Bob Cervelli

In the Transition Garden, we planted spinach in late September in our unheated 20′ x 24′ greenhouse.  We were picking this spinach in late November and early December, and let it rest in January and February in a dormant state.  Despite unknown varmints (perhaps voles) that got in there over the winter and dug up many of the plants, many others survived.  We began picking again in mid-March onward as the plants began to come out of dormancy and grow again.  In early May, now they are growing like crazy and we are picking a lot.

However, spinach knows when its time to think about seed production, and we are now seeing the first plants beginning to put up their seed stalks.  The plants are aware of the increased day length and warmth.  In the trade, this natural phase of ‘going to seed’ is known as ‘bolting.’  Its also sign that our continuous harvest time of leaves is drawing nigh.   We can see the seed stem beginning to elongate in some of the plants. The leaves have also gotten smaller and are more arrowhead shaped.

In another week or two, it will be time to do one last thorough harvest and pull out the plants to make way for summer crops like tomatoes, peppers and basil. We will leave a handful of these spinach plants to continue their process, go on to flowering and produce seed. We will then harvest the stalks and save the seed late in the season.

Wow, we picked our first spring turnips today! Little young ones with a turnip about 1/2″ in diameter.  In another 1-2 weeks they will mature out to full size spring turnips of about 1 to 2″ in diameter.

These are fast varieties – almost like growing radishes.  We use either Hakauri or Market Express varieties which have a growing season of about 40-45 days.  They were planted in mid-March in our unheated greenhouse.

We like them really young, and tend to harvest them early.  We very lightly steam the whole plant (tops and all) and add a bit of soy sauce for seasoning.  Yum!

It mid-February at the Transition Garden.  We just celebrated Chinese and Tibetan New Year’s on February 12th and now its almost Valentine’s Day.  There’s 10 inches of snow on the ground from the last storm and night time lows are in the range of -6-12C. The bees are tightly clustered in their bee hive and sipping the honey that keeps them warm.  Two deer came through last night rooting around for any vegetable stems to chew on that they can find under the snow.

We spread some wood ashes from the woodstove on some of the beds to provide nutrients and help lower the pH.  Calcium is the most abundant element in wood ash. Ash is also a good source of potassium, phosphorus, and magnesium. In terms of commercial fertilizer, average wood ash would be about 0-1-3 (N-P-K).

While the outside garden is fully dormant, we have been at it in the greenhouses. The lower greenhouse has 3 beds of over-wintered spinach still ripe for picking.  In another short few weeks, it will begin to awaken from its winter slumber and begin actively growing again.  Its seems impervious to the cold and always yields some harvest. The workshop greenhouse is undergoing a thorough cleaning in preparation for the upcoming transplant production season which begins in March. Its also time to inspect our extra bee equipment, as we may need to rebuild some honey frames or hive boxes in preparation for spring nectar flow.

Of course, winter is also the perfect time for sprouts and micro-greens production in order to keep salad fixins in the fridge.  One of our favourites are the micro-green mixes from Mumm’s Seeds, soaked for 6-8 hours and then planted into 1/2″ of potting mix on a cafeteria tray.  Be sure to drill a few holes in the tray for drainage and keep them under a strong growlight.  It takes about 10 days for a great crop which can be harvested with scissors.

Stay tuned for more regular updates as we get into the growing season!

Transition Garden is looking for a 2021 Season Intern and Co-manager.  This is a fully-flexible position for the right individual and represents a great learning opportunity for learning almost everything about intensive garden production, local resilience and climate readiness.  See the attached listing for more information.

2021 Gardening Internship St Margarets Bay Feb21

 

It’s just about that time of year to begin plans for seeding vegetables into trays.  I was out in the shed pulling out some ’72 trays’ (they have 72 cells in each tray – the best size here for most transplant production, compared to trays with 50 cells, 128 cells, etc.) and clear plastic lids.  There’s a whole lot of trays and pots of different sizes that we have accumulated over the years.  I even found an old wooden tray labeled ‘Univ. of Wisconsin’ from my days there doing research in botany.  I also made sure we have enough potting mix for the upcoming season (we use Promix BX, available in most garden centres).  And of course, we will need our seeds.  Word is that seed companies are already getting overwhelmed, so don’t delay in your ordering!

Even though its snowing outside today, there’s 6-8″ of snow on the ground, and night time temps are well below zero, seeding time is here for some crops – starting under grow lights, for later transplant into a greenhouse.  Its a timing issue.  If you begin seeding in the second half of February, be sure to use a grow light, and be sure that you can move them into a greenhouse (or cold frame as a minimum) by the second half of March.  Letting seeds germinate on a window sill is usually a recipe for disaster, because they will stretch towards the light and become weak-stemmed or leggy (the botanical term is etiolation).  You need the light intensity of a grow light to eliminate this problem.  I set mine on a timer for 16 hours of day length.

