Life Lessons From Gardening: There Are No Mistakes

I love gardening for so many reasons, not least of which because of everything gardening has taught me. Anyone who has tried to grow something can tell you something that they have learned through the process. Some speak of the appreciation they have for nature, for being witness to the life around them. Others speak about the time spent outdoors and the meditative effect of daily tasks and chores. Then there is the satisfaction of growing one's own food and being intimately connected to the earth.

My favourite gardening lesson is also my favourite life lesson.

There are no mistakes in gardening, only learning experiences.

It is all a matter of perspective, really, as is most of life. Glass half empty or glass half full?

Sure there are posts and books about common newbie gardener mistakes, like not giving plants enough space, under or over fertilizing, or planting in the wrong location. I have read many of them, and when I started container gardening many years ago, and then gardening in my raised beds 5 years ago I did what I do when I start anything new: I read up on how to do it.

But gardening, like life, cannot always be anticipated perfectly, and sometimes things do not go as planned. Of course it feels like a mistake when the garden does not turn out the way you intended it. 

But there are no mistakes, only learning experiences and happy surprises.

An example is my backyard garden so far this season. I was very excited to plant asparagus for the first time this year because I love perennial plants that are plant once and go. I wouldn't be able to harvest any spears this year to allow the plants to establish themselves firmly in the soil, but oh the wait would be worth it for delicious, fresh homegrown spring asparagus. I read the information packet that came with the roots I ordered from a local seed company, did a quick search on the internet to read a little more and then I planted them quickly before heading off on a family vacation.

Asparagus crowns: the roots are the long dangly parts. You
maybe can see why I thought the part of the crowns in the
bottom of the photo were the beginning of the roots,
rather than the future spears. Basically this is upside down.

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Wordless Wednesday: Planting Garlic

Before we had our first frost at the beginning of the month I managed to get all my garlic planted. After separating the cloves and sorting the intact ones from the ones with broken skins, I got outside in between rain showers. This year some is grown by me, some by the Sharing Farm, and some by Westcoast Seeds.

Last year I grew enough in one raised bed to hopefully last until late spring. This year I increased the amount I planted, hoping it will take me through until the next backyard harvest.

For a full description of how I plant garlic, click here.

Extending the Harvest with Covered Hoops

Last year I began experimenting with extending the growing season and harvesting fresh food through autumn. In fact, I was able to harvest backyard veggies for the last time on December 1st! After that we had an unseasonal cold snap and early snow (I live in the moderate pacific northwest where we are increasingly finishing winter with little to no snow). Luckily some of my cold resistant veggies bounced back enough by late winter that I could start harvesting them again in February and March.

But one of my faults as a backyard gardener is that I often forget to harvest the veggies before they bolt (go to seed) in the summer or freeze in the winter. I'm always disappointed that I didn't pick something when I thought of it instead of waiting just that one more day or week. Hardy plants like kale did well with limited frosts and bounced back quickly, but my turnips, carrots, and cabbage were turned to mush in the freezing temps and never rebounded.

Through the summer, after doing more reading about fall and winter gardening, and weighing the pros and cons of cold frames versus covered hoops (an excellent discussion here), I decided to try covered hoops this year. Sometimes plastic covered hoops made with flexible tubing are called low tunnels, and the taller variety are called poly tunnels. I guess mine are a hybrid (not low but not tall enough to walk in).

My wonderful neighbour (really, he's amazing) and built my covered hoops once I'd cleaned up the fall garden and mulched everything for warmth and moisture retention. Unfortunately we'd already had a frost, so there has been some damage to the lettuce and Asian greens, which I'd hoped to avoid.

With the sides down for full protection.

With the sides up for moisture in warmer temperatures.

So how well do the covered hoops work to protect my plants?


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Kitchen Scraps Garden Part Two: Carrot Seeds

Most kitchen gardeners grow carrots, and I am no exception. My daughters love eating them, and generally I find them easy to grow. While seeds are not overly expensive, I find I go through a great deal of them each year because of having to sow so many then thinning the seedlings to allow for adequate growth.

I have been experimenting with growing food from kitchen scraps, and I saw a post somewhere about planting the tops of carrots to produce seeds. As a novice gardener I am beginning to delve into seed saving, which has so many benefits. This seemed like a perfect fit.

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Autumn Garden

Tomorrow will be the first day of autumn and I am looking forward to the official end of summer. I feel alive during the summer and I revel in all the outdoor activities we can easily do during the hot months, but like many people, autumn may be my favourite season. This year I have more reasons to say good bye to the summer than in previous years.

The leaves have begun to show their first blush of autumn. On the eve of what should have been the first day of school we spent time at my old alma mater, Simon Fraser University, and enjoyed the beautiful leaves. 

We are fortunate here in the pacific northwest because we can often have an extended summer in September and a long autumn with cool, crisp mornings and warm afternoons well into October. We make up for it in November with the famous Vancouver rain. 

While the intense growing season of the summer has all but ended, I like to extend the backyard harvests with colder season growing. In fact, last year I harvested various Asian greens and kale on December 1st. 

