June Tally: $6.75

Since there were peas, there have been more peas and more lettuce, and raspberries and strawberries for grazing. (Okay, there have been two ripe strawberries and a handful of raspberries so far, but it's a start.) Some of the radishes have been all greens and very little below the ground. Any ideas? I heard that radishes are one of the easiest things to grow, so what's going on?

Between the peas and lettuce, I'm estimating we've reaped $6.75 of harvest so far. Pretty minimal, but it's still early, and I'm a rookie.

Finally all of the veggies I started inside are out, and potting them and planting them all was quite a bit of work. There are 5 varieties of tomatoes, two plants of each; one in a pot on the patio, and the other in the garden. It's a bit of an experiment to see where they grow better, and I got tired of buying soil for pots. (Note to self, must learn how to re-use this soil for next year so I don't have to re-buy every year.) There are 6 sweet pepper plants (gypsy) and a few jalapenos. Some in pots, some in the garden. The wee little cucumber is out in a pot, and hope it gets a growth spurt soon.

Oh! And the sweet peas are climbing up their trellis and flowering. Sweet peas remind me of home and growing up. I don't know if we had them every year, but we had them a few times at least, and I really like them.

Here are some patio pictures:

Suddenly there were Peas

It seems like only days ago that I noticed the first flowers on the bush peas, then suddenly there were peas. And they totally caught me by surprise. I don't know why, but I imagined it would be weeks longer before the peas grew. How satisfying after various setbacks involving earwigs, slugs, snails, and other unsolved mysteries (like the beets germinated, but they are totally stalled out, almost no growth beyond the first set of leaves. Why?).

The peas are the second harvest (I picked two today, just for a taste), but the first was actually last week, and I didn't manage to post pictures at the time. I snipped off some lettuce, picked one radish, and some of the first borage leaves (the borage, by the way, is going great gadzooks now, happily blooming flower after flower). I put it all together into a simple yet totally satisfying salad.

Garden Aesthetics

I may not have anything to eat yet, but the garden is beautiful to look at right now. I just put down fresh mulch around the garden beds, and it's so aesthetically pleasing I can't get enough of it. There also is enough greenery now to make it actually look like a garden rather than a patch of dirt. I think I can pick some lettuce leaves and radish any time now, but the spinach was a total dud going to seed before it produced any useful leaves.


Looking at other people's gardens is perhaps even more thrilling than looking at my own, and I just had a cyber tour of Sustainable Eats garden in Seattle. Then there's Garden Therapy in Vancouver and the before and after pictures. Oh why didn't I take a before picture here when it was a mound of dirt, garbage, and the full range of invasive species?

From earwigs to slugs and snails

The European earwigs appear to be gone, and now the slugs are eating my pea leaves and the snails are eating the dahlia I bought. I am coping with slugs and snails and feel that I will pull through this latest invasion without too much of my spirit crushed. It is heartening to hear that expert gardeners also experience losses and setbacks like the dying cucumbers and pole beans that didn't come well in the modern victory garden. I made a trap for the slugs in an old yogurt container filled with yeasty water and found it dug out and overturned by my suspected feline trouble-maker. I put a ring of crushed egg shells around the dahlia and it seems to have kept the snails away last night. Either than or they didn't bother coming back because they'd already completely defoliated the thing and even nibbled on the flower.

Otherwise things in the garden are coming along, slowly with the cool weather. Lettuce should be ready to pick for a small salad soon.

I may not have mentioned yet that we have a giant walnut tree in the yard. As a result of dealing with the harvest last fall, there are cast off walnuts pretty much everywhere, being collected with leaf debris and used as mulch, or tossed in the compost and also ending up the the garden. So now we have little walnut trees popping up everwhere. I've put three in pots to grow them just as a fun experiment, but the rest I have to pull up. Check it out.

Another lovely surprise is the first borage flower today. Thanks for the plant Sonja.

Lawn Treasures

I've turned my focus to flowers this past week. The zinnias I planted outdoors over a month ago barely have their second set of leaves, but the ones I planted indoors more recently are getting huge. When the seed packet gives you the option of planting directly outdoors or starting indoors, they seem neutral on the topic, not giving you an advice one way or the other. How misleading! Oh I have much to learn.

I have poppies popping up outside (free seeds at the community garden), marigolds that survived the earwig rampage of destruction about to bloom, and then I went on a wee shopping spree at Buckerfields on the weekend. Lavender, a dahlia, status, allysum, and heliotrope (the last two for the shady patio in the back. Oh, and the sweet peas I planted ages ago are about six inches tall now, and we installed a trellis on the sunny patio for them to grow up.

