The Occasional Bed

Reconciliation

2007-06-22T14:22:00.001-06:00

I've been meaning to do a post with this title for months now, ever since I first ventured into the garden and cleaned up the organic debris that should have been cleaned up last fall. What a release of energy that brought! I hadn't realized how the tattered old garden was weighing on my mind and spirit.

But before I got the post done, my intended planting dates were passing, and the weeds were growing, and I was needing to reconcile with the garden all over again. Gardening has been a struggle this year, but in the last week or so, with some help from the kids, it is starting to feel okay.

If it seems like there is an awful lot of bare soil in that picture, you're right, there is. Next year I want to try some extremely early spinach planting, and have it harvested in time to start the turnips in the same bed. Otherwise that soil is left open to parching sun and pounding rain for too long, I figure. The turnip bed runs from lower left to near centre of the photo above. Beyond it to the left is more bare soil, where I planned to put beans, but I still haven't got my later bean plantings in yet.

This corner seems happy, although the onions in the foreground are a bit sparse (and weedy) so far. Those I grew as transplants and set out much earlier than other years, so they are doing much better than any onions I ever grew from seed before EXCEPT . . . see that tall thick green patch in the background, with the handle of the hated lawnmower sticking up behind it? That's my crop of onions from the sets I grew last year. Yippee! This year I am growing more sets, and next year I don't think I'll bother with the transplants.

And here's my favourite part of this year's garden.

I wanted to reduce the bare ground around my tomatoes and peppers, so I surrounded them with carrots. I didn't realize how pretty those double rows of carrot leaves would be, bordering the taller tomatoes. And like last year, James has been praising my "formal" garden, saying it is so much nicer to look at than all the gardens he has seen with straight rows. Thanks, James. Praise from my kids feels wonderful.

Resting, Waiting

2006-12-07T14:24:00.000-06:00

Frost Warning?

2006-09-08T14:25:00.000-06:00

Ouch! How come the text forecast says low of 5 degrees C, but that little icon thingy in my sidebar says 3? That's it. I've got work to do.

Bedpost #2

2006-09-07T15:02:00.000-06:00

Ummm...

Wish I had progress to report...

Gotta go whip up something that looks like progress in the kitchen...

Bedpost #1

2006-09-06T10:14:00.000-06:00

The Daily B.E.D.

This foray into daily posting is conceived as a sort of bedtime evaluation of my day, except that I will probably write it the next morning, after everyone else leaves the house. Might be only on weekdays.

B: for Being. Being here. Here in the eternal now. Mindfulness - the "attention" of Timothy Miller's "Compassion, Attention and Gratitude".

E: for Emotions. My emotions. My very own. Somebody quoted somebody the other day, saying (roughly) "The only things that are truly your own are your emotions. Use them well." That might sound frustrating, except for this: in the one week or so that I attended a university psychology class, I learned how to own my emotions. They don't just happen to me. They are not the automatic result of some outside factor. That factor acts on a belief, to trigger the emotion. Change the belief, and you change the emotion. Any emotion arising, then, is a clue pointing the way to the belief behind it, and thus pointing the way to change. (Thanks, Paul.) In the same vein - did you know that Happiness Is a Choice?

D: for Day. This day - and only this day. Day by day, bit by bit - but for now, just this one. This moment of this day.

I was thinking all this yesterday morning, and it felt good, felt hopeful. Got up with good intentions. Found myself at the end of the day with not much to show except a very sarcastic blog post. Much the same sad situation as I'd sat in all last week.

Why?

Well, it could be partly this thing that's going around, but still.

This morning, as I slumped through another utterly pointless computer-simulated card game, I asked myself why I was doing it. And the answer made sense. The game represents a clearly defined and limited problem, with a high probability of successful resolution. (I play FreeCell, and I nearly always win. I do allow myself unlimited restarts.) The reward comes quickly.

Faced with a choice between the messy, no-quick-fix problems of daily life, or the straightforward, get-'em-done problems of a computer game, I've been choosing the latter.

Similarly, I've been blogging a lot, tackling big problems, except not really tackling them, just talking about them. I love to write, and it doesn't even matter if anyone reads it (that's a bonus). Again, the satisfaction is that I get a quick resolution to the problem I set myself: writing a blog post. It's a comfy substitute for doing some concrete work on an infinitesimal bit of the real problem.

It's funny, though. In a teamwork situation, I tend to pick the hardest or most unpleasant tasks for myself. Why pick the easy stuff when I'm alone?

Not Daily Anymore

2006-08-08T12:45:00.000-06:00

I'm trying to get back to doing a "daily bed post" - might get there yet. I could go back through all the beds and make sure I noted varieties, spacing, what worked and what didn't. That could be useful next year.

But next year is the problem. I have already lost interest in this garden. Not that it's a disappointment; it has done better than any garden I've ever tended before. But it's not enough. It's too small, and any expansion would run into droughty saline soil, or shade, or resistance from Garth. It needs more water supply, and that means a new roof, and when I think about the new roof, I want to change the roof to expand the house (and put in a cistern, too), and that means permits and planning and way more time than I can realistically imagine finding in my life.

So instead I dream about climbing an even larger mountain - moving back to the hills, where there are rich moist low areas just waiting to grow food. There's just the small problem of a house. And an agreement from Garth. He worries about disagreements with my family over land use, so he'd rather buy his own land. So, then, we would have free rein to do whatever we wanted with the land - and no money to do it.

Lettuce Update

2006-08-03T17:28:00.000-06:00

The Cimarron Red Romaine in the foreground is still okay, but better if mixed with other greens. It was planted around June 8th, a little later than the now-bitter leaf lettuce in the background, which is about to be pulled for mulch or compost. I hear that Garth gave away several pails of it.

