Growing Up, Out and Growing Pains

In June the Campus Community Garden has seen a lot of growth, both in our space management and vegetable plants. Here, we'll explain how the Campus Community Garden grows up and out, while pointing out some of our growing pains in this month.

We take advantage of vertical space at the campus garden to increase our vegetables' yield and to diversify the species of plant-life in our garden. We do this by encouraging the vertical growth of trellising plants, and building troughs - a new edition to our greenhouse. Our trellising plants include:

• Snow Peas
• Tricolour Pole Beans
• Grapes (variety to be determined)
  

As well, we will be planting pumpkins for July, which are able to be trellised and will be ready for October-November. When they start to flower, a net will have to be designed to hold the pumpkin, so that its weight does not cause it to prematurely fall off the trellis.

Physically, the garden has expanded outwards in a plot at the Eco House and to the north our fence-line. Of course, with building new plots, we always respect the space necessary for volunteers to travel through, with equipment, or for comfort. Most of our expansion this year has been acquiring new space. In these new plots we've planted:

• Potatoes
• Mokum Hybrid F1 Carrot
• Strawberry Spinach
• Crisp Mint Lettuce
• Space F1 Spinach
• Monnopa Spinach
• Mizcina
• Red Russian Kale

We'll be updating on the condition of these plants as frequently as we will with the other plants in our gardens.

Finally, we say good night to the plants that did not make it through the Edmonton climate between planting in April and through the month of May. Cold weather (accompanied with snow) mid-May, followed by excessive sun and heat, mixed with cool evenings caused a bit of crop and seed damage. Here's a list of transplants and seeds that did not make it through the early part of the season, and which we cannot update anyone on anymore:

• Most of the Lemon, Diva and Sweet Success Cucumbers
• Milkmaid Nasturtiums
• Calendula nana Candyman Yellow
  
• Orange Thyme
• Some of the Windsor and Blue Wind Broccoli

However, with every loss, there is a gain. In some of their places we are growing the Tricolour Pole Beans, as well as Radishes and Mammoth Sunflowers. We will be updating as to the conditions of these plants and how they're growing.


Right now, we are having a huge success with our Strawberries. We do not know the variety yet, but when we do we will let our blog readers know about the success we have with these berries in our climate! Here's a shot of the little berries. They began to flower at the end of May and have produced a few red ones in June.

More updates on the progress through June will be coming up!

Campus Garden Grows Again - 2009 Edition

It's been an incredible time for the ECOS garden this year, which saw its first planting in mid-April. The volunteers and gardeners have been busy building new projects for the space, extending it, and seeing a lot of new vegetables sprout up!

Like always, the garden is organically grown, which means we use non-GMO seeds and organic weed and pest reduction methods. The garden is communally gardened, instead of a plot-based system, and open to student and community involvement. If you reside in the Edmonton-area, stop by and visit the garden near the University of Alberta campus on 89th Ave between 110th and 111th Street.

I'm Ashton, the Coordinator for this year's garden, and I hope this year's blog can help connect the volunteers, gardeners, community and interested web-goers to our garden online. Here you'll be able to have updates as to the status of our garden, observations of vegetable behaviour, tips and tricks in the garden, and then some recipes when the vegetables are ready for harvest.

Here's what's new for April 2009:

• Extended the garden north even further
• Lots of new beds in the garden with different shapes and sizes
• Acquired a plot of land next to the Eco House residence for gardening

Here's what's planted from April 2009:

• Beans: Snap Bush, Purple Royal Burgundy
• Roots: Scallion, Allysum Bull's Blood Beets, F1 Hercules Carrot, Garlic
• Leafy greens:Red Mustard, Red Russian Kale, Red Velvet Lettuce, Euro Red and Green Lettuce, Smooth Leaf Spinach, Tyee Spinach, Romaine Lettuce, Arugala, Red Leaf Lettuce
• Cucumbers: Lemon, Sweet Success, Diva
• Squashes: Green Tint Patty Pan, Table Ace, Yellow Zucchini
• Tomatoes: Green Zobra, Red Zobra, Mexican Midget, Juliet, Red Brandywine, Oregon Spring, Yellow Cherry, Silvery Fit Tage, Black Seaman, Purple Prudeuce
• Flowers: Milkmaid nasturtium, Candy man yellow calenvula
• Herbs: Italian Large Leaf Basil, Mrs. Burns' Lemon Basil, Lime Basil, Nayoletano Basil, Creeping Thyme, Orange Thyme, Savory, Common mint, Korean mint, Cumin, Curled Parsley, Dill, Chervil
• Berries: Strawberry, Raspberry
• Other: Sunny Vee Hybrid Corn, Rhubarb, Jerusalem Artichokes, Windsor Broccoli, Blue Wind Broccoli, Snow Peas

