Lovely Last Harvest & Many Thanks!

Thank you Dirk, and all your farming friends for your time & efforts in making this amazing assortment of seeds and the great guide booklet available to us. Our vegetable gardening adventure was wonderful, and can't wait to do it again next year!

Fava Harvest disappointing

Beets & carrots are thriving and harvesting has begun.

Maxibels are plentiful & continue to bloom as periodic harvesting continues. Delicious! Ditto for Swiss Chard.

Noticed a few days ago that Favas were ready to harvest, but by the time I got to them something nasty had devoured half of them and put ugly black holes into others. We have legions of earwigs - could it be them? Yield for 10 foot row: only 1/2 cup of Dirk's Mom's Dip: delightful torture for three ...

Also, lots of squash blooms, but something appears to be chewing them off, and can't see any baby squash. Any idea what's happening?

Our beans all have babies!

And the Favas are outa control! Didn't get a good picture, but they are full of pretty black & white blossoms,with lots of babies.

Here's how most of our offspring are doing right now:
Squash & turnips

Jacob's and parsnips

Beets

Jacob's

Maxibel

Garden Mix

I have to say that I was quite proud to serve our first 100% garden lettuce & herb mix.
Chard and beet greens from the Beckta seed kit + treviso, frisée, dill, fennel, gai lan and kale.

So many breakfast radishes that we brought some as a host gift!

Marysol
www.sheeatsbears.blogspot.com

Our thriving garden

Our garden's doing great! We used about half the seed kit to make a raised 5' x 16 ' bed of organic black earth mixed with compost that gets about 6 hours direct sunlight a day. The first harvest of radishes were delicately sweet, and have become much spicier as time passes. We have been picking the 5-colour swiss chard for several weeks now; but can distinguish only three colours: yellow, green, and red. Also thinned out the beets a little later than recommended; and as a result we very much enjoyed eating a few little beet buds raw in our salads. The beet greens are a tasty addition too.

All three types of beans are blooming now. Only about half the squash survived the initial sprouting. It looked as if they had been chewed off at ground-level by cutworms. Have since been advised by a friend that one way to foil cutworms is to surround the seeds with an open-ended frozen orange juice cylinder pushed all the way down into the ground.

Anyone harvesting French Breakfast Radishes yet?

Just wanted to check in with everyone to see how this years gardens are going. 

Critters and questions

The score so far?

Me 5: Raccoons: 0

For them to get back to my backyard they'll need to walk 12km and cross both a river and a highway.

Quick question for Dirk.

We also planted mini cucumbers and are hoping to train them onto a trellis. Can the same be done with the squash or would the squash be too heavy to hang?

Hope everyone's having a great weekend.

Super fast seeds

I planted the beets, Swiss chard, radishes, parsnips, carrots and Maxibel beans on the Friday before last and then went away for the weekend. When I got back on Monday the radishes, beets and carrots had already germinated and had 1" sprouts above ground. Only 3 days to sprout! Those are some magic seeds Dirk.

Preventative pest control

Off to quite a late start.

Had to build a garden and spent this weekend shoveling 4 yards of dirt into new 12'x12' garden and to level off part of our yard.

Shoulders and back ridiculously sore.

Hoping to plant later this week.

In a bid to protect the garden I decided to buy a raccoon trap yesterday as there's been at least one who's been feasting in our backyard composters.

Baited with two carrots and some cat kibble, first night set caught what seemed to be a teenage raccoon. A quick drive into the country and hopefully he'll enjoy his new idyllic home near the Jock.

Yoni: 1, Raccoons: 0 (will keep score throughout the season)

Garden - let's begin.

I have to admit that I bought seeds before buying the Beckta loot bag, but, as a fun experiment, I planted the heirloom, organic and plain jane seeds side by side.

I planted a lot this year (not only for the garden, but new trees too!) and tried to be a tad more organized in order to make my life easier in the long run. (Not letting the tomatoes suck the life out of me, prevention from slugs & earwigs, little paths to pick the raspberries & veggies...)

