Flowers

Prairie gardeners are usually pretty efficient with their garden plots.  The season is short and we want to get in as many vegetables as we can manage.  But there's always room for a few flowers between the rows.  Here are a few of my favourite shots.

Fall Fruits

So, it's officially the first day of fall today, but we have still had no frost!  The pace of production has definitely slowed down with the cooler nights and less rain than in August, but many gardens are still producing a few last crops.  I saw Sylvia in her garden yesterday.  Her tomatoes are ripening, finally.  And her melon plants are setting a few late fruit.  She told me that they have had one melon so far - juicy, sweet, and about the size of a golf ball!  She still has a few more like it to harvest.

The August rains were not kind to squashes.  Mine pretty much gave up, hidden under my overgrown corn.  But some managed to get enough sun to set fruit despite the attack of powdery mildew.  Pumpkins are ripening in a few patches, and I suspect some have already been harvested.  

Sunflowers are just reaching their best now, as most of the other crops are being cleaned out of the garden.  This one is Brian's.  The plants are huge - 7 or 8 feet tall, and this one is so big across that it can't hold itself upright.  

Mandan Bride Corn

The frost is holding off still, and my corn seemed to be ripening, so I have been picking a few cobs every few days.  Mandan Bride is a flour corn, not a sweet corn, and I wasn't sure how long it needed to mature.  The husks were starting to turn red so I thought it was worth picking.  

This is the first time I have grown this kind of corn.  The description in the seed catalogue said it would be all colours, including some kernels striped or spotted.  So far it is mostly blue, white and yellow, or dark purple and red when the cobs are more mature and dried.  I haven't tried eating any yet.  I have been waiting for it to dry, then I will try to make corn meal out of it.  

Some of the cobs grew well, and others seem only partly fertilized.  Any ideas why?

What to do with all the Swiss Chard?

Does anyone else find they planted too much of something?  In June I just wanted to get everything in and get it growing.  The dirt looked so empty and the seeds looked so small, I just had to squeeze in a few more.  Then once things start to grow they fill in all the space and start to crowd each other!  

That's what happened with our Swiss Chard.  I planted a whole package, 2 rows closely planted, of Rainbow Chard.  I think every single seed came up, in every possible colour combination - while, pink, yellow, orange, vibrant magenta, and even red with a dark red leaf.  Gorgeous to look at, and delicious to eat, if you don't mind a bit of grit.  But through most of August, the more I picked, the more it grew.  

After a few days of steamed chard for supper, it was time to get creative.  We found this recipe in Laurel's Kitchen:

Chard Cheese Pie

6 cups chard, lightly cooked and well drained

1 onion, chopped and sauteed

2 cups cottage cheese

2 eggs, beaten

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup grated cheese

paprika

Preheat the oven to 350F.  Beat together cottage cheese, eggs and salt.  Stir a cup of this mix into the chard, onion and cheese and press into a well-greased 8x8 pan.  Spread the rest of the cottage cheese mix over the top, and sprinkle with paprika.  

Bake for 30 minutes or until set.  Let stand for several minutes before cutting.

Mmmm... Chard is good, but chard with cheese is even better.  Suddenly we were looking forward to the next giant bag of chard again!  By the end of August with all the rain the Chard was starting to get powdery mildew, which was disappointing.  

This week I was able to find a few new leaves with no mildew again, and I think I got enough for one more chard pie.  If the frost holds off and we get a little more warmth I might even be able to get one last picking.  

Does anyone else have good chard recipes?

Bean Harvest

I went to the garden in the sunshine this afternoon when I could count on my bean plants being dry, and look what I found hiding between the leaves! This is my first harvest of snap beans this year. I have one row of each variety. The yellow/purple one is Dragon Tongue, a heritage variety with long, flattish pods that taste buttery when cooked. The green with faint purple stripes is Thibodeau de Comte Beauce. I have not eaten these yet, but they look delicious.

What is everyone else eating from the garden?

Summer storms

Strong winds and rain pummeled the garden on August long weekend! The wind must have come from the south as the corn is all tilting northwards.

I'm not sure onions need quite this much moisture! In all the combination of frequent rains and sunny days without too much heat have been good for the garden. It's just that you can have too much of a good thing.

Three Sisters

The Three Sisters are Corn, Beans and Squash, planted together in companion plantings, often with sunflowers too. I heard about Three Sisters first as an anthropology student. This was the traditional style of agriculture that sustained people all over this continent, from the Iroquois Confederacy of nations to the Hopi and Zuni in the American Southwest, all the way to Mexico where corn was first domesticated. The idea of the Three Sisters was planted as a seed in my mind at that time.

