With Alexandre Beaudoin from Miel Montreal

Saturday, 31 May
English 2:00pm – 4:00pm
Français 10:00am – 12:00pm

This presentation reveals the mysteries of the bee and the creation of honey. Alexandre will explain the different stages of the life of a bee and the important roll this insect plays in the maintenance of biodiversity. 

The workshop will include a lecture with slides, discussions, photos, beekeeping equipment and products from honey. It will conclude, of course, with a tasting session of honey from their urban hives!

Contact us to reserve a spot!

At Urban Seedling HQ 4910-2 Rue Brock, Montreal QC H4E 1B4 or search “Urban Seedling” in Google Maps

Workshop is $20

Time to start your harvest

Now that summer weather is upon us, you can remove your floating row cover if you haven’t already and let the sun in. Fold it up and store it. You will need it a couple more times this season to protect the cucumbers and to extend the season into the late fall.

Make sure to water your garden regularly and deeply. A quick watering encourages your plant roots to grow upwards to reach the water and makes your plants stressed and vulnerable. A deep (20 min at least) watering promotes downward root growth for strong and healthy plants. Check your soil every day to make sure it is moist. If watering regularly is an issue, something simple like a drip hose, or sprinkler on a timerhelps a lot.

Slug hunting! Make sure to keep the area around your garden clean. Be proactive and look for slugs under rocks or wood and get rid of them right away. 1 slug can lay 4000 eggs in a single season. Talk about population explosion!

Because of the cold wet spring, the bok choy, rapini and roquette are going to flower right away with the sudden warm weather. Simply remove the flowers and the plant will keep growing.

Your seeds should have started sprouting. Radishes and peas plant about 7-10 days after planting, beets and carrots take quite a bit longer – up to 3 weeks! Once your seeds have sprouted it is important that you thin the extra seedlings so that you have just one seedling per space allotted. Each radish or carrot needs 2″ of space around it, peas and beets need about 3″.

Check out my video for more instructions.

You can start harvesting some of your vegetables almost right away. You can use onion greens as you would chives – simply cut off a couple of inches from each plant and add to a salad or pasta. If you had garlic planted last fall, you can start harvesting the greens in the same way.

Head outside with your salad bowl and remove the larger outer leaves from lettuces, spinach, bok choy, kale and chard for a lovely mixed green salad.

You can cut the entire bok choy just above the ground to let the entire thing grow again.

A lovely recipe for sourdough pizza with garlic greens and asparagus. Yum!

Time to get watering

The sun has finally decided to show itself and the last two days have been absolutely glorious! This is really great news for the garden. You will see your little seedlings spring into action and start producing new leaves, and all your little seeds should start sprouting. Usually it takes around 2 weeks for your seeds to germinate. Longer for beets and carrots.

This means that you have some tasks to accomplish. Watering begins! Watering deeply is very important to the health of your garden. If you don’t water long enough, the roots of your plants will grow up towards the surface and your plants will be stressed. For an Essential Garden (10′ x 3′) I suggest at least 20 min per day when it is not raining.

Watering in the morning is best, since watering in the evening encourages slugs. Speaking of – now is the best time to address your slug population. Check under stones, clear debris away from your garden and keep an eye out for any slugs or snails to remove from your garden. Each slug can produce 4000 eggs in a season, so being proactive is important.

Keep your floating row cover on. It is not absolutely necessary, but it can be helpful in keeping your garden cozy and safe. If you are motivated, you can remove the cover on warm sunny days, and replace it at night. If you do not have one – let me know and I’ll be sure to get one to you.

Once the outer leaves of your lettuces get big enough to your taste, you can start harvesting them for your salads. Simply head outside with your salad bowl and a sharp knife and remove a couple of leaves per plant. Cut right at the base of the leaf – and make sure not to take too many from any one plant!

Let me know if you have any gardening questions. I love to hear from you.

Best,
Tereska

protecting your garden

Your vegetable garden is planted for the spring – or will be in the next few days. You now have all sorts of delectable cold-hardy seedlings in your garden. We planted some seeds too, since root vegetables and peas don’t like to be transplanted.