And here's my current delight: a couple of rows of fresh lettuce, just coming into their own. I planted these on July 3rd, under the mulch, and kept peeking underneath until they appeared, just five days later. Then I parted it gently to let them out, and away they went. The soil was cooler under the mulch, and this part of the garden is shaded for part of the day, which may have helped too. Next year I want to pay more attention to successional planting, but for this year, with so many of us away in the latter part of July, it worked out okay.

Now it's a maze

2006-08-02T13:31:00.000-06:00

Here's the spaghetti squash again. And the pumpkins, and the "west squash," all blending together. There used to be a path through the middle there. No more walking the labyrinth these days, but it's fun to pick my way through there and come across startlingly large squashes swelling under the leaves. Just a couple of weeks, and I'll start pinching the vines back.

Spaghetti Squash

2006-07-13T21:48:00.000-06:00

Labyrinth Location: 2nd yin-dot arc, 1 to 2 o'clock
Vegetable: Spaghetti squash
Seed/Transplant Date: June 5 or so?
Soil Preparation: Rototilled lawn, with some grass rhizomes pulled out, and hills made with a shovelful of manure underneath

The spaghetti squash are the two hills near the centre of the photo, with pumpkins in the background and the "west squash" crawling across the path from the bed on the right. Tomorrow I leave for the Great Sandhills, and I won't be back for over two weeks. It could be a jungle when I get home. If you see Garth, remind him to train those vines, will ya?

The West Squash

2006-07-12T20:02:00.000-06:00

Labyrinth Location: 1st yang-dot arc, 2 to 5 o'clock
Vegetable: A winter squash
Seed/Transplant Date: June 5 or so
Soil Preparation: Rototilled lawn, with some grass rhizomes pulled out, and hills made with a shovelful of manure underneath

I mentioned the South Squash a couple of weeks ago; these are the West Squash. One direction is acorn and the other is butternut squash, but I don't know which is which.

I've been training some of the other squash vines along the empty areas between the hills, to keep them out of the labyrinth paths, but these vines don't seem to be vining along the ground. They are reaching for the sky, and quite uncooperative about being twisted into the desired direction. Maybe I just need to wait until they get too heavy for themselves.

And How They Grew

2006-07-11T20:13:00.000-06:00

Labyrinth Location: 3rd yin-dot arc, 9 and 11 o'clock
Vegetable: Green peppers
Seed/Transplant Date: Same as tomatoes
Soil Preparation: Same as tomatoes

Those are Mary Milligan's above. These I got from my mom:

They're taller, but a bit lanky looking.

And these are my own.

Wow, that middle one looks fantas... wait a minute, that's a sunflower.

I've been meaning to transplant that volunteer out of there, but I'm starting to think it's too late.

Got 'im

2006-07-10T21:28:00.000-06:00

Bet you never expected to see me proudly displaying a dead varmint on this blog. I'll spare you the pictures, then. (They turned out rather blurry anyway.) Above you see the trap, sprung - there is indeed a dead pocket gopher in there. At the lower left you can see the carrot we placed for bait. It's one of our own carrots, and it probably would have been gopher food by tomorrow if we hadn't resorted to this small violence. The little white archway is a piece of a plastic yogourt tub, which had a previous incarnation as a cutworm collar but got cut in half for this gig. We were trying to simulate the original tunnel opening, and it looks like we were successful.

There were several surprises here.

For one thing, I didn't know pocket gophers were so big. I expected something mouse-sized, but the one we caught was more like a Richardson's ground squirrel in girth, though not so long in the body.

Secondly, I was amazed by its digging claws. The picture on the site I linked above doesn't do them justice. If we catch another one, I'll try to get a better picture.

Thirdly, I definitely hadn't expected to find a tunnel open to the surface. When we set out to place my new traps (acquired in Carlyle's amazing Home Hardware store this afternoon), we just assumed we would have to dig to find a tunnel. We started right in next to the mounds, sacrificing a few carrots in a row where several plants had already gone missing (pulled down from below). Not so easy. Apparently the gopher had plugged the tunnel there. Garth went to look for a rod to probe around the mounds, and I gazed around, wondering where to start. I noticed a very small pile of what looked like gopher-pushed dirt, away on the other side of the next bed, close to the edge of the lawn. When I took a closer look, I found an actual opening down into a gopher tunnel. I don't think I'd ever seen one before - not a pocket gopher tunnel. Ground squirrels make their front doors obvious, but pocket gophers will have mounds of pushed-up dirt dotting the landscape and not a single hole in sight.

We think maybe the lawn edging had something to do with it, forcing the pocket gopher to either surface or dig deeper.

And one more surprise: catching a pocket gopher so fast. I think we had it inside of an hour after the trap was set.

We reset the trap (or, to be precise, replaced it with a second trap while the first one gets rinsed and aired out). Here it is being buried.

It's a Victor "Black Box" gopher trap. They recommend setting two traps end to end, which is why I bought two, but in this instance we figured one would do. And it did.

I feel like I should make some witty remark, or say something apologetic. Yes, folks. Things die in my garden.

Mary's and Mine

2006-07-09T20:28:00.000-06:00

Labyrinth Location: 2nd border arc and 3rd yin-dot arc, where they meet
Vegetable: Tomatoes
Seed/Transplant Date: I dunno. Sometime after May 21 and before June 5th, I'd say.
Soil Preparation: Existing garden, the usual.

Manitoba tomatoes on the left, Beefsteak on the right. I got the seedlings from Mary Milligan. She said they were her best ever, and they have done beautifully. Transplanting didn't seem to bother them in the slightest, and look at these fruits already!

(See what I mean about the mud?)

Now for a peek beyond the Manitobas, between them and the shrouded turnips.

