Hello,

It is time to harvest all of your radishes, turnips and spinach. As these are spring vegetables, they do not enjoy the hot weather, and will not grow well.

Where possible, we planted these spring vegetables in the space dedicated to a plant that needs a lot of space to grow. Please find your zucchini, melon, squash and cucumber plants, and make sure they have enough room. This means that when you remove your radishes and turnips, you are leaving space open for the larger summer vegetables. If other plants are too close to them, they will stay small and wont produce well.

Radish and turnip sometimes do not form nice round roots. Even so, the greens are delicious sautéed in garlic and butter, and are packed with nutrients and vitamins.

Your kale, broccoli and cabbage leaves are probably huge and overshadowing other vegetables. You should cut off any leaves at the base that are passing over their allotted space. These leaves are delicious steamed or shredded raw in salad.

Harvest anything that is sending up a central stalk or flowering. These vegetable flowers are edible, and wonderful to spruce up any salad.

Starting next week is a good time to replant your lettuce. Instead of harvesting cut-and-come-again, or individual leaves. You should start ripping out the entire head, roots and all and planting your seedling or seeds. Make sure to water thoroughly.

Your peas have probably exploded and should be harvested as often as possible. Regular picking prolongs harvest. As soon as the pod becomes thicker, they become too tough to eat as a mange-tout, but are still delicious as fresh peas. Just crack open the pod and eat raw. Also a wonderful salad addition.

All of your plants can really benefit from some additional feeding around this time – especially tomatoes, zucchini, squash and melons. You should spread compost thickly on top of the soil. Sea weed spray (available at most garden centres) can be sprayed directly onto the leaves and is great for quick access to nutrients. If you have a fish tank, watering with your old fish water is great for the garden. The fish poop is very high in nitrogen, and repels rodents and critters.

Crab meal is a great organic fertilizer for tomatoes and other vegetables, and is also available at many garden centres. Be sure not to buy any chemical fertilizers. Your garden will no longer be organic, and all the beneficial micro-organisms will die, and your soil will be much less fertile. If you are interested in soil fertility as a topic let me know. I could go on for days.

Targeted pest and fungus spray:

• 2 cloves garlic
• 2 cups water
• 2 tsp dish soap (phosphate-free)
• 2 dashes hot sauce

Crush garlic and steep it in water for a couple of hours, strain add a bit of dish soap and hot sauce and spray on leaves to help the plants fight fungus and aphids.

Please keep your excellent questions coming.

Happy gardening,
Tereska Gesing

Hi gardners,

The hot weather has officially arrived. Hot days like yesterday are great for your heat-loving tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, squash and zucchini.

However, these plants also suck a lot of moisture out of your garden. This means that it is very important for you to water your gardens whenever it doesn’t rain. A good rule of thumb is whenever it is going to be over 30 and sunny, water your garden (preferably in the morning, so you don’t encourage the slugs).

It is also time to harvest all of your radishes and spinach. It is too hot for them, and they will ‘bolt-to-seed’ (grow flowers and get bitter and tough) if they haven’t already.

Many of you may already have snow peas to harvest. Make sure you pick them early and often – even every day. If they get over grown they will not taste good as ‘mange-tout’ but don’t despair! You can eat them as delicious shelling peas. Just open up the pod and eat fresh. Yum!

To clarify your seed packet gift (let me know if you haven’t received one yet):
The seeds are to replace the vegetables you harvest from your garden. You can either start them in pots or egg cartons to give them a head start, or just plant the seeds directly in the garden. The radishes, beets, peas, spinach and carrots are for a fall planting in late July, early-August and the lettuce seeds are for when your lettuce plants get too old and start tasting bitter. If you want to replace your lettuce plants with seedlings you should start those seeds in pots right away.

I’ll let you know when to plant your fall veggies in a Garden Maintenance email when the time comes.

It is best to start your lettuce seeds indoors. Just sprinkle the seeds on top of the soil. Lettuce seeds are tiny and if you bury them too deeply, they will not grow. If you do start them outside, make sure to water daily, because the don’t like to dry out.

