To Begin

The garden in February, two months after we moved in. The garden had obviously not been cultivated for several years, there were even two composters that had cooked themselves "dry." The full sun potential of the grass at the back of the yard was my inspiration for digging a new bed, the neglected fence was my excuse.

Such a messy garden. Mind you the gardens that I like are usually messy in the winter, but this one looks neglected. I love a project, and this one came with so much material, like these boards and bricks to work in.

I love starting seeds, I start tomatoes from seeds every year and give the plants to my friends. I usually start them around the spring equinox (Mar 20), which seems to give them a long enough season in my area. I started these guys under fluorescent lights in my living room.

In March I also ordered 10 bags of composted manure from a local sports stadium, I put them against the fence that I was preparing to tear down, to kill the grass I was thinking. 

 I used a warm day to take a shovel to the soil of the vegetable bed, of course that soil was wet so I had to till it again to de-clump it, but I enjoyed the activity and it helped me to sort out the sections I was planning on planting.

This photo is my defence in case my landlord, whom I did not consult, complained. The neighbours downstairs had requested the fence get taken down, but the landlords did not see it as a priority. I like to envision that absentee landlords give freedom to the tenants to make positive changes to the property.

On April 5th I planted my potatoes in trenches, they started coming up immediately. I also planted spinach, lettuce and Gai Lan, but none of those came up at all. Maybe the soil was not tilled properly?

In May the positive changes began. This is after the first day of digging. I used the double digging technique to deal with the grass, with this method you dig out the grass, put it in a pile, dig  a shovel head deeper in the hole you just took the grass out of, piling that dirt in another pile, fill that hole with the grass and then pile the dirt you just got from under the grass, over the grass. pretty hard work...

This is after two more days of digging, with lots of help from friends and neighbours (i was 8 months pregnant at this point and could not do it all alone.) The red tinge comes from coconut coir, I also added sea soil to help condition the soil.

I divided the bed into four and used bricks that we dug out from the right corner of it (city dirt is filled with interesting things, once I found a bedpan in a bed I was digging) to create paths through it. I had started pumpkins inside and they were getting big fast, I was happy that I could finally get them into the dirt. On the far left I direct sowed a different variety of pumpkin to see how it performed next to the transplanted variety. The transplants way out performed the direct sowed pumpkins. I was originally trying to make this a mayan garden, which is an intercrop of beans squash and corn. Sadly the corn never got the heat it needed, so it didn't do much at all, and so the beans had nothing to climb, they still produced, but harvesting them is kind of crazy. The pumpkins though...

This is the end of May, the potatoes are huge, the tomatoes and zucchinis are still little baby plants.

The pumpkins are getting bigger, this is taken in the beginning of July, as that is my parents van, they came to stay during the month of July to help take care of the baby.

Here is a early July shot of the tomatoes and zucchinis, which exploded in a matter of days.

Within two weeks, the pumpkins were on there way to taking over.

And the tomatoes were choking themselves out.

Here is a photo of the pumpkins in the beggining of September, when I decided to harvest them, because it suddenly got really cold and wet, and they looked mostly done anyhow.  Its hard to believe there is only 4 pumpkin plants in this patch.

I got 9 huge healthy  Rouge Vif D-Estamps pumpkins (seeds bought from West Coast Seeds) from three plants. I also got a couple small dwarf and diseased one that didn't make the photo or my plate.

I looked up what Estamps is, and it is a town in France, I like to imagine that is where this varietal was developed.

This is September in for the potatoes, which we are still harvesting, one row gave us over 5 kilos, and we still have one more to harvest.

This was the last and the largest zucchini I harvested, it weighed 2.5 kg and was dinner for three days.

I will plant Zucchini every year from now one, it produces so much it is very rewarding, and it is very versatile to cook with.

Finally, a picture of Juni, our little June baby,