moving our greenhouse

if you recall, last year at about this time, we put up a temporary greenhouse. temporary as in we used plastic instead of glass and made it of a rather light construction. well, today, we decided to move that greenhouse to another spot - on more of a foundation.

we thought it would be a matter of loosening it, picking it up and moving it, but it turned out to be a little bit more complicated than that. and one branch of the mirabella tree was sacrificed. because that thing was a whole lot heavier than we thought.

husband got to use all of his inner engineering skills and we were thankful that the big girls were here this weekend, because we definitely needed some extra muscles.

we only moved it about 10-12 meters, but we had to go precisely between the mirabella and the currant bushes before we could turn it onto the new foundation. as you can see, some of the plastic didn't fare that well over the winter, but we've got a couple of new rolls, so we'll get that on in the next few days.

for the new foundation, husband repurposed some bricks from a wall we no longer want to have. i love when he does stuff like that. it feels a little bit modern-day little house on the prairie - making do with what you have.

we had tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and eggplants in the greenhouse last year, but it felt a little bit like it never really got going. i think the dirt we got to fill into the boxes wasn't that great (it can be hit or miss down at the dirt guy) and we didn't fertilize it enough.

it also felt surprisingly cramped for being 5 meters long and 3 meters wide. we hope having it up on a foundation helps that - it already feels more spacious.

eventually, we are still going to be building a "real" greenhouse - brick foundation, glass windows. and when that comes, this one will become the cucumber greenhouse. another thing we learned last year was that tomatoes and cucumbers don't really like the same climate, so neither one did stunningly well, tho' we had both cucumbers and tomatoes - they never really came on properly and really produced. i don't know if moving it will help that, but it will help when we get the real greenhouse built.

we got a load of really good, rich compost soil from our local recycling station and we hope that it helps to have better soil this year. we're going to configure the beds a bit differently, to make it easier to weed and get to the plants.

this gardening thing is a process. and i don't always know what to learn from it, but it feels positive to be tweaking what we did and trying to improve it. i want to utilize the greenhouse longer into the autumn and early winter this year for salads and such. that i didn't try at all last year - it seemed like it was so hard to keep it going that i gave up rather early. i'll keep you posted.

dreaming of an herbarium

at judith's recommendation, i've been reading ellis peters' cadfael novels. they're set in 12th century england and the main character is brother cadfael, a monk who came to the cloth late in life after having been to the crusades. he solves murders and other mysteries and is an appealing character who is a bit of a rebel but no one ever really catches him at it. but most fascinating about him is that he uses all kinds of natural herbs and plants for healing. and he has a wonderful little herbarium in the abbey gardens. he uses it as a refuge and of course, a place to keep his stores and make his tinctures and medicines. i think i read the books as much for the descriptions of this magical place as anything else.

i told husband yesterday that i want an herbarium of my own in the garden. and you know with husband, it's never that far between talk and action and his eyes lit up at the idea. he was soon mumbling to himself about roofing materials and how much ventilation the building would require to keep the herbs dry.

the steps i can take towards this magical herbarium already now are lists of herbs to plant in my expanded herb garden. i've got the usual suspects, like parsley, 3 kinds of thyme, rosemary, sage, tarragon, coriander, oregano, lavender and marjoram. there's quite a lot of wild chamomile around the garden as well.  but i want to add some flowers - like echinacea. and i have a whole lot to learn, as i figure out what else to plant - both edible and medicinal.

so with learning in mind, i went looking for herb-related resources and found henriette's herbal homepage, which seems to be an absolute wealth of information. last year, i bought the amusingly-titled grow your own drugs, but will admit that i didn't do that much with it.

i love the notion of using less medicine and more natural remedies. i love the idea that some of it could be foraged. i've also found a great foraging resource in the first ways blog, which i also follow on facebook. (i'm increasingly finding facebook useful and not only social, are you?).

i can't wait for spring to come in earnest so i can get planting!

i'd love any suggestions you may have of useful sites or suggestions for what i should plant! please share!!

Some inspiration

Today I found Peak moment television, here one can find all kinds of interviews on various subjects. Some of the titles are:

• Managing the 21st Century's sustainability crises
• Your money, your life, your happiness
• Four acres and independence
• Your personal baker
• And several interviews on community-gardens and gardening.