This week we have a special treat – a recipe for a tender spring salad using your lettuce and some of the flowers the pay be popping up as your greens “bolt”.

Green Summer Salad with Flowers and Lemon Vinaigrette

Recipe to Serve 2-3 People:

1 Bunch Greens – you can use a combination of lettuce, finely chopped kale, finely chopped radish leaves, roquette, beet greens.

1 Handful flowers – any of the flowers from the bolting greens will work well for this (In the salad shown in the photo we used romaine lettuce, finely chopped kale and rapini flowers).

Vinaigrette

1 Lemon juiced
Freshly ground pepper and sea salt to taste
1 Tbs. finely chopped herbs from your garden (Parsley, basil, chives etc)
2-3 Tbs Olive Oil (it is nice if you use a good, fruity olive oil)

Whisk together and dress greens, adding the flowers at the end and tossing lightly. Enjoy!

Hello,

Your warm weather vegetables are in the ground, and your lettuce, kale, chard, radishes and spinach are flourishing.

There are a couple of important tasks to add to your list of things to do in the garden.

We have provided you with seed packs (please let me know if you didn’t get yours, and I will make sure Shawn brings you one when he comes by this week or next to check on your garden.
These seeds are a gift to get you started on replanting the vegetables you harvest from your garden, and to get you going on your fall planting. I will let you know by email when it is time to use these seeds.

When you harvest lettuce, you can harvest the whole plant, cut 1″ above the ground and let it grow again or you can harvest just the outer leaves you need for your salad and let the inner ones keep growing. Either way, as a lettuce gets older, the taste and texture get tough and bitter. Before this happens (late june) you should remove the plant roots and all and replant it with a seed. You can start the seeds indoors to get a head start on your lettuce and keep your garden as productive as possible

Anything that is flowering (spinach, roquette, rapini) needs to be harvested often, as these plants will get tough and bitter if they start to go to seed. Make sure to keep these plants short by cutting down any central stalks to discourage flowering. The spinach, radish, beets and carrot seeds should only be replanted in late-July or early-August for a fall harvest, as these plants do not germinate well in the heat.

On the back of the seed packets, I have written instructions such as 9/sq ft 8 weeks. This means that you plant 9 seeds in each square in the grid, and that the vegetable (say beets) takes 8 weeks to mature, from seed to harvest. Please let me know if you have any questions. I will write you an email when it is time to use your seeds!

The next important matter at hand is caring for your tomatoes. Tomato plants do not climb on their own. In order for them to go up the trellis, you need to train them. This means wrapping their central stalk around the trellis once a week or so. Since the tomato is a vine, it grows “suckers” which eventually turn into branches. These take energy away from growing fruit, and make the plant to big and bushy. You need to remove the suckers weekly as well. They are found in the “crotch” between the central stalk and the leaves. See video for more instructions. Sorry about the sound quality. The next video will be better.

Weekly reminders:

Water, water, water. You can leave out an empty yoghurt container or tuna tin near the garden. Each week you need 1.5″ to 2″ of water. Your container will let you know if you have enough water from rain.

Weed, weed, weed. Small weeds look innocuous and innocent, but when it is warm, wet and sunny they can get out of control quickly and take away precious resources from your veggies.

Don’t forget your cayenne pepper, chilli flakes or other animal deterrent. You need to reapply each week at least, and again after each rainfall.

To keep slugs out of your garden, you can mulch with coffee grounds or eggshells, or both. Diatomaceous earth is also effective, and considered appropriate for an organic garden, but I have never used it personally, and I suspect it might be detrimental to beneficial insects and worms.

Happy gardening!

