Gardening is Worth It

Some folks may ask if it is worthwhile to garden when it comes to the price of tomatoes. Well, yes, it is worth it if only for the therapeutic factor. However a strong second motivation is that you know how your vegetables and fruit are being grown with healthy nutrients and good water. I actually use a lot of rainwater on my plants once the barrel fills up with the spring rains and I believe it has a lot of benefits rather than the well water I use at other times of the year.  I use Miracle Gro on my plants as well although I am looking for alternatives.

Composting has not been a great success with me, in fact quite the reverse. I think it is mostly me not doing it correctly but I find it is a real challenge to keep the weeds out despite coverings. If the coverings are in the stuff doesn’t get enough moisture, if I leave it uncovered wild seeds tend to find their way into the stuff. So while it would be perfect for nourishing my plants I haven’t been able to do anything with my mess. I am thinking of going smaller with a small compost pot to see how that works out but thinking and action are not the same thing!

I am hopeful that this week will see a turnaround in the miserable weather we have been experiencing. I have just been out sitting on the lido deck and then I took a wander around the yard and the ground feels promising so I plan to finish drinking my water and then going out to do a little raking. I may even discover that the rhubarb is starting to come up. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Pumped Up and Ready to Go

Yesterday’s writing conversation got me really pumped up and ready to up my own game. I ended up starting tomato and pepper seeds in two big trays of starter plantings. The summer garden is on its way, yippee!

We are still in a deep freeze but it doesn’t mean that the mini-greenhouse can’t be moved into the sunroom and that is my challenge for today. I am not sure if I can wrestle with it on my own but if I have to take it in piece by piece, which will be today’s project. It’s a big one but it will be worth it to start my plants early while learning new techniques on how to make certain plants grow. I am glad I bought extra bags of potting soil last fall so I have a good head start of the garden centres.

When I was speaking with my treatment specialist last week he was quite surprised to learn how active I had been in my garden last summer and well into the fall season. Despite seeing him for 2 years he really does not know much about how I tick. I am so meek and submissive in his office that he doesn’t have a true sense of the Viking girl I really am. I am hoping that I will really surprise him with this new medication that I have started this week. I will write more about that as I get an idea of the side effects . . . so far so good.

Meanwhile I have a summer garden to plan and work towards. That is one of the projects Jeanette will be assisting me with in May. I can hardly wait.

Walking on a Chilly Day

I was walking around the acreage this weekend enjoying the winter sunshine as I inspected trees and bushes for winter damage.  It still amazes me that I can pick up sticks in the fall and find more in the late winter or early spring that I had actually already cleared up.  The winds seem to get harsher every year or else the trees are just getting too old to withstand those winds.  This year part of my windbreak by the hen house also took a dive so that has to be repaired come spring.  As I walked and mentally stored away the tasks ahead I also used the other side of my brain to ponder philosophy.  Gasp!

I was thinking about how much I enjoyed walking around a piece of property that belonged to me and feeling appreciative of having 5 acres to trudge about on.  Ownership is a powerful feeling but it can also make one very vulnerable.  There’s this attachment thing which can trigger some very fierce emotions if that sense of possession is violated.  Attachment can also make a person stubborn or inflexible, change may be unwelcome.  These thoughts were reinforced by watching Robert in Downton Abbey struggle with change after the war. 

As I inspected my new apple trees I also felt a sense of frustration with nature in the form of deer.  They are pretty, I feel sorry for them getting shot at during hunting season but I do not like them eating the bark off my expensive Japanese Ivory Silk Lilac tree or chewing the young branches off the apple trees.  My mind went in circles as to how best to shield the trees from these hungry deer since the construction I currently have in place doesn’t seem to be doing the job.  Just as mice can squeeze through the tiniest of cracks so a deer can leap the highest fence or find the space between trees and bushes.

I remembered that the vineyards of my childhood had the sound of shotguns firing to keep the birds away.  Hmmm?  I’ll have to ask John if he can fix me a shotgun sound.

Outsmarting Mother Nature

While I am an avid gardener I am still only slightly advanced from a beginner in many respects but one thing I do know, you cannot outsmart Mother Nature.  That is to say, no matter how good the weather can appear we gardeners in Southern Alberta know that we cannot put out bedding out plants before the May long weekend (and many won’t until June 1^st).   Generally I go with the May long weekend unless we have had an unseasonable long, cold winter.  This year I am very tempted to put plants out earlier than that as we have had an incredibly short and mild winter but I am not going to let Mother Nature outfox me.  Instead, I am using my greenhouse to cold frame many of the vegetables that I hope to grow this year.  I am having success with tomatoes, peppers and pumpkins of all things.

Southern Alberta is a very challenging area to grow anything out of the ordinary but things that I seem to have had good luck with are raspberries, gooseberries and asparagus.  I am leaning towards planting more items that are perennial in nature rather than a lot of small vegetables that I cannot handle in large quantities.  One of the challenges that I experience is watering the garden since it is a fair distance from my taps.  This means multiple hoses which have to be unscrewed at intervals to accommodate the front flower beds and then extended to reach the back garden.  One certainly gets a lot of exercise in walking and bending when gardening in a large area.

I attempted to over winter some miniature roses in containers by placing them in the garage where they would have consistent temperatures and yet wouldn’t experience a hard freeze.  That unfortunately did not seem to make any difference, they do not look as though they have made it.  The year before I had then in the sunroom but they didn’t like that either as they seem to require to go dormant for at least a few weeks.  Gardeners can read up on a lot of facts but it really comes down to experimenting with your own area and figuring things out.

But that’s part of the fun of gardening, discovering what you can grow that no one else can.  I’m still waiting for the lightbulb.

