Humble Garden

(KD with fast growing kid)
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Wow, lets talk about hardy plants, yikes! I made or rather, I jury rigged, a cold frame on the raised bed that will hold brassicas (early cabbage, kale, and bok choy) to see if I could get them out there before our last hard frost date of May 15th.

I bought some 4 mil clear plastic and 2 ten foot 1.5 inch diameter plastic pipe. We cut the pipes in half to make 4 five foot lengths for support, in theory that is.

This thickness is strong enough to deal with the elements but clear enough to get solar gain.

I stuck the 5 foot length pipes into the bed, as you see below.

And then KD, seen above, and I made holes for the seedlings (I peeled off the peat pots when planting)

And then, using duct tape and varying levels of angry kevetching not rated for young ears, I draped the pipes with plastic.

One important part of this plastic is to keep the darn chickens who are still free ranging off my plants. As I was planting these seedlings, I turned my back for a few moments and the darn rooster jumped right up and ate 5 bok choys!

As soon as I finished enclosing this bean trellis with plastic and stepped back, that evil rooster jumped right up and proceeded to menace my cold frame. He very deliberately worked hard to find a way in.

I hope you can see him in the photo above. I also have a few other shots below.

After that beautiful day when I built the cold frame, it has been raining and blowing non-stop. Those poor little seedlings have been subjected to sub-32 weather at night and direct weather exposure because the high winds continue to blow everything off the raised beds! This includes having the plastic directly ON the seedlings with a load of icy cold water pooled above them.

I figured I had lost these poor seedlings but today I ran out in the rain and looked and saw that they had already grown new leaves! Crazy things!

I guess they like this sort of weather (I know they are cold hardy but this is just crazy)

I am very thankful for their resilience and I am looking forward to some VERY hardy cabbages, kale, and bok choy!

My next project is broadcasting carrot seed (with sand) and also getting some broccoli going out there.

Like diapers for babies, it seems like there is no end to the doo-dads and supplies one needs when starting seeds indoors.

My brassica seeds rocketed into sproutdom WAY faster than I imagined they might and I was caught without a means for transplanting the soil blocks to a larger size. I cant really afford to get the larger soil blocker and I didnt have any larger containers right away so I figured I could use an excess diaper box to jury-rig something to transplant the seedlings into.

I was exhausted by the end of this DIY project because I could not find my exacto-knife (DH put it somewhere “safe” and now lost) so I used a pair of KID scissors.. use the knife.

The main hack here is to cut skinny rectangles and then some slots so that they for a grid that fits in the black tray.

Add soil.

Plant.

The White House made a splash yesterday by announcing it’s plans to grow a victory garden on the White House lawn!

“Obamas to Plant White House Vegetable Garden” – NYT

If you surf the garden blogosphere you would know that there has been a web based campaign for this very outcome for a couple of years now!

Namely, the Eat the View effort over at the Kitchen Gardeners International site, by Roger Doiron!

Its exciting times and I could NOT be more proud of our first family. This will really be a beautiful beginning to an even more widespread movement to grow your own!

(Edible nasturtiums, before blossoms. Leaves are fascinating)

February in New England can be a hard month to wade through. Seed ordering and seed packet receiving frenzy is long past. Planning of planting is done. Now its just waiting for time to pass for the moment that indoor started seed can be planted. As of today Friday the 27th of Feb, the most I can plant is some herbs and eggplants that I want pamper well past the flea beetle stage.

At the moment, there is nothing more to start indoors. The snow still sits on the garden, can’t even really clean up because there is too much snow pack.

Parts of the yard are melting into a dank gooey mess that the duck and chickens love to foul even further.

Having lived here more than a decade (and growing up a good part in the frigid midwest), I knew that planting seeds like a mesclun mix for use long before the sun warms the garden would be crucial.

When I feel especially doldrumish, I hover over my mesclun greens, marvel at their complex beauty, nibble a few to see how they taste and to dream about the green summer to come.

I just thought I would share a few shots of some of the things we are doing around here. Its all really low key and a lot of planning and dreaming – not too scintillating

I bought a soil blocker doodad from Johnny’s seeds and have been using it to make seed starts indoors.

You pack the form with starting soil and then plop it down in trays like below. I will be the first to say these are the not the most beautiful soil blocks!

I let KD (6 yo and headstrong) help with some of the seeding, here you can see that she put quite a few basil seeds into a tiny bit of soil!

I have also been growing mesclun indoors simply for the green and to eat long before the beds thaw enough for planting

I am very excited to receive the first batch of seeds for the 2009 garden. This year I am going to focus on growing open pollinated vegetables and then to save the seed bounty for the 2010 garden.