Hello, My things are moving in the garden this week! With the warm weather and all this sunshine, your veggies should be doing very nicely. Although, for those of you who started early-mid May, your garden will still need some time to get established. Here is a great guide to how each vegetable likes to be harvested: GUIDE The carrots and beets take a very long time to get established, so don’t worry if they are still quite small. For an April-planted garden, they will still only be a couple of inches tall. You will probably be harvesting spinach, radishes and lettuce. Make sure to cut all of your spinach and roquette plants sooner rather than later as they will start to bolt (flower) which will make them tough and bitter. Spinach, lettuce and roquette(arugula) are “cut-and-come-again” plants which means that you can harvest them by cutting the whole plant about an inch above the soil level, and the plant will grow again! Harvesting in this way prevents bolting. Please remember to keep up with weeding, and spreading cayenne pepper around the fence to deter animals. Covering the ground with coffee grounds helps a lot to keep slugs away. And of course, make sure to water every couple of days – especially in this heat! Here are some photos to explain about thinning: In the first photo, there are four carrot sprouts all in a bunch. In the second photo there is just one. I removed the 3 extra by cutting with a small pair of scissor at ground level. Please let me know if you have any questions about your garden. Happy gardening!

Howdy gardeners! Sorry about last week. She slipped me by! Looks like we are just about ready to start harvesting (if you haven’t already!) Those of you who got started late-April should be seeing your first radishes, some spinach, and definitely some nice lettuce ready to eat this week. For those who got started early-May, you may have a little longer to wait. You can harvest your vegetables whenever they are big enough to your liking. To check the size of your radishes, gently investigate around the root with your finger. You should be able to judge if your radish is big enough to eat. Some of the radishes will not grow a round root at all. It is just luck of the draw. The radish greens are edible as well – delicious sautéed in butter with some salt, pepper and a splash of lemon juice. Spinach, lettuce and roquette can be harvested as “cut-and-come-again” crops. This means you cut the entire plant about one inch above the ground and the plant will grow again and keep producing! You can also harvest individual leaves. I suggest taking your salad bowl out to the garden and filling it with an assortment of delicious greens. Your kale and chard may also be ready. These you should harvest by cutting the big outer leaves and leave the smaller ones in the middle to keep growing. Reminders:

1. Keep watering every couple of days. Water deeply rather than often.
2. Keep up with some kind of spicy animal deterrent such as cayenne pepper, chilli flakes etc. Fish emulsion and blood meal and human or dog hair also keep critters away.
3. Keep on thinning! Your carrots should be coming up. There will probably be a couple of sprouts per spot. Take some scissors and cut all but the strongest one.

*thinning is very important* Each vegetable needs it’s allotted space to grow. Enjoy your veggies! Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

You will probably see your second row of peas peaking through the earth, and should start seeing some young radishes popping out of the ground soon too. Keep weeding, and taking those pesky maple keys out before they start sprouting in your rich fertile earth. We got a bit of rain this week, but your garden could probably use a good soak by Sunday as this weekend is supposed to be warm and sunny. Yay! When you are watering, it is important to water DEEPLY rather than often. When you water just enough to wet the top of the soil, the roots of your veggies grow upwards towards the water and then are more susceptible to drying out. When you water deeply, you encourage the roots to grow downwards towards the water as the top of your soil starts to dry out. This makes your plants hardier and healthier. You should be watering for at least 15 minutes and make sure to get right into the corners! It is also important to use a rose (nozzle attachment that makes your hose into a shower rather than a stream) to disperse the water and avoid drowning any one plant. The ideal time of day to water is early in the morning. The hot noonday sun evaporates a lot of the water before it can penetrate deeply enough. Avoid watering in the evening at all costs! If the leaves of your plants, and the surface of the soil are still wet when the sun goes down it really encourages slugs to move in a wreak havoc!! This brings me to my next topic: SLUGS. These are garden enemy #1. They are gross, put holes in our nice leafy greens and can even take out an entire seedling overnight! The best way to deal with slugs is to hit them early and often so they don’t multiply. Prevention: Make sure to keep dead leaves and other debris out of the garden – this is their favourite food. Don’t water in the evening. Fill in any slug homes around your garden. They LOVE cracks between the wood and the ground so look around the outside of your garden to make sure the wood is touching the ground everywhere. Fill in with soil where it is not. Attack: go slug hunting at dusk (or dawn if you are up). This is when they head out into your garden for a snack. Pick them up and squish them, then throw them away. Dead slugs are also a favourite slug food (YUCK) Beer traps are also effective, but also gross. Fill a shallow dish with beer and leave it out at dusk. Slugs love beer and will crawl in and drown. Make sure to change the beer daily. Slug corpses rotting in beer are the grossest of all. Please let me know if you have any questions, Happy hunting!