One Handed Gardening

I love flowers and I love the fantasy of having a wonderful garden where one can wander about the paths and lanes created artistically to keep the fantasy of a nature wonderland alive.

Crashing to earth, the reality is a lot of hard work to get just a fraction of the fantasy.  This year we experienced an outbreak of dandelions as I have never seen before.  Virtually one half of my acre of lawn was yellow with the noxious weed.  I have used Curtail, I have used the dandelion bar, I have cut and plucked, pulled and cursed but now I have a field of fluff exploding and seeding for another horrific year.

On the greenhouse side of my fantasy I have learned that you can steam the plants until they literally cook in the clear plastic covers you put on the pots.  Where do you draw the line between encouraging sprouting and cooking?  Somewhere around midnight perhaps?  The truth is very simple, while gardening can be fun and exciting it is also a very demanding hobby in that one must be attentive at all times.  Gardening on a serious (as “in retirement”) scale is pretty much a full time job.

Let’s not forget watering which is HUGE, simply huge, in gardening.  Hoses, many hoses, are required to handle nearly 3 acres of garden plots.  Not that all 3 acres are planted, but the surrounds are.  Hence the hose.  Water jugs are good also, useful in tight places.

An extra pair of hands, weed whackers, lawn mowers, spades, shovels, rakes, and lots of toweling required.  Toweling, you may wonder, until you have seen my face after wiping the sweat from my brow and upper lip.  When my brother sees me he does the Nazi salute because I am inevitably wearing a Hitler mustache in dirt!

But I am having fun.

Learning about Farming

When I started talking about retiring last year I had just raised up my 26 chicks and felt inspired to go one step further in farming by contemplating putting in raised beds for small vegetables.  From there it was a leap to calling my venture “sustainable farming” and as I read up on the ways to be ecologically friendly I realize that this is indeed a huge leap from hobby farming (i.e., putting in a vegetable patch).

It’s interesting to learn which vegetable, herb and flower complement each other in a garden, and by compliment I mean nurturing each other with the nutrients in the soil, known as companion gardening.  Who knew that marigolds go well with potatoes, peppers or eggplants and that sunflowers are great with squash, pumpkin and melons?  Both mint and parsley work well with tomatoes (and tomatoes has always been my retirement challenge since I find them incredibly touchy to grow).

While waiting at the book store for a friend last week I also picked up a magazine on beekeeping.  It’s not like you can just buy a hive of bees and hope for honey, there is a lot to learn about apiculture including how to accept getting stung by your little honey bees!  One must learn about the bees themselves, how to recognize the queen bee and how to ensure that the hive accepts the queen.  How to set up the hives, how to take out the various “combs” to extract the honey, how much do you leave for the bees, how to overwinter the hive.  The list goes on and on.  It’s a little daunting but then the magazine had a huge article on mentoring and I thought ‘what I need is a mentor”.  Apparently there are bee clubs and I just need to find one close by so I can start learning firsthand what I would be up against and I am up for the challenge?

I think I would prefer the beekeeping over handling larger livestock such as sheep or goats since in the long run they are going to be much higher maintenance.  Once a person has learned about bee keeping then it ought to be fairly straightforward.

Much less complicated is building raised beds, adding compost material and good soil.  Planting seeds and bulbs and watering regularly.  I’m fortunate in now having plenty of compost from cleaning out my chicken coop all winter, I should have a good base for my vegetables.

Spring’s around the corner and I am excited to get out doors to begin my first year of “farming”.

 

Winter Gardening

When you experience a chinook for 14 days then you are deceived into thinking that spring is just around the corner.  Then wham, you get hit by another snow storm and then a deep freeze comes in.  Nevertheless, the armchair garden can find plenty to dream about as she pulls out the gardening books, looks at garden and seed magazines and considers what is possible in the months ahead.

It’s important to realize that we in southern Alberta are in a Zone 3 area which means our options on plantings is quite limited.  I’ve long since given up on attempting even Zone 4 plantings as it is disheartening to discover dry twigs the following spring.  I’ve patiently waited until almost September in the hopes of seeing a little green sprout but alas, it was not to be.  Now I find myself going to those tried and true plants that come back year after year, peonies, lilies, daisies, delphinium, and irises.  I have moderate success with globe thistle and bleeding hearts.   I also go for my reliable annuals like petunias and geraniums and then take the seasonal selection of pansies, snapdragons and lobelia.  I’ve discovered some nameless vines that I put in my hanging baskets and seem to overwinter very well, as do the geraniums. 

I adore roses and have planted at least a dozen but find that even my shrub roses struggle to survive.  However, this is one plant that I find hard to give up and will attempt some new bushes again this spring since I lost my 2 heirloom bushes to construction last summer.

For shrubs and bushes I like lilacs and honeysuckle as they are dependable, colourful and have interesting berries afterwards.  I've also discovered an interesting, spindly little bush whose name I don’t remember that seems very dependable and is very attractive even in the winter time.

For the last 10 years I’ve had a program of planting evergreens and only wish I had begun much sooner.  They are slow growers but they are so worth it when they come to a size where birds are harbouring their summer and winter.  I have had great success with larch and find them extremely attractive during the summer and their shedding needles do not make a mess during the winter like leaves do.  Junipers are very dependable but can be quite invasive so you have to plan them very well.  Junipers also are very alkaline so you need to plant them where they will be compatible with your other plantings.  Junipers also seem to attract ants so that can be a bit of a problem.

As I flip through the books I wonder when I should start seeding indoors for spring containers and when should I bring the geraniums up from the basement.  Is it spring yet?