These are the Roma tomatoes I started indoors. When I transplanted them (at the same time as Mary's), they were barely starting to grow some true leaves. They seem to have recovered from whatever I did wrong (letting them get chilled, I think), but I will be amazed if they grow more than a handful of fruits.

Good News and Bad News

2006-07-08T22:36:00.000-06:00

Sometimes it's more of a nightly bed...

Labyrinth Location: Outer border arc, 11 o'clock
Vegetable: Lettuce
Seed/Transplant Date: Monday (July 3rd)
Soil Preparation: Mostly existing garden bed, I think, but near the edge and rather grassy. Has been under mulch for a week or two.

The good news - it worked! I planted this lettuce by peeling back some mulch, seeding the row, and covering it with mulch again. That kept the soil cooler, and the lettuce grew in spite of the hot spell we've had. I pulled the mulch aside a little bit this morning to let the plants out into the sun.

The peas I planted at the same time aren't up, but I'm still hoping.

Now for the bad news.

Those mounds appeared just this afternoon. Pocket gopher, I think. They were common on the farm, but I have never noticed any sign of them in town before.

The disheartening thing is, immediately off the right-hand edge of the picture is my carrot bed.

Battle strategy, anyone?

What Happened Here?

2006-07-07T22:29:00.000-06:00

Much of the garden has a bit of a lean to it, but it's worst among these broad beans. The lettuce just looks sort of sprawled. Anything that wasn't mulched is mud-spattered, as much as a foot up the stems.

When we left this morning everything was dusty dry. As we came back from the city this afternoon, there were thunderheads off in the distance, and I looked at them longingly. We did some errands around town before actually coming home, and suddenly I noticed the puddles on the streets. Hurrah! We got rain!

As soon as we parked in our driveway, we jumped out and headed for the rain gauge. But Garth stopped at the rain barrel, and I could hear his disappointment as he announced, "Only about an eighth." He was a little off, I think. Actually the rain barrel had come up about what we would expect from two tenths.

But the rain gauge showed nearly four tenths.

And the lawn didn't seem squelchy at all. In places it still seemed dry.

Brian cleared up the mystery. He said all that rain came in one short burst, in wind-driven sheets. Some of it must have flowed over the edge of the eavestrough instead of into the barrel. I suppose a lot of it must have run right off the garden, too. Maybe two tenths is the best estimate after all.

Drought Stress

2006-07-05T23:39:00.000-06:00

Labyrinth Location: Outer border arc, 9 to 10 o'clock or so
Vegetable: Beets
Seed/Transplant Date: May 22?
Soil Preparation: Not enough. Rather grassy yet.

I never think of watering these. I pay more attention to the small seedlings of later planted things, and the tomatoes. But they wilted yesterday, and even after a good dousing, they don't look quite themselves yet. My record keeping is a little erratic, but I think it's been almost two weeks since we had any significant rain.

Mulching seems to help a lot, and I'm trying to get more done, but my supply of clippings has nearly dried up. The lawn is growing very slowly, in the shade; out in the sun, it isn't growing at all, except where I moved sod this spring. Strange - I haven't given it any special attention, but it seems to be the most lush grass of all.

Limited Success

2006-07-04T21:02:00.000-06:00

Labyrinth Location: 3rd border arc, 11 o'clock
Vegetable: Basil
Seed/Transplant Date: Around the end of May? (started indoors, mid-late April?)
Soil Preparation: Existing garden, rototilled with well-rotted manure tilled in

That's my biggest basil plant. Here's the other extreme.

I think all my transplants got chilled sometime during their stay in the porch across the street, and went dormant. They are finally starting to recover from that and the transplanting. Here are two of the three surviving oregano plants.

In more than two feet of row, I got two plants less than two inches apart. It was awfully tough transplanting these, when they were just a pair of cotyledons and one pair of true leaves, all together making a circle about the size of a capital "C" in a book.

Basil, oregano, and parsley are all close together near the middle of the garden. I also planted a few of each in a small bed right at the entrance to the garden (outer border arc, 6 o'clock). The basil are doing okay, but the peas are looming.

Yesterday I was freezing spinach, since some of the plants were bolting already (perhaps partly due to crowding?). I wonder if I'll still have any fresh spinach when the basil can spare its first few leaves. Spinach pesto is so-o-o tasty.

And the Basic Beans

2006-07-03T21:18:00.000-06:00

Labyrinth Location: Outer border arc, 7:30 (green); 2nd yin-dot arc, 9 o'clock (wax)
Vegetable: Beans
Seed/Transplant Date: May 21 or 22
Soil Preparation: Variable; partly existing garden, and partly sod swapped out for garden soil

These beans were featured in the stepping-stone photo in my introductory post. How things have changed! Here's another photo from way back then (June 14th).

Aside to self: today is the day I planted lettuce and peas under the mulch near the South Squash. Check for germination this weekend.

Aside to anyone listening in: How many days to germination for leaf lettuce?

I'm Back...

2006-07-02T21:29:00.000-06:00

Labyrinth Location: Outer border arc, 7 o'clock
Vegetable: Broad beans
Seed/Transplant Date: May 21(?)
Soil Preparation: Same as the Yin Dot

Just back from a weekend away. After a couple of hours of loafing, I realized that the best light had already faded. I took some pictures anyway.

These are broad beans, or fava beans. They are my experimental crop for the year. I had never tried them, but the Harrowsmith Northern Gardener said they were an excellent choice for northern gardens, deserving more use than they get. You can plant them "as early as the soil can be worked." Although I didn't plant that early, and they seemed to take a long time to sprout, I am delighted to see that they are already flowering, a little bit ahead of my green and wax beans. I think they could mature in time to dry on the vines. I won't have a big yield from this little bed, but hopefully enough to see if we should plant more next year.

Aren't they striking flowers?