Every week (or almost 🙂 I will be posting here to let you know what to expect from your garden, and what you should be doing to maintain it.

This week we’ve had a lot of rain, so your garden shouldn’t need much water, if any.
Take a look at your seedlings. Any that have fallen over in the inclement weather may need propping or firming by pressing on the earth around them.

Make sure to take out any maple keys or small weeds. The key to a happy garden is to weed early and often so that your plants can get well established.

The beet seedlings may be coming up two or three in a bunch. This is because beet seeds are actually fruits, and are 2 or 3 seeds stuck together. These need thinning. Take a pair of scissors and cut away the smaller sprouts leaving the strongest standing.

Pinch off any dead leaves and don’t forget to spray or sprinkle some kind of hot peppery mixture to deter animals.

Here is one recipe:

Squirrel Repellent

1. 1 Bottle (small) Hot Pepper Sauce
2. 1 Gallon Water
3. Water Retentative (available from plant nursery) or 1 Teaspoon of Mild Liquid Detergent such as dishwashing detergent

Although anything that uses cayenne pepper should do the trick. Even a mixture of 1/3 cayenne pepper and 2/3 flour sprinkled around the garden should work wonders.
Blood meal is a good addition, it adds Nitrogen to the garden and the critters don’t like the smell.

Make sure to re-apply often, especially after it rains!

It is supposed to go down to -4 tomorrow night. You can lay a light blanket or sheet over the garden to protect from frost, but the seedlings you have in your garden should be light-frost resistant.

Can’t wait for the sunshine!

An important addition to any vegetable garden, living mulch provides food and habitat for beneficial insects, retains moisture, regulates soil temperature, improves soil structure and adds nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium.

We use dwarf white clover between the vegetables planted in our raised beds to act as a living mulch. Other popular living mulches are alfalfa, hairy vetch, red clover and winter rye. Dwarf white clover is best for our intensive city gardens as it doesn’t grow more than 6 – 8 inches tall.

“A living mulch is a cover crop interplanted or undersown with a main crop, and intended to serve the functions of a mulch, such as weed suppression and regulation of soil temperature. Living mulches grow for a long time with the main crops, whereas cover crops are incorporated into the soil.”

(Source:Wikipedia)

Lets explore the benefits of living mulches more thoroughly:

1. Repress weeds: The dense clover shades out and smothers other weeds in your garden
2. Retain moisture: Just like regular mulches, the clover will retain moisture in the soil by providing shade and shelter from desiccating wind and sun.
3. Regulates temperature: Shelters soil and plant roots from cold spring rains and low temperatures, and shades roots and soil from hot summer sun.
4. Add essential nutrients: Clover’s deep taproot brings up and cycles nutrients found deep in the lower levels of your soil. The complex secondary root system, like other legumes will fix nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous into the soil.
5. Improves soil structure: Clover’s root system improves friability of soil almost immediately. When the clover dies and is turned into the soil, it adds organic matter.
6. Attract beneficial insects: Clover attracts bees and other insects that will then pollinate your flowers and vegetables, and hunt pests in your garden.

It is best to start the clover in your garden a couple of weeks after planting your vegetables to allow them to get a headstart. You don’t want the clover to shade out the vegetables as well as the weeds!

It is best to cut or ‘mow’ your clover once a month down to 1 or 2 inches tall. The clover tops decompose and add nutrients and organic matter to your soil, and this way you are preventing the clover from going to seed and spreading where you don’t want it.

While there is competition between plants, the benefits of biodiversity within any system greatly outweigh the potential disadvantages. Planting a living mulch is companion planting at it’s best: The roots of the clover provide a structure for your vegetable roots to inhabit. The decomposing clover cuttings feed the worms and beneficial microorganisms in your soil. The clover leaves provide shelter for predatory insects and the clover flowers provide food for pollinators. This kind of inter-connectivity is what permaculture is all about.

