BLOOMTOWN

Listen to Darcy Daniels on In the Garden with Mike Darcy this Saturday

I'll be on the radio with Mike Darcy tomorrow talking about vegetable gardening. His program, In the Garden with Mike Darcy, is aired on KXL at 750AM in the Portland area. I'm told that I'll be on at about 11 am. For those out of the listening area, the segment will be available as a podcast soon after airing. Hope you'll get a chance to tune in and/or check out the podcast!

Urban farmer? Yup, I'm working three plots.

I've been doing more doing than blogging lately so I'd like to attempt to share a bit of what I've been working on.

Spring is a busy time in so many ways and this year is shaping up to be one of the busiest yet ... veg-garden-wise, that is. In this post, I want to set the stage a little bit for what I hope will be many posts chronicling my progress with growing more of our food. I've got several different gardens that I'm tending and want to give you an overview of the different sites so that there will be some additional context as I post through the season. I've set up photo albums for each garden and will be posting lots of photos as the season progresses.

My Kitchen Garden at Home: 2009 will be my fourth growing season in this garden which occupies our re-commissioned driveway, a narrow space less than 9 feet wide on the south side of my house. My goal was to create a beautiful, productive, and space-efficient kitchen garden. The fence was designed to be beautiful and functional. I grow "up" as much as possible, using the fence to support vining and trailing plants; maximizing vertical growing space in small gardens is essential. New this year: growing "down." I've added containers hanging from the eaves. Anything a cook would appreciate having right out the back door is a contender for including in this space. We're growing salad greens, peas, beans, a few tomatoes, berries and herbs for cooking such as basil, cilantro, mint, parsley and more.

The (Urban) Farm: I am co-farming with a friend on her property. We're doing production-oriented growing with an eye toward really making a dent in providing a fair amount of the food for our two households; both during the growing season but also with enough left over that we can preserve some of the harvest as well. This is not huge garden by some peoples standards, but it is by no means a small garden either; we have ten 4'  x 8' raised beds and we're adding about 60 feet of 2' wide in-ground rows this year. We started this venture last year, so 2009 will be our second growing season at this site. A photo album of this garden is here. Past post about this gardens development can be found here.

The Back 400: After being on the waiting list for a couple of years for a community garden plot, this year my name came up and I'm thrilled. Our garden is a 20 foot x 20 foot plot (20 x 20 = 400; the "back 400" ... get it?!) at the Cully Community Garden site in NE Portland. I'll be doing more production-oriented growing over there as well. 

Edibles ... the new Ornamental?: In addition to the "traditional" sites mentioned above, I'm going to be looking for ways to integrate ornamental edibles in creative and beautiful ways within the garden proper at home; anywhere and everywhere is fair game.

So why all this effort to grow our own? Most importantly, you can't beat homegrown for quality, freshness and flavor. But I'm also a strong believer in the environmental value of local food production and you can't get more local than growing your own. Plus, there's great satisfaction in knowing exactly what went into the food that we bring to our table especially with all the recent issues surrounding food safety. In my mind, it's definitely worth it and I'm having a blast doing it.

So, I hope you'll check back often to follow our progress. If you're also trying to grow more of your own food in your garden, leave a comment and let us all know what you're up to.

Vegetable Garden Update: Building a Protective Cage

I wanted to share a project that we completed this weekend at "the farm." We built these these protective cages using a method that we found in Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardener; page 65 in the edition that I have, in the chapter entitled "Building Boxes and Structures."

Our day started with a trip to the hardware store. Got supplies for our next couple of projects, but here's what you'll need for this particular project:

• Wood for the frame: We used 1" x 2" x 8' strips and used the hardware store's saw to cut them to our 4' length.
• Chicken Wire Mesh: we bought a 50' roll, the best value since we plan on making several of these at varying heights.
• Screws: We bought 1 3/4" wood screws
• Plastic ties: I wasn't crazy about using plastic for the attachments, from an eco-standpoint, but they're pretty darn slick and super-easy to use. 
• Drill: I already own this.
• Wire snippers: I already had these as well.
• Staple Gun: If you don't have a staple gun, you could use the plastic ties which is what the book recommends. But again, I think the less plastic we use the better. Plus, by using the staple gun we were able to make our attachment a bit more snag-free which is a consideration when working with this rascally wire-mesh.

