More crawlies

It is very much tent caterpillar season. Here is one with the mark of satan on its brow: a parasitic (ichneumon?) wasp has laid its egg on this unfortunate. There's a moral choice here: kill the caterpillar for a swift death, and wipe out a beneficial insect? Or leave the caterpillar to experience an Alien-type of death? Nature can be a difficult place.



Spring is also a time of digging in the garden, and I had an interested bystander last week who watched me carefully to make sure I had not uprooted the rock that was its home.



I decided to extend a little patch of garden by digging a couple of feet into the lawn



which meant digging up some grass and, in the process, a large population of wireworms



as well as a large population of leatherjackets, a couple of snails



and a cutworm larva.



My war against slugs continues, and I think I'm getting the upper hand, mostly by hand-picking at night. But I complement this activity with some slug traps made out of used styrofoam or plastic cups,



baited with home brew (water, yeast, sugar and flour) and it attracts a good number of drinkers who hang out in the bar past closing and then fall in.



I have been surprised by my slug populations' fondness for onions.



The chives are in full blossom, which is good for my salads and visiting bees:



The garden spiders have moved to the strawberry pots:



My overwintered artichoke has offered a second bulb and seems perfectly happy under the downspout of the garden shed, surprisingly. Plagued with ants though, and I'm not sure if that's harmful or not. More research needed.



The potato car tire experiment continues, behind the shed, next to the fence, so well out of direct sunlight. They seem happy enough so far, as do the burlap bag specimens.



The leeks are looking better in the pot than they do in the garden (where I suspect wireworms have been nibbling on their feet), and the radishes are helping to pass the time between them:



Lots of flowers on the fava beans:

Creepy spring

Last year's battles with tent caterpillars were gruesome, but I have (so far) managed to find and destroy the few nests that are turning up in my apple tree. Not so with the ones in my neighbour's plum tree - I have visitors dropping in periodically - but hopefully they will go away soon.



I believe this is a sowbug,



one of the night-crawling culprits who (together with the slugs) are making my rhubarb look like this:



I have been on slug patrol the past few nights and found so many slugs I lost count. Most are babies. I have been putting out slug brew for them (served in plastic party cups) and had quite a few takers, but will need to go slug-picking more often to keep them under control.

Meanwhile, I discovered several conglomerations of spiders, which I think are baby Garden Spiders. I would like them better if they ate slugs...



More potato experiments this year. I'm trying them in a burlap bag



as well as car tires again, and some in the earth as well. Meanwhile, the artichoke I planted last year survived the winter and looks like it will offer me something nice to eat this spring...

GTUF's urban garden tour

Sunday we had the first Gorge-Tillicum Urban Farmers tour of our neighbourhood. First stop was Peg and Tom's beauty spot, with its raised beds



and six kinds of garlic (behind which blueberries and evergreen huckleberry).



A young herb gardener patrols.



The greenhouse.



The worm bin, with its little red tap to drain the juice, great for watering house plants.



On to Brenda's



where she's been using lots of different techniques to expand her growing space.



A cold frame for seedlings.



Gorgeous raised beds in stone walls.



Not so gorgeous wireworm infesting the newly created raised beds at the back of the garden. Potato traps and time seem to be the only options at the moment.



Howdja like them onions?



Irrigation system to make better use of water.



Fava bean flowers.



Foil the wireworms by using a box planter for potatoes.



Strawberry beds a-plenty.



The container planter in me was happy to see asparagus growing happily and abundantly in pots.



The native plant garden looking happy and well populated.



We were chided long and loudly by a local hummingbird (name of Hector, I reckon).



Salad green bed; we've seen deer in our area but they're not yet a problem for us. Brenda's ready for them when they become so.



Another container planting.





Then on to John's where the brassicas were brightening things up. John leaves his purple sprouting broccoli in as long as it produces, treating it as a perennial, which lasts 2 or 3 years.



Some of his onions, grown from the roots of grocery store green onions.

Urban garden tour: SPIN Farming, consumer ed and community garden

I did a double-whammy garden tour extravaganza on the weekend. I'll report Saturday's here and make a separate posting for Sunday.

Saturday I joined my classmates from the Food from the Hood (The Role of Urban Agriculture in the Relocalization of Our Food System) class, which is taking a close look at local urban agriculture initiatives, to see a SPIN farming installation, have a ramble round the Compost Education Centre's grounds, and then pop into Springridge Commons.

Sol showed us one of the dozen back yards that she and her fellow SPIN farmers manage for City Harvest as a cooperative urban farming venture.



One of the many obstacles facing urban farmers of any stripe is the out-of-control cedar hedging that has become so popular - and so contested - in these privacy-obsessed times. Perhaps planted in goodwill by one property owner, if left unattended - perhaps the property changes hands, or is rented out, or the owner just gets cranky or lazy or too old to cope - this is what it looks like from the house next door. What we can't see are the roots pushing up through the growing space.



I think I'm getting a post-apocalyptic vision of what we'll be leaving behind us on this island, and it won't be native plants...



Sol talked about the SPIN Farming manual, which offers advice on the business end of urban farming, including the choices made between high and low value crops. Radishes, because they grow quickly and offer several crops in a season, are high value.



It's the first year they've operated the business as a coop, so everything is new and they're having to build relationships with the landowners, set out guidelines about access to the yards and compensation to the owners, and deal with the local challenges (deer and slugs being the main ones, though Sol said she had a bit of a turn when she heard a child on the other side of the fence from where she was working say "oh look! a bunny!").

Then it was on to the Compost Ed Centre, where I found a Blue Orchard (mason) bee studying the literature.



I was much taken with this two-in-one growing method which seems a useful way to use your leaf mulch.



Some miners lettuce....



I liked the information about willow coppicing



and the charming hoops they'd created from it.



Nice example of a green roof.



Our final stop of the day, Springridge Common, was empty of people when we visited, but the wind was chilly and it was spitting rain at times.



More bee boxes. Paper tubes allow you to take the bee larvae out and manage the hairy-footed mite that plagues them by infesting their dwellings.



Signage will come in time; for now it looks simply lush to the bystander.



Communal compost



Community spaces may experience guerilla plantings, of species that may not work in the space they're placed by their mystery donors:



for oh so many reasons.