With a click here you can start browsing around, when you don't have the time right this minute you can always find the link at our linkpage under eye-opener.

Enjoy yourself.

Elizabeth

already dreaming of next year's garden

200 new strawberries

our gardening year is winding down. we've just had 4-5 days of sunshine and warm temperatures (in the 70s), which breathed a bit of life into the tomatoes and eggplants in the greenhouse, so they're not as done as i thought they were, but they soon will be. we're also hoping that the sunshine will prove to have ripened the sweetcorn so we can actually eat a few ears of that before the season is completely over. but largely, the garden is in its last stages.

waiting for the corn

big successes were strawberries, raspberries, artichokes, kale (until some kind of caterpillars took it), swiss chard (which strangely was right next to the kale and the worms ignored it), borlotti beans, broad beans and runner beans. my herb bed, which is over closer to the house, did very well - apparently cool, rainy weather is perfect parsley and sage weather, as my parsley and sage have been phenomenal.

less successful were the patchy carrots (tho' i'm feeding fresh carrots to the bunnies every morning these days). not a single beet came up, nor a single leaf of spinach (i planted that twice!) only a single kohlrabi grew, our brassica bed resulted in 3 small heads of white cabbage and tho' the red cabbages are leafy and lush, they're not actually forming proper heads. the broccoli was only enough for a few spindles in the odd stir-fry and the cauliflower, which started off beautiful went strange and black - possibly because of the wet, cool weather. my onions are small and the tops died off quite early, tho' some of them are growing new tops no (which i can't explain). the onions themselves are ok when you pull one to use in a salad or to cook with, but they should have been much better. some of this, i don't know what to learn from it other than to say that we'll just try again next year.

kind of a lot of grass grew up in the paths!

in the greenhouse, we had enough tomatoes for salads, but not enough to can any. the aubergine had loads of blooms, but i think the cool temperatures prevented them from really growing into something, tho' we've had enough to be hooked on home grown aubergine as opposed to store-bought.  plus, some of the kinds i bought were actually petite varieties, so the size didn't matter that much.  the cucumbers produced well, after we saved them from the aphids, but with a cucumber-addicted child in the house, there weren't enough for pickles.  it's partially because we had a cool, wet summer and partially because we didn't have the greenhouse up 'til the end of may, so we missed quite a lot of the growing season. next year, it will be better.

black plastic on the left is where next year's garden will be.

we have super sandy soil and while it has great drainage, it seems like the nutrients quickly wash away as well. we conducted a few experiments, putting horse poo only on one squash and not another and learned that horse poo is KEY. we've prepared a large area for next year's garden - loads and loads of horse poo went into freshly-turned soil and then were covered in black plastic to prevent weeds.  luckily, our neighbors have eleven horses and love to be rid of their manure pile.  husband has built an elaborate composting area, so we'll have compost to add to the soil next year as well.

the new compost staging area

but i find i'm already thinking about what to plant next year. i want to try some new things and do better at some of the old ones. we planted 200 new strawberry plants, so i'm going to be busy making marmalade next june. i want more herbs and i want to try some unusual things, like mustard and horseradish. i'm also feeling pretty inspired looking around the chef's garden website. and despite our dark winter, i would like to try to extend the season a bit by planting lettuces and things inside the greenhouse. hmm, maybe i'd better go pull some weeds in there...

how we saved our cucumbers

these little puppies...phytoseiulus persimilis - or spider mite predators - have rescued our cucumbers from blight and all four plants are producing again!! they're a natural biological, organic and safe deterrent against that nasty little spider mite that makes the little baby cukes turn yellow and fall off before they even get a chance to grow.

if the leaves of the cucumbers have some white residue on them (check the underside), you probably have spider mites and need some of these little predators...they come in a little vial in the mail and you sprinkle them on a few of the leaves of each plant and they spread out and do their work, quickly, efficiently and seemingly like magic.

now if i could find something to use against the little green worms that are eating up my tuscan kale...

garden lessons

i suppose we're at the halfway mark with the garden and it seemed like time for some assessment.