So if you have any of these varieties of plants in your garden and want to compare to send input, then keep visiting this blog, and feel free to post comments. Hope to hear about other's success stories.

The next update will include what's new for May 2009, and what will be coming up for the rest of the summer. Stay pruned!

The dirty hoe gardening show

Well, I have been very busy lately with the garden, but I think now that things are slowing down that I will be posting more regularly. Here is a link to Alex Bolivar's show on CJSR featuring our garden. Well done everyone who contributed!

http://www.cjsr.ualberta.ca/news/news.php?s=dirtyhoe&ep=1314&

I encourage you to listen to other episodes of Alex's show. It is on CJSR on Fridays between noon and one, and on Mondays at 2pm. Or, of course, you can listen to it as a podcast.

Guerrilla Gardening

It is the newest thing. They were on the radio in Edmonton this year, and there is a picture of them in Calgary on the wikipedia site . There is the Guerrilla Gardening: A manualfesto (2007) by David Tracey that you can purchase at Earth's General Store,and you can even get it on Amazon, along with Richard Reynolds' On Guerrilla Gardening: A handbook for gardening without boundaries (2008)--here. Reynolds even seems to have global forum (it is a movement, man!).

My fav so far is from a blog my friend Jen in Vancouver sent me called heavy petal (a kickass name, to boot!). Yup, that is a seed-bombing baby! See, even the cool kids are doin' it. VIVE LA RESISTANCE!

I am not sure how many of our gardeners are aware that ECOS has also has a Naturalization Garden Project. The guru of native plants in Edmonton is the glorious Cherry Dodd of the the Edmonton Naturalization Group. We have Ms. Dodd's book Go Wild! in the ECOS library, something that I will talk about in greater depth later. Anyway, I am going to be putting in a lot of work over at the Native bed over the next couple of weeks and hopefully meeting up with Cherry, so if you are interested in the project, let me know.

Until tomorrow. And yeah, I did just discover how to link.

Too much thyme on our hands!

Yeah, I think I love the cheesy titles.


So, this year, in an attempt to put more herbs in the garden, we managed to kinda overdo it with the thyme. We actually have three types of thyme in the garden. In the burm, we have a tonne of Common thyme (Thymus vulgaris). In the trellised area, we have creeping thyme (Thymus serpyllum) and orange thyme (Thymus fragrantissimus).

It all looks pretty much the same:


The question is: what to do with it? Here are some suggestions, none of which, I admit, I have tried!

http://www.theherbaltouch.com/iha/thymerec1.html

(the drink called the "Lemon thyme Lift" looks tantalizing.

http://homecooking.about.com/library/archive/blthyme.htm (this site has all you need to know about thyme, even an apple thyme jelly recipe!)

These explain themselves. Enjoy!

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Thyme-Rubbed-Steaks-with-Sauteed-Mushrooms/Detail.aspx

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Garlic-Herb-Grilled-Pork-Tenderloin/Detail.aspx

Peaple

The Peas are almost ready!


It is amazing how quickly one forgets the changes in a garden. Even with peas, those nitrogen fixating, super growers, it feels as if they were always as big as they are now. If you haven't been out to the garden in awhile, though, you might be surprised!

Here (right) are the peas Sugar Ann snap peas (Pisum sativum "Sugar Ann"---sativum, by the way, merely means cultivated) on the 21st of May, 2008, about ten days after they were planted
.

Here they are (above) on June 7th, 2008, nicely pea-sticked with Bob's branches. And again (below) on the 19th of June. They are now about two feet high. And we have PEAS!!! They came

almost over night! Here is the evolution:


Anyway, the juvenile peas taste pretty good, but the real thing will by tomorrow and they will all be ready by Wednesday!