But pictured below, are the tiniest, cutest little pansies that I found in the middle of the lawn, managing to flower between mowings to announce their presence. I quickly extracted them from the lawn and planted them in a flower bed. Aren't they amazing? There are two plants, and they're each about 3 inches tall and have lots of blooms.

In vegetable news, I believe I eradicated those European earwigs with my traps of beer and insecticidal spray, either that or they just finished up on their own and died or moved on. Hard to tell. They got 2 broccolis and 5 marigolds, and severely damaged all the carrots and radishes. I'm ready to put that behind me though, and think it's nearly time to plant another row of lettuce, spinach and carrots.

European earwig goes on a rampage of destruction

Oh I was supposed to have more successes than failures, right? I was supposed to have an easy, productive and rewarding first year at the garden to give me the enthusiasm to face the trials and tribulations ahead, right? Apparently the European earwig had different ideas.

It's been about a week since I first noticed something missing. Something being an entire marigold plant (a little one that I'd just planted outside after WEEKS of nurturing it under the growlight). Then the next day another one gone, and the next day another. Since I'd only planted three in that little spot, I guess I thought when they were done with those three marigolds that would be it. Nope. Then the jumped the retaining wall and started on the next two. Saturday morning we went away sailing for the long weekend, and in a last ditch effort to save the biggest and last remaining marigold, I put a toilet paper role around it. At this point I figured it was rodents chewing the plants). Well that did absolutely nothing to keep the leaf chewing at bay.



In fact, now that I know it's the European earwig (or at least it's the best match on this website), I've realized the toilet paper role actually attracted them rather than kept them away. At least it allowed me to figure out what was going on, because when I took the toilet paper roll away the dirt moved and I found these.

In the meantime, they got the carrots, broccoli and radishes, and may be responsible for some chews in the beets and spinach. They seem to have left the lettuce, peas and cilantro alone, if that's any consolation.

Oh and some neighbourhood pet left a big poop in the spinach. Where is the justice?

Well I am not going to let the European earwig get the better of me, so I have laid traps, as the helpful information from McGill University told me to do. Traps of beer. That's right. I thought that was a better first option compared to making a "bug juice" of blended earwigs and water to spray on the other earwigs.

Not all is lost, but my spirit is dampened. Has anyone dealt with these bugs before? Do you think I have it right? Are these indeed European earwigs?

Hypothesis #1: Starting seeds may not be worth it

I didn't even question my plans to get a grow light and start all my seeds indoors as part of becoming a vegetable gardener. That's until I see all these sales this time of year at the nurseries, and how cheaply you can buy a six-pack of this or that, and how much bigger these bedding plants are than the ones I've been nursing in the basement or the windowsill for weeks.

I sowed carrot, pea, lettuce, radish, spinach and beet seeds all directly outside, and that seems to make sense. But the broccoli, cabbage, peppers, tomatoes, cucumber, sage, basil, marigolds and zinnias (impulse seed buy) are all being nurtured indoors. With a little garden like mine, I only need a few of each of these veggies, and there's no way I'll use a whole seed pack. Lets say I want 4 tomato plants, well I can probably buy those at the nursery for little more than the pack of seeds would cost, they'll be bigger than the ones I've started because they're grown by the pros (or maybe fertilized like crazy?), I wouldn't have to spend the time nurturing them, and I would save on electricity use because I won't need the grow light.

So why did I assume that starting my own seeds would be better? Partly I wanted to learn how, but I also figured it would be cheaper, and didn't account for the fact that my plants would be half the size of those you can buy in the nursery. I probably also felt very clever and proud of myself for doing it all from scratch. Perhaps a little bit of ego was involved, like buying plants at the nursery is for lazy people or something. But I'm just not sure my garden is big enough to really make it worthwhile. I spent about $50 on seeds this year, didn't empty most of the packs, and I think I could buy a lot of bedding plants for that.

I'm definitely going to buy my one zucchini plant at the nursery. I've been repeatedly warned that I only need one zucchini plant or we will be drowning in them!

On the other hand, I got 5 varieties of heritage tomato seeds for Christmas, and I probably couldn't buy them as bedding plants in a nursery.

Bees and Blossoms

I had a serious thinning session on the weekend which left me dizzy but satisfied, and I've tentatively planted some of the tomatoes outside, but other than that things are just growing along.

