-wards) in each successive bed.  So the full-sun tomatoes, beans, squashes, or herbs, provide part-shade for turnips or beets, and closer beneath the sun-loving plants, more consistent shade for lettuces, kales, mints, parsley or asian greens. 

The client also looked to create some kind of barrier around the yard to prevent dogs (and maybe overly-eager human scavengers!) from coming in - while not making it unfriendly for the neighbours.  And finally, she wanted  to replace her straight-shot, broken concrete walk with a winding walk of pavers.

In designing the yard, our first decision was that the garden needed a focal point - both visually from the street, and practically in terms of a staging-place for the gardening work.  So we started with the paved patio area up near the house - where a potting table, garden bench or small table and chairs could sit - and worked from there.   

Likewise, we saw our goal as trying to provide as much food-producing space as possible.  So on the front and one side, a fence became either growing frames or an arbour incorporating another growing frame - for grapes, beans, peas, tomatoes, squashes, even melons, kiwi vines or espaliered fruit trees.  Similarly, we replaced a proposed wooden fence on the other side with an edible, living fence of raspberries and blueberries.  

This is the most basic plan we devised, our client not wanting to get too adventurous with odd shapes and sizes of beds (though within the limits of what can be effectively gardened, the sky's the limit in this regard!).  We also agreed that an overall east-west layout for the beds was aesthetically the best choice for this yard. 

Included in the estimate was the installation of a well-designed, inconspicuous drip watering system, all running back to a single tap with a programmable timer to make it as little work as possible.

We should add: we have yet to get to design a garden for someone with particular physical needs - but it's a challenge we can't wait to take on!  Wheelchair friendly paths, extra high raised beds, friendly composting or watering systems, vertical gardening strategies, and so on: these can all be adapted for each person's particular needs.

Either way, the result: the transformation of an unused front lawn well past its prime, into a vibrant, rich, beautiful foodscape, producing healthy, fresh food year-round!  And no more mowing the lawn!

 

 

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: