FarmCity Food Garden Construction

Valentine's Day Gifts for Gardeners

Valentine's Day is a great occasion to give your gardening beloved a unqiue FarmCity gift!  We are happy to help you design exactly the gift you are looking for.  For some ideas, check out our Gifts for Gardeners, including:

A brand new raised garden bed filled with fresh, clean soil:

A beautiful way to design a garden, and a practical gardening strategy in our West Coast climate, the benefits of raised bed gardening are many.

 

 

 

 

 

A custom built planter - or suite of planters:

 A gorgeous design element in any garden, and essential for balcony gardening.  And notice the attached trellis: we also build furniture-quality custom arbours, garden sheds, potting tables and garden woodworking.

 

 

 

 

 

A private session with a food garden expert: 

A 30-year veteran of growing food in Vancouver's particular climate, Susan Stewart offers clear, sensible gardening advice and planning help.

Gardening Season Has Begun!

This January, it's been frosty, and foggy, and now we're back to rain again.  But believe it or not, the gardening season has already started!  

Planning: There's lots to consider for the upcoming season: in recalling what crops your grew last year (where they were planted, how they did), you'll be working out what this year's crop rotation will be.  You don't want to plant the same plants in the same place year after year, because the soil will have accumulated diseases and fungi particular to that kind of plant.  So in order to keep down such pests as garlic rust, tomato blight or wireworms in your carrots, it's important to rotate the location of your crops each new season - preferably on a 3 or 4-year cycle.  

You'll also want to think through whether the various crops did as well as they could have - or whether you want to change strategies: maybe you just can't grow a pear tree in such waterlogged soil, so you'll have to move it to a drier spot.  Or the beets were too tough and fibrous, so they should be planted in a somewhat shadier area.  Or those heirloom beefsteak tomatoes just aren't your thing.

Beyond the planting plan, there are plenty of other issues to consider, of course - take your pick from the full array of gardening issues and questions that constitute the rich world of food gardening!  From wheelbarrows to soil care,  from building new beds to contemplating companion plants (like calendula, left).

Ordering Seeds: The absolutely best part of food gardening - except maybe the eating part - is deciding what to grow for the coming season.  Time to have a look in the freezer at the seed you saved from last year.  You'll also soon be seeing veggie seeds in every grocery store and gardening centre - and it's impossible to resist browsing them.   Or if you're going the catalogue route, it's worthwhile working with a company from your local area so that you're sure you're getting accurate information (for people on the West Coast, we've mentioned West Coast Seeds before).  

Outdoor Planting: the one crop you can sow outdoors within a few weeks, is peas.  They prefer the cool climate of late winter/early spring - and die off by late June.  Plant them in repeated flights 2 or 3 weeks apart, so as to keep a steady supply going for as long as possible.   They'll need to be near a trellis or other support, of course, so they can grow up into the sun and away from the damp soil!

Indoor Sprouting: It's a bit early yet, but for some of your planned crops, you'll need to be starting the seeds indoors well before the outdoor season starts.  Tomatoes, peppers (right), melons and artichokes, among others, need a longer growing season than we actually have here in the Vancouver area, so they should be planted indoors in March.  You can probably get any of these as a bedding plant in May or June, but growing from seed means you have far more varieties to choose from - including heritage plants and organically grown seed.  And it's a lot cheaper to grow from seed, too.

Sprouting Set-Up: In addition to getting seeds, you'll also need to ensure that you have the plant trays and lights needed for indoor sprouting.  These days, most good gardening stores supply these set-ups.  Just make sure to get not just growing trays - with holes for drainage - but also another set of trays without holes, to catch the run-off (learned that one the hard way!).

Inspect Your Garden: Now is also the time to go out and give your garden a good looking over, with an eye to what needs repairing or replacing - or how you want to expand your garden.  Do some of the raised beds need replacing?  Will you need a new wheelbarrow?  Is this the year to expand your garden to the front boulevard, where the light is amazing?  How much manure should you order?  And so on.

 How Can We Help?  We would be glad to talk over your ideas with you, and look at your garden, however large or small.  We can help you: arrive at an overall garden design for your particular situation; repair raised beds or build new ones; do the heavy lifting of moving soil and manure; plan and build custom planters, trellises, arbours, garden sheds and composters; lay a new drip hose system; dig in your cover crop; and spread compost.  Feel free to inquire about anything you need help with. 

Expert Gardening Advice: We have recently welcomed gardening expert Susan Stewart, 30-year veteran of West Coast food gardening, to our crew.  She's available to consult with you, in your garden, about your garden design and planting plan or on any other food gardening questions you may have.  Email or phone to book an appointment!