This first batch of seeds are all open pollinated and many are heirloom varieties. I ordered them from the oldest continuously operating seed company in the US – Comstock, Ferre & Co., established in 1820 and not very far from where I live!

As you can see from the photos, this company is VERY Yankee – they do not waste any effort on fripperies and stick to the important things. For example, they adopted the use of paper envelopes for their seeds back in the 1830s from the Shakers in their area. They also designed the simple blue printing for the border you see STILL used today in these photos.

You can also see that they simply write on blank envelopes when an order comes in, VERY thrifty!

I ordered the following seeds:

• Beans, Bush, Cherokee Wax
• Beans, Bush, Derby
• Beans, Pole, Yard Long
• Beans, Soybean, Vinton 81
• Carrot, Gold Pak
• Carrot, Purple Dragon
• Chamomile, German
• Coriander/Cilantro, Long Standing
• Cucumbers, Slicing, Apple Shaped/True Lemon
• Cucumbers, Slicing, Marketmore
• Cumin
• Dill, Mammoth
• Eggplant, Black Beauty
• Fennel, Florence
• Gourds, Bushel
• Lavender, English
• Lettuce, Butterhead, Buttercrunch
• Mesclun Mix, Early Season
• Mesclun Mix, Mid-season
• Nasturtium, Dwarf Single Mix
• Pea, Shelling, Tall Telephone/Alderman
• Rosemary
• Sage, Broad Leaf
• Spinach, Bloomsdale
• Squash, Winter Butternut, Early
• Swiss Chard, Giant Lucullus

(Some of what I use to help me garden)

I will be ordering more seeds for a few more vegetables that I didnt see on their list. I will also be posting up garden maps for the raised beds and also be talking about my expansion project for this year’s garden, exciting stuff, stay tuned!

I have been slowly cleaning the garden of plants that should not overwinter (tomatoes, diseased plants) and pulling out stakes, cleaning out plastic ties.

The chickens have done a great job of converting plant matter into eggs. They have cleaned up a lot of the debris. I will be clearing off the spent landscaping fabric and then overlaying with goat and llama manure. I will top that over with straw.

I am going to be using a bean trellis-pup-tent thing I made this year over a part of one of the beds to see how much I can grow in a small cold frame.

How is your garden doing now?

Over at one of my other blogs, I feel like I have been “all melamine – all the time” the past couple of posts, sorry. (Melamine, oh thy name is Legion and Melamine Toxic Tsunami) Its been a fast moving story and its relevant to all of us who eat food. Its my hope that, as a scientist, I can help people who might feel overwhelmed by this massive and frightening subject.

I would like to shift gears into a positive mode and tell you about what you CAN do so that this sort of problem and all of the food security problems that come from globalization can be addressed.

DeGlobalizing – ReLocalizing

In a nutshell – its all about 2 main things:

• Refraining from buying things that require global travel
• and
• Building your local economy and food systems

The first thing – you can do that starting right now. You will quickly find out that you will have to do the harder second thing – rebuilding your local economy.

A couple of months ago I tried to summon the people in my community for a food security meeting on just this. I sent out a press release and got in all the relevant papers. One person showed up and she was actually confused about the topic.

This is NOT easy work!

I am not the only one who is focused on this, not at all. There is a world-wide effort on, called the Transition Initiative and it is helping people build what are called Transition Towns. The UK is the leader right now but start up groups are nucleating all across the US as I write.

If you visit this link Transition Town you can see if there is an initiative near you (anywhere in the world).

• Transition United States
• Transition Towns Wiki (home of the UK’s Network)

If you live in the New England region, you are lucky because there will be a Transition Training conference this November in Cambridge, MA. There are actually two of these conferences. I will be going to the later one. If you decide to go, let Rob know I referred you and also let me know you are coming and we will meet up. Perhaps there is call for live blogging it! (mind is a churning).

The following is the release from the organizer, Rob Riman. Let me know if you have any questions!

Training For Transition

November 1-2 & 22-23 – Cambridge, MA

Transition initiative Cambridge (TiC!) together with the Transition Center Portland Maine will be hosting these 2-day trainings to provide the in-depth knowledge, experiential tools and practical skills to successfully set up, run and maintain a Transition Initiative in your own community or neighborhood.

Course Objectives:

• To understand the context for transition
• To understand the Transition Initiatives model as it has evolved so far – from inspiration to working groups
• To understand the inner and outer aspects of transition
• To gain knowledge of the main ingredients of transition
• To develop a plan of action for your self and your locality
• To assemble the elements of an inspiring talk on Transition Initiatives
• To connect with others who are responding to the call for transition

See complete course outline at http://transitiontowns.org/TransitionNetwork/TransitionTrainingDetail

When?:

Saturday & Sunday November 1-2 and 22-23, 2008

Training begins at 9:00 am sharp and finish at 5:00 pm both days. Please arrive by 8:30 am on Saturday for registration and welcome.