I've been admiring these ever since they came up. It's partly just the novelty, but I think they are particularly handsome plants. Here is what they looked like on June 14th.

The South Squash

2006-06-29T16:10:00.000-06:00

June 28th photo

Labyrinth Location: Outer border arc, 12 o'clock
Vegetable: A winter squash
Seed/Transplant Date: June 5 or so
Soil Preparation: Rototilled lawn, with some grass rhizomes pulled out, and hills made with a shovelful of manure underneath

Okay, I admit it - I don't know what I planted here. I think it was either butternut or acorn squash. I'm calling them the south squash, until they show some evidence of their identity, but I'm not sure they'll get around to that. Here we are right around the solstice, and the shade above was just after noon. They've been coping with some grass pressure, too.

June 14th photo

Grass is edible, eh?

But not very nourishing for a human, and not very good for nearby garden plants, either, I'm thinking. My impression is that some weeds can actually benefit the vegetables by loosening soil and bringing nutrients up from deeper levels, but grass doesn't help that way.

Time to Move the Rain Gauge

2006-06-28T21:23:00.000-06:00

Labyrinth Location: 1st yin-dot arc, 10 o'clock
Vegetable: Zucchini
Seed/Transplant Date: May 22?
Soil Preparation: Existing garden, rototilled with well-rotted manure tilled in; hills made with a shovelful of manure underneath.

I don't know if it would work as a funnel, or as a roof, but I don't think that leaf would help the accuracy of the rain gauge.

B gave us a couple of big zucchinis already (and they were great in lasagna yesterday), but he got seedlings from a friend. Ours were started in the open. They have flower buds showing, so zucchini season is just around the corner.

They've grown a lot in two weeks.

June 14th photo

Well, Pumpkins?

2006-06-27T11:24:00.000-06:00

Labyrinth Location: 2nd yang-dot arc, 4 to 5 o'clock
Vegetable: Pumpkins
Seed/Transplant Date: June 5 or so?
Soil Preparation: Rototilled lawn, with some of the grass rhizomes pulled out, and hills made with a shovel-full of well-rotted manure under each.

I'm wondering if these pumpkins are well enough along to produce this year. I don't think I've ever grown a winter squash, of any kind, so it's very hard for me to judge. I think most people around here start their winter squashes indoors. That was my plan, too, but by the time it was indoor planting time for squashes, I was so discouraged with my other seedlings, I just didn't bother.

There are two hills of pumpkins in the picture, one directly behind the other, with a little patch of peas in between. We got tired of planting peas in the pea patch, and we had quite a bunch of them soaked and ready, so Garth took the extras and broadcast them on this new section of the garden. At that time, I wasn't sure if I'd be planting anything here, or just keeping it fallow to kill the grass. He raked them in a bit, but I could see a lot of them just sitting on top of the ground. Amazingly, nothing seemed to eat them. I found one that sprouted and grew, right out on the surface of the soil. Now I'm just letting them grow, as long as they don't crowd the squashes.

Here's the same piece of ground, from a slightly different angle, on June 14th. The near hill from the above picture is just right of centre in this one, with the second hill near the top left (in the not-yet-mulched area).

By Request . . .

2006-06-27T10:59:00.000-06:00

. . . a closer-up picture of purslane (portulaca). Breathe deeply now - there's no need to send the weed inspector. This is part of our crop.

Here's a closer look at the flower, with an unfortunate blur/flare just where you'd like to see some detail.

Notice the fleshy leaves. The mucilaginous quality of this plant is said to make it a very good addition to soups and stews.

Here's one more close-up, of a plant that hasn't developed into a mat yet. You can see the way it branches out along the surface of the soil.

The Potato Portulaca and Pigweed Patch

2006-06-26T20:21:00.000-06:00

Labyrinth Location: Not even close. Across the street.
Vegetable: Potatoes
Seed/Transplant Date: May 20?
Soil Preparation: Rototilled existing garden (borrowed space from bro-in-law).

Picked a pail a' portulaca . . .

. . . and it's quite tasty stuff, kind of lemony flavoured, but most of it is still in the fridge, waiting for me to try cooking Mexican Purslane Stuffing. Purslane is what you call it when you're planning to eat it. When you're getting hypertensive over any little sprig of it in the garden, you call it portulaca.

By the way, I think they left a step out of that recipe. They forgot to actually add the purslane. I'm guessing that happens right before you "saute until . . . the flavours marry."

I was introduced to purslane as a food by my dear friend Anita, just last summer. This year I was watching for it in my garden, and feeling rather sad that I hadn't found a single sprig. My mom is almost obsessive about cleaning out every last leaf, since even one tiny leaf can root and grow again. I guess I must have followed her teaching too well in the last couple of years.

Then I went across the street to check the potatoes. Bonanza! The ground was almost carpeted with it. Like I said, I picked an ice-cream pail full, and that was, oh, less than a third of the patch. And I wasn't picking the patch clean, either - leave some for next year, I figure!

I had bits of it on sandwiches and stuff, but before I could get 'round to cooking up that dish I linked above, I pulled a bunch of redroot pigweed from the yin-yang garden, and found another recipe: Stir-Fried Pigweed with Coconut (pdf). I was halfway through preparing the leaves, when I decided I didn't have enough, so across the street I went again to the patch of plenty. We had a great feed of stir-fried pigweed, and it was delicious - a delightful meal, except for the kids' reaction. After they had stirred up a heated argument and fried everyone's nerves, Ruth tried some and decided she liked it. James, on the other hand, declared that he will be doing all the cooking this summer.

Here is a wider view of the potato patch. There's an enormous volunteer spinach on the left, and the odd dill plant or radish scattered through. The larger darker potatoes in the middle distance are from purchased Pontiac seed potatoes, while the foreground is whatever variety we've been growing and eating for years - Netted Gems, maybe? The background area, behind that row of Pontiac potatoes, is B's garden.

