Slug Challenge Kick-off 2018

The first seeds have been planted. This means that my yearly challenge has been issued to the slugs who are the de facto overlords of The Crooked Wood.

I think this is year two (?) for my flat-topped hugelkultur bed. 

I bought a bigger bottle of Abundance liquid fertilizer at Seedy Saturday this year, but last year's empty is still in my garden. I think this photo demonstrates how picturesque it can be to be messy and a total chaos muppet.

I hear slugs hate sand, so I gave this bed of bok choy and other greens a good sprinkling...

Salinger enjoys gardening. And, of course, he is quite good about staying off the planting beds –
at least when anyone is watching. Now, if only I could help him acquire a taste for hunting slugs – but ugh.

Some of the open-sourced seeds I got from the lovely folks at Seedy Saturday this year
(held in Dayspring at the Municipal Activity and Recreation Complex, aka the MARC, back in February).

The garlic I planted in the fall is several inches above the ground, so that's encouraging. I am planning to build many more hugelkultur beds in the next couple of weeks – some for veggies, some for flowers and herbs, some located along my driveway and others on the land that was cleared around the new cabin. 

I am also harbouring some nut tree fantasies. I haven't decided yet if those are in my budget for this year, but I expect you know the saying: "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now."

Garden update

One of my Nana's ways of saying "How are you?" was to ask "How does your garden grow?" 

Of course, I rarely had a literal garden. Now, I wish Nana were able to see these photos and witness my development as a gardener. I am still pretty small potatoes, but rather proud of myself and happy with the way things are going. 

Of course, gardens are a fine metaphor for life (as my Nana well knew), and so, results are mixed. 

My tomatoes and beans are doing really well:

Tomatoes, marigolds and sweet williams (I don't have a flower garden, but love having some flowers scattered in with my veggies. The marigolds are there for their pest-deterring properties; the sweet williams are there because I love them.)

A flourish of beans (I have a hummingbird who comes around to whirr at the stained glass in my window. I hope it will soon discover my scarlet runner beans – much more satisfying)

Of course, some things haven't gone so well. The slugs decimated my bok choy. 

Bok choy boneyard

But that made room for the herbs that had been sitting in their little pots for 4 weeks (or more) since I brought them home from market...

Bok choy boneyard converted to herb garden

And the bok choy's sacrifice may have preserved the lives of the less-favoured-by-slugs arugula and kale. 

My peas were a flop and my brussell sprouts are completely static. I think they may be the leeks of 2017. (I didn't bother to plant leeks this year: although they did not die last year, they also did not grow). 

My potato patch is thriving and the potato bugs don't seem to have found us yet. 

Potatoes and some teeny, tiny beet plants

Last night, on my way home from a music show at the West Dublin Hall, I remembered that I had my headlamp in the car and so I finally took the time to stop and gather up a bit of seaweed to hill these beauties with.

Potatoes hilled with seaweed

I could stand to get a little more seaweed. I hope it won't take me another month to find an opportune moment. And I hope I don't remember at 11 pm again. Although it was kind of fun feeling clandestine on the dark beach, disturbing the sand flies was not pleasant.

Best of all is the daily-ness of the garden for me. Every morning, I have some mindful, undistracted garden time. I go out and hunt for slugs, I water if it's going to be sunny (and if I have any water in my rain barrel), I check on the progress of things, see if anything is ready to harvest and graze on a few greens.

Items on my to-do list like "hill potatoes", "stake and tie tomatoes", "netting for beans" inject some more grounded and less stressful activities into my daily, peri-menopausal life. And happily, weeding is limited. Gardening in the forest, most of my weeds are ferns and baby trees. I don't have many of the typical, super-annoying garden weeds, at least not yet.

And almost always, there is this guy in the garden. On the hot days he sits under the ferns to keep cool, and deters the mice and squirrels. Now, if only I could teach him to hunt slugs...

My garden helper/familiar (the hugelkultur beds are great at deterring Sal from sleeping on top of the gardens themselves – too lumpy!

Hugelkultur – Year 2

Last year's foray into gardening was a very successful one. Not that I got a huge amount of food from my small garden, but I enjoyed the process, learned things and impressed myself by staying active in the garden throughout the summer. 

This year, I am expanding. I've spent the last couple of mornings (early, before the blackflies wake up), completing the two hugelkultur beds that I started building last summer. 

The process feels like "mud pie architecture" to me: fitting together logs, branches, twigs and rotten wood, then stuffing leaves (and sometimes cardboard) into the cracks. 

Then comes the task of mixing up some soil. 

And then spreading the soil on top of the mounds. 

One of the two new mounds is the same style and shape as the one I built last year. Let's call it Hugel II.

The other one I'm calling Flattop. This one is more of a raised bed than a mound, with about 16 square feet of gardening space on the top and no soil spread down the side. I'm looking forward to seeing how it will perform.

Next, I plan to make a raised bed with "log cabin" sides to grow some potatoes and beets. Why buy lumber when I have so many logs lying around that will contain soil without costing me a dime? Besides, converting some of the strewn-about logs into gardening space tidies the place up a little bit...