we had a month-long strawberry harvest. i learned from it that i am a horrible judge of when the strawberries are finishing, as i kept thinking, "this must be the last time i'll pick this many berries" and then the next time, i'd pick two buckets instead of just one. we ate strawberries every evening and in many different ways and i put up a dozen jars of strawberry marmalade (several quite large) and had a big jar of strawberry porridge (jordbær grød) in the fridge that lasted for a week's worth of desserts. and we never bought a single strawberry from the grocery store. so i think we can safely say that the strawberries were a success. the next step with the strawberries is to do a thorough weeding and then prepare to take the little fledgling strawberries for new beds next spring. this we do by digging in a little plastic pot below the runners, settling their roots into some good potting soil and encouraging them to take root. in the spring, we dig up the little pots and move them to a new bed.

as for other things, we haven't yet begun to havest in earnest. our weather has been rainy and a bit cool, so some of the expected lush growth hasn't yet happened. nearly every day, tho', i can add tuscan kale to my dishes, as it's thriving in our cool, rainy weather. we will soon have more broad beans and runner beans and borlotti beans than we know what to do with (i'm already planning on canning them various ways). and the raised bed of brassicas is looking good and the cabbages finally appear to be forming heads of cabbage - we were a bit worried for awhile that they were just going to keep making leaves. i've been harvesting small stalks of broccoli for stir frys for a couple of weeks.

moving our rhubarb didn't seem to hold it back and all of the plants have come back and are producing in earnest. you can get some ideas as to what i've done with it here. we now have three rows of asparagus going - the row you can see on the left was asparagus we bought in pots last autumn - it should be ready to begin harvesting in two more years (one lesson from gardening is patience). there are two additional rows of asparagus i started from seed back in march. i didn't read the instructions on the packet, which made it sound quite difficult, but just planted them in little pots. every single of one of them came up and despite their tiny stature, they are all thriving very well, even after i planted them out.  so the lesson in that - don't be scared away by difficult-sounding planting processes, just jump in and try it.  it will likely be 5 years before we can begin to harvest from those, but i'm hoping the wait is worth it.

we had a number of things that just didn't come up. primarily beets and spinach and kohlrabi and parsnips. our carrots are extremely patchy. what's frustrating is that we don't really know what lesson to take from the experience. was the soil too cold when we planted? did birds eat the seeds? did we not plant deep enough? too deep? not enough fertilizer? not enough water? too much? is our soil too sandy?  i would love to learn from the experience, but feel that i don't know what the lesson is. i find that a bit frustrating.

our artichokes, which are a perennial, are doing very well. they took off like mad after husband put a load of horse poo around them. you have to be careful doing that, as it can burn them, but the artichokes seemed to love it! as to the eggplants in the greenhouse - we can see that their roots have reached down to the layer of horse poo and have taken off like mad.

our sweetcorn is pretty patchy as well, as you can see in this photo, but it just hasn't been warm enough for corn. we do think part of it is that one brand of seeds - Albertine's Have - were duds, as i think that all of the seeds which didn't do what we expected were that brand. in all, i think the garden should be farther ahead and more lush than it is and i'm not sure how to ensure that next year. we're talking about more raised beds for the more delicate items as one measure. more pre-planting indoors and in the greenhouse to prepare for planting out. we will work more horse poo into the soil this autumn - actually, that yellow-ish patch to the right (i just mowed down the tall weeds) will be next year's garden and we're soon going to be plowing in some manure in the coming weeks to prepare for that. another thing we're going to do is more continuous planting. planting new rounds of salads and radishes and things and daring to replant what didn't come up. we definitely haven't done enough of that this year.

what lessons is your garden teaching you? and if you have any ideas as to what lessons i should be learning from our garden failures, i'm all ears!!

a temporary greenhouse

we're still a couple of years away from being able to build our "real" greenhouse, so husband decided to make us a temporary one. he actually built it of such sturdy materials that i suspect it will stand for longer than our regular house - and maybe only need its plastic changed out in a couple of years.

our climate is such that the growing season is very short - too short for tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and eggplants to grow out in the regular garden like they can other places. our light and warmth simply don't last long enough for that. so if you want such crops, you have to have a greenhouse.

over the past week, while it rained, husband constructed the skeleton of the greenhouse in his workshop and over in the big barn (where he was supposed to be working on matilde's new stall, but we won't go there).