Let's see what grows...
*Rhubarb (already craaaazy)
*Cattle Beans (B)
*Kale (goin' good!)
*Gai Lan (I can see you!!)
*Breakfast radishes (B)
*Long radishes
*Red Cored carrots, chantenay
*Purple haze carrots
*Plain old carrots
*Chantenay carrots (B)
*Red Beets (Oh, I can't remember the name...)
*Yellow tiny tomatoes
*Red tiny tomatoes
*Yellow plum tomatoes
*Chiogga beets (B)
*Harris parsnips (B)
*Laurentien turnips (B)
*Maxibel Beans (B)
*Green beans
*Fava beens (B)
*Yellow beens
*Herbs, herbs, herbs...
*Anis (or fennel bulb as some of you call it...)
*Purple tomatillo
*Jalapenos
*Sweet peas
*Courgette
*Swiss Chard (B & organic)
*Butternut, Bush delicate (B) and Hubbard squash (In our front yard! Why not?)

My tricks:
- Egg shells. I have been keeping them for awhile to dry and crumble. Spread around any area that could be attacked by slugs.
- Soapy water. Yes. I seem totally whack and go out at night with my flashlight and spray earwigs with soapy water. I saved my jalapenos by doing this last year.

Planting time... ish.

My husband and I have been plotting out our modest garden for what seems like years. Our garden beds went untended (and grew everything from weeds to roses) for the two years we've lived in this home, but this year we've managed to tear everything out, get the earth tilled, and add in a giant heap of mushroom compost to help the soil along.

We went out to Greta's Seeds (in Gloucester) this afternoon and picked up some seedlings to complement our impressive collection of seeds from this project -- our failsafe, perhaps, since we acknowledge that we have no idea what we're doing. We took inventory, mapped out what we think each bed should house, and headed out to the back yard to finish setting up the plots.

Many hours later, we were knee-deep in tree trimmings and masonry dust. We HOPE to have things set up enough to plant our seeds by lunchtime tomorrow. I'm eager to get started putting things into the soil instead of ripping stuff out.

Is anyone else planting this weekend?

Keeping Raccoons and Squirrels Out Of Your Garden

Raccoons are very smart animals so keeping them out of the garden patch can serve to be somewhat frustrating at times. However, it can be done if you’re persistent.  Here are some good options for keeping these pesky animals from eating your hard work.

1. Erect an electric fence. An electric fence is the only sure way to keep raccoons out, but that involves extra work and expense.
2. Applying scent from coyotes (available from sporting goods stores and some garden centers)
3. Spreading Dog and Cat hair around plants.
4. At night, floodlights may work as well.
5. Dozens of vining cucumber plants completely surrounding garden.
6. Sprinkle Cayenne Pepper throughout garden.
7. Chicken wire fence.  Erect a fence around garden but make sure it has a little give so the raccoon can't easily climb it.
8. Mason jars with something shiny inside (like tin foil) placed around area.  They really like shiny things so they will spend there time trying to get it out of the jar instead of eating your garden.

Good Luck!

Garden Bed 1st

Great! new seeds and really no where to put them since my backyard is as big as Dirk's seeds can handle.

So off to Home Depot, 85$ later, with sore back and dirty feet I was able to prepare a decent garden bed for Dirk's seeds.

Haven't planted them yet since they are calling for SNOW!!

I also already have issues with a raccoon the size of a pig trampling through the garden already. Not sure what he has been eating all winter, but I can see I am going to have an ongoing problem with him!

I believe Dirk has suggested putting bone marrow powder....anyone know where to get that??

Last Frost

For Ottawa, Ontario The last expected Frost is May 6th, and the first Frost is expected to be around Oct. 5th. The expected growing season in days this year is 151. Checking with the weather network it is looking pretty good with a few night's getting to 5 degrees Celsius. Everybody should be good to plant.

Seed Kits

The Beckta seed packages are ready!