Spring is seeding

Across the nation, seed producers are shaking things out of seed stalks and brown paper bags and getting ready for Seedy Saturdays. These events, growing more numerous and more popular as the local food and nouveau Victory Garden movements take hold, allow local growers to share their seeds with gardeners. The big advantage this gives you over buying from commercial catalogues is that you can find seeds that grow well in your own area, and you can ask the grower for advice about planting and growing.



GTUF, our neighbourhood food security and growing group, decided to have a small Seedy Sunday, ahead of the official day, to swap a few of our own round the neighbourhood. It was a great success and we all came away wealthier.



So. My pockets full of seeds, I must wait for my garden to drain. Meanwhile I have laced the pots and whatnots with some okara, byproduct of tofu-making, and beneficial to gardens for those who dig it in rather than cooking with it. Now I need only keep the dog away as he has decided it makes a delicious mid-morning snack.



And my walking onions are ready to take their first steps. Here's hoping for more mild weather.

Falling towards winter; the business of urban farming

I did a final harvest, and then another one in late October,



and now I think we're done. Except for the black radish - that is growing delicious greens - and the beets still fattening in their pots, and the kale (Red Russian and the one Black Kale plant that was spared by whatever has eaten the rest to sticks) and a few leeks and some celery.

The tomatoes are just about over as well - most of the ones I picked green are now ripe and ready to cook into something more durable: passato is one idea I have.

Meanwhile, the leaves fall and I've got them mostly chewed up and on the beds as winter mulch. Time to spend the winter learning more about growing.

To which end I happened to make it to Robin Tunnicliffe's talk last night (sponsored by LifeCycles' new Urban Agriculture Hub) about making money as an urban farmer. She has worked her way into a healthy business - one third of Saanich Organics - through apprenticeship, land leasing and collaboration, and does a lot of speaking and teaching besides.

She shared her views on where to begin: pointing out that you need to dream a little about what you want your farming business to look like, because it needn't look like anyone else's model. She suggested growing low-intensity, drought-resistant plants at first: squash and tomatillos for example. The key to 9-5 gardening, she said, was working with others. It's easy to overdo it when you start out, and everything else in your life can suffer.

When you come to the point of looking for land, she advised arming yourself with a plan: the more fully you have imagined what you want to do and what your farm will look like (e.g. can you afford a glass greenhouse or will you have to build one from reclaimed lumber and bits of plastic?) the more able you will be to sell yourself honestly to a prospective landlord. Start making friends with other farmers - cooperation and collaboration are central to her vision - and if you can get them on side, they may help you find available land, and also support your efforts by sharing advice and information. In BC, the leasing of farm land to a working farmer can pay big benefits to landlords.

On the question of how much land to lease, she suggested that smaller could be better: if you stick with a size of farm that you can tend yourself, you have the space to find out what you like growing, what sells best, and adjust your plantings and expectations as you go. The most profitable plots are those with tight successive plantings, and with several people working them. She makes a good living from her one acre, but she does get great marketing support from her partners in Saanich Organics.

And about marketing she had much to say, suggesting prospective farmers learn some business skills, including basic accounting. Keep in touch with other farmers to find out what everyone's growing, selling and charging, and remember that sustainable agriculture must sustain farmers too: it does not help the community of farmers to try to undersell anyone else, it simply erodes your own ability to make a living. With her partners, she sells broadly: to box scheme subscribers, restaurants, small shops and farmers' markets. She doesn't bother with supermarkets: not only are their requirements expensive (packaging, labels, logos, websites, barcodes), they don't like to sign agreements, and their quest for the bottom line can send a small supplier under very quickly.

She talked about organic certification and recommended local growers hook up with IOPA (Island Organic Producers Association) for a manageable certification fee. The organization is run by volunteer farmers who hire provincially-certified inspectors, so is cheaper than one run by all-paid staff. She said that certification forces farmers to maintain records that can be hugely helpful in assessing their own land use and profitability.

Crocus, purslane and tomatoes

Some of my tomatoes have been rather sculptural, like this Black Krim.



There has been no end of preserving activity as the summer bounty mounts up. Some of my tomatoes went into this oddity, Tomato Marmalade. It was excellent.



And there are tomatoes still on the vine.. playing wait and see with the early frosts.



Meanwhile, the autumn crocus is up and nearly over. Unlike cousin Shirley, who gave me these, I do not have thousands of them which would make an impressive display; but the few I have are lovely enough.