I apologize for the skip in the photographic documentation that occurs here; but we learned that it takes two to wrangle the wire mesh into submission. I'll try to document these steps when we build the next ones and provide an update to this post. But I wanted to get these photos up that I have so far, because I was pretty impressed at how quickly it went together and optimistic that they're going to be super-useful to us. They're also quite economical to build. Even purchasing the materials, I estimate that we spent about $10 in materials for each frame. But these could be even less expensive if you happen to have scrap wood around that you could re-purpose for building the frame.

Here's the gist of what we did.

1. Figure out what size you want your frame to be. For our beds we wanted them to be 4 foot square so that they would sit on the lip of our 4' x 8' raised beds and cover half of the bed. 
2. Build your four-sided frame. I recommend that you pre-drill your holes to limit the possibility of the 1" x 2" splitting. Make your attachment with one of your wood screws.
3. Cut your wire mesh to appropriate size with wire snips. For the cage pictured below, the finished height is 6 inches, so we cut two lengths of wire mesh, that were 5 feet long each, off of the roll, which is 4 feet wide.
4. Prepare the chicken wire mesh. Now here's the tricky part to visualize and also the reason that I don't have good photos of these steps. The wire mesh has a mind of its own and wants to fold back on itself, but once creased will hold its shape. So we creased the mesh at 6 inches from each of the ends.
5. Attach the mesh to the frames. It will really help if you enlarge the pictures below (click on them and they should open up larger in a separate window) and look closely at them. The two mesh panels are stapled to the inside of the frame.
6. Once you have attached the mesh and your frame looks like the one below, you can consider yourself done, or you can cut frost cloth to size and clip on the frame as we have done.

 
Their reason for being: our buddy Jack! He's a digger and wreaked major havoc with a lot of our plantings last year, so we really hope that these will deter him. We'll create some method of securing them more firmly to the beds.

And here's a little closer view. If you click on the image to enlarge this, it might help you understand the construction better. Perhaps you've already got it, but I have to say I had a terrible time visualizing how the mesh was connected to the frame when I was reading about these in the book. We've strayed from his method somewhat but I hope you get the gist.

And of course, this is what it's all about, right? We were able to plant our first cold-season greens with more confidence that Jack, or raccoons, or whatever other creatures we're bothered by, won't undo our hard work.

And since, it's still pretty early here and quite cold, we attached reemay to the cover; mostly for added warmth at this point, later it can help us out with pest deterrence as well.

Ta da! Now that we've built one, making more will go a lot faster. We'll make these in varying heights for the most flexibility in terms of how we'll use them. We've got enough supplies so that we should be able to make four frames of varying heights. They can be covered, or uncovered, with cloth and easily moved from bed to bed, to wherever we need a bit of added protection, shade, or pest protection.

I'd love to hear from you if you've built something like this in your garden or if you take a shot at building these. Let us all know about your project by leaving a comment on this post.

Podcast: Darcy Daniels talks bees with Glen Andresen

Darcy talks with Glen Andresen about urban beekeeping.
LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE:
Darcy Talks Bees with Glen Andresen

Thanks for talking with me Glen, you're the bee's knees!

See below for links and other information we promised in our podcast.

Plants for attracting and feeding bees & other pollinators:

• Plants for Pollinators in Oregon, a very thorough USDA publication specific to Oregon. See pages 15 to 20 for a table of plants.

Mason Bee Blocks:

Here's a good article from the Audubon Society on building a mason bee nesting block.

Or if you'd rather, you can purchase them ready-made from the Home Orchard Society.

Find out more about the classes that Glen's teaching this spring:

• Hardy Plant Society of Oregon (HPSO) Garden School, Mar 19 & 21, 2009, go here for more information and to register.
• Garden Fever, Mar 14, 2009, call the nursery to register.
• Livingscape Nursery, 2009 class list doesn't seem to be posted yet, so you might want to give them a call at the nursery.
• Urban Growth Bounty, a wonderful new series of classes offered by the City of Portland, Office of Sustainability. This is a really great range of offerings, well beyond beekeeping. You must check it out, now. Go here for dates & registration information.