Your tasks in the garden are minimal at this time of year. Since it is raining a lot, and the soil is still soggy from the winter weather, you don’t need to worry about watering too much.

Keep your floating row cover on all the time. You may have to secure the corners with rocks, or clothes pegs to keep it from blowing away. The sun and rain pass through easily and the cover will give you a 3 or 4 degrees extra warmth and protection from weed seeds, cold rains and wind. You can take the cover off once the weather warms up for real.

Please check your garden regularly to make sure the soil is still moist. The seeds especially need the humidity to germinate.

There are still some things missing from some of your gardens, some herbs, trellis netting and other details. Fear not! We have a list and Shawn will be by early next week to fill in all the blanks and tie up loose ends. Please feel free to let me know if you have any concerns.

All the best!
Tereska

Hello, With the season officially finished, and all the gardens closed up and put to sleep for the winter, I want to take this opportunity to thank you for coming with us on this journey. Your enthusiasm, feedback and input make cracking the code on vegetable gardening in the city possible – and a pleasure! We love the opportunity to learn how to make your vegetable garden as beautiful, productive, and easy to maintain as possible. Every season we learn so much about how to do things even better. While closing up the gardens, we planted garlic in the front right corner of your garden bed. It should be the first thing to come up in the spring and will stay in until July. You can, however, start using the greens as a garlicky garnish right away. Just make sure you leave enough leaves so the plant can grow! We’ve identified a main problem in almost all of the gardens that didn’t do well this year. We’ve found that since our garden soil is so rich, the roots from nearby trees or cedar hedges sneak in and take over the garden bed. This makes the soil root bound – it becomes so thick with roots you can’t even get your hand through! The tree roots choke the vegetables and drink up all the nutrients and water. The spring plantings did well because the tree roots hadn’t taken over yet, but by mid-summer, everything stopped growing. If this was the case in your garden, we will come by in the spring and dig out your garden and lay down a couple layers of geo-textile to block the tree roots but let the water pass through. This is something that will need to be done every couple of years, as the tree roots will eventually penetrate. Otherwise, it was usually a case of too little sun. In this case, you would have to either prune back trees that are casting too much shade, or we can move the garden to a sunnier location if you have identified one. Next year we will be:

• taking oversized vegetables like broccoli, rapini, cabbage and definitely zucchini out of the main garden;
• planting root vegetables (carrots and beets) in the spring, and again in the fall;
• doing the fall planting a full three weeks earlier to take advantage of the longer days of summer to establish the plants!

We will also be offering some new packages:

• Additional vegetable gardens for large plants and perennials such as brassicas, zucchini, asparagus, mushrooms and potatoes;
• A yard maintenance package that includes opening flower gardens, closing flower gardens and four monthly maintenance visits.

Please let me know if there is anything else we can do better. We will be calling in March to discuss the services that would interest you and what types of vegetables you would like to have in your garden. Have a fantastic winter! Tereska Gesing

Hello,

We will start our garden closings next week, on Wednesday. I will email you 3 days beforehand so you have a chance to harvest any last veggies you might have in the garden. Please let me know if you want to be there when we close the garden, and what day would be good for you.

We will remove anything in the garden except perennials roquette (arugula) in the garden and oregano, thyme and parsley in the herb garden. I encourage you to bring your rosemary inside. If you put it in a small pot, you can keep your rosemary in a sunny window all winter, then plant it back out in the garden in the spring.

We will also remove the trellis netting and the top of the trellis and top up your garden with fresh soil and compost, and enrich with natural, organic fertilizers. Then, plant two squares of garlic (3 for an Abundance garden). We will finish up by covering the garden with plastic. This will keep the nutrients from being leached away by inclement winter weather and will heat the garden up much faster than the surrounding soil allowing us to plant much earlier in the spring.

While we are there clearing out your vegetable garden, we can close up the rest of your yard by cutting soft-stemmed plants like hostas down to the ground, protect any delicate plants with leaves or burlap, and do any edging or mulching necessary. Please let me know if you are interested in this service and I will add extra time to your visit.

