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20 April 2009
Posted in
Spring Gardening: Your Green Thumb
Deirdre is nothing if not an extremely accomplished gardener in HRM. We know this not because she told us. But rather because we, together with a group of young budding gardeners (ages of 1-7yrs old), had the pleasure of plucking some vegetables out of her garden last summer.
The garden was vast, varied, creative and plentiful. Although Deirdre has a large yard, she had wonderful examples of gardening in well-economized spaces, as she shares with us below. The best part was definitely their backyard compost bin, yielding the purest, nutrient-filled soil, which they recycle into their garden. Find out how she did this, built raised beds and more, from the words she shared with CRUSISIS for our Spring Guide, linked below.
- Composting for Your Garden
- Small Spaces &/or Container Gardening
- Build Your Own Raised Gardening Beds
Deirdre explained the gardening process to our young pupils one step at a time. She started them by planting their own seed. They ended with turning the compost heap with the leafy waste from the potatoes they’d picked and cleaned themselves. As Deirdre educated us about the gardening cycle, she kept it simple, showing us it’s easy to grow your own vegetables, herbs and even manage your own compost bin, no matter where you live.
Rumor has it we may hear a lot more gardening tips from Deirdre soon. So CRUSISIS will definitely keep you posted in our Summer Guide!
a. Composting for Your Garden
Last week when I turned over my compost heap, steam rose from the black mound. It’s a perfect sign of a good healthy compost. The scraps I’ve been piling on over the winter have been fuel for the microorganisms in my pile, turning waste into fertile soil.
Building a backyard compost is easy. You just need to add an extra bucket in your kitchen to separate your raw greens from your other food scraps that go into HRM’s green bin. Fruit and vegetable scraps; anything too ripe to eat; coffee grinds; tea bags and egg shells; can all be used. And they help make great soil for your garden once they decompose.
You don’t need a lot of space for a compost. I use a spot in my back garden that is about 5 feet by 5 feet. There, I pile up my garden scraps. The basic formula for a good compost is Green + Brown. The brown is high in carbon. This comes from things like leaves, straw and sawdust. The green is made up of the nitrogen rich material: kitchen scraps, vegetable matter, seaweed and grass clippings are all great.
Keeping a small pile of dry grass clippings and leaves beside the compost is a good idea, so that you can alternate kitchen waste (“green”) with your garden clippings (“brown”). Each time I bring a bucket of scraps out from the kitchen, I cover it with the carbon rich brown matter.
There are two advantages to this method. The first is that covering your kitchen waste with leaves or grass clippings seems to deter unwanted pests. Yes, this can be a problem in HRM. The other advantage is that combining the carbon rich grass and leaves with nitrogen rich kitchen scraps, oxygen and a bit of water, makes a great compost in about 8-12 weeks.
Having two piles on the go is handy also: one for your fresh pile and another for your older compost. Once my heap reaches the crumbly soil stage, I dig this back into my garden to renew the growth cycle. And even if there are a few pieces of organic material that have not fully decomposed, the naturally occurring worms in the soil will take care of it.
I’ve gone through a number of methods for composters, everything from the black compost bins available through the city to bigger box structures built with 6 foot planks.
Regardless of the structure, here is what I’ve found works well:
- Layer your compost with equal parts of "greens" and "browns."
- If possible, mulch or break up larger pieces to help with decomposition.
- Build the pile large enough to generate heat. About 3 feet high is recommended if you are trying to create a pile that reaches 40-50 C and decomposes quickly.
- Use a pitchfork or shovel to turn or aerate the pile every couple of days to add oxygen.
- Keep the pile reasonably moist and let excess water run off. In NS this is easy!
If you are looking for more information on backyard composting, check out Nova Scotia's RRFB (Resource Recovery Fund Board) guide to backyard composting ( http://www.rrfb.com/pages/compost/Complan.html ). The guide provides instructions for building 9 different types of composters.
b. Small Spaces (ie: Beans) &/or Container Gardening (ie: Basil)
One of the easiest ways to start gardening is to garden in a small pot. Even if you live in an apartment, you can grow a whole variety of edible plants. I love to cook so some of my favourites are herbs, Tiny Tim tomatoes or beans.