 

Custom Planters and Raised Reds

Another busy season for FarmCity - and we wanted to do a little show-and-tell.  We seem to have become the go-to people for custom balcony and small-space planters, made of long-weathering Western Red Cedar and hand-crafted to a high standard.  These are not your crudely built, mass-produced boxes!  In addition, part of our service is to install them, with soil, in the requested location.  

For small-space gardens, the efficient use of space is a real concern, so many of our planters come with attached growing frames, which can support beans, peas, tomatoes, squashes, cucumbers - even artichokes, or anything else that needs staking up.

A few samples:

 

In gardens that are "light-challenged," one solution is to build your garden up towards the light, here with multi-leveled planters.  The top level of the two-tiered planter, above, is a couple feet off the ground, and of course, plants vining up the growing frame will reach still higher.  This particular planter is about 5 feet long, but any size is possible.  The three-tiered one is about 2 feet across, and 3 feet high.   Check out our page on small space gardening for other examples and ideas.

We've also built a variety of styles of raised beds, for a range of locations, this season.  Raised beds are practical for a lot of reasons, including providing good drainage, reducing plant pests and diseases, extending the growing season, and reducing water use.  But they're also really attractive!  Here are a few styles:

With careful planning, even the smallest yards can grow a lot of food!  The front bed, above, will host the tomatoes, beans and other sun-loving crops, while the back bed will be for the more shade tolerant foods like lettuces and other leafy greens.  

The planters on the left will surely survive an earthquake - good survival planning!  Look at how much can be grown in a small space!  Replace the turf around the beds with stone paths, and you'd have a great garden for wheelchair gardeners, as the beds are higher than most, and can be easily reached.

The front yard planters, on the right, we've shown before, but we wanted to draw attention to the custom shape of the beds to the far right in the photo - made to fit the shape of the yard, and to accomodate the stone path that runs along the ends of the beds.   

Last raised bed, above: these twinned beds we built for a North Shore daycare.   Adapting the beds to the extreme slope of the yard had the advantage that there were a few spots with nice deep soil for potatoes or sparagus, slightly shallower spots for a crop of carrots, and then pleanty of room for all kinds of the shallower-rooted vegetables - from tomatoes to beans to beets.  

Finally, we've also recently built a number of backyard compost bins.   In our West Coast environment, composting needs plenty of air circulation so that the kitchen scraps and garden waste actually compost - an aerobic process that produces little odour.  The widely used black plastic bins are not so great - poor air circulation, very hard to turn or empty, and SMELLY!  Our solution is this two-lidded box made of Western Red Cedar and wire mesh.   The front boards are removable, right down to the ground, so turning and emptying are easy.  

Any size is possible, but this one is 2x4x2', big enough to handle kitchen waste and a fair bit of yard waste as well.  As long as the compost has contact with the ground, the requisite microbes and worms will move in on their own, but just to be sure, we "seed" the composts with a nice dose of critter-laden compost of our own!

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!

 

 

Beautiful Front Yard Garden

People's opinions about front yard vegetable gardens are often quite negative - but here's a recent project of ours that shows just how beautiful it can be:

We removed all the sod, then built the four raised beds using spruce wood and organic soil.   The result is about 150 square feet of rich, new growing space!  Between the beds, we put in pea gravel paths.  The gravel packs down into a firm layer on which to walk and work.   Finally, we installed a flagstone patio and path, from which to stage the gardening work.  Between the flagstones, we'll plant wooly thyme, while of course within the raised beds - fresh vegetables galore!

Our clients have asked us to help plan and plant the vegetables, which we're delighted to do: how nice to get to help the garden itself really take shape!

Finally, the next stage of our work with them will involve renovating the back yard, helping to redesign and refurbish the existing garden beds, and possibly building a trellis for a grape vine (or maybe wisteria!)

Below, a couple more photos of the project so far.  Also, check out our front yard garden update - the garden 5 or 6 weeks later!

Year-Round Harvesting in Vancouver

Fresh lettuce in January - thanks to our row coverings!  Using the technique outlined in an earlier post about covered beds - using rebar, PVC pipe and plastic sheeting to make mini-greenhouses - 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, shown 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!

Ideas for Garden Beds, Vertical Gardens and Intensive Gardening

We've been doing a lot of building and tinkering in our garden - and I thought I'd show a few of our recent additions. 

Vertical gardens: Like many people who are "food-scaping" their yards, we are always looking at ways to grow more intensively, in order to maximize our harvest within the limited space of an urban lot.  One basic principle of intensive gardening is to go up wherever possible. Tomatoes, beans, peas, squashes - anything with a vining habit - can be made to grow up a fence, trellis, arbour, or other support.  This allows for the plants to receive maximum sunlight and air circulation, and it means that you can squeeze more plants into a smaller area.