When I found out I could get a community garden plot, the seed of the idea sprouted as I looked into local sources of heritage seeds, grown from open-pollinated crops and saved by farmers over the generations. With a sunny community plot, I could finally indulge my fantasies of growing crops that require full sun! I wanted to grow the Three Sisters as an experiment for a few reasons.

Over the centuries through saving the seeds of plants that grew best in local conditions, Aboriginal farmers pushed the limits of their climates and created varieties of corn that could grow further and further north. The Buffalo was a more abundant source of nutrition in the northern plains, but the Sioux nations in North Dakota grew the Three Sisters for many years before the colonists came. One reason for growing heritage varieties of traditional crops was to honour those Hidatsa and Mandan women who fed their communities from the land in this way.

I also loved the idea that many of the nations that grew Three Sisters had a strong role for women in community life. Many of the Northeastern societies were matrilineal and matrilocal. Clan membership and hereditary titles passed through the mother's line, from one man to the son of his sister, and the clan mothers were very powerful in the community. Women grew up and remained in the same areas and tended the same fields their whole lives, with their husbands coming to join their household. It was the farm that anchored the community, through the work of the women. I wanted to be part of this tradition of strong women keeping the community together.

I also wanted to garden in a way that would benefit the environment. Companion planting is one way to allow one plant to help meet the needs of another. With the Three Sisters, the beans add nitrogen to the soil to feed the corn. The corn grows tall, allowing the beans to climb up and reach the sun. And the squash vines grow along the ground, covering the soil with their broad leaves, preventing weeds from growing and shading the roots of both corn and beans from the hot sun of late summer. This combination is the ultimate companion planting for North American gardens. And the plants that grow together as companions are also eaten together - corn, beans, squash and sunflower seeds together make a nutritious meal with complete proteins.

This year I am growing a combination of different heritage varieties that likely would not all have been grown together traditionally, but each sounded fascinating:
Mandan Bride corn - a multicoloured variety used for flour or fall decorations
Bleu Coco beans - a French heirloom that is reputed to taste wonderful as green beans or as dried beans
North Georgia Candy Roaster squash - doesn't that sound delicious?
All are from Heritage Harvest Seeds in Carman.

As it turned out, my Candy Roaster squash had poor germination, so only two of the plants are that variety. All the others are miscellaneous plants from the nursery. I also found that the Blue Coco beans were not sufficient for 16 hills, so I added some Helda pole beans from Lindbergs.

The first shot shows the corn and bean hills in late June when they were just getting established. It was hard to imagine they could possibly need as much space as they had. The second shot shows the effects of several weeks of sun and rain in equal measure. Interwoven together are corn stalks, bean flowers, tendrils of squash and some volunteer dill courtesy of Gauchers who had this plot last year.

What brought this on?

As every gardener knows, you don't get good growth without both heat and water. These clouds above the city speak to both - strong updrafts on a hot day, bringing thunderstorms and heavy downpours. We've had our share of both over the last few weeks, and it shows in the healthy growth at the garden.

More garden blooms

Still more flowers: squash, hot peppers, and coriander in full bloom.

Promise of things to come

A quick tour of the garden this evening, just before the first few drops of rain fell, revealed a surprising number of blooms.

Potatoes, fava beans, raspberries, and a few marigolds brighten the garden scene with their colours and make me hopeful of a tasty harvest.

Patchwork Quilt

Planting season is now done, and we can start to see the evidence of all our hard work. The gardens at 26th and Maryland make a patchwork quilt of different styles of planting, each garden different from the one next to it.

Some plots are closely planted, with short rows of many different vegetables. These shelter a little of everything to keep the fridge full, and not one inch of soil is wasted. Others take a different approach, with widely spaced rows, concentrating on a few favourites. Some are planted in blocks, others in rows running east-west or north-south. A few plots are dedicated to potatoes as these need a large area to grow well.

Flowers have appeared in a few plots, dressing the edges of the plots and brightening the landscape. Some flowers merely add decoration, others are edible (did you know you can eat pansy blossoms?) and still others are there to keep the vegetables company. I'm told that slugs and other bugs are drawn to marigolds and will leave the crops alone if they have some of these aromatic plants to chew.

The raised beds are now complete, one foot high, and four feet by twelve feet long. They are made of interlocking 2 by 4s, so they will be durable. We ran out of labour to fill the beds, so each gardener hauled their own dirt from the piles next to the rows of beds. Some were able to do it before the heavy rains, and had a relatively easy time, but after a week of solid rain, the soil turned into mud and some gardeners had quite a chore to haul the heavy soil.

