Blueberries

The garden centre at work is in full swing (although under cover right now due to the crappy weather) and they are selling some big pots of blueberries that look like they’re in decent condition.  I usually like to frequent the local garden centre but these were really inexpensive and I do need to worry about budgeting since I’m planning on splurging on apple trees later this week.  So I bought three bushes.  They’re highbush I believe and were in blossom. The flowers are fairly inconspicuous but quite pretty when you notice them.  

I’ve decided to put them in a little triangle formation on the northwest corner of the house.  They’ll get direct sun in the afternoon until early evening, which should be fine for the partial shade loving plants.  I also picked up a big bag of peat moss.  I’m trying to avoid peat based products since they’re fairly non-renewable but blueberries do need the acidity that comes with peat moss and it will also help counter balance the clay… so I’m making an exception. Once they’re in the ground all those pretty little blossoms will be plucked off to direct energy into the roots, so unfortunately no berries this year, but I’m hoping this year’s sacrifice pays off.  

I’ll post some pics after I put them in to show how it looks, so check back then.

Does anyone have any experience growing blueberries?  Any tips on planting/maintenance?  Leave me a comment.

Snow!

Nothing throws a wrench into my spring momentum like a day of snow. It’s not all that much and I’m sure it’ll be gone by this evening but still, snow. What a pain in the ass.

City Life

I love the city.  My city probably differs from what most people consider ‘city’.  It has less than a quarter of a million people and has a very small downtown.  I do not live ‘downtown’.  I do not live in a condo or a highrise.  I have an older city lot that I guess may have been the 20’s version of the suburb.  However, as far as this area goes I’m considered ‘in the city’.  I live less than a 15 minute walk from downtown.  I have all amenities within easy reach and my neighbourhood is mature.  Great trees, fantastic park nearby and the provincial legislature is visible from my front garden.  

On the flip side, I work in an area that is not so ‘city’.  Although it is within city limits as much as my area is it is much younger.  The denizens of that area have a much different idea of what a city is than those who live in my neighbourhood*.  It was established in probably the 60’s through 70’s.  It has a very consumeristic bias and is not very pedestrian friendly.  There are no landmark parks or pathways.  The patients I deal with are not the type of people I’d be friends with.  

I find it very striking to see the difference a few blocks can make in the makeup of a community.  By no means am I claiming I have hit up some utopia of social living… I’ve been here less than 3 years and less than a year in the current home.  But I am saying that I feel more at home in my area of the city than I ever would up where I work.  Those who have garages have them in the back lane, not out on the main road.  You can see the people and their front yards instead of an enormous port for people to park their cars in… effectively preventing them from stepping outside at all on their journey to and from work… or walmart.  My area has local shops with independent owners.  

I can feel a little more comfortable ripping up my plain grass lawn to plant a hedge, or god forbid… a vegetable garden.  Would I get away this in my area of work? Maybe… but I know the neighbours would hate it.  The girls I work with have grown up in the ‘newer’ areas of the city and constantly make digs at where I live, despite it being one of the most sought after neighbourhoods in the city.  These girls complain about having nowhere to park, feeling claustrophobic with all the elm trees and the ‘tacky’ old houses.  They can’t fathom why someone would want to live in an older home or near the lake which would stink in summer (for those of who know… it doesn’t anymore).  They don’t understand the benefit of having an eclectic neighbourhood where you can walk to where you want to go.  

I love where I live.  This may not be where I’ll be forever, but for now it feels more like home than any place has before.  I feel like I’m able to put down roots and find community here.  I want to nurture this plot of land that I have into something beautiful, not just for resale value but for the mutual benefit for my own sense of being and soul.  The heart of the city is really alive and I love being a part of it.  I feel inspired on my walks just soaking up the heritage and the hard work of those who have been here before me and that of my contemporaries.   I look forward to becoming even more involved with the community.  This is where I live.

Queen City Farmer – The Prequel

QCF is not the first blog I wrote.  I was previously on blogger and had a few difficulties with the site.  However I did do about 15 posts over there and instead of bringing them over to wordpress I decided to just link back to them.  It’s called Urban Pharmer.  Kind of a play on words since I’m a pharmacist.  Funny, I know.  Anyway, check it out, its all me and I can answer questions about those things on this blog too.  I may from time to time steal posts from there and republish them here… so I don’t think thats plagiarism.  