Want to know more? Check out this great video:

and read some of the research:

“…analysis shows that plant communities with many different species are nearly 1.5 times more productive than those with only one species (such as a cornfield or carefully tended lawn), and ongoing research finds even stronger benefits of diversity when the various other important natural services of ecosystems are considered. Diverse communities are also more efficient at capturing nutrients, light, and other limiting resources.”

(Source: ScienceDaily.com via Virginia Institute of Marine Science)

On your garden calendar you should have ideal harvesting dates for all of your vegetables. These dates are a guideline. When you are in your garden, you can judge if you want to harvest right away, or if your would like to let your vegetables grow a little longer to get bigger or more ripe. It is best to harvest your vegetables right before you will eat them so they will be as tasty and nutritious as possible. For cut-and-come-again crops like lettuce and other greens, you can take your salad bowl right into the garden and take a few leaves from each plant to make your mixed green salad. Once the plant reaches maturity, however (usually around 8 weeks) it is best to harvest the whole plant and start a new one for the best taste. Old greens tend to get tough and bitter. As soon as you harvest your vegetables, re-plant your seeds or seedlings right away so that your garden is continually productive. You may need to tear out some clover to make space for your next crop. Add some compost every time you re-plant to help maintain soil fertility. To make the most out of your garden you can interplant crops that fit well together in time and space. For example, radishes and spinach are early crops that don’t do well in the full heat of the summer – so in the 4 square feet you have set aside for a June 1st planting of squash, you can plant 2 square feet of radishes and 2 square feet of spinach May 1st. You can then harvest mature radish June 1st, and let the spinach keep growing for a July 1st harvest while the squash is still small. Another example is to alternate plantings of beans and tomato. Not only do the beans fit nicely in the spaces under the tomato plants, but they also fix nitrogen and other elements from the air and add nutrients that the tomato plants need to grow well. We find that our pepper and eggplants do well in the tomato bed as well. End of season: Putting your beds to sleep Once the season is over and even your cool-weather crops are done, remove all of the plant residues from your vegetable crops. Just cut them at the level of the soil as the root systems add structure and nutrients to the soil. Be careful to leave your undercrop of clover to protect your soil from leaching nutrients over the winter. Cut back all of your flowers and herbs to the ground. The perennials will comeback from the root, and the roots of the annuals will add to the soil fertility as well. If you have rosemary, you should bring it inside in a pot for the winter.

Through out the season you may however come across some pest problems. In a healthy garden, these are mostly slugs and snails. The best way to deal with these is to go out at dusk, pick them off of your vegetables and kill them. Alternatively you can leave out a saucer of beer for them to drown in, or purchase a slug trap. DO NOT use products such as Sluggo or other slug killing poisons even if they are organic because they will upset your ecosystem and cause problems for your beneficials like worms and bug predators. Ultimately they will cause more harm than good in your garden. The other big problem is squirrels, raccoons, groundhogs, cats, dogs and other animals. These do not care at all about companion planting or insect predators. The only way to keep them away is a physical barrier. The 2.5’ fence discussed earlier is the best way to keep them out of your garden. The netting is better than the chicken wire because it is not rigid, so very difficult to climb. We staple the netting directly to the wood of the raised beds with a staple gun. It is low enough to step over to get into your garden. NEVER step into the beds. You will compact the earth and harm your soil structure and your plants will not grow well.

