The Dirty Hoe

This is a quick one, as I have been working on a huge post about rain water capture and it has gotten away from me a bit. Just wanted to share a favorite Podcast called "The Dirty Hoe"

Your weekly guide to organic gardening and living in Edmonton heard Friday at 12:05pm and Monday at 2pm on CJSR FM88.

It's worth a listen and helps pass the time while you are on the train or biking to work in the mornings. Enjoy!

A Couple of "Winged" Tools I Can't Live Without

Over the last little while, I have been using a couple of new tools in the yard. One little fantastic tool called the Winged Weeder and another called the Wingdigger. I have a lot of the other standard gardening tools, and none have made my life easier than these two purchases.

I stumbled across the Winged Weeder at the Calgary Horticultural Society Garden Show in April. There were a lot of interesting products there, but this one caught my eye. Interestingly, my initial reaction was to just walk right by because the guy working the booth was making it a little too infomercial for my liking. However, I was drawn back to the booth on the way out and decided to pick one up.

As I am doing a little bit of everything including rock garden plants and raised veggie beds with tight spacing, I went for the compact version called the Winged Weeder Junior. Now I can't recall all of the fantastic things that the demo jockey did with this at the show, but I just like it for my everyday puttering and weeding around the yard. You can see all the tricks on the official corporate video from Creative Enterprises.

It has a hardwood (I think ash) handle that is long enough to reach a wide range wihout moving around a lot. Despite that I find the tool to be light in comparison to others in the shed. The blade itself is tempered spring steel so it doesn't need sharpening and withstands quite a beating. I highly recommend picking one up if you have the means.

The other fantastic little tool I picked up was the Wingdigger from the Clean Calgary Association. This handy little tool is dirt cheap and saves much back-breaking effort turning your compost over. The little wings on the side of the steel rod flip in as it is pushed into the compost pile. When you do a 90 degree turn and pull it back out, the wings engage like a fish hook grabbing wads of rotting veggie matter and dragging it to the surface. This is great for aerating your compost and ensuring a good mix of your browns and greens for optimal heat generation. Those little aerobic bacteria will thank you.

Better Late Than Never - A Review of the Spring Plant Exchange

As I mentioned before, I attended the City of Calgary's Natural Areas Adopt-A-Park Program 2007 Plant exchange (on May 12). This exchange is much more casual and laid-back then what I have read about the Calgary Horticultural Society exchange. The folks attending were limited to City of Calgary employees, volunteers, and Healthy Yards participants. The selection was good, I went there with a dozen Tiny Tim tomatoes that I started from seed and came home with a whole tray of established perrenials. What a great deal!

It was held at the city of Calgary offices located at 111 17th st SE Calgary. Kind of out of the way, but worth the trek. I can say that since I left home late, blew a tire, changed it, ripped down the deerfoot and got to the exchange at about 10AM. I was happy with my finds, but I did get the distinct impression that everything was pretty picked over by the time I got there. So, my suggestion would be to get there on time (about 9:15) for the trading frenzy at 9:30.

Here's what I grabbed:

2 Tall Blue Campanula

6 yellow sedum - as far as I am concerned, you can never have enough of this stuff.

6 Shasta Daisies (I don't remember grabbing these, but that's what my notes say. I wonder where I put them?

1 Large Sedum (I need to id this one... a later post perhaps

6 red potato sets

1 Achillea millefolium Cerise Queen (Pink Yarrow)

1 Pairie Mallow

1 Other suspicious yarrow like plant.

a handful of hens and chickens

1 seed pack of native Alberta wild flowers

I know, there are those folks out there that would warn me about Yarrow and the Mallow, but my yard is pretty new, so I should be able to get away with it... right?

So far, all are thriving, I'll post photos when they are in full bloom. Keep your eyes peeled for an email note from Sue Horne, there is usually another exchange in September!

Healthy Yards Hand-Outs

Here is a quick run-down of some of the very useful hand-outs we have been provided as reference material.

Healthy Yards Leaf-Lit - Program Newsletter

A Calgarian's Guide to a Healthy Yard Brochure

Composting in Calgary

Water Wise Gardening

Outdoor Watering Tips

Water-wise Plants

Water Wise Trees

Healthy Lawns - Health Canada

Worm Poop! - TerraCycle

Although I haven't used these products yet, I stumbled across these TerraCycle "worm poop" fertilizers in Home Depot the other day.