And, just because all of the photos in this post are primarily brown, here is a picture of the beautiful bouquet I got at the West Dublin Market on Saturday as my "welcome home" present to myself.

My first (real) foray into gardening

I love the idea of gardening.

What's not to love? Being attuned to nature, being active outdoors, raising the most local food possible, saving money, saving the earth, knowing where one's food came from and how it was grown – gardening seems like a no-brainer for everyone who has enough energy and enough space to do it.

In practice, my past attempts at gardening have not been very successful. It has varied a bit, depending on where I have been at it my own life and heart, but on the whole, my thumb is not green. At times, I have felt sorry for the plants that came into my life. I remember being given some "Lucky Bamboo" once as a house-warming present in Toronto and thinking, "No, this bamboo is not lucky. It is Unlucky Bamboo." And sure enough, a couple of months later, it was dead. Many of the plants that have come into my life have suffered from a combination of neglect and over-compensation. Many have perished.

As a result, though I grew up in a gardening family, I have not had a garden of my own for many years.

Sure, back when I was a yuppie, I had a backyard that the previous owner had had professionally landscaped. It occasionally warranted a little desultory pruning, but that hardly counts as gardening and those were ornamentals - and those don't count for me - at all.

Over the years, I've had a number of failed attempts at vegetable gardening – some things in containers at various urban apartments, and one summer since I moved home I was invited to grow a few things in my folks' garden – 45 km away. Not too surprisingly, much neglect (and good-natured ribbing) ensued.

I find it difficult to pay attention to a garden. The shriveled tomato plants and dried up herb gardens of my past haunt me, mournfully waving their reproachful brown leaves at me.

But, I love the idea of gardening. And I especially love the idea of gardening here, in the Crooked Wood. So this spring, as you may have already read, I got help from a friend to build a hugelkultur bed and my folks gave me a raised bed kit and away I went.

So far, things are going well. I planted a few things from seed: peas, beans, spinach. The spinach didn't take, but the peas and beans are thriving: 

Peas and beans – June 22

Peas and beans – July 3

The onions and potatoes are doing well, too. Some tomato and leek starts that my pops gave me out of his greenhouse are adjusting more slowly.

Potatoes, onions, leeks and tomatoes – June 22

Potatoes, onions, leeks and tomatoes – July 3

I also got some starts from some other local sources – a few from Stewart Hebb's, some from the Village Nursery and some from the West Dublin Market: Zucchini, arugula, mesclun mix, butternut squash and a few herbs. Interestingly, two tomato plants that I didn't have room for in the raised bed and put in the hugelkultur bed are now twice the size of their compatriots. I'm not sure if this is because they are getting more sun, or if they have more room for their roots, or if the hugelkultur mound retains more moisture in the dry conditions we've been having (which may or may not be because it got well mulched with seaweed and the raised bed did not. I ran out of seaweed – I will need to get a much bigger load next spring). 

Mixed greens, squash, tomatoes and herbs – July 3

Salinger enjoys the garden, too, and often hangs out with me while I'm working there – and gets all nice and schmutzy, rolling in the dirt.

Mmmm, schmutz!

I started small with my garden this year. With so many unsuccessful past attempts, I didn't want to set myself up for failure and disappointment. I think that was a good decision, especially with all of the dry weather we are having this spring – without running water here, keeping the two beds I have moist is enough of a challenge for me.

I think it's fair to say that I'm appreciating this experiment so far. I enjoy having tasks like, "Hill potatoes" on my to-do list. I expect I will have my first home-grown salad today. A garden is a perfect complement to a life with limited refrigeration. It's also great for a person living alone – I can pick things as I need them. I won't have any more big bags of purchased greens going partly to waste because I can't eat through them quickly enough.

And, since the garden is right outside my window, it's difficult for me to forget about it or neglect it. So far, at least.

Since things seem to be going well, I've started making plans to expand my garden next year. My Amazing Friend dropped off a gift of horse manure the other day and I have constructed two more hugelkultur beds (which I will drape with black tarps – on the advice of my friend Jude – to kill any weed/grass seeds in the manure and help it compost thoroughly before next year).

Next year, I want to grow broccoli and cabbage and bok choy and perhaps I will make another, deeper raised bed for some root veggies like beets and carrots. And some more potatoes. I only have a few blue fingerling potatoes planted this year; next year I would like to have more variety.

One of two new hugelkultur beds being prepared for next year. Next spring they will be topped with soil mix and seaweed and will be good to go.

One of the most enjoyable things about this gardening experiment for me is learning. I feel curious to find out what does well where. And I love the thought that I will have the opportunity to try different things in subsequent years – to test and assess and change and develop. 

Hopefully, I will build a gardening habit and gain some skills that have eluded me in the past. Now, if I could get get curious about organizing and tidying...

Settling In: Ups and Downs, Hugelkultur and Clotheslines

Salinger and I have been here, in our Wholehearted House in The Crooked Wood, for a little more than a week, but it feels like longer. Partly because a lot has been packed into each day and partly because this place fits us like a favourite, well-worn sweater.