Best,
Tereska Gesing

Hello,

Do you still have tons of green tomatoes on the vine? You can make some delicious things with them. (‘Fried Green Tomatoes’ anyone?) My favourite though by far is green tomato ketchup.

We will be back during the first two weeks of November to close up the vegetable garden. We will remove the plant residue, add fresh soil, add natural, organic fertilizers and plant garlic for next year. We will also cover your garden with plastic to protect it during the winter, and heat up the soil more quickly in the spring.

If you would like us to close up your yard and flower gardens as well, please let me know (some of you have already – but please confirm again) and we will schedule extra time at your house. We charge 30$ per hour for this service. The time we spend at your house for your vegetable garden is included in your planting package and will not be charged again.

GREEN TOMATO KETCHUP
Makes 6 pints

Ingredients:

• 6 pounds green tomatoes
• 3 pounds onions
• 2 tsp pepper
• 1tbsp dry mustard
• 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• 2 tsp mixed pickling spices (optional)
• 2 cups vinegar
• 1 cup honey

Materials:

• 6 mason jars
• Large pot

Preparation:

Dice green tomatoes and onions. Place them in a large pot with pepper, mustard and Worcestershire sauce.
Put pickling spices in a small cheese cloth bag and add to the mix.
Pour vinegar over all and cook for 4 hours over very low heat, stirring occasionally. Carefully puree mixture in a blender; and strain though a mesh strainer.
Return to pot and bring to a boil; add honey.

Immediately fill 6 sterilized pint jars, leaving 1/4 inch space.
Wipe the jar tops and threads clean. Place hot sealing lids on the jars and and apply the screw on rings loosely. Process in boiling water bath in a deep canning pot for 5 minutes. Remove the jars cool completely. Tighten the jar screw rings to complete the sealing process.

After the jars cool, check seals by pressing middle of lid with finger. (If lid springs back, it is not sealed and must be refrigerated.) Let jars of green tomato ketchup stand at room temperature for 24 hours. Store unopened jars in a cool dry place for up to one year. Refrigerate green tomato ketchup after opening.

Best,
Tereska Gesing

Hello, Happy Thanksgiving! What a blessing this long stretch of gorgeous weather is. If you were lucky enough to have seedlings that survived the initial attacks from slugs and other pests, these beautiful sunny days are great for maturing leafy-greens and root-vegetables and for ripening up any almost-ready tomatoes. We have about 3 or 4 weeks left to the season. Once your lettuce gets big enough (6 – 8″) you can harvest the outer leaves. My favourite salad at this time of year is slices of tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella, basil, mixed lettuce leaves, shredded chard and kale, with balsamic vinegar, olive oil and salt and pepper. Delicious! At this time of year you may notice a big difference in the amount of sun your garden gets. As the summer wanes, and the days get shorter, the sun also sits a lot lower in the sky. Since we are in the city and surrounded by buildings and tall trees. A garden that has lots of sun earlier in the season may get almost none at this time of year depending on the surrounding skyline. If you have radishes, carrots or anything else planted from seed, it is important that you “thin” the seedlings. This means that you choose the strongest seedling in any given 3 or so inches and remove all the rest. This will allow the remaining seedling to grow more fully. Make sure you snip these seedlings with scissors so you don’t disturb the roots of your remaining plant. You can add any seedlings you remove from the garden to your salad. They are very tasty and nutritious! This year was the first time we added a fall replant to the gardens. I realize now that we planted two or 3 weeks too late. Next year we will switch to pole beans which will climb the trellis and take the zucchini out of the garden. This will give us the space and flexibility to do a fall planting in mid-August instead and allow the seedlings to grow faster before the days get too short. Also I was really surprised at how aggressive the slugs and other pests were at eating the tender young seedlings. Next year we will be much more proactive in protecting the seedlings with floating row-covers right away and treating all the gardens with DE (diatomaceous earth) at the time of the fall replant. I am sad that the fall planting did not work out for many of you, and sorry for any disappointment this must have caused. We are constantly learning and evolving to make your gardens as beautiful, productive and easy to maintain as possible. Best, Tereska Gesing

Hello,

Hopefully you have lots of lovely lettuce in your garden. At home, I had to share about half of my lettuce with critters. The red salad bowl and oak leaf lettuce seems to be growing well. The lovely weather so far has been fantastic for the gardens! But since we haven’t gotten any rain in the last 10 days, the health of your seedlings and your carrot germination will depend on how well you are watering.