Here are some pictures of strawberry and raspberry blossoms, and the mason bee house (and one bee in the picture)

The Cyber-Gardener

Well why wouldn't there be zillions of gardening resources on the Internet? Of course there are. And there's even an app for that.

There's a Seattle mom blogging about how she manages to supply all her family's vegetable needs from her garden from May to December, Dan from Ontario and his post on toilet paper seed mats, (this is so cool), and City Farmer in Vancouver that has been promoting urban gardening since 1978 (I am obviously not the trend setter here, but I am in good company).

And then, my heart is still palpitating from the absolute joy of discovering The Modern Victory Garden blog and their 2010 garden economics. This is exactly what I intend to do on my blog, but they actually seem to KNOW what they are doing! I haven't calmed down enough yet to be able to actually read through their absolute goldmine of information.

Back here in MY yard, I needed to make more room under the grow lights so moved some of the plants to a sunny window. Pictured here we have 4 varieties of heritage tomatoes, sweet peppers, jalapeno peppers, broccoli and two marigolds.

Basil notes

The basil that I planted indoors, under the grow light, seems to be growing ridiculously slowly. What is going on? I planted it on February 12. This picture was take on May 1. That's over two months, and only two pairs of leaves.
I had a look under the tray yesterday for the first time, and quite a lot of roots had grown through. Are the plants putting all their energy into root growth for some reason?

I might have been too stingy with the grow light. Because I'm cheap I only bought one tube, and put two trays under it. I went and bought another light yesterday, repotted the basil, and put them back under the light.



In other news the carrots, lettuce, spinach, beets and snap peas are all up and looking good. The potatoes are growing quickly. I nearly put some tomatoes outside yesterday but told myself to just calm down and be patient. Another few weeks. I'm going to look into some way of covering them to give them a little greenhouse when they do go outside, but am not really sure how to rig that up. More to come!

Is the start up just small potatoes?

My number crunching shows that I spent roughly $150 on the start up for the garden. That's $100 on materials (grow light, seed trays, potting soil, etc), $42 on vegetable seeds, and $11 on flower seeds. Because I didn't keep track from the start, and I might have forgotten something, I'm going to round up to $200 for the sake of this project. That way I can't be accused of minimizing the costs to make an economic case for the urban vegetable garden which admittedly, I might be likely to do if I don't police myself. The costs would have been much higher if it wasn't for the plants and materials I've been gifted: Heritage tomato seeds, strawberry plants, raspberry canes, oregano, borage, cilantro seeds, alpaca poo, and mason bees. Thanks to all!

So the challenge begins. Can this garden produce over $200 worth of food?

And what about the small potatoes? I've planted Red Chieftain and Yukon Gold potatoes in those coffee sacks pictured above, and they're up, those cute little green leaves.

The Project

Welcome to Roots and Shoots, the diary of a wannabe urban gardener. I live in Nanaimo's Old City, this is my first spring here, and I've been working all fall and winter to get things ready for planting my first vegetable garden. I've dabbled previously. When I was a teenager I was allowed a little patch of garden at my parents' house and grew some very nice oregano. Last winter I started a flat of vegetables from seed in a sunny window and nurtured them for weeks only to let them all dry up and die when I went away for the weekend. Then I bought some tomato, green pepper and swiss chard starts and grew them it pots, but I didn't exactly get a bumper crop.

So here I am, with a house I plan to be in for a while and a yard with lots of potential. We chose a neglected corner of the yard for the garden plot that was piled high with English ivy, morning glory, Himalayan blackberry and other hard-to-get-rid-off plants, atop a mound of yard clippings and the odd piece of garbage (a kiddie pool and two wire fences, for example). Hours and days later, we have two level garden beds with a rock wall creating two levels from the natural slope. Each are about 8'x10', give or take, and the bottom plot has an apple tree in the middle.

So where are we now? Snap peas, spinach, lettuce and carrots are all up, and I planted radish and cilantro seeds today. There's a whole bunch of stuff inside under the grow light, and I just can't wait for the bumber crop to come!

To make this project more than just fun, I plan to keep track of the harvest and estimate what it would have cost to purchase what the garden produces. I have kept rough track of what I have spent on seeds, soil and a couple other things for start up, so at the end of the season, I should be able to measure the economics of this project. It's not all about the money, in fact that's a small part of it for me, but some of the joy will be gone if it turns out I could have bought it all for less. I just want to know.

I hope you'll read and post comments, tips, ideas, and perhaps pictures from your own garden. Wish me luck on the urban vegetable garden project, take one.