Winter Greens Part 2

After I planted the cold frame and wrote the first blog about it, I attended the Atlantic Canada Organic Regional Network's conference  http://www.acornorganic.org/ and learned from Niki Jabbour's workshop http://yearroundveggiegardener.blogspot.com/ that winter greens need to be started about 45 days before November 5th for our area.  The 45 days was for lettuce she plants, so I am assuming other greens are similar to that amount of time.  I guess I need to look up the days for each cultivar I am planting.  Anyway at the time during the workshop I thought "oops" to myself but then a man in the room asked whether you could plant things now or not.  Her answer was "sure go right ahead.  If things don't get as big as you want, come February they'll start to grow again because the sunlight starts to last longer then."   Phew.  I thought I had made a mistake and did all that planting and preparation for nothing.  The beauty of the work I do is that most of the time experiments work - seeds just want to grow - and the rest of the time mistakes are pretty easy to fix.

 The Sunday of the conference I went out to check on my frame and low and behold, I had emerging greens.  Woo Hoo!

13Nov11

  So that date was November 13.  Every now and then I open the frame on a warm day but mostly I keep it closed so I don't forget and leave it open later than I want.  These are very hearty greens but I want them to really grow as much as possible before the winter sets in for good.  We have had an amazing warm fall but right now it is getting cold.  Today is November 21 and the temperature is hovering around freezing.  The sun is out so it is probably a lot warmer in the sun.  I opened it today but I'll go out and close it pretty soon.  For some strange reason I think I'm giving it fresh air.  The warm fall has caused my garlic to sprout and that is NOT a good thing.  I'll have to find out if I need to snip the sprouts or if there is anything I should do.  I love being able to put the question out to my other farmer friends and see what their answers are to my questions. I love it especially when they differ because that's how this all works.  Experiments and personal choices!  So I took today's picture and things are getting bigger.

21Nov11

Close up same day

The right side of the frame is seeded with mache which takes a lot longer to emerge but I am optimistic it is coming along,  Mache is probably the hardiest of the plants so once it gets going it should be the easiest to harvest on the coldest days.

I've been getting hired to do presentations at different venues and it's fun to spread the word of urban farming. I was at an elementary school last week and this weekend I will be at a Green Living Fair.  Besides my presentation, I showed the school kids my vermicomposter and the worms, of course.  I left them with some worms and a container to get them started composting with them.  I'm meeting with some university students this week regarding their project on Food Sustainability in Dartmouth.  They are collecting information about what is happening in Dartmouth around food security.  I really should be working on my presentation coming up so I'll end this here.  

Happy fall time to all.

Growing Winter Greens

I have used a cold frame in the spring only and decided this fall to try my hand at using the cold frame to have greens during the winter months.  I don’t know if it will work, but I’m giving it a try.

First thing I did was move my cold frame from the outside of the garden to sit in an actual bed.  I had just removed my tomatoes from the row so there was some unused space.  I have only put trays of seedlings in the frame before, never used it to have plants growing in the ground inside it.    

Setting Frame Inside Garden

 

The dates of this set up were November 2^nd and 3^rd.  I filled the bottom half of the frame with manure, soil and composted seaweed.  I had just chipped some brush and used that to line the outside of the frame to insulate it.  As I was working with the frame, I noticed that there was a lot of shade inside so I turned it more  to be at the angle of the sun’s path.  I put more manure for insulation around the outside edges.  There are bags of leaves from a neighbour and I don’t have a mower to chop them up.  Keeping the leaves in the bags, I put manure and soil in the bags and tried to sift the materials down the bags.  After I poked lots of holes in a bunch of bags, I lined them around the northish sides of the frame on top of the manure and chips.  The window was quite dirty so I got a window cleaner and gave it a good wiping. 

Cleaning Glass

Seed Selection

 

Now to choose the seeds; I have kale and arugula already growing in the garden, so I could eliminate those.  I chose purple mizuna, mache, red lettuce and mustard greens.   After I broadcasted the seeds I sprinkled more manure/soil mixture to cover the seeds and filled my watering can with rainwater and watered it all.  I’m hoping the front side of the frame isn’t too high and causes too much shadow.  Another thing I could do is put a white poster board along the back wall to give it more light and I have in the past put in water jugs painted black to store the daytime heat.  Maybe I’ll get to those things.   I hope I am not starting this too late.  We are having very sunny days and not too cold nights right now, so maybe the seeds will get started before the real cold sets in.  It is all an experiment and I’ll keep you posted.  Just picture me heading out fully clothed in winter attire to get some fresh greens for supper.  Occasionally I’ll look after it by making sure the snow doesn’t cover the window and I guess I won’t need to water it??  Wish me luck!

Finishing By Watering

A couple of days later I decided it needed more light so I stapled white sheets of paper on the back of the inside wall.

Harvestfest A Good Time...

We marked the end of our season with our first annual Lake City Farm Harvestfest.   On October 24th we gathered for some good company, good food and some live musical entertainment thrown in for good measure.
We started the afternoon at the Hawthorne location for some spiced apple cider and a musical sing-a-long.  The inclement weather kept us indoors for the duration but that didn’t dampen our spirits.  Bob and Elliot provided the music and were able to play something to please every taste and mostly everyone sang along.  We never realized before how many enthusiastic  singers there are at the Hawthorne place.
After Hawthorne we carried on up the road to Jean’s and Bob’s place on Murray Hill Drive.  Waiting for us were the aromas and tastes of a feast that included roasted veggies, garden salsa, vegetarian chili, fresh baked loaves of bread, more cider,  and local beer and wine,  among other goodies.   Of course, the musical instruments came out again and while everyone ate and talked and laughed and sang we were entertained by Amie and Clara (aka Awkward Folk Band), Will, Elliot, Elise and Bob.  We even managed to get Elise to play a few fiddle tunes.

Amy Stoodley from the King’s College Journalism program dropped in and did some interviews for a piece that aired on Eastlink TV on October 29th, 2009.  You can view it here:  Lake City Farm on the \’Fax
The first season of Lake City Farm’s CSA program was a success overall.  We were able to provide our customers with a variety of fresh, locally-grown veggies.  Some things we weren’t satisfied with.  We would have liked to have more veg in the boxes each week.  We put great store in our tomato crop which didn’t ripen in a timely manner, due to summer weather conditions very likely.  Most of it was harvested green and distributed to our customers that way.  We had lots of dishes that included green tomatoes – fried green tomatoes, green tomato vegetarian lasagna, green tomato salsa, etc.  Some things went very well for us.  The harvest of greens kept up all season with regular amounts of mache, arugula, spinach, among others.  The root crops were OK but of course quantities could have been greater.  We made a good start on garlic most of which was replanted for a larger crop next year.  As always there were plenty of herbs harvested throughout the season.  The gardens at Slayter, Hawthorne and Murray Hill have been improved for the next growing season and we are hoping the cumulative effect of various soil amendments will increase the productivity of the gardens next season.  Our cold storage problem was finally solved with the completion of our walk-in cooler.
Our goal for the next season is to keep a similar number of  CSA subscribers but to expand the amount of land under cultivation so as to increase the weekly harvest tonnage (I use that word with ‘tongue in cheek’).  Farm labour is the challenge at this point but we are working on some ideas and incentives to help with this.  Of course, with input from our current customers and partners we are still trying to fine tune the selection of crops that will be planted next season.  These things and other planning will keep us busy throughout the upcoming Nova Scotia winter, developing ways to grow more food locally and naturally in the backyards of Dartmouth and Halifax.
To all of our 2009 customers and CSA partners we want to extend a hearty THANK YOU for your support this last season.