he revealed his inner swede, preparing i nearly ikea-style, so it could be popped together and easily fastened - he even drilled holes where the nails would go.

he had prepared the ground in a different spot, but we realized that spot got an awful lot of shade, so we moved it to a sunnier place, next to the raspberry canes and beside the raised bed of brassicas.

we covered it in heavy 20mm plastic, fastening it down well, as we've got awfully windy conditions around here most of the time.  it's 5 meters long and about 3 meters wide.

the frame is so sturdy, we may eventually put in real glass or perhaps plexiglass, but the plastic should last a couple of seasons and create good growing conditions for our delicate plants.

we're looking forward to it, as we've had a cucumber scare here in europe - with cucumbers infected with e-coli bacteria killing ten people in germany and making countless others seriously ill. what's worrying is that they know the cucumbers came from spain, but they can't figure out how they got the bacteria! i suppose having one's own veggies is no guarantee, but at least you know how they've been tended.

we're looking forward to getting all of the plants in during this long holiday weekend ahead (we've got thursday and friday off). husband will bring in new dirt and we'll plant directly in the ground.  more photos of that when we've got it all planted!

what are you doing in the garden these days?

a little bit of steampunk in the garden

back in the depths of winter, husband decided he had to have one of these old planet jr. planters from the early part of the last century. and if at all possible, he wanted a cultivator too. so we began a search online. we quickly realized there weren't any here in denmark (they were a US phenomenon, after all). husband had originally seen it on DR's bonderøv (bumpkin) - a program that follows a young danish man in his quest for self-sufficiency and going back to basics. but frank, the bonderøv, is a t.v. guy, so people send him stuff. we knew we'd have to track one down ourselves.

many ebay sellers refuse to ship abroad, especially if it's a rusty old hunk of metal you're asking them to ship, so even tho' we saw several of the coveted pieces of machinery on ebay, we couldn't bid on them. but, my sister could, so we enlisted her help (although it may have confirmed her in her opinion of our insanity).

one of the things that worried us about buying one on ebay was that you wouldn't get to look at it before it was sent. what if it was all rusted shut and unusable?  so my sister placed an ad on craig's list, saying she wanted a planet jr. no. 3 seeder. she got an answer almost immediately and was able to go look at it in person before buying it for us.

then, my sister (who still thought we were insane), photographed it, carefully took it apart, boxed it in two boxes (one for the handles and one for the actual machine) and sent it to us. our postwoman would have commiserated with my sister as to our insanity as she lugged it to our door. but it even made it through customs without us being charged anything for it. apparently you can import a rather significant quantity of rusty metal without incurring duty.

we used it this week to plant beans (these are borlottis) and carrots and beets and peas. it was a little bit challenging getting to know it and get the right seed distances for the right seeds (seeds must be quite different now, as the hole sizes suggested on the lid are WAY off). but in all, it was very fun and worth all of the effort.

and even children can use it, no problem. and look how it has a clever little attachment that stakes out your next row while you're planting the previous one. then, you just follow the line it made. very efficient.

oh, and we did get a cultivator as well:

the cultivator came from ebay - as there were less things that could be wrong with it. its handles weren't in such good shape, but perhaps next winter, husband will make new ones in his workshop. and in the meantime, it's the perfect size for weeding between the rows.

those of you who live in the US and have big gardens, check your local flea markets, i'm sure these beauties are around and it's so much fun to use a bit of history. i love feeling both connected to the soil and to the ingenuity of past generations. plus, it digs a hole, plants the seeds for you at the right distance from one another and covers them up, all while it's marking the next row for you. very helpful object. and just a little bit fetching in its steampunk design.

strawberries & rhubarb

when you have a new place, it's always an adventure to see what's coming up around the garden, planted there by those who came before. last year, when we arrived, we saw that there were loads of strawberries. and we heard from neighbors that those who lived here before had actually sold strawberries. we weren't so interested in doing that, but we were interested in saving some of the shoots that the strawberries send out and thereby getting new (and free) strawberry plants. so last year, that was pretty much the extent of our efforts. we cleared a long row and tucked those little shoots into small plastic pots that we embedded into the sandy soil. now it's time to move all of those new little plants with their fine roots over to a new bed. and so we did that this week.