Once your lettuce gets to 5 or 6 inches, you can start harvesting by cutting the larger outer leaves, and letting the inner leaves grow. Take your salad bowl out into the garden and grab a couple of leaves of swiss chard, kale, different types of lettuce, a couple of tomatoes and a cucumber add some basil or other herbs and with some oil and vinegar – voilà! A fantastic fall salad from the garden.

Over the next month we will simply get the most possible out of our gardens and think about what we want for next year!

If you loved gardening this summer, and are sad to think of the next 4 months without fresh food from your garden you might want to try winter gardening. You can harvest kale, spinach, lettuce, carrots, beets, mâche, mustard greens and many other cold hardy vegetables all winter long. Winter gardening does not prolong the growing season, it prolongs the harvest season. Once there are less than 10 hours of sunlight per day (end of November) your plants will stop growing, but will hang out and wait for you to come and pick them.

Timing is important. Pick an area you can cover this winter and plant your hardy vegetables this week, and all you need to do is provide them with 2 layers of protection. Before the first hard frost, build a plastic tunnel over your garden (or a smaller box) and lay a floating row cover over the plants. Under these two layers the temperature will never go under -7 degrees – even if it is as cold as – 22 degrees outside. You will have a harvest window between 11:00am and 2:00pm when the plants thaw. Winter vegetables have a great taste are packed with nutrients.

Converting your garden for the winter is a service we are considering as an additional package. Is it something you would be interested in?

For more information on winter growing, check out Elliot Coleman – a market grower in Maine, wrote a wonderful book called The Winter Harvest Handbook.

Ultimate winter-optimized vegetable garden:

Best,
Tereska Gesing

Hello, Gardening at this time of year is much slower than when we plant in the spring time. We have less problems with weeds, but more problems with slugs and other pests who are looking for a tasty treat to eat. You can leave your floating row cover all the time if you are having a problem with pests. You can weight it down with stones or bricks to make sure it doesn’t blow away. We will not be receiving any rain in the next week or more. Make sure to keep up with watering! Make sure your Zucchini or Kale leaves are not shading over your new lettuce seedlings. Otherwise they will not grow. If your seedlings were eaten, and you received seeds in the mail to replant, sprinkle the seeds into the empty spaces in your garden. As the seedlings grow to 3 or 4 inches, you can harvest the baby leaves for a mixed green salad. If you harvest just the outer leaves, or the whole plant one inch above the soil, it should keep growing so you can get consecutive harvests. Make sure to keep your floating row cover over these young plants so they don’t get eaten again. It seems that we will not have a repeat of last years super hot fall. I remember record warm temperatures right up until Halloween last year. Hopefully the warm sun will stick around long enough to get a good harvest out of the lettuces and root vegetables. We are currently thinking of changes we will make to next years gardens. Lessons learned this year so far: Fall planting needs to be earlier, we will probably come by the last two weeks of August instead of the 1st two weeks of September. There is not enough space in the garden for zucchini! No matter what we try, the plant is just too big for our intensive style of vegetable gardening. Same goes for cabbage and broccoli. This will leave us more room for more peppers and eggplants to have a usable harvest. We will place large stones around the base of the peppers and eggplants. This will provide the roots with extra heat during the night, and have the added bonus of giving you something to step on to help to reach the back row. (That said, it is best to stand in the garden as little as possible to avoid compacting the soil) One of our clients had an excellent idea of bringing a 3′ 2″ x 4″ into the garden to place across the raised bed for something to lean on while working in the garden. If you have any other tips on how we can improve our service, please let me know. We are continually striving to make our gardens as productive and easy to maintain as possible. This includes an excellent customer service and gardening support on my end. I am also working on our catalogue for 2014, so let me know if you had any favourites or if there were varieties that you didn’t like. For next year we will offer an “add ons” list of extras to plant outside of the garden bed. This will include potatoes, asparagus, “brassicas” (broccoli, rapini, cabbage), zucchini, ground cherries and mushrooms! We will also try again to plant carrots in the spring. I believe that with thick sowing and a floating row cover, it would be worth it to try again with carrots in the spring. I am worried that with our early cool weather, the carrots will not have enough time to get very big this fall. Time will tell! Carrots take a long time to germinate, keep the soil wet to help them sprout. It can take 10 – 20 days to germinate, so if you haven’t seen any sprouts yet, they should be coming soon. Once the sprouts are up, you will need to thin them to about 16 plants per square, ideally 4 rows of 4. This means favouring the strongest plants, and pulling out or snipping all the rest. Here is a nice, healthy recipe. Switch out the mustard greens for Kale or Chard from the garden for a delicious treat! http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2009/07/balsamic-glazed-chickpeas-and-mustard.html Best, Tereska Gesing