Bok choy, kale, sui choy, turnips, cabbage, marigolds and sunflowers.

I began planning and organizing my fall garden back in late July and early August when I started seeds in a mini shelf greenhouse unit in my backyard. I had to finally say goodbye to the summer and yank up some plants to make room for the new ones, which was hard. 

Beans and tomatoes in the mini greenhouse in the spring.

At the moment my garden beds are looking a little shaggy as I wait for the remaining sunflowers and cucumbers (which as still producing).

Things are looking a little sad with the squash gone and droopy sunflowers.

Growing in Two Raised Beds:

four varieties of kale 

bok choy

sui choy (Chinese cabbage)

leafy lettuce

spinach

turnips

chard

cauliflower and cabbage (for the spring)

garlic (to be planted in October)

parsnips (very hard to germinate; out of two dozen seeds I have three seedlings so far. I don't have high hopes that they will survive)

* This is my first year not growing Brussels sprouts. In the past I have harvested some for Thanksgiving dinner and the rest for Christmas dinner, and now I am regretting not growing them.

Lettuce, spinach, chard, bok choy, sui choy, parsnips, cauliflower

I have plans to build hoops and cover two of my beds with plastic when we have regular frost. I was able to harvest through mid fall frosts last year because we had a warm season and the frosts were intermittent. However, once winter hit we had to wait until late January before the kale was defrosted and edible again. I am hoping to have kale through to the spring with covered beds, as well as cauliflower next spring. 

This Moment

{this moment} - Inspired by Amanda Soule at SouleMama. 

"A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments."

Wordless Wednesday: Sunflower Love

There are so many great reasons to grow sunflowers, but to be honest, I grow them because they make me happy.

Garden Art

I am a bit of an Instagram addict, and my gallery is filled with photos of my backyard garden. But this summer I grew bored with the same old photos and began playing with my veggies and flowers, which developed into some photography fun. I began with making faces, or veggie selfies. 

Then I started getting more creative and playing with colours and patterns, which developed into garden mandalas. 

Despite feeling wistful about the turning of the season soon, I am looking forward to trying some leaf and pinecone mandalas in autumn.

If you are on Instagram, I am crustyroll35. Find me and say hello.

Freezing the Harvest

This is the time of year when the earth's bounty is overflowing. The harvest is in full swing and there is abundant fresh, local and often organically grown vegetables and fruit. Those of us who have kitchen gardens are faced with buckets full of tomatoes, beans, zucchinis, greens and herbs. I am trying to bake as much zucchini bread as I can, but it is nice to have homegrown, or locally grown food in the winter months when most of our produce comes from far away.

Climate Crusader has written of easy food preserving methods, and I would like to share my favourite way to preserve the summer bounty for the long, wet, cold winter. 

I enjoy eating my easy refrigerator pickles and beets, but I have yet to delve properly into the world of canning (it's on my "to learn" list every year). This would be my best bet for saving the majority of my harvest, but every year the complications of life seem to get between me and my canning dreams. 

Freezing the Harvest

My preferred method of food preservation, by default, is freezing my food. This past spring we used up the last of my frozen zucchini just as I was preparing to put the new zucchini plants into my garden bed. I have learned that it is possible to freeze many vegetables and berries, it just takes a little preparation and time to do it properly.

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The Benefits of Bolting

We are approaching the dog days of summer and in the heat many vegetables are starting to flower. I am always surprised when I see people pulling up all their plants that have bolted, to make way for new plants. Of course once some plants have bolted their greens are bitter to taste and we need to remove them so that we can have a continuous supply of plants to eat. But those plants that have flowered are great for the garden. I would like to make an argument for intentionally letting some vegetables flower and go to seed.

Seed Saving

Leaving plants to go to seed, and then collecting the seeds, may not be on the list for novice gardeners, but I believe that it is important. It provides free seeds for subsequent years' gardens, which is always a good thing. It also preserves a diverse living history of plants so that we can maintain and grow plants that we do not typically see in the grocery store. There are many other benefits to seed saving, but an important one is that it takes the control of seeds out of the hands of corporations such as Monsanto and their terminator seeds.

Kale seed pods drying.

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{this moment}

{this moment} - Inspired by Amanda Soule at SouleMama. 

"A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments."

Spot the Pollinator

Everyone is hearing about the importance of pollinators to the world's food systems in the media these days, and the threats to their existence. Most people think about honey bees when they hear pollinators, but there are many other insects who contribute to the pollination of flowers. Along with honey bees, there are hundreds of bees native to North America who carry out the important task of pollination. My lawn is full of digger bees and I am trying to help nurture some mason bees in my backyard. But other insects carry out the act of pollination as well, such as flies, butterflies, moths and beetles.

Are Wasps Pollinators?

One pollinator that most people are unhappy to see are wasps. Yes, they can be aggressive, particularly as the summer comes to an end, when they are grumpy and their food supplies begin to dwindle. Until I spent more time in gardens observing the insects that visit and populate the plants I didn't realize that wasps visit flowers. They may accidentally pollinate when they are hunting their prey in flowers, but it turns out they also drink nectar!