And today I found a single purslane plant in the last untended corner of the yin-yang garden. I wonder. Should I break it up and spread it around a bit, for next year?

The Yang Side

2006-06-25T22:10:00.000-06:00

It's not really a bed, but I wanted to show you the yang side of my yin yang garden, now that I finally drew out the arcs of the labyrinth in the lawn. See the faint white lines? They're only marked with flour, so they're temporary. They are also nearly invisible when you look across the labyrinth at a low angle. When you actually walk it, you are seeing the lines close up and from above, so they show up quite well.

I walked it for the first time yesterday, and I found there was a very pleasant sense of arrival at a place of tranquillity when I reached the exit at the south end, looking out over the grassy expanse of the brick ponds. Then I walked back through it in the other direction, and found myself resisting, reluctant to follow this path back to the demands of daily life. Gradually I came to terms with it, though. When I emerged where I began, I felt a slightly uneasy thrill as I noticed that my hands were tingling. I used to get that same sensation after a good long session of Tai Chi.

I've been pausing from my gardening to gaze at it and wonder. If I remember correctly, a wide flat lawn area would actually be considered more "yin" than a gardenscape with its more complex surface including more vertical elements. Maybe the lawn part is actually the yin side. In that case, I believe I have it laid out backwards, since the yin side is supposed to lie mostly towards the south. (If you're thinking the black part of the symbol is mostly towards the top, you're right, but keep in mind that south is placed at the top of a map in Chinese traditions.) *UPDATE: Nope, I got that backwards. Yin, the black area, is mostly to the north. Feng shui expert I'm not. Here's a detailed discussion. I still haven't decided for sure which side of my labyrinth is really yin and which is yang. Maybe there's some wisdom in that.*

Oh well. This layout works better with the contour and soil conditions of my yard.

A school class might be coming to see the labyrinth tomorrow. I'll try not to talk too much about the philosophy. They might like to hear about how I made it. Here you see me marking the lines, using a rope tied to a peg to guide the "limer" (borrowed from the school) along an arc.

This arc, drawn with the rope staked at the centre of the whole design, is what I refer to as a "border arc," because it is stepped in from the border of the design. Just behind me in the picture, you can see some tighter arcs that were drawn with a rope staked at the centre of the yin dot (which is hidden behind me). I call these the yin-dot arcs. At the right edge of the picture, closer to the garden, I drew some yang-dot arcs. The only tricky part was remembering which arcs had to join up, and where, so that I didn't extend any arcs too far.

Armed with this new information, you might be able to figure out my "Labyrinth Location" codes. Some tricky points: I number the border arcs inward from the outside, but I number the dot arcs outward. Points of the clock refer to one of three different imaginary clock faces. If we are talking about a dot arc, the clock face is centred on the corresponding dot. If we are talking about a border arc, the clock face corresponds to the entire design. And finally, since south is at the top of the yin yang symbol, 12 o'clock means south. Clear as mud? Good.

I know, I need a diagram. Soon. Well, that is to say, maybe this winter.

Just Spinach

2006-06-24T22:27:00.000-06:00

Labyrinth Location: 2nd yin-dot arc, 11 o'clock
Vegetable: Spinach
Seed/Transplant Date: May 23 (?)
Soil Preparation: Existing garden, rototilled with well-rotted manure tilled in

Freshly mulched with grass clippings from the collecting basket on the reel-type mower. I've let the lawn get too long again, so I'll have to switch to the gas mower for the rest of it . . . sigh . . . but I'm always learning. I noticed that it really doesn't take much gas to do the whole yard, and yet it saves a rather large amount of effort. It boggles my mind to think of how much energy I use up with every gallon of gas. It's far more precious stuff than its price would indicate.

Maybe it's time to learn to sharpen the scythe, and swing it just right. When I was a teenager, I could swing it well enough to mow down a waist-high tangle of weeds and poplar suckers, but I'm thinking it would take a little more skill to mow just an inch or two off the lawn. And then I'd have to rake it, too. Maybe it's time to learn some discipline and use the reel-type mower a little more often.

Under Wraps

2006-06-23T13:21:00.000-06:00

Labyrinth Location: 2nd border arc, 12 o'clock
Vegetable: Broccoli and Cauliflower
Seed/Transplant Date: When did I set these out? I think it was around June 5th.
Soil Preparation: Variable. Mostly just tilled up lawn. I don't think I even added any manure to this part.

While I was cleaning up under the row cover yesterday, I dug a lot of grass out from around the broccoli and cauliflower. The soil smelled so nice and rich - I don't know if that means it's healthy, or if the decaying lawn residue might be stealing nitrogen at this point. But I did notice that there was a wonderful warm moist microclimate under that row cover.

Mom grew these transplants for me - aren't they lovely? This one is just starting to form some florets.

Taking a Peek

2006-06-22T19:43:00.000-06:00

June 14th photo

Labyrinth Location: 2nd border arc, 11 o'clock
Vegetable: Rutabagas (Swede Turnip)
Seed/Transplant Date: May 21 or 22 (?)
Soil Preparation: Existing garden, rototilled with well-rotted manure tilled in.

Have you been wondering what's under the white stuff? All my cabbage-family plants. Mom gave me the floating row covers, and I stitched two lengths together side by side to make a wide enough cover for my three-foot-wide beds.

I was forewarned to leave quite a bit of slack in the cover so the plants don't push it up and lift the buried edges free of the soil. The wind moves the cover around quite a bit, so there are often layers of folded material lying over the plants, but they don't seem to mind. I've been watching the dim green lumps get larger, and itching to get a good look at this vigorous growth...

