Mid Summer Happenings

This has been a strange summer in regards to the weather.  It just keeps reminding me how little control we have with our growing environment.  May was warm and everything got an early start but then June turned cold and rainy - but mostly cold.  Most of what I had in the garden just went into a holding pattern.  Then end of June and July has been very dry.  No rain for weeks.  Most of my gardens have drip irrigation, so that hasn't hurt us too much.

The basil!  Boy do they love the hot, dry weather.  I have never grown basil so successfully.  I have made pesto twice and will be able to make more or use it a different way.  It seems that in the past I was only able to make a decent amount of pesto once.  I love my pesto!

My lettuce has been a total bust at my house but I am growing it at another location.  I tried starting lettuce multiple times and I have one lettuce plant.  I had three at one time but two of them got devoured by something - I'm sure it was slugs.  It is very weird to only have one lettuce plant, but it works for a single family to harvest some of it about once a week.  I have lots of other greens, so that's why it works.  One lettuce plant wouldn't be enough without the other greens.  My bok choi, and arugula are doing great.  My kale, mizuna and mustard greens seem to go to seed regularly, but we eat them anyway.  The squash plants have been very weird this year.  My yellow crook neck is beautiful and huge but only now just starting to flower.  I'm not excited about pretty squash plants.  I want pretty squash fruit.  Doing a little research, I figured out it is most likely a unbalance in nutrients.  Too much nitrogen, maybe.  So I fed them with a seaweed/fish plant food and that seems to help. I'm getting flowers now and not just male ones.  My magda cousa is ahead of the other plants and I should be able to harvest some of that real soon.  I also have a zucchini at the other location that should be ready soon.  Everybody else has been harvesting their squash for awhile now, so I am very behind others.  Once they start, I should be inundated - I hope.  I have been craving summer squash like crazy this year because last year with all the rain it was a horrible squash season.  I'm harvesting beans and just finished with the peas and we have raspberries we can't keep up with.

I took a video and made it into a movie to show how we build tomato trellises.  I've attached it here and then  added two snapshots of what they look like today.  I hope people enjoy and learn how we do things.  I find the trellis system we use to be successful. There have been  many years of tomatoes falling down and breaking off and other disasters.

Movie of Building Trellises:

Cucumber Trellis

Tomato Trellis

Winding Down For Winter and Planning For Spring

We are having a monsoon season this past week.  We finally got the garlic in the ground and figured the warm weather and rain would be fantastic at getting the garlic started before winter.  So, okay now, it can stop raining before it drowns the garlic.  How much rain does garlic need or should I say when is it too much rain?  As usual, we just have to wait and see.

We have great news and exciting things happening here.  It has been an extremely busy fall but very productive.  My fall part time job started earlier than usual and it overlapped with my last week of the CSA box production.  So, that week was crazy but we got through it fine.  I really have two part time jobs besides the farming.  I sell advertising for the Ecology Action Centre’s magazine, Between the Issues, and I work on membership with the EAC.  So both the magazine and the fall canvass overlapped with the last weeks.  They are great jobs that go well with the farming and it’s usually happening when I’m at a slow time – but not this fall.  Along with those things, we needed to start planning for next year and continue our expanding that we have done every year.  This last year’s evaluation and final compilation of stats of everything plus just the regular taking care of the gardens that still needs to be done were two more things we needed to keep doing also.

One of the first things we needed to do was to find another person to work with me.  Bob has always done most of the building and construction projects that needed doing around the farm, but with his work schedule and being on the road he hasn’t really been available for the day to day work on the farm.  The new projects and just the work alone were getting too much for just one person to manage, even with the tireless help of our wonderful volunteers.  So I’ve been keeping my eye out for just the right person who might want to join in the precariousness of farming with Lake City Farm.  Great news!  You might have already heard by now that we have found her – Benna Keoghoe.  She is now an associate with LCF and will be working over the winter with us getting everything ready for the next season.  (the season doesn’t really “start and end” but does have slower months)  We have already worked on one project that we completed and it was a complete success!  We gave a presentation at PechaKucha Night  http://4days.ca/ and from the feedback I think we were a hit.
We have complimentary strengths and best of all, Benna loves working with data and numbers!  Wooo Hooo!!!  And of course she loves the farming and getting her hands dirty.  Look for more information about our new addition in further blog updates and on the website.  You’ll be hearing lots!

On to the next projects; we are working on the expansion of our business to keep up with the demands of building food producing gardens in the HRM.  Soon we will have all the details on the website but here is a bit of a preview.

Customers can contract with us to install a vegetable garden on their property complete with soil, beds and seeds planted.  Seeds will be of the customer’s choice.  After that the customer can contract us to maintain the gardens throughout the season and we highly recommend this to keep the gardens in tip top shape.  We will visit each personal garden weekly and if there is harvest to be had, we will leave it at the customer’s back door.  How cool is that!  If the customer wishes to work in the garden, no problem, it’s their garden.  If they wish to have some guidance we will be around for consultation.  The customer can choose to keep all the harvest or share the harvest for a discount.  The food will go to others in the neighbourhood or possibly the Farmer’s Market.

We also looking to build vegetable gardens in other capacities but we will bring you up to date on that later.  We have lots to work out and plan but it is all very exciting.