This time has felt very full and rich. With lots of rainy and overcast weather right off the bat, we have been alternately calm and cosy, blue and snoozy, chilly and shivery and brisk and busy.

Infrastructure is definitely a challenge. With no way to charge my computers and plenty of desk work to do, I am forced off the property periodically. It's probably good for me to have a reason to see people, because otherwise I think I would be a total recluse. I am not feeling very social these days.

The other day, as I was trying to do a piece of work, I watched my laptop battery count down: 4%, 3%, 2% (your computer will shut down soon if you don't connect it to a power supply), 1% – as I desperately copied the files I needed off onto a stick and transferred them over to my other laptop, which still had about 50% of its battery remaining.

I'm managing, but I am also trying to figure out an alternate power solution and/or office space. When I lived without electricity two summers ago, I had an external office in a neighbouring home, but this time around, I haven't succeeded in finding a similar situation. Fortunately, my new place is only a 15-minute drive to Bridgewater and I am enjoying the benefits of part-time membership at co3 – a pretty groovy little spot.

The Big Ups

I am actually relaxed. It is quiet and peaceful here. Well, "nature quiet", which is to say that there are tons of song birds in the canopy of trees and plenty of peepers at night.

I feel at home here. I feel like I belong in these woods.

I have been receiving a lot of help from a lot of people.

And, I have very nice neighbours.

The Big Downs

There have been a couple of struggles, for sure. I hit a snag with my building permit for my shed (the shed to which NSPower is going to eventually connect electricity) last week when it was pointed out to me that I had not fulfilled a prerequisite: acquiring permission from the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal for permission to build a structure within 100 metres of the centre of the road. Fortunately, the DOT was super-awesome, processed the request in 4 days and went out of their way to provide me with a scanned copy that I could quickly send to the municipality (because for some reason, they wouldn't accept photographs of the hardcopy that I took in my car – LOL).

My other big down happened when Salinger took off for almost 24 hours last week, which had me doubled over with worry. I was afraid he had been eaten by coy-wolves or set upon by a gang of savage neighbourhood cats. But he was just off exploring and came back, hungry, uninjured and unrepentant, all in his own good time. I am very grateful to my Facebook community for helping me stay calmer during his absence. Damn, but I'm attached to the little fella.

Hugelkultur

On Friday, a friend for whom I did some design work this past winter came to return the favour by sharing his expertise with me. He is a gardening guru and together we set up my first (and I'm thinking, not my last) hugelkultur raised bed. Hugelkultur is a permaculture technique, involving making mounds out of rotting wood (abundantly available here). We also used seaweed, peat moss, dirt, dead leaves, twigs and a few soil additions like lime, wood ash and rock phosphate.

Hugelkultur: basically a big pile of organic
matter – rotting logs at the bottom, then
twigs, brush with seaweed and dead leaves
to fill in the cracks...

And soil on the top. All of it later mulched
with seaweed.

I'm very excited about my hugelkultur bed! And I also have another raised bed that my sweet folks gave me as a land-warming present last Saturday. So far I have planted blue potatoes (in seaweed), onions, peas, beans and spinach. Now I just have to find more of the seeds I bought last year and never planted...

The Clothesline

I don't know what it is about clotheslines, but to me they feel like home. Home is where you can have a clothesline. I haven't had a clothesline in a long time. Probably 15 years. Apartments often don't have them. By chance, the houses I have rented in have not had them. Stretching freshly washed clothes out over a fire escape is just not the same.

It has been one of my highest wishlist items for my own place. Shortly after moving to The Crooked Wood, I found myself at Gow's Home Hardware buying a pitchfork, some electrical tape, a big, purple, plastic laundry basket and a clothesline kit. And some clothespins.

On Saturday, I did a huge load of wash at the Bridgewater laundromat (When I have a back-log of three+ loads, I like to take them to the BIG MACHINE where the wash can be all done and dusted in 20 minutes). I came home committed to install my clothesline all by myself. And I did! It took me three tries, plagued by blackflies, struggling with the technical aspects of the task – I found it difficult driving in the screw hooks, working over my head, on tip-toes. The clothesline itself got super-tangled right away. (I blame this on being left-handed in a right-handed world. Cables, wires, extension cords – they are all wound up with right-handed people in mind.) Twice I gave up and ran from the bugs. But I kept going back out and by the end of my third foray, I had installed my clothesline. It's a little low (I'm short and don't yet own a ladder) – and I feel fairly certain that some people will snicker at it when they see it – but it runs smoothly and it works! I dried my clothes on it today and they smell amazing. (It has been a long-held aspiration of mine to have sheets that smell as amazing as my mom's and I think I've achieved my goal!)

My beloved clothesline – the quintessence of "Home".

I am not handy. But I hate feeling helpless. I am happy to outsource a lot of tasks, but I also like to know that I can take care of something like this when I want or need to. I feel a sense of accomplishment from doing something that I am not innately good at – something that was difficult and frustrating – and which, now done, will add greatly to the quality of my life.