At first I didn't have enough row cover, so I left about six rows of turnips exposed. Mom found some more cover stashed away, and I headed for the garden, armed with a needle and thread to hand-sew the new piece onto the end of the old.

The flea beetles were there ahead of me.

I put the needle and thread away, and got out the battery-powered vacuum cleaner. Up and down the bed I went, sucking up the tiny blue-black beetles wherever I saw them, back and forth until I didn't see any more. Then I put the new row cover on, but instead of attaching it to the first piece, I buried the edges separately (as you can see above). I didn't want to release any beetles I'd missed into my original covered bed. It meant disturbing the soil rather close to the roots between two rows of turnips, but I had to take one chance or the other.

Well, it looks like I cleaned out the flea beetles pretty well; either that or the plants were almost beyond being vulnerable. They grew vigorously with very little further damage. Today I decided to unearth the row-cover edges from between those two rows, while I could still do it without too much root disturbance. Hand-stitching the edges together was a more gruelling task than I'd anticipated. In hindsight, I might have just dug the whole thing up and taken it in to the sewing machine, but then again, I did see a white butterfly flitting around the edges of the garden as I worked. Bending over, reaching, trying to hold the layers straight and taut by putting my toe on one spot and gripping another, and then trying not to catch extra folds with the needle . . . I didn't have the patience to make a fine seam. I hope the flea beetles or cabbage butterflies (or whatever it is I'm keeping out) aren't too persistent at looking for a gap.

Ah, the suspense. Yes, I did pull the cover loose all the way up one side of the bed to do some weeding and thinning. Wow! I've never grown such a blanket of turnips. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever successfully grown a turnip at all.

But I didn't dare leave them like that. I've been trying to convince myself to leave things thicker, and thin them gradually just enough to keep them looking happy. Under the row cover, though, I can't really see what's going on, and with the fuss of uncovering and re-covering, I just might procrastinate too much.

So I thinned them.

Now, who is going to eat all those greens?

What does one do with turnip greens? "...country as a turnip green..." - I know the song, but I don't know what it means. Somehow in all the excitement of learning how to garden, I overlooked the importance of learning how to cook.

Even More Patience than Parsnips

2006-06-21T08:29:00.000-06:00

Labyrinth Location: 3rd border arc, 10 o'clock
Vegetable: Parsley
Seed/Transplant Date: May 25 or so?
Soil Preparation: Existing garden, rototilled with well-rotted manure tilled in.

Looks like an empty bed, doesn't it? The only things that look like rows are the borders of weeds?

But they're there - I found them peeking out from under the shepherd's-purse umbrellas just the other day.

I don't quite remember when I planted them. I think it was just a few days after my main planting spree. I remember that I left them to soak and forgot about them, so instead of a 24-hour soak it was more like 48. But they still seemed alive to me; in fact, they seemed on the verge of sprouting, so I was optimistic about a fast start. Then as the weeks went by, I wondered if I'd killed them. But I guess they're just very slow.

Cleaning Up the Carrots

2006-06-20T20:01:00.000-06:00

Labyrinth Location: 2nd yin-dot arc, 10 o'clock
Vegetable: Carrots
Seed/Transplant Date: May 22 (?) - Danvers and Touchon; June 8 (?) - Nantes replanted.
Soil Preparation: Existing garden, rototilled with well-rotted manure tilled in.

I'm sure glad I decided to try several varieties of carrots, instead of relying on my large store of leftover Nantes seed of uncertain age. The old seed was a total failure, so I replanted with a packet of Nantes from the grocery store. We'll see how well they catch up.

Like many beds, I planted this one with a fairly close row spacing, planning to mulch to control weeds. Until I get that mulching done, I have some finicky weeding to do between the rows. One of my favourite garden tools so far, during this wide-bed experiment, is this one.

It's marketed as a crack weeder, but I use it as a miniature hoe.

The replanted Nantes carrots are up.

And here is how the carrot beds looked five days ago.

A Whole-Garden Day

2006-06-19T21:30:00.000-06:00

I worked in a lot of different beds today, wherever there was lots of room for my hoe. Up and down the paths, too. I was thinking I should try to do more interplanting next year, so there isn't so much empty space between plants, but I suppose it will fill in a lot. And if there was less empty space, I'd have to do more hand weeding.

I haven't done as much mulching as I'd like. First I was busy just getting it planted, and then I was weeding and thinning in the rows, leaving the hoeing and mulching till later. But yesterday Garth started in with the hoe, and I got anxious about doing it my way. Besides, he was right - it was time.

It looks a lot better this evening, overall. I was out at a meeting and didn't get a picture until dusk, but you get the idea.

I borrowed a "limer," for marking lines of lime (or flour) on athletic fields and race tracks and so on. I'm going to mark out the lawn half of the labyrinth with it. Watch for a picture soon.

Poetry of the Hoe

2006-06-19T11:42:00.001-06:00

I was hoeing in the hot sun
most of the morning but there's
method to my madness.
I want those wounded weeds well wilted
ahead of the healing hands of
darkness and dew or
another
round of rain.

Wind-Whipped Chard

2006-06-18T20:51:00.000-06:00

June 14th photo

Labyrinth Location: Outer border arc, about 10 o'clock
Vegetable: Swiss Chard
Seed/Transplant Date: May 22 (?)
Soil Preparation: Existing garden, rototilled, with well-rotted manure tilled in.

A side note about the construction of the yin-yang garden design: the lawn at the left of the photo above is transplanted sod, where I grassed a corner of the existing square garden. The topsoil went to fill new beds where I had taken out sod.

The chard has given us several small harvests of thinnings already. They're quite nice in a salad or a sandwich. The bed is due for a thinning again.