We recently built this vertical "wall" out of nothing more than a few old 2x4's and some twine, added to the wire mesh fence that we already had in place:

I don't know how you find it, but I think it's really attractive, despite how rudimentary it is.  It stands about 7 feet high.  There's another photo below showing the garden bed when it's a little farther along in the season: we planted scarlet runner beans and vine tomatoes right below the fence, so they can grow up the supports.  In the foreground (above) are some cauliflowers plants, which we planted last July.  In this photo they hadn't developed their heads yet - but then, who has?! - but by now, in mid-May, we're harvesting them.

Raised Beds - Alternate Designs

We also went a little crazy with some creative raised-bed-building.  Russ - my neighbour and fellow FarmCity carpenter, built these:

This also shows the same vertical supports as above.  By now, there are are some tomato & bean seedlings right along the fence - hard to see here - and then further from the fence are baby kale (needing thinning!), several types of lettuce, and arugula.  The bed is fairly shallow, and will eventually be shaded by the tomatoes & beans - hence the choice to plant greens (see my shade gardening tips).  We also planted some leeks in amongst the greens - and finally, in order to protect against unwanted insects and to attract pollinating ones - there is a line of marigold seedlings following the curve of the bed.

After Russ built the above bed, I built these curved extensions on some existing beds:

The decision to build curving shapes is mostly just for the heck of it: it breaks up the straight lines of most raised beds, and encourages us to think creatively about how we plant the beds (intensive, intensive, intensive!).  In the foreground, each of the posts is set beside a tomato seedling, which we will tie up as they grow.  Back against the fence is a garlic crop, planted last fall, and then to the left are a few of this winter's kale plants that we're leaving to go to seed - to harvest the seed.  Between the tomato plants, we usually direct seed parsley and basil - basil on the sunny side of the tomatoes, parsley in the shade of them - again, to maximize the food grown in a small area. The hay is leftover mulch from the winter.  And finally, the plan is to replace the turf between the beds with river rock or gravel, so we don't have to mow there!

Boulevard Gardens

We have a corner lot, so we're also slowly developing the side boulevard, which gets good morning sun.  Last year we planted some fruit trees - two plums and two apples.  FYI, the City of Vancouver does allow residents to build gardens on their adjacent boulevards - but planting fruit trees is not strictly allowed by Vancouver by-laws.  We take the risk that a city crew could remove them at any time for their own mysterious reasons - but our gamble is that with Gregor Robertson's "Greenest City" plan as the current policy at City Hall, we will get away with it!  Forgive my self-righteousness, but I think we have right-thinking on our side on this one.

In any case, now we've begun to expand the boulevard garden, slowly replacing turf with gardening space.  Rereading Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture (Toby Hemenway), we decided to begin with circular gardens around the base of the trees:

These beds will be planted with a combination of plants called an "apple guild."  A "guild" is defined by the co-planting of mutually supportive and beneficial plants (the Three Sisters of corn, beans and squash is the classic guild).  In other words, within the drip line of the tree, moving in from the outer ring, we will plant successive species of compatible plants, each chosen for their particular features, which together will work to create a whole, complex eco-system of plants centred on the tree itself.  I hope that makes sense.  Check out Hemenway's book for more details!

Just in case you're wondering, we aren't in the habit of tying our fruit trees down - as if they would run away without it!  Rather, we're trying to pull the branches down to get them to grow horizontally - to keep the fruit more accessible as the tree grows larger.

Some of Our Recent Work

We've recently built a great little balcony package: a very simple potting table, a three-tiered planter, and a matching shelf on which to put more pots.  Made of finely sanded cedar, the table was finished with varnish to protect it from weathering (not yet done in this photo), while our clients decided to leave the planter and shelves to the elements: they'll weather to a lovely silvery grey.  We photographed the combination in our own yard, but it was custom built to fit a balcony approximately 5-1/2 x 13 feet, with room to spare for people and cats alike!

We also recently built a lovely kitchen garden over on West 15th Avenue.  The small yard of one half of a duplex, it had a perfectly nice lawn, but our clients, Will & Nina, didn't use it at all.  So instead, they put in a series of four raised beds - enough to grow a substantial part of their diet over the seasons!  And in order for our clients not to have to mow between the beds, we also installed river rock paths between.  Check out the link just above for a fuller description and more photos. 

Will & Nina are brand new gardeners, but just jumped right in - within a couple weeks of our building the garden beds, I got an email from Will: their spinach is coming up already, and there're other crops on the way!  

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!