Hello, Fall planting is now done. Unfortunately our delectable little seedlings, in a lot of cases became lunch for hungry critters out there. If this is your case, please let me know and I will send you a mix of seeds in the mail (free of charge) that you can broadcast in your empty squares. As the lettuce, beet greens, baby kale, radish shoots, grow you can harvest them as baby greens for a mesclun type salad. Don’t forget to keep your garden watered and weeded during these gorgeous hot and sunny days. We have another 50 or so days left of our gardening season. There are still delicious veggies in your future! Otherwise your only tasks are to keep your slug population under control, and wait for your veggies to ripen! This harvest time is a wonderful time of year, not just in your garden but all over the city (and outside the city). I encourage you to do wonderful seasonal things like apple picking in Rougemont, or Ile Perrot http://montreal.about.com/od/seasonalattractions/a/apple_picking.htm I also love Santropol Roulant’s 100 Mile Meal at Robin des Bois restaurant which is a 3 course meal (including local wines) celebrates local farmers. There is a panel discussion by the farmers that grow the food you eat following the meal. For more information check out the invitation attached to this email. Today form 5pm until 9pm you can even visit the Loyola campus City Farm School gardens at their Harvest party. Should be fun! https://www.facebook.com/events/180064242178742/ We are collecting all of our notes about what when well this year, and what did not go so well so that we can make changes for next season. If you have comments, complaints or tips about how we could make the “Urban Seedling experience” better they are very welcome. Also, if you have any pictures of your garden you would like to share with me, they would be very appreciated. I will be updating the pictures on our website, flyers, Facebook and the rest of those hungry beasts. We need more garden pictures! Please let me know if you do not want me to post your pictures online. Don’t worry, I never use full names or addresses. Best, Tereska Gesing

Hello,

The next couple of nights are getting quite chilly. It is important to cover tomatoes, zucchini and peppers with your floating row cover. You can drape an old sheet or light blanket over your trellis to protect the tomatoes and cucumbers. Keeping your fruiting vegetables covered in cooler weather will help them ripen and keep their flavour.

Look behind leaves of tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchini for fruit. They might be hiding. I just discovered a huge patty pan in my own garden

Make sure you harvest your peppers right away. It will help the other peppers on the plant to ripen, and for new ones to be produced. If you have a tiny pepper on your plant, remove it instead of waiting for it to ripen. This should help encourage further production especially if we can get some more warm weather.

It seems like the slugs are back with a vengeance. If slugs have invaded your garden and handpicking, beer traps or fruit husks just aren’t cutting it anymore it is time for Diatomaceous Earth or Sluggo. Both work very well to kill slugs.

The first option is considered more ‘organic’ as it is literally a powder made out of fossilized remains of diatoms, a type of hard-shelled algae.Make sure you wear a mask when applying it as the particles are very fine and can irritate your lungs. Sluggo is effective as well, but eventually looks very messy in the garden since it gets mushy when wet and can get mouldy. Both are available at any garden centre.

Some lovely eggplant recipes if you need some inspiration!

http://www.marthastewart.com/314482/eggplant-tomato-and-mozzarella-salad…

http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2011/09/roasted-eggplant-with-tomatoes-an…

My favourite thing to do with slices of eggplant is popping them on the BBQ brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with salt and pepper

Tereska Gesing