I'll try to thin out the plants that are growing flopped over at the base. I don't know why, but certain plants lie over sideways a bit and then turn up. In a wind, they get whipped around a lot (as I noticed while weeding in a very gusty spell yesterday), whereas other plants grow straight up and the wind doesn't seem to bother them. Something about planting depth? Soil disturbance after sprouting? Just luck?

Peas, Peas, Pretty Peas

2006-06-17T18:17:00.000-06:00

June 14th photo

Labyrinth Location: Inner yin-dot arc, 6 to 9 o'clock
Vegetable: Peas
Seed/Transplant Date: May 21 (?), and June 7
Soil Preparation: Same as the Yin Dot.

When I started this blog, just three days ago, I walked through the garden and photographed every bed. I'm amazed already at the change that's noticeable between those June 14th photos and today.

Garth made sure we got these planted as early as possible - well, actually, as early as he could persuade me to interrupt my digging for some planting, which wasn't early at all. (Deb in Minnesota has peas flowering already!) I gave them a prime spot in the new part of the garden, hand dug with the sod swapped out with existing garden soil. Not that I wanted to favour them - in hindsight, I might have found a way to put parsnips and carrots in this nice deep soil - but I wanted to keep the legumes away from where I'd grown them before, to see if the germination would be better.

It was, but only marginally. I had new seed, too, whereas last year I had planted three-year-old seed of very uncertain quality, stuff that Garth had collected from our own garden when the crop got ahead of us and dried on the vines. Maybe I shouldn't be soaking the peas before planting? The seed envelope suggests using a fungicide if spotty germination has been a problem, but I'm wondering if there are other things I could try instead.

The snow peas I planted were old seed, and didn't grow at all. I got some more seed of the regular (Lincoln Homesteader) peas, and replanted the snow pea bed plus the gaps in the regular peas. They're just coming up today. That should extend the harvest a little.

Parsnips Take Patience

2006-06-16T22:28:00.000-06:00

June 14 photo

Labyrinth Location: Outer border arc, 9 o'clock plus.
Vegetable: Parsnips
Seed/Transplant Date: May 22? No later.
Soil Preparation: Less than ideal. Converted from lawn with a rototiller, and a few shovelfuls of well-rotted manure tilled in.

Two days ago, I could barely pick out the rows of tiny seedlings among the weeds. Can you? They're there, in the photo above. (No, not those things in the background; those are beets. Planted at the same time.)

It was only in the last week or so that I found the first sprouts. Parsnips take patience; it says so in the Harrowsmith Northern Gardener, but I had already figured it out for myself before I read that. I'm sure I hadn't read the parsnips entry before, or I wouldn't have planted them in this bed. It's constantly growing up in grass from the bits of rhizome that the tiller didn't kill. Some other converted-lawn beds that I deep dug by hand are almost grass free, and probably loose to a greater depth, too, which would have been good for the parsnips. I didn't do a lot of figuring where to plant things this year; it was getting late, and I had to resort to the "just do it" principle to get it done. (So I can't complain too much about the rototilling.) Next year I'd like to plant these a lot earlier.

Parsnips have been an on-again, off-again crop for me in the past, but I think it was the patience that was lacking. I pretty much planted things, walked away, and didn't give the garden much attention until I could see some things to weed around. That might work with peas and lettuce, but by the time the poor parsnips got going, the weeds usually had a terrific head start. Another difference this year: I've been trying to keep the beds well watered until the seedlings show up. (I love my new rain barrels.)

On the topic of parsnips - last fall Mom forgot to ask me to dig her parsnips while she was away. In fact, she completely forgot about them, until this spring. They hadn't been mulched or anything. She dug them up, and they were perfect. Delicious. When someone says "harvest with an ice pick," they mean it.

I couldn't find the camera earlier today, and then I got . . . busy, and then it was supper and a band rehearsal, and then dark. I found the camera, barely found my way out to the garden (almost walked in it), used the faint light from the camera's view screen to make sure I'd located the parsnips, and tried a little pointing and shooting. Point, shoot, look at the screen to see what the flash found for me; point again.

There they are!

Some are getting more of a parsnip look.

But just a couple of days ago, a pair of parsnip cotyledons could hide very nicely among the leaves of this weed. (Sorry for the blur - a lot of my in-the-dark photos turned out like that.)

I think if I let it grow, this weed would turn out to be shepherd's-purse. The garden was thick with it when we bought the place. Over time, we were getting the edge on the seed bank, I thought - more withdrawals than deposits. Then last summer I was away or busy or something, and Garth kindly zipped through the garden and pulled most of the big weeds. Trouble is, he just dropped them where he found them . . . seed pods and all.

I Just Weeded This!

2006-06-15T09:02:00.000-06:00

Labyrinth Location: Outer border arc, 9 o'clock
Vegetable: Lettuce
Seed/Transplant Date: Grand Rapids and Salad Bowl: May 21 or 22, I think; definitely no later. Cimarron Red Romaine: same date, but almost total failure (old seed); replanted around June 8.
Soil Preparation: Same as the Yin Dot.

Yesterday I cleaned up this bed for its debut here. This morning I went out to take its picture in the best light, and . . . just look at all the green between!

Of course, I can't complain about the rain last night, even if it did help those weeds re-root.

I could have planted lettuce a lot earlier, but I didn't have the ground ready. (Next year.) I planted all my lettuce at once, rather than in succession, thinking it might soon be too warm for good germination. But my romaine lettuce seed turned out to be too old - I only found two seedlings - so I got some new seed, and did a late planting after all. Last week's cool rainy weather was perfect for it, and I have good thick rows of romaine sprouting now. They don't show up in the photo, but they're in the bare area in the foreground (top photo).

