Cylia's Blog (15)

I am growing 12 varieties of tomatoes on my patio this year. I promise myself, less is better next year. It's already September 16 and we've had few tomatoes so far -- all larger patio tomatoes have had blossom end rot -- the Sweet Million cherry tomatoes are perfect, sweet and plentiful -- like candy.

Did a pruning on the tomatoes today and am picking partially ripe tomatoes and finishing them in sealed paper bags. Fruit naturally produces ethylene gas which helps stimulate…

Check out this link : http://www.mayapedal.org/

Wondering if anyone in Vancouver is doing this? If so, please post the info on this site.
Cylia

With the beautiful spring weather I was out on the patio digging out two of my wooden garden boxes and replacing with fresher soil.  I use a combination of my on-site compost material, old soil, and added some fresh soil/compost mix from the MOBY sale.  My strategem peas are planted.  We purchased these peas from the seedy Saturday at Stewart Farm a couple years back and grew these out last year.  This time I removed the chives.  According to my companion garden book, peas don't like the…

I've finally tallied up the numbers and in order of greatest harvest, here goes:

23 oz   Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Helper* - beefsteak

16.25   Pollock

16 oz   Black Krim* - most tasty

14.5     Taxi

13.25   Black Prince

12 oz   Yellow Pear

9.25     Victoria* - tasty early producer

7 oz     Elfin Cherry

6.75     Principe Borghese

118 oz TOTAL

(7 lb, 6 oz)

What have I learned?  They are…

This picture shows all the varieties and quantities I harvested August 29 (and there's still more). If you're wondering about the brown tip tomatoes, those are Ardwynna Paste tomatoes with blossom end rot. It is a deficiency in the soil and the cure is to dissolve epsom salts and water, and give the afflicted plant a dose.

I appear to have a lot of…

Thought I would post a pic of the harvested tomatoes.

Robust red tomato - Victoria (4 oz)

Purpley red - Black Prince (2.25 oz)

Golden yellow - Taxi (2 oz x 2)

Golden yellow pear shaped - Yellow Pear (didn't register on…

This year I decided to grow several varieties to check out how they would do on my patio and to determine if I wanted to grow them again. There are hundreds of kinds of tomatoes and I am growing 11 heritage varieties (12 in total), planted either in Ikea self-watering black plastic garden pots and/or my garden boxes (on wheels). With the self-watering pots I only need to water every other day, at least during the hot summer. This is what I have found out so far.…

With some of our Neighborhood Small Grants funding (thank you Vancouver Foundation), our seed saving collective has purchased three books:

(1) "Breed your own Vegetable Varieties" by Carol Depp

(2) "Seed to Seed" by Susan Ashworth, both of which are available to borrow.…

At around 8 a.m., after I had quickly consumed my breakfast fruit smoothie, I harvested pea seed from my dried vines. We didn't eat many peas this spring even though four varieties were planted in our patio garden boxes. One "Oregon Sugar" and "Green Arrow" came up, even though the same number of seed were planted in each row. Perhaps we planted too late since peas won't germinate if it's too warm.

The heritage…

Last year I concocted kale pesto and froze batches of it. It has a rather dark flavor and we're still eating it.

This year, we planted daikon radishes and red frilly mustard and perhaps they weren't planted early enough or the plants decided to go to seed because of the warm/cold wet weather instead.  Who knows?  Instead of having long beautiful daikon roots to harvest, we have short stumpy roots and lots of greens and flowers. The greens by themselves are pretty bitter so we googled…

Certain veggies seem to thrive in our conditions and don't care if the spring was cold and wet. Yes, they are leeks and kale. Ever since I started planting these vegetables in my garden three years ago, I have never regretted these easy care plants. Both overwinter here no problem (with good drainage) and during the summer need occasional watering and not much else.

My kale plants keep on seeding themselves in my plot and when I harvest the young leaves, the plant just keeps on…

The weather has turned and we are receiving clear blue sky and sunshine. My patio tomatoes are looking very healthy and are flowering. I need to start the basil soon.

Sunday and Monday were spent weeding out a mustard-like self-seeder from one garden plot at MOBY. That is one hazard of taking over someone else's plot. Last year we pulled out some huge celery like plants from this plot. After six hours of weeding, I can now see the onions, leeks, lemon balm, peas, nasturtiums, daikon…

April 11, 2011

It looks like spring…

Wow, it feels early to be doing seed starts and apparently it isn't, so Peter and I have planted our first batch of 24 pots, 4 seeds in each.  Some will go toward the Cedar Cottage spring fling event, some for our gardens.

My method:  clean/wash the reusable plastic pots (the square kind work best), use purchased seed starter mix (took out the big lumps of wood chips), fill the pots with soil up to 1/4 inch from top, compress gently so particles meet, spray the top with…

Background: An asset mapping exercise at the Resiliency Revolution gathering put on by Vancouver Permaculture Meetup, Evolver and Village Vancouver, to explore some of the resources we have in our neighbourhoods