To prepare your bed for spring planting, first warm the soil by covering your raised beds with dark plastic (garbage bags cut open, punch holes in it to let some water through) as soon as they are accessible from under the snow. The earliest planting date for cool weather crops is May 1st, 2 – 3 weeks before, strip off the plastic, add a layer of compost/composted manure and turn under last year’s clover cover crop and put the plastic back on to further warm the soil. The warmer your soil is, the more quickly your seeds will germinate and the more quickly your crops will grow. Most vegetables fit neatly into 4 spacing categories • 16/sq ft or 3” apart: Radish, carrot • 9/sq ft or 4” apart: Beets, turnips, spinach, beans, peas, bok choy • 4/sq ft or 6” apart: Lettuce, kale, chard, escarole, and most greens (mustards, collards etc.) • 1/sq ft or 12” apart: Cabbage, broccoli, pepper, eggplant, tomato, melon The only ones that don’t are squash (summer and winter) 4 square feet per plant cucumber 2/sq ft The planting depth is 3 times the seed width, so ¼” for small seeds like pepper or tomato, ¾” for larger seeds like radish or pea or on the surface of the soil for tiny seeds like lettuce or carrot. Ideally you would even place your seed on the top of the soil and cover with worm castings to an appropriate depth. • Your planting season starts with your cool weather crops: Kale, chard, beets, radishes, peas, broccoli, cabbage, bok choy, spinach among others. On the 1st of May – 3 weeks before the last frost date for Montreal – plant your seeds according to your garden plan. • Your next planting is on May 22nd for cucumbers, beans, • Warm weather crops: tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, melons, appreciate another week of warming, and these seedlings should go into the garden June 1st. • Kale, chard and peas will keep producing all summer, but in mid-to-late July you can get a fall crop started of your other cool weather vegetables. Broccoli and cabbage need to have been started earlier as seedlings. Once all of your plants are in, plant clover again between vegetables as a living mulch to keep in moisture, suppress weeds and provide food and habitat for your beneficial insects. This is known as undercropping or a type of companion planting. As part of your soil fertility maintenance, you should cut down your clover mulch to a couple of inches above the soil and leave the tops to decompose on the surface of the soil. This will give your soil microbes something to munch on, keep your ecosystem strong, and keep the clover from going to seed and spreading all over your yard. It is important to give your vegetables this head start so that the clover doesn’t shade out your sprouting seeds. An ideal planting date for the clover is June 7th – 2 weeks after your last planting from seeds as your June 1st planting of established seedlings.

Certain vegetables need a longer growing season than Montreal can provide, so we need to start them off indoors. These include tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, cabbage, onions and flowers. You can buy all of these seedlings from a nursery, or at a market, but you will be limited in the varieties available to you. When buying seedlings, make sure to inspect each one carefully to make sure they are in good condition. The ideal size for a seedling planted June 1st (ideal date for tomatoes, peppers and onions) is 4” and it should not have any flowers. Any larger and the plant will experience too much shock in transplanting and the eventual vigour and harvest from the mature plant will be adversely affected. There is not enough light in the winter even in a sunny window to grow nice strong seedlings. You can provide light with a fluorescent bulb and fixture you can get for 20$ at a hardware store. You do not need a special grow light, which usually run 5 or 6 times that price. Hang the light 6” above the soil, and raised it as the plants start get taller. Give your seedlings 16 hours of light and 8 hours of darkness (easiest on a timer). Plants need the darkness as a part of their daily growth cycle. Plant the seeds in a growing medium: a mix of vermiculite, peat moss and worm castings (from your vermicomposter, or garden store) is best. As a general rule, plant seeds 3 times deeper than the seed width, so for a tomato seed, about ¼”. Keep them moist but not wet, and leave them uncovered so mold doesn’t form. Seed germination needs heat and moisture, so start your seedlings somewhere warm, like on top of the fridge, or on a heating pad (sold especially for this purpose) Seedlings need to end up in 4” pots for enough room to establish a healthy root system. Before planting your seedlings in the garden, you need to take them through a process called “hardening off”. To do this you bring your babies outside for only a couple of hours at a time for progressively longer periods until they are ready to spend the night. This greatly reduces plant shock, and will give you a much healthier and more productive mature plant. This process is especially important for fruiting plants such as tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and squash. The more gradually you go through the hardening off process the better, generally a week is sufficient. Start onions and flowers in February, peppers and tomatoes, mid-March. To make your garden extra productive, you can also start your lettuce, chard, kale, squash, cucumbers and many others as seedlings outside of your garden to maximize the time and space available to you (More on this later). The only vegetables that cannot start as seedlings are root vegetables such as carrots, radish, beets and turnips. Also spinach is finicky and doesn’t like being moved around either. You can find more detailed step-by-step instructions either on Google, in gardening books or in the upcoming maintenance section of our website.