Years ago, I had an apartment where I grew beans as a privacy screen. The south view from my corner balcony was of a neighbouring building, about 15 feet away, whose onward looking balcony was more of a dumpsite for recycling and green bags.
Promptly, I planted the beans in a window box and strung up a grid of twine along the South side of my balcony. The beans grew all the way up the lattice. It was fantastic! Not only did I have a privacy screen, I also had an edible wall!
Here’s how if to build your bean wall if want to try:
Building the Lattice:
- Hammer nails about every 4 inches to frame the opening.
- Begin winding cotton twine vertically along the nails, starting from left to right.
- Repeat the same thing in the horizontal direction, starting top to bottom.
- Tie off the string.
Planting the Beans:
- Plant the beans 2 inches apart in a window box.
- I did so in late May. Within 12 days, I saw the first seed leaves poking through the soil.
- By the end of July (2 months later) I had a thick green wall that was producing beans and flowers.
Another easy thing to grow in pots is herbs. My favourite herb to grow is basil. If you also have tomatoes growing, there are endless possibilities of fresh summer salads and rich roasted tomato and basil sauces!
Basil is so easy to grow:
- Grow from seed.
- Or, fill a pot with basil transplants: **
- Pick-up a tray of small basil transplants at the Halifax Farmer’s Market.
- Crop the tops off & use for dinner or in a batch of pesto.
- Cut off the tops about 3 cm above the first set of leaves.
- o Plant the remaining stalks.
- You can plant approx. 6 of these plants in a 9” pot.
- Plant in a warm sunny spot.
- Don’t over water.
- Within a week you should see new stems starting to grow where the leaves join the main stem.
- Let these stems grow another 2 to 3 sets of leaves.
- Then crop off the tops again for a very bushy and attractive planter.
** The past couple years I have used this technique and it's produced strong healthy plants.
Watch for flowers forming on the tops of the stems in August. As soon as you see the flowers stalks forming, pinch them off. The basil becomes bitter if you allow the plant to produce flowers.
Other herbs I grow in pots on my balcony are rosemary, parsley, chives, sage, oregano and thyme. These don’t take up much room and can be combined together in pots. They’re so handy to have close to the kitchen to add fresh flavour to any summer meal!
c. Build Your Own Raised Gardening Beds
If you have a South facing sunny spot, an easy way to convert it into a garden is to add a raised bed. Last year, we built an 8 ft by 4 ft raised bed, using 8 ft long cedar boards (6X1). These worked very well. We had tomatoes, zucchini, snow peas , beets, all growing on our front lawn.
The highlight was the bumper tomato crop. These grew up 7 feet, collapsed back to the ground to re-root, and up another 7 feet. We picked up 2 year old cow manure from a local farm. It was the perfect soil!
Build your own raised beds and grow your own meals! Here’s an example of how:
Raised beds (8 ft x 4 ft x 6 inches)
Materials were only approximately $45: hardware= $30 and soil= $15.
- Three (3) 8 ft long cedar planks (6 inches x 1 inches).
- One (1) 4 ft long 2 x 4 cedar board; cut into 12” lengths (x4 pieces total)
- 24 screws
- 0.6 cubic yards of soil (16 cubic feet) The cost was $25-$30/cubic yard of garden soil or compost or $4 per 20 L bag.
Instructions
- Cut one of the cedar planks in half (½) to make two (2) 4 ft long boards.
- Secure the four (4) 2X4s (12” long) to the corners to secure the corners of the 4x8 bed.
- Use an online resources or soil calculator to calculate soil required for your beds:
- http://www.millergroup.ca/compost/lme.html
- http://www.pykefarms.com/products_calculating.html
Before raised beds built - May 31, 2008
Raised beds in place - July 23, 2008
Raised beds overflowing with vegetables - August 30, 2008
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