Listen to Glen's radio program on KBOO; you can listen to his previous shows and subscribe to the RSS feed here.

If listeners would like to get in touch with Glen you can reach him via email at glen@pacifier.com.

And remember, one of the very best things we can do for our bees is to garden pesticide-free!

 

Vegetable Garden Update: Today's harvest

I was able to make it over to "the farm" today; first time since we've gotten back into town. There's been lots of change/growth in the week that we've been away. The summer squash are really coming on. Since we've been away these are bigger than we'd like, but aren't they beautiful!

I had visions of ripe tomatoes upon our return ... but alas, no. They're still poking along, although we gleaned two small "teasers" -- enough for one bite of summer!  When they do start ripening, I am hopeful that we will be buried in tomatoes gauging from the number of green fruit that have set thus far. Between the two gardens, we're going to have a ton of peppers; pictured here are the first of the jalapeno-type. 

Fast as a speeding Zucchini

Things are cruising along … we’re largely "planted" at this point; at least until we are able to harvest some of the early stuff and then re-commission the resulting open space for a successive crop.

In terms of what we’re harvesting right now; between the "farm" and the kitchen garden at the house, we’ve been getting plenty of spinach, arugula and chard. I expect the peas come on in a couple of weeks.

It’s been especially fun to see how quickly the beans & squash sprout and get their garden on – Zucchini called ‘Speedy Silver’ is certainly living up to its name. Of the summer and winter squash that we planted on the 14th, this Zuke was first to show itself. As I recall from the seed packet, ‘Speedy Silver’ promised a harvest 45 days from our sowing date. Wow!

Vegetable Garden Update - First (mini) Harvest

Our first official harvest. A mini-serving of baby spinach and argula, and a few radishes as well; perfect for a simple salad, direct from the garden --- just add a little olive oil, balsamic & garlic.

Vegetable Garden Update - Pea Party

Things have been chugging along nicely since my last post about our progress at the "farm" ... mostly just photos to share today; I hope to have a chance to write a more thorough update soon.

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Peas are up, and well on their way.

Most recently we've provided support for our peas and have covered some of our plantings that are susceptible to bug invasion.

But alas, it's not all work and no play ...

Bloomtown gets mention in Willamette Week

Bloomtown got a nod, two actually, in the most recent edition of Portland's Willamette Week print edition; the story is available online as well. The article, Getcha Hands in the Dirt, mentions this blog and our vegetable garden project here and the Nursery is mentioned here.

This week's paper has a pull out section called Habitat: The Dirty Hands Issue that is focusing on our ever-expanding interest in growing our own food. Even if it's just a bit in a few containers on a balcony or perhaps a more production-oriented venture, such as what Laurie and I have embarked upon that I've been blogging about here. Either way people seem to be tuning into the satisfaction of growing their own.

They've put together a great collection of resources ... check it out.

Vegetable Garden Update: Work party on a cool spring day

It's been pretty hectic between the nursery, client work, and teaching but we finally got back out to the "farm" for a work party on Sunday.

We got a tremendous amount of work done in a short time. We got our remaining two raised beds into position and filled with soil; bringing our total to the ten 4' x 8' raised beds, as planned.

We had some extra soil so have started an additional in-ground garden space. We'll grow the large scrambling plants like summer & winter squash in these beds and we'll choose an area of this bed where we'll grow sunchokes on a permanent basis (you can't easily remove them once you get them started, so think carefully about your placement before planting).

We did some additional sowing of our cool season crops such as spinach, argula, carrots, and scallions and a first sowing of a couple of interesting broccoli varieties and kale, and some other things that I've likely forgotten at this moment.

It's so exhilarating to see the seedlings emerge. We had our first taste of greens direct from the soil ... thinnings from our arugula and radish sowings from a couple of weeks back. Can't wait until we have enough for a real meal!