There are three varieties of lettuce, with rows of onions in between. I used onion sets to mark boundaries between similar vegetables, because they sprout quickly, and because it's good to plant onions throughout the garden to discourage pests (or so I'm told). Unfortunately, they didn't discourage whatever it was that munched off the larger of my two original romaine seedlings. A jackrabbit? I've never noticed any lettuce losses before this year, but I know there are jackrabbits around. Maybe I shouldn't have planted the lettuce so close to the caragana hedge.

No Beginning and No End

2006-06-14T23:36:00.000-06:00

June 14th photo

Labyrinth Location: The Yin Dot
Vegetable: Chives and Tree Onion
Seed/Transplant Date: Early May (transplanted from another part of the garden)
Soil Preparation: Sod stripped about 7 cm deep. Soil underneath loosened with shovel. Sod replaced with existing garden soil, which had already had well-rotted manure tilled into it.

Where to begin? One of the principles of Tai Chi is that there is no beginning and no end. It is fitting, then, that there be no obvious place to begin a tour of this garden. But since I have to choose a spot, I think it is fitting to start with the yin dot in the middle of the yang part of the design. This dot represents the idea that although yin and yang are different, each one contains a seed of the other. So this yin-dot bed will be the seed of my garden blog.

I put my perennials here, thinking it would be easier to protect them from reckless tillage. Somehow it seems meaningful, too; they are part of the cultivated part of the design, and yet, their perennial habit gives them something in common with the grass of the lawn.

There is a barrier of plastic lawn edging to keep the grass out of this little circle, and inside it a row of bricks for the mower wheel to run on, so that it can mow right to the edge and not leave a fringe of grass needing trimming.

The steel post in the centre is temporary, just anchoring my arc-layout rope. A barn swallow likes to sit on it and sing at me. As long as he doesn't get more aggressive than singing, I'm happy to have him around eating mosquitoes. His nest is in my toolshed, though, so I'm a little worried.

Also in the centre, hiding among the chives, are two tree-onions from Mom and Dad. Last year they struggled among weeds beside the tree that grew in our garden (yes, in it), and they barely managed a few leaves. This spring, when we dug out the tree stump, we transplanted one tree-onion and overlooked the other. It somehow endured all our digging, plus some rototilling, and still managed to get a leaf up and catch my attention in time to be rescued and moved into this bed. It isn't as large as the one that was transplanted directly, but it's doing fine.

The larger one is already working on a second generation, with bulblets sprouting new plantlets on top of it.

Introducing "The Daily Bed"

2006-06-14T14:40:00.000-06:00

If you've been reading Arcol-o-Gist, you may have seen my posts there about designing a Tai Chi Labyrinth, and the evolution of that design into my Tai Chi Labyrinth garden. You may also have seen some posts about trying to grow more of my own food, to reduce my use of fossil fuels and the associated impacts on oceans, climate, native prairie, nutritional content of food . . . okay, I'm getting off the topic already.

I am writing this blog as a discipline, to focus more of my attention, more regularly, on gardening. My aim is to feature one garden bed each day, regardless of whether I have one ready for public viewing or not. But just in case you're thinking I'm possessed by a Babylonian demon that's demanding rigidly scheduled productivity: I won't present the beds systematically, but in the order that they themselves demand my attention. So there.

And in case you're wondering what's of interest here for you: remember, this is no ordinary garden. It's a Tai Chi Labyrinth garden, probably the only one in existence, anywhere; and at the same time, it's an attempt to grow a serious quantity of food in a fairly small area, in a northern climate.

If the Tai Chi Labyrinth angle interests you, perhaps you'll want to just read the rest of this introductory overview, and then wait until I develop a virtual walkthrough (probably this fall, after gardening season; I'll add a link in the sidebar when it's done).

If serious food production in a northern climate is your interest, I don't have a lot of the wisdom of experience, but I hope that this diary will gradually become a storehouse of detail on what I did, when and how, what worked, and what didn't. You're welcome to follow along on this beginner's journey and see what I learn along the way.

Now, before we get started, here is an overview of what this Tai Chi Labyrinth garden is all about.

The garden as it appeared on May 31st.

The garden beds make up one half of a Tai Chi symbol, or yin-yang: the half which is coloured black, representing yin. The paths between the beds are actually one long continuous path, winding back and forth as a labyrinth for meditative walking. A few stepping stones are strategically placed to allow shortcuts through the design for garden maintenance.

Someday the path will extend out into the adjacent lawn area as well, tracing its meanders through the yang portion of the design, which at present is left to the imagination. (At one point I had hoped to fill the whole symbol with garden, but I was told I couldn't have that much of the yard.) Aside - I'd like to find about 800 of the original Arcola bricks (made at the brick plant just a stone's throw southeast of our present yard), bring them home to the earth they came from, and set them into the ground as path outlines.

I had not anticipated how very attractive the garden would be, especially the "S"-shaped border through the centre of the design.

(Eventually that whitish thing where the yang dot should be will be replaced by a dot of grass - buffalo grass, so I can be sure of controlling its spread. If you're wondering what the whitish thing is, it's a discer blade that spent some time in the role of a bird-bath basin, but now the bird bath is upside down, and its post is serving nicely as an anchor for the rope I use to lay out arcs.)

Another thing I hadn't anticipated is the power of that curving path, beckoning me into the garden.

On the downside, I hadn't expected to have so many family members trying to correct this part of my design for me. (At least they're interested!)

I try to explain that the garden beds, although wide, are actually lines outlining paths, and at this spot, the outside line has to change from garden to grass to begin the yang part of the symbol. Someday I will publish details of the geometric construction of the design, and it will all make sense. Trust me, it's elegant. That's what drove me to build it - the amazingly simple layout process that somehow fell into my mind. If it weren't for that, I would still be fiddling with sketches and dreaming about next year.

Here is what the garden looked like overall, first thing this morning.

Now, on to the first bed!