Anyway, enjoy!

Spring Garlic

The first of the spring planted garlic is up, er, well just barely.  I swear that green must belong to garlic! 

I'm sure its not a weed

 

 

This is my first experience growing garlic and since I couldn’t wait until later to fall grow it I thought I’d try my hand at spring sowing.  I didn’t really have much area to put it in and didn’t think I’d have room in the four raised beds in the back yard so I experimentally stuck the cloves of one bulb in the empty area between asparagus crowns.  I was to later read that garlic and asparagus aren’t the best of friends but I think things will be okay for one year.

The variety I planted was an unnamed hardneck variety found at the local garden centre.  I’ve saved the other two bulbs in the bag for fall planting and hopefully will put them in a better site than where these spring ones went.  As I mentioned it is currently occupying the empty areas of the asparagus bed.  That particular plot only gets direct light starting at around 12:30 but goes until roughly 8:30 or so.  I’m hoping to get a few bulbs out of it by the end of summer but won’t be disappointed if I don’t.  Right now I’m just excited that I can see signs of life!

Rhubarb

Over the mother’s day weekend I made the brief trip out to my hometown to have supper with my parents.  I also had a secondary motive — bring back plants.  Rhubarb and strawberry plants are fairly abundant on my parents property.  There are a few large rhubarbs that we had taken from my grandparents yard after they passed on and some in the empty lot next to the house.

Although I originally wanted to take some divisions from my grandparents plants, for sentimental reasons I guess, the little plants in the empty lot were the ones I chose.  First of all, they were easier to dig up because they were in the middle of nowhere and I didn’t want to hack up the other ones that were in the middle of a bed.  Second, I felt bad for them; they were in a north facing exposure with little direct light and were buried under years of fallen leaves.  Those plants were neglected and needed a little bit of help.  And third, I recall those plants having nice, juicy red stalks while the other ones were always a bit more stringy and green.

Armed with a spade and a few left over gallon pots from the hedge planting last year I hacked those two plants into roughly 6 pieces.  They popped out of the ground with little effort but had some hella thick roots on them.  I shoved them into the pots and wrapped them in plastic bags to retain moisture on the trip back.  Now I’m a big fan of leaving places as good or better than they are and spreading the wealth around, so I didn’t totally ravage the rhubarb patches.  I left a few root pieces in each hole and firmed the earth back around them.  In a year or two they’ll be good as new and producing all the more for it.

Now this trip was a little spur of the moment so I didn’t have any rhubarb beds planned back in the city.  What to do with six rhubarb plants?  I kind of wanted to plant them beside the asparagus because they’re both perennials and it seemed logical.  That spot, however, is fairly shaded by some enormous pine trees until about 12:30 and I know that rhubarb does best in full sun.  The fact that I also really like the look of rhubarb, with its thick red stalks and wide, crinkly leaves made me put it right in the front of the yard where there is a gap in the hedge.  I plan to put a path through the gap eventually and a huge rhubarb on either side will look fantastic.   The remaining plants went back in the shade area near the asparagus, so it’ll be a nice comparison to see just how important all day sun is to these plants.  

Holes for all were dug roughly the same.  The sunny area had a nice, well drained loam that I augmented with leaves and rotted manure and the shady area was a thicker clay so I added even more leaves, manure and some previously removed sod to add organic material.  Soil was replaced to the crowns and a thorough water went on each plant.

The result — fantastic.  I know these plants are really small (they were on a north facing location, remember) but they’ll really take off here, I can feel it.  Plus they’re the first food plant I’ve put into my yard that I can actually see and not just try to remember where I put the seeds! 

Now I just need to plant those strawberries and we’ll be making pie in no time.   

If you have any other good rhubarb recipes shoot me a comment.

Horseradish

I’ve always been a fan of horseradish with my steak or roast beef.  I’m sure it goes with a hell of a lot more things that I’ve never even tried.  Well come fall I’ll be looking for some good ideas.  Along with my potatoes I planted two horseradish roots.  They’re not quite in full sun, but in the shadow of the chokecherry and lilac bushes.  As mentioned in the last post horseradish is supposedly a good companion for potatoes and I had the space anyway. 