Now they are all set up and all have seeds, sprouts, or whole plants reaching skywards. The small raised beds are a microcosm of the plots - each is different. Some gardeners trusted to seeds, and have tiny rows of new sprouts emerging. Others put in plants from the green house to get a jump on the season, and some have done a little of both to hedge their bets. Tomato plants in particular vary from tiny little transplants, to large potted plants that already had fruit setting.

Now that the first round of hard work is taken care of, the next task will be weeding - a couple of weeks of heavy rain alternating with hot sun have brought along the wild oats and lambs quarters that want to take advantage of our freshly tilled soil.

Name our Garden

What's our official name? So far we have been operating as "26th and Maryland Garden" based on our location. But we can have an official name for our garden, as Nancy mentioned at our meeting on opening day. If you have a suggestion, you can add a comment or send me an e-mail at my address above. I'll share all the suggestions here and people can pick their favourite.

By the end of the summer we should have an official name to add to our sign.

Tetanus Clinic

Further to my last post, if you do not have your Tetanus shots up to date, there will be a nurse giving boosters at 7th Street Health Access Centre on Thursday, July 10 from 11:00 am to 3:00 pm. It is free of charge.

7th Street Health Access Centre is located at #20 - 7th Street in Brandon, and you can call for more information at: 578-4806.

Tetanus

It looks perfectly safe, doesn't it? Public Health officials have just warned us that there could be Tetanus lurking in that wholesome-looking earth. The tetanus bacteria live in soil, and they can infect unsuspecting gardeners through even a tiny cut or nick in the skin. Once they get into the bloodstream they can cause lockjaw. Trust me, you don't want to get lockjaw.

The good news - tetanus is easy to prevent. One booster shot every 10 years and we are good to go. When was your last shot? If it was more than 10 years ago, or if you can't remember, it's best to get a booster. You can ask a Public Health Nurse, or your doctor for a Tetanus booster and be up to date in no time.

If you want more information, you can check here: www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/ccdrw-rmtch/2008/ccdrw-rmtcs2108-eng.php

Happy and healthy gardening!

Rain!

It finally rained today! South-western Manitoba has had a fairly dry windy spring so far, and the top couple of inches of soil has been pretty dry since opening day. On the long weekend it clouded over and a few drops fell, but not enough to get the seeds sprouting. A few of us gardeners have been hauling water form home to feed our first tender transplants, and others have been hoping for rain.

A hose has been set up to bring the water supply closer to the middle of the garden plots. This will be a great help once the water is turned on! As a few of us have noticed this week, the main water supply is not yet functioning. Karen assures us that she is looking into it - as far as she knows it should be turned on, so we'll have to see what the City workers say...

In the meanwhile, the weather came through and supplied a steady day of rain to soak the soil.

Encouraging words from Brian

Brian ended the garden club meeting with some encouraging words: "All in all this land's been good to us. At the very least, it's brought all of us together. And now we can be good to it."

When I spoke to him later, he elaborated: "I'm a farmer. When you work the land, you put something of yourself into it. And while you're working, it gets inside of you too. "

This week at the garden, there are subtle signs of people working the land. A few small transplants have appeared, and the ground has been hoed into small hills or neat rows. Row markers have appeared - some standard, and some creative - as a sign that the 26th and Maryland gardeners are putting their hope and faith in the land here.

Opening Day!

May 15 was the opening day of our community garden at 26 and Maryland. Healthy Brandon arranged for the ground to be tilled, and brought in some new top soil to get us started. All the gardeners met in the field to sign up for plots, find out what's going on this year, and stake their claims!

Karen from Healthy Brandon got us started with our contracts to sign, and Nancy filled us in on the improvements that are coming. With the help of a Green Grant from Walmart, we will be able to add some raised beds to our plot, and bring the water closer to the plots. By the end of the summer we hope to have an above-ground irrigation system with soaker hoses to deliver the water gently to the roots where it's needed. This will help keep our water bills down as we won't lose as much to evaporation!

Once we had all agreed to the rules, Nancy and Karen officially declared the gardening season open!

Brian got out his measuring tape to divide out the plots, and found we were short a few feet from what we thought we had. Instead of 64 feet across, we were barely at 60... so some adjustments were made. We still have our centre walkway, however, and each plot only lost about a foot from what we were promised. The ground plots are now about 14" by 14". We gardeners may be Canadian but we still garden in feet and inches! Everyone pitched in to string out the plots, or at least supervise. How many people does it take to stretch a string and drive in a few stakes?

By 8:30 it was all marked out and the claims were staked. There was some last minute wheeling and dealing as people exchanged ground plots for raised beds, and the raised bed locations were moved around to improve access to the water. Good thing they're not built yet, or we couldn't move them!

As the sun went down, a few keen gardeners were still on their plots, laying out boundary lines and planting the first few rows of radishes. The early bird may get the worm, but the early gardener gets the first radish!