But Aren't Wasps The "Bad Guys"?

I have long been terrified of wasps. I was stung repeatedly, in fact dozens of times at once, when I was a young child and inadvertently disturbed a large wasp nest. As I have become more passionate about organic gardening, however, I have come to appreciate the wasp. The mere sight of them can cause people to scream and run away. But they are an important part of the ecosystem. They are carnivores who hunt for pest insects that may eat our plants. They are everywhere, and as the summer wears on their numbers increase, so if you can't beat them, join them, so to speak. I have even been able to get close enough to some to take their photos, something that I consider quite brave because of wasps' renowned aggression.

Of course I still get frustrated with wasps in the dog days of summer when they swarm around us as we eat our dinner outside. But I have a new appreciation of this much maligned insect.

Spot The Pollinator 

My spot the pollinator photo is a bald faced hornet, taken on my raspberries.

I am linking up with The Green Bean Chronicles who is hosting the Spot the Pollinator segment. Pop on over and visit her.

Egg Shells for Tomatoes

As my Green Phone Booth name suggests, I love composting. But there is one item that I never put into my backyard compost bin; egg shells

We save every single egg shell that we generate and now I have a fairly sizable bag. I have read many blog posts on the multiple uses of egg shells, such as growing seedlings in them, and using for a calcium boost in smoothies. I use them in two particular ways for gardening.

1. I crush egg shells and scatter them around my young plants to protect them from snails and slugs.
2. I grind them up and use them as a calcium supplement for my tomato plants.

Tomatoes are prone to a problem known as blossom end rot, which is when the bottom on the tomato, where the blossom was originally, begins to rot. This is due to a calcium deficiency, which eggs shells can alleviate.

Tomatoes with blossom end rot resulting from
calcium deficiency. Image source link

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Week One: 30 x 30 Nature Challenge

I have decided to join The David Suzuki Foundation 30 x 30 Nature Challenge to spend 30 minutes a day outside, preferably in nature, for 30 days in May.

Overall this first week has gone well and I've logged many minutes, far more than the 30 minutes per day. In fact, not that I'm officially keeping track or will continue to do so, but I have spent more than 12 hours outside this week. I've been lucky with the weather so far, with only one solidly rainy day, so I have been able to find time to do gardening, biking, and walking in between rain showers on less than perfect days. I'm a hardy pacific northwest coaster who is usually embarrassed to use an umbrella, so even a little bit of rain doesn't stop me from getting outside. That said, as I type this I am bundled up in a blanket on my couch to warm up after a particularly wet bike ride home from the school pick up.

Some interesting things have come up as a result of participating in the 30 x 30 Nature Challenge. I haven't worried too much about my three daughters getting their 30 minutes outside as they run around outside during recess and lunch at school. But when I've gone into the yard to garden they usually follow me out, then stay outside long after I've gone indoors.

After a quick tune up, we've been using our bikes far more than usual, and have used them to ride to gymnastics class and to a sushi dinner out at a local restaurant. My husband has also joined us on weekend bike rides to our favourite local spot, Garry Point. This has highlighted for him how much he needs a new bike, which will be his joint Father's Day / birthday present this year.

I can be lazy (can't we all) and I have been avoiding a few gardening tasks, but knowing that I am participating in the nature challenge has really motivated me to get out into the veggie garden each day and slowly tick items off my to do list. So overall, regardless of how I do for the remaining 23 days, it has been a success for us.

In photos, here is how I spent some of my time outdoors this past week:

We rode our bikes out to the beach at Garry Point, and had ice cream. After
coming home from work my husband rode his bike to meet us for dinner.

Wandering around on driftwood at Garry Point again.This was my first time
wearing my beloved Birkenstocks. Can you see the sand all over my feet?

I logged many hours outside in my garden this week. My biggest back-breaking
 task was thinning the seedlings, which gave me a yummy snack of microgreens.

My girls followed me out to the front yard while I was cutting the lawn (with a push
mower). They are natural tree climbing monkeys. Sadly I couldn't convince
them to help with the raking or weeding.

I am enjoying watching the progress of my mason bees.They have finally started
laying eggs and plugging the holes with mud. 

I love visiting the chickens at Britannia Shipyards,
just around the corner form my home.

I'm trying to motivate myself to run on a more regular basis. It's easy when
this is along my route. My shoes match the surroundings!

One of the many bike rides this week. This is on the way home from the school
drop off. Can you seemy four year old, Little Monster, in the bike trailer?

The only activity on my list that I haven't tried yet is geocaching, which I've wanted to do for a couple of years now. I've downloaded a free app onto my iPhone, but I'm looking for any suggestions of websites or apps to try, any tips and ideas for getting going.

Join me in the 30 x 30 Nature Challenge here.

Follow my progress with the 30 x 30 Nature Challenge here.

And follow my fellow Green Phone Boothers who are also participating:

Eco Novice

Eco Yogini