They went in easy.  The soil I had worked over was loose and rich.  As per instructions on various websites I planted them about 2 inches deep on a slight angle.  The roots look similar to a dandelion root and from pictures of mature plants the leaves look a little ‘weedy’ as well.  

I should expect shoots in a few weeks and can harvest sometime this fall but will taste its best after the first hard frost.  It can apparently become invasive if left in the ground and care should be taken to limit its spread.  I can’t think of any other ‘weed’ that is as useful as this, well maybe a rampant raspberry patch.  

To prepare horseradish it should first be grated (which can irritate the eyes and nasal patches apparently) and then mixed with a bit of vinegar and cream for creamed horseradish or with a little bit of veg oil to make a spicier version.  Maybe a delicious addition to some of its mashed neighbours, the potato?  

Have you grown horseradish? What is your favourite way to prepare it? Leave me a comment!

Ref:  Herb Expert UK

Potatoes

 I’ve planted my potatoes for the year!

Originally I didn’t think the little yard would have enough room for the space hog plants but it appears that I was underestimating the production capacity of this place.  Against the back fence there was originally mad amounts of brush and weeds; suckers from the lilac and chokecherry bushes were everywhere.  Last fall we cut down the tallest of the weeds and hacked up a bunch of roots but left it at that.  The area is still occupied by the chokecherry bush and the lilac.  Both have been heavily pruned and are more open and airy than they were last  year.  I’m hoping that despite their proximity that I can still grow a decent crop of delicious tubers.  There are also a few old tree trunks that are in the way but most of the roots have been hacked up. 

On Monday I had a day off and decided something needed to be done.  I grabbed the fork and hand dug the whole patch, maybe 150 sq feet? I’m bad with space estimations but thats what my back felt like afterward.  Anyway, what was underneath was a slightly clay type soil with ample organic matter (or so it seems) with a nice dark colour and rich smell.  I was able to get the whole root systems of the resident dandelion population and removed the roots from quite a few trees that were cutting through the area as well as numerous bottle caps, broken glass pieces and, curiously, a large, heavy metal plate.  After all that it fluffed up quite nicely and raked it down into some large, irregular beds.  

After making some trenches in the bed (roughly 8-10 inches deep) I planted the back row with some spoiled potatoes my mother had given me, I believe they are probably Norland, as that is the most common type in this neck of the woods.  The second row was some certified seed Norland and that was followed by a couple rows of Russian Blues.

Fantastic looking potatoes the Russian Blue.  I cut one in half to get the most out of it and it was a dark, rich blue all the way through with a bit of a lighter border near the skin.  After a light tamp down with about six inches of soil a light sprinkling of some blood/bone meal I gave them a good soaking to get them well on their way. 

I also planted two little patches of horseradish at the ‘entrance’ to the potato patch.  I’ve read that horseradish acts as a companion to potatoes by increasing their disease resistance.  Kind of vague but I’m interested in trying a lot of companion combinations and I really wanted to try growing my own horseradish too.  

Now to those of you thinking “Its too early to plant potatoes in  your zone, the last frost date is still 2-3 weeks away!” I respond,  yeah, it might be on the early side, but I have heard of people doing it this early.  Potatoes take about 2 weeks to emerge from the soil and can apparently take a light frost.  If anything nasty is predicted I’ll mulch over them with some leaves or sheets.  I’ve put lots of things in earlier than I’ve ever done before.  I’m taking a bit of a risk, but I’m hoping that I can pull it off.  Fresh radishes by Victoria Day?  Damn rights.

What do you think of my idea?  Too early? Any suggestions? Leave me a comment

Welcome

Welcome to my new blog ‘Farming in the City’.  I wanted a place on the internet to chronicle my progress and stories of converting my old 1928 home from a neglected home and plot of land  to a productive food garden and more sustainable place to live.  

I’m currently in the thick of planting seeds and preparing beds that I didn’t get around to last fall so I hope to take some pictures and document the changes I’ve made thus far.  

Come back often and leave comments when you can!