we prepared a bed, taking as many of the weed roots out as possible and turning in lots of horse poo (tho' not too much, because it is rich and can actually burn your plants). we have extremely sandy soil, which makes for great drainage, but isn't the most nutrient-rich soil, so fertilizing is important. we laid down a sheet of black fiber to try to help against the weeds (we have persistent crab grass), then cut holes in for the strawberries and moved the little plants (my hands were dirty and i failed to photograph this part). as you can see, we've stretched a plastic tunnel across it, hoping to both protect from the chilly nights that are yet to come (tho' strawberries can actually tolerate quite a lot of cold) and hoping to hurry them up a little bit - hopefully by a couple of weeks! we have another even longer bed that's not covered, so it's an experiment in seeing whether the tunnel helps and how much.

rhubarb hiding in the grass

while we were at it, we decided to move some of the rhubarb that were here when we bought the place, over to a more suitable place near the other edible perennials (like asparagus).  i thought last summer when we arrived that there were 12 rhubarb plants, but it proved there were far more, especially as we we were able to separate some obviously very old roots.

ancient, well-established rhubarb root

seeing these old and very established roots was somehow so satisfying. i felt a little bit like i was next in a long historical line. weird, how seeing a root provoked that feeling in me. a very base and primordial feeling of being very close to the earth. wonderful.

row 1 of the rhubarb (and husband with his precise lines)

and now there are two rows of rhubarb next to a long row of asparagus. they'll no doubt be quite relieved not to have to compete with all that grass anymore. tho' they'll probably be a bit shocked by their move, rhubarb is extremely hardy and  will undoubtedly come back very quickly.

and that's what happened in our sustainable life this week.

seeds of contentment

tho' there has been quite a heavy frost on the ground the past couple of mornings, it won't be long before that's gone and our planting can start in earnest. so, i did a happy dance of joy today when my seed order from thomson & morgan arrived in today's mail. quite a few of these can be started indoors for planting out in a month or so when the weather is warmer.

i focused on heritage varieties, but i also focused on the unusual and things that said they would grow well in our climate - like kale and others in the brassica family (brassica just sounds so much more posh than cabbage, doesn't it?). tomatoes and eggplants will be grown in the terrace, as our growing season this far north is too short for them out in the garden.

last weekend, i planted herbs in the new herb bed that husband constructed for me. i picked up thyme, oregano and sage at the grocery store, moved a couple of last year's thyme plants and then planted parsley and basil seeds inside of a little tunnel that will keep them warm and protected.

we also planted 225 willow sticks of different pretty varieties - from purple to yellow to red. i'm not sure i have any great ambition to weave baskets, but i will be able to, should the fancy strike. willow is such an amazing plant - fast growing - you can make beautiful, living fences of it or it will serve as part of your water rinsing unit if you, like, we do, have your own well and sewage installation. and if it looks pretty to boot, all the better.

what are you going to plant in your garden?

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oh, and have you heard about lovefre.sh?
the app of the local food revolution.

Sunday Morning Seeds

Every year has been a garden adventure for us.  After last years CSA experiment, we are actively dialing things in so that we can accommodate more families and reduce the performance anxiety a little.  B and I have spent our sunny Sunday morning referencing and cross referencing what seeds we have, what we need, how many to plant what beds to plant in, are there enough beds, how many days until each plant matures, and how to best time succession planting.  Whew!  This plan is like a dance, and not an elegant waltz, no it's like a head spinning polka.

So what we have ended up with is designating individual rows or for high yielding varieties a number of plants per family participating.  Then we will plant separately what we know we need for ourselves for fresh consumption, processing and storage.  We have decided upon 25 different types of produce subset into 45 different varieties.  This does not include the onions, potatoes, or lettuces that will also be planted.  I'm not sure whether to be excited or overwhelmed!  For many of the plants we will begin seeds in the basement this week.  Living as far North as we do and with the uncertainty of warmth in our summers, we are going to utilize some black landscape fabric to try to boost the possibility of having a good season for those warm weather plants.  With any luck, all of this planning will result in a full and prosperous season.  Now off to order seeds!  Have a great Sunday!