Two days ago, I started the very first seed tray – our ‘ultra-hot chill’s’ – red ghost, red 7-pot, bhut jolokia and orange habenero (all with scoville units over one million!).  These seeds are finicky.  They need at least 29-30 degrees to germinate in high humidity.  I have them on a heating pad, under a clear plastic lid which has a temperature sensor inside.  That way I can monitor their conditions, and try to keep a uniform temperature in the 30-32 degree range.  Even at that temperature, they may take up to two weeks to emerge.

Next week, we will begin seeding onions and other varieties of peppers, including sweet bell peppers.

We will not begin to seed most crops until mid-March.  In that way, we can grow them out directly in the greenhouse without the need for grow lights.  These will be mostly the cold hardy spring crops – more on that in upcoming posts.

Spring is coming soon!  All the best, Bob

Some questions have come in about soil amendments and using wood ash.  I can provide more perspective here, but the topic of soil amendments in particular is huge and ultimately depends on your existing soil’s condition. Do your homework as there is always more of a learning curve.

In Transition Garden, we send soil samples most years off to the Nova Scotia Analytical Testing Lab in order to get a full run down on nutrients, pH and other characteristics.  Alternatively, you can buy soil test kits at most garden centres.  This information is your best guide to understanding how to build your soils.

It is always a good idea to increase the level of organic matter in the soil as much as possible.  Compost, well rotted manures and leaf molds are some of your best sources.  Soils high in organic matter will have a rich soil ecology of microorganisms that will in turn increase a plant’s health.  They also retain moisture better during summer dry spells.  Through the use of tons and tons and tons (literally) of composted manures, we have built Transition Garden soils to a 12-15% organic matter content.  For a gardener, rich soils are literally your main capital asset.

Some of the better and more common organic soil amendments include bone meal, blood meal, seaweed or fish emulsions, green sand and rock dusts.  Investigate each for their levels of N-P-K (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium) which are the 3 main nutrients required by plants.  They are generally lower in these levels than chemical fertilizers, but are better at building soil ecosystems.

One suggestion that came in:

Leafy greens: need nitrogen

Fruit bearing (like tomato, peppers, potatoes, cucumbers, squash):  need less nitrogen and more phosphorus and potassium

Root veggies: need lots of phosphorus and not much nitrogen

Wood ash is good in soils, but not too much – use sparingly – 10 to 15 pounds per 1,000 square feet.  This is the amount you may get from one cord of firewood.  Also, stir some thoroughly into compost piles.  It adds phosphorous, calcium and reduces soil acidity.

Happy planning, Bob

 

 

 

Winter is the time that many beekeepers sort through their inventory of supplies before things get busy in the spring.  At the Transition Garden, we are planning to expand our apiary to two hives this coming year, and we purchased new hive boxes. We also ordered a new colony (a ‘nuc’) from a respected bee breeder in the area.

The prep work includes painting the new boxes, lid and ‘bottom board’ as well as preparing frames with new beeswax foundation for the bees to build out new comb for storing their honey.  Painting in an empty greenhouse is perfect because the heat drys the paint quickly!

The days are getting markedly longer now at the end of February.  We are about 3 weeks away from the spring equinox, when the days and nights are the same length.  Nevertheless, there are still significant cold snaps (last night on the full moon for example it got to 15C below!).

Despite these cold snaps, the days are routinely starting to get above zero.  Low pressure fronts tend to bring snow which changes to rain – that is the forecast for tonight.  (As an aside, this is a new pattern of weather for February compared to 15-20 years ago.  Is this caused by climate change?  One would certainly think so.  It is getting difficult in our area to do winter sports, like cross-country skiing or snow shoeing.  Even ice skating on ponds and lakes can get risky.)

With the increased day length, our spinach in the unheated greenhouse is starting to come out of dormancy and show signs for growth.  Three greenhouse beds over-wintered under row cover (held up above the plants by a thin frame of wire and bamboo).  Spinach is incredibly cold-hardy.  Very cold nights never seem to cause any damage.

In a few more weeks, we will begin to have a bumper crop of spinach for everyone who helps in the gardens!

The only over wintering damage to the spinach was caused by moles or voles in one of the beds (we discovered their tunnels under the soil), who chewed the plants right down to the base of the stems.  Anyone have suggesting on how to catch voles in a live trap?  Fortunately the plants will survive and begin to re-leaf in the coming weeks.

 

It’s March 2nd.  Even though it’s -13C degrees with high winds and drifting snow outside, we are starting to seed plant trays for spring transplanting.  When to start?  It is a question with a multi-layered answer as it depends on the crop, when it is intended to be transplanted outside and what growing infrastructure you have to keep them happy and growing until they are set out.  The risk is to start too early, especially if you cannot keep them under proper conditions as they get bigger.

We use a grow light indoors for small amounts of specialty items, such as our ultra-hot peppers.  These were seeded two weeks ago and germinated on a heating pad.  They are now happily up and just now producing their second set of leaves.  As they get bigger in about 2-3 weeks, they will be upgraded to 2″ pots and kept under the grow light for a week or two more, and then moved out to a heated pad in the greenhouse.