The purslane is growing leggy and starting to seed. I had thought it would flower and then seed, but I guess this is the purslane equivalent of a flower:



Each of what appear to be flower buds are actually seed pods, which open spontaneously and spill what looks like poppy seed. I've been trying to collect it which is a bit laborious but should be worth it as I'm guessing it grows easily and then propagates itself endlessly, since it was considered a weed (until its value as a source of omega 3 and other antioxidants came to light). Rather glad I planted it in a pot.

Potatoes and permaculture

Felt kind of smug seeing the output yesterday from my volunteer Norland potato - which yielded three or four jumbo spuds - and all of them, from first inspection, wireworm-free, which is most exciting, since this was the main place in my garden that seemed to have them. Also dug up a Yukon Gold that I'd already harvested from, so only little ones from there and could have been left a while longer if I'd looked carefully at the base. Oh well. I got an ice cream pail full anyway.



And the tomatoes continue to ripen; my big beauties have now been identified as Black Krim rather than the previously supposed Costoluto Fiorentino.



Even the slugs like them, alas, so some of the riper ones end up with little slug bites. But I'm going to be canning them over the next few weeks so hope to stay on top of them.

Someone from my neighbourhood gardening/food security group sent this great link to an Introduction to Permaculture, by its father, the Australian naturalist Bill Mollison. In his intro, written in 1981, he observes

The real systems that are beginning to fail are the soils, forests, the atmosphere, and nutrient cycles. It is we who are responsible for that. We haven’t evolved anywhere in the west (and I doubt very much elsewhere except in tribal areas) any sustainable systems in agriculture or forestry.

Too bad he's still right. Given the failure of will on the part of our governments, we can only make our own backyard food systems as sustainable as possible, buy only (as far as possible) from farmers who do likewise, and hope that a wave of consumer concern - voting with our minds and our wallets - brings positive change.

Grow, baby, grow

The September chill is in the air, and we've had a week of rain and now some sun, so those plants can put on a spurt before the frosts.

Gypsy peppers ripening in their pot:



Lots of scarlet runners still, and more flowers coming:



The German lunchboxes have been trailing some of the other varieties, but are looking healthy:



My pot of purslane:



I now have five baby eggplants growing for all they're worth:

Tomatoes love... wood ash and... er... human urine?

A Finnish study published this summer in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry has tested a sustainable fertilizer of urine and wood ash on tomato crops and found high yields. This will not be news to Geoff Johnson, a local permaculturalist here in Victoria, who has long advocated the application of home-made nitrogen supplements (urine diluted 10:1) to crops and compost.

Tomatoes have been on my mind a lot lately; it is the season after all, and there's even a Slow Food tomato brunch event to celebrate them this weekend.

As for mine on the vine, they are ripening one by one. My big beefy guys are grown from seed I saved last year from a plant Tom gave me, which was a Costoluto Fiorentino, but it's looking a little dark now so we wondered if it might have crossed with something else? (Late-breaking news: it is quite likely a Black Krim) Delicious but misshapen. So big and heavy - some of them are just under a pound in weight - it's been hard to stake the plants adequately.



Also in the bowl is a San Marzano, from a plant Tom gave me; haven't got enough ripe yet to use but looking forward to tasting them.

These are the little guys, scarpariello, a small sweet roma from Italy.

Late summer in the garden

My miracle acorn squash looked so lovely



I had to pick it the other day. And botched the job! I broke its little handle off, which is a bad, bad thing to do - it won't keep if you do that. So I have another squash on my menu (and two more on the vine, phew!). It's a miracle squash because it grew from a seed from a particularly delicious one I had in my seasonal veg box last winter, from FoodRoots. I heard after I planted it that I wasn't supposed to do that because squashes are a bit promiscuous and will cross with anything; but then I read that it's ok for your current crop, but the next round of seeds won't grow true. And that the two I'd planted (acorn - Cucurbita pepo - and hubbard - Cucurbita maxima) were different varieties and should be safe from wilder crossings as long as nobody else in the area was growing them. Or something like that.

Nice flowers anyway, and the bees like them.



The popular wisdom is that you should only sow squash seeds that have been properly bred and saved. One reason is to prevent disease, and all my squashes (including the one legitimate number I got elsewhere) are mottled with evil powdery mildew.



My eggplants are taking their sweet time and I fear will not bear fruit of sufficient size by the time the frosts come. Still, three cheers for pretty flowers and this game attempt against the odds and limitations of light:



And as for my garden - testing ground for plagues and pestilence - all manner of wickedness in the stunted corn...



Ugly onions (could it be wireworm?)



And those poor chard plants. No sooner do we vanquish leafminers but we get these wicked things, some kind of aphid I suppose: