Sunday 30 October 2016

Fall update

Garden is pretty much shut down for winter.  We still need to plant garlic for the next year but it seems that weather next week is summer like (according to forecast) so we will wait another week or so as it will be too warm.  We also need to put some tulips bulb in flower bed for the spring.  In general, I was planning to continue to mulch  leafs this weekend, but unexpected snowfall on Friday, delayed these plans.  Our two mountain ash trees produce so much of leafs, and so late in the season that this is big challenge to keep up with management.

We lost our Molly and she is dearly missed.  The best dog ever!  

Saturday 15 October 2016

Fall cleanup

After -9 C on Tuesday this week, nothing survived in the tunnels  and garden and officially garden season 2016 is over.  We will still plant garlic for the next year crop, in about two weeks time.  We cleaned garden, our compost is full to the point that nothing more can fit into one of the composting bins and left some space for day use in the other one.  Weather was great today despite forecast calling for rain and cool weather.  At one point my weather station recorded +12C.
Now we are still processing harvest and enjoying fresh produce as well. 
We had pretty sad week as we had to make decision on "putting down" our beloved golden who reached age of fourteen and her conditions deteriorated so rapidly that we decided inevitable.  It was and still is so hard on us as she was such a wonderful dog.  RIP Molly.

Monday 10 October 2016

Winter...?!

IT has been a while since last post, so decide to provide quick update on state of the garden.  It is Canadian Thanksgiving and snowy one here.  It has been snowing everyday for the past two days and the effect left about 4-5 cm on the ground, making my dog so happy. Snow would melt at the end of the day, but today it was snowing again and ground again is covered by wet snow.  It was also be unusually cold and I mean cold as temps are around 0 most of the time and hardly reaching into positive territory.  My large tunnel double wall design proved to be a winner.  I have temperature recording device and it shows me the lowest and highest temps and also current temp, humidity.  Even at days where temp went down at night to -3C it was still positive temp inside and during the day when it was very cloudy and temp. outside was at -2C, we had +6C inside.  So we still have tomato plants growing and producing red tomatoes.  We still have quiet a lot of green tomatoes. I decided to evacuate sprinkler system and thus close water to the garden.  We have covered lettuce but lots of wind moved cover to strawberries that surprisingly, are still producing and I had strawberries last Wednesday straight from the plant.
We have now assumed that small tunnel is done, despite kale still growing in it.  In the next few weeks we will focus our energy on cleaning our garden and prepping it for winter.

Monday 26 September 2016

Harvest time ..

Last weekend we started harvest in the garden.   Here are some pictures from  potato harvesting and carrots.  Some of the potatoes were huge, more than 1 lb in some cases, 2 lbs.  I think we have collected about 150 lbs from plot that was approx. 10 sq ft  garden plot.  This was definitely the best year for potatoes, despite getting bit of frost in the late spring, they still produced above expectations.  Now is the question how long they will last in our "cold room" that really is wine room.  We will observe and see.



Wednesday 21 September 2016

Strawberries

I wanted to focus this post on amazing strawberries in my garden operation.  We have planted strawberries last year and they did o.k., most of them survived winter  and spring frost did some damage but nothing serious.  There was not much fruit in June or July, hardly any, maybe due to wet July.  Now, I cannot believe how many berries are there.  It is amazing crop, berry patch is full of fruits and they are big.  Frost hit us but did not affected strawberries and we are enjoying it a lot and there are still lot of them despite the fact that it is getting colder.  I do not remember having strawberries fruiting so late but that is the fact and they look so healthy now.

quick update, my big pathway rebuilt project come to fruition and below is the final product.

Monday 12 September 2016

Frist ... Brrr

Yeas, that is reality of high altitude gardening, early onset of cool watcher which translates to frost.  In the past two days the the temperature reading on my weather station showed 0 dec C and some effects are now visible int he garden.  Lettuce has shown sign of frost, I have been keeping tunnels closed to protect tomatoes crop and hope that they have not been affected. Also, I have big landscaping project on the go so that keeps me away from blogging.  It seems that this experiment is for my own self fulfillment, and does not look like I have lots of following.  Will try to keep updating for my own records so I will be able to compare events.

Yard project ..

.. has taken over my time last weekend and finally is done.  It has been very hard on my body, lol, doing "honest man" work, that is digging with shovel.  The pathway is now looking like it supposed to.  Weather was not pleasant rest of the weekend, Saturday though was very n ice (too  nice to work  digging unfortunately), Sunday, it was late fall winter like.  Mountains about 40 min. away got  snow on them, we had lots of cold rain and wind.    Nothing was done on Sunday, even walking with dog was hard due to rain and wind gust directly into the face.  Rest of the week looks actually good, so we will have to start working on harvesting fruit of our labor in the garden.  Talking about fruits, strawberries are producing like crazy, best and biggest strawberries  the whole year.  There are so many of berries strangely at this time of the year. It looks like they have awaken from some dormant state and decided to propagate by producing fruit.  maybe cold winter is coming?  We will have to wait and see.