The company's flagship product, TerraCycle Plant Food™, is an all-natural, all-organic, 'goof-proof' liquid plant food made from waste (worm poop) and packaged in waste (reused soda bottles)!

Here is a video telling The TerraCycle Story...




It sounds very much like the "compost tea" that I have been reading about, but wasn't too interested in creating right now. More importantly, their worm poop based products fit within my "Healthy Yards" guidelines of non-synthetic fertilzation methods. Look for a future post reviewing how the products fared in feeding my lawn and tomotoes.

On a related note, Scotts Miracle-Gro is suing these guys for branding infringement and false claims. Looks like the typical David vs. Goliath! I have added their blog feed on the subject in the side column...--->>> it's a good read.

French Intensive (Square Foot) Gardening

I put the final seeds in this morning in my raised bed veggie garden. It was quite the task overall to get these little spaces prepared. As I only have a small space in the back yard, I wanted to minimize the amount of real-estate used for beds, while maximizing yields. So, based on a bit of research, I chose to use a combination of the square foot / French intensive method.

Soil Preparation
I wasn't fully comfortable with Mel Bartholomew's suggestion that I could put weed cloth down and just add 6" of "Mel's Mix" to the raised beds and be good to go. My hope is that going into the future, I will never have to move these beds so I did what I could to prepare the plots. That means double digging.

This is where Mel Bartholomew gets superseded by years of fundamentals coming from the French Intensive methods. As I have a very hard clay layer between 3"-8" below the topsoil, I felt I had no choice but to remediate a bit. I won't get into the details, but suffice to say that double digging includes tilling the soil with hand tools to add a layer of compost. I hope it was worth it.

Bed Construction
Again, going against Mel's suggestion, I opted for 8" high raised beds. With soil like ours, more soil on top can't be a bad thing. Nothing fancy in the wood selection, I picked up some 1"x8"x8' for the sides and 2"x8" cut into 2 foot lengths for the ends.


I opted for untreated wood, as this is going to be primarily for food production and didn't want the "Chromated Copper Arsenate" in my veggies. However, wood left untreated will not last long, so I followed the suggested of some fellow square foot gardeners and used linseed oil (available at Rona for $7/liter). For those of you that don't know, linseed oil is a non-toxic, food-grade oil that is most frequently used to oil butcher blocks. It goes on smooth and the softwood lumber readily soaks up many coats. I had some leftover 1/2" trim that I used for my 1'x1' separations. These were convenient, but not the best as they are made with glued joints that come apart after the slightest of weathering.

The final touches in my bed construction were my own. As both of my beds are slightly down-grade from my rain barrel, I ran a soaker hose through the length of both beds (about 4" deep). From there I just hook up a small length of regular garden hose from the rain barrel to the soaker coupling and gravity does the rest.

Bed Layout
I added a shot of my final layout and plant density below. As you can see, I chose an 8'X2' layout, other than the proposed 4'X4' suggested by many texts on the subject. It made more sense with the lot layout and my desire to leave room in the yard for playing kiddies.



Row Covers
The last thing I did was to add some row covers using plastic sheeting and PVC hoops. I'd like to take credit for this one, but alas I cannot. You can download some great plans here. A couple of tips with this one.

3/4" PVC is just right. Buy it in 10 foot lengths and cut them in two for just the right length for a 2 foot wide bed.

DO NOT use copper pipe clamps, try plastic or galvanized steel. Copper is too soft and can't handle you hitting it with the aerator, snow load, etc.

DO NOT staple your plastic cover down. Find some rocks to hold down the bottom, so you can get easy access to your plants for watering. The soaker hose is great for established plants, but seeds need moisture on the surface.

DO use something across the top of your hoops to keep your plastic from sagging.

If you are silly enough to think you can get your plants in before May long, you MUST use row covers. Refer to earlier post about our record May snowfall.

The Aftermath - Morning of May 24

NorthEast


East

The Upper Deck!

Snowing Again - May 23rd

The good news is that most of my plants fared well two days ago when it snowed. It warmed up later in the afternoon and provided a good watering.