Two days ago, we seeded 3 trays with onion seed – yellow storage onions, red onions and green onions.  We seed 4-7 seeds per cell in a 50 cell tray.  Onions don’t mind growing in clumps and they separate easily when transplanting into the ground in early May.  These are germinated indoors next to the wood stove where it is warm – it takes about 5-7 days.  When they just start to emerge from the potting soil, we will put them out into the greenhouse in an insulated box which has a heating pad on the bottom.  The box is covered with bubble wrap on cold nights. 

Stay tuned – in two more weeks we will begin seeding many of the other transplants to be used in Transition Garden.

Consider knowledge of gardening to be an essential life skill.  Teach young children and students at every opportunity, as they will need to have these skills in the future as the world grows increasingly crowded and resources increasingly scarce.  It is possibly to grow a huge amount of food on small amounts of land.  This is evidenced by the many many small scale farmers who still today produce most of the world’s food supply.

Mid-March is the best time to begin seeding for transplants which will go into the garden in early May or grown further in a greenhouse of planting out in June.

At Transition Garden, we plant seeds, let them germinate inside the house, and then put them out into our ‘workshop’ greenhouse the moment that they start to emerge from the soil.  The greenhouse is mostly unheated.  The tomatoes, eggplant and peppers, being heat loving plants, would go into our insulated ‘hot box’ in the greenhouse that has a heating pad on the bottom.  The other early seedlings are fairly cold tolerant and can withstand the cold nights in the unheated portion of the greenhouse.

Assess your own situation carefully.  Unless your have good grow lights, a greenhouse or at least a cold frame, the common error is to start seeding too early and not be able accommodate the plants properly as they get bigger. Tomatoes, eggplant and peppers are particularly sensitive – it is good to start them early, but they will need lots of light and warmth.

Here is what we would plant during the middle of March:  Onions, Leeks, Chives, Peppers, Tomatoes, Eggplant, Broccoli, Brussel sprouts, Cabbage, Celery, Kale, Chard, Bokchoy, Leaf lettuces and Parsley.

Lettuce seedlings just emerging from the potting mix.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Onions germinated 3 weeks ago

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our beehive on a warm March day.  We checked them for honey stores and they have plenty to get through to first nectar flow.

 

Activities are picking up quickly in the greenhouses at Transition Garden.

The three dormant fig trees were moved out of cold storage.  They were in our workshop, which we keep at 3C during the winter to act as a root cellar and cold storage area).  They will leave out quickly and we will move them into the lower greenhouse in May, where we plant the pots into the ground and let the roots grow out through the holes in the pot during the summer.  In the fall, when they go dormant again, we pull out the pots and prune off the roots.  This year, we may get 3-4 new figs trees by rooting shoots that came up from the bases of two tree.  We planting these shoots in small pots after dusting the ends with rooting powder.  Exciting!

Over the past few days, we thinned cabbage and Swiss chard seed trays that had germinated and had more that one seedling per cell.  We took many of these ‘extras’ and transplanted them into another tray, leaving a few seedlings doubled up in some cells.  You always want to have a few extra seedlings in case there was poor germination or other problems, but over-seeding can give you too many and is a waste of seeds.  Last year, a mouse was happily munching seedling right down to the stub until we finally caught it in a live trap and took it for a relocation drive.

Our onions, seeded about 4 weeks ago, are well on there way.

We are seeding more varieties of crops into seed trays. Today it was the eggplant (2 types), ground cherry and radicchio.  Last week we did tomatoes (8 varieties) and peppers (4 varieties).  Our ultra-hot chilies which we started in mid-February are now growing well in 2″ pots and we moved them from under the grow lights into the ‘hot box’ in the greenhouse.

I love that phrase – “the spring quickening.”  Its that time of year when winter has lost the battle to spring, which is quickly gaining momentum.  Everything starts to come to life, out of its winter dormancy, and quickens with almost a pace of urgency.

Two crows are guarding their nest in the tall white pine outside my window, kicking up a big commotion one afternoon when a hawk came by looking for an easy meal.  The early bloomers like the crocuses and coltsfoot are up, and the bees are bringing in the first n

ectar and pollen.  Spinach in the greenhouse, long dormant over the winter, now seems on a tear for growth, providing many salads and spinach pies.  The garlic has jumped out of the ground, beginning it growth just as the frost left and there was the first sign of warmth.

This week we will start doing more intensive work in the garden beds, doing spring cleanup, spreading compost and adding some soil amendments.  We will start some direct seeding of cold hardy plants like arugula, cilantro and radish.

 

Our seedlings are growing well in the transplant production greenhouse, as they put on new sets of leaves and begin to fill out the plug trays.  We will be upgrading the ultra-hot chilies from 2″ pots to 4″ pots.  These were started back in mid-February and are coming along well.