Where?: The training will be at the office of the Livable Streets Alliance located at:

Livable Streets Alliance
100 Sydney Street
Cambridge, MA 02139

For directions via various modes see: http://www.livablestreets.info/node/530

Also see the transit system map (and click on the ‘Boston Detail Map’ tab).

Bicycle parking is in front of 100 Sidney. Free weekend car parking is available on Pacific Street.

Sign up!: Course registration is via the RSVP option at The Transition Training Center Portland Maine website: (You will first need to join the group.)

Tuition:The cost for the course is $215/person and full payment or a minimum deposit of $100 should be received in advance of the course start date. Checks should be made payable to ‘Transition Center Portland Maine’ and sent to me (Rob Riman) at the below address.

Lodging:Participants are responsible for arranging their own accommodation.

If you can offer or are seeking a local homestay during the training, please reply to the related post or start a new discussion on the Meetup site message board. Note that all activity for a given discussion is trackable by clicking on Track this discussion. I also have additional leads.

For information regarding local hotels and B&B’s, please contact me.

Travel:If you can offer or would like a lift to or from either of these trainings, please reply to the related post or start a new discussion on the Meetup site message board.

To Bring:

• 1) Any Transition related materials that you can share: posters, leaflets, brochures, any printed/audio/visual material that you have used in your Transition Initiative. This will be a mutual learning environment!
• 2) Lunch to share in the training room. If you prefer, there are local venues to purchase food within easy walking distance. Other meals are entirely up to you. Warm beverages and light snacks will be provided throughout the day. Toward a zero-waste event, please bring your own mug, water bottle, utensils, etc. as needed (some will be available should you forget).
• 3) Laptops and/or recording devices if you feel these might help you, however they are not necessary. Please bring a 330+ mb memory stick for copying background material and training presentations.
• 4) Your story. Take some time to reflect on your journey regarding transition: When did you realize that we needed to make big changes to the way we live? How did you hear about Transition and what got you interested? Why do you want to be part of a Transition process?

Reading: In addition to The Transition Handbook by Rob Hopkins, the following resources offer valuable background and will help prepare you for the course:

• Transition Initiatives Primer
• Transition Network Structure Document

Resources: For more information about current Transition activities:

• Transition United States
• Transition Towns Wiki (home of the UK’s Network)

More Info: See who else is coming, learn about the trainers, find related events in the Northeast, etc. at:

Transition Center Portland Maine

Contacts

Cambridge Trainings Coordinator:
Rob Riman
robriman@gmail.com
92 Henry Street
Cambridge, MA
02139

Trainers:

• Alastair Lough – jlough1@maine.rr.com
• Pat Proulx-Lough – proulxlo@maine.rr.com

Thank You to our Sponsors!

Green Decade Cambridge
www.greencambridge.org

Livable Streets Alliance
www.livablestreets.info

Mass Climate Action Network
www.massclimateaction.org

Humble Garden 2008 from nika on Vimeo.

Here is the Humble Garden video for 2008 (I shoot these with my MacBook Pro, forgive the quality). In it I share my family, our organic vegetable garden, our chickens, our LaMancha diary goats and our guard Llama. I also share a bit of my Colombian culture through the music so turn on your speakers and enjoy.

Let me know what you think! Hope we do not seem too odd to you!

If you do a bit of reading on permaculture you will see that integrating animals into the garden is very beneficial. You do have to be careful about allowing them access to tender delicious plants.

The nitrogen from the chickens, goats, and llama, all goes into the compost. The chickens convert weeds, bugs, MICE, other unknown things, into eggs. We have seen our chickens attack live running mice and eat them almost whole. Before this batch of chickens, I had no idea they were such hunters.

They do a great job of scratching up bugs in the underbrush and doing a bit of airing out of the compost heap.

KD inspects one of the broiler chickens who is obviously getting rather large!

Barred rocks scratching between raised beds.

(Avian Revenge)

In the photo above, look at the upper right hand corner. You will see a blurred image of our cat Fuzzy. She is running for her life because aggressive little roosters are chasing her. Our cats (we have 5) mostly just watch the chicken antics.

I had something like 12 cabbages growing and have been letting them grow and grow. Lately, two have simply burst (from the extensive rains?) so I have picked them. My oldest child who we thought was allergic to cabbage tried some (stir-fried with tumeric, nutmeg, sauted mustard seeds) and loved it!

So, this is a great metric for garden success – child now BEGS for cabbage!

Share how you use animals in your garden!