The bad news is, it's snowing again! I can't believe it. The flurries started coming down just before supper this evening and I was scrambling around again to get everything covered up. I guess I picked a bad year to test getting a garden in early.

May 21, 2007 - Snowed about 3"

Woke up this morning to heavy wet snow and high winds. Scrambled around with my plastic and old sheets covering things up, and won't be able to assess the damage until tomorrow evening.

I guess that's why everyone says to wait until AFTER May long weekend. Although the lows of 0 (32F) on Thursday and Friday don't look any more promising.

Healthy Yards (Spring 2007)

A large part in starting this blog was to share some of my experiences in participating in the City of Calgary Healthy Yards Program. Please read on for a brief outline of the program and my progress so far.

A new environmentally-friendly approach to yard and garden care. It's good for the environment, easy to do, and can save you money too!

The Healthy Yards program helps homeowners create a more environmentally sustainable yard by combining the practices of composting, water conservation, responsible pest management, and grass cycling.

The Healthy Yards Program is FREE and limited to 200 participants each year with a two year program commitment.

So Here is a brief timeline of the 2007 Healthy Yards Program thus far:

March 9, 2007 - Applied online for the program. I suspect that this was rather late in the year and was quite surprised that I was selected for the 2007 program. So if you are interested, I would apply now.

March 19, 2007 - Introductory email announcing acceptance into the 2007 program, outlining program requirements, commitments, and orientation dates.

April 10 - May 12, 2007 - Orientation Sessions, 2.5 hours. This was an overview of the tools and techniques that you would apply in your effort to create a Healthy Yard. In addition, we picked up our rain barrels and composters. In the event that you take the train (like I did), or don't have the vehicle to drag these things home, the city will deliver. However, the Earth Machine Composter breaks down pretty small. With a little work, the rain barrel seemed to fit in the compact cars as well. The sessions were hosted at The City of Calgary Outdoor Resource Centre at 1111 Memorial Drive NW. That is the old brick firehall building off of the 10th street bridge in Kensington. Many of the information resources, pamphlets, and books that we are using in the program are available for the general public there.

Late April - installed rain barrel and composter.

May 3, 2007 - Got a heads up notice about free mulch at the East Calgary Landfill. This is available to the public, but participants get notified when a fresh load of mulch is available.

May 12, 2007 - Attended City of Calgary's Natural Areas Adopt-A-Park Program 2007 Plant exchange. This exchange is much more casual and laid-back then what I have read about the Calgary Horticultural Society exchange. The folks attending were limited to City of Calgary employees, volunteers, and Healthy Yards participants. The selection was good, I went there with a dozen Tiny Tim tomatoes that i started from seed and came home with a whole tray of established perrenials. Great Deal!

May 16, 2008 - Picked up free recycling bin from the Outdoor Resource Center.


We have only really been at it for a month now, and I am not sure that everyone is diving into it as I am. However, I would say that so far the program has been great. It has helped guide my decisions on how I will care for my established yard, while providing great insight into choices for future development.

Now this is only the beginning. The real challenge will come when my raspberries or cherry trees get attacked by some wee beasties and I need to find organic methods to get rid of them... I am going to test out some mechanical methods to take out weeds. We'll see how that goes. If that doesn't work, I'll take out the propane torch! Who knew that low impact yard care could be so fun?

Aerating

Last night was my first exercise in lawn aeration (I've added a good link from Virginia Tech as to the hows and whys, here is another from Bluebird). As far as I can tell, it was a success, but I guess we'll see later on in the spring.

My neighbor and I rented a unit from the local Rona and split the cost. Not a bad deal at $30 each. The unit we rented was a behemoth called the 742 from Bluebird International.

The rugged design of the 742 aerator provides low maintenance and outstanding durability for profitable operation. A 4HP Honda engine with a synchronized clutching system, allows for smooth starts. The free-wheeling outer tine system provides unparalleled maneuverability and removable side weights offer optimal soil penetration and balance for easier slope aeration.

Probably a little much for what we needed, but with the hard packed lawn, I think the extra weight did some good.

Total time to cover the small urban yard was about 30 mins, so it was not a problem getting it back to the store that evening.

A couple of Lessons Learned:
- Remove the weights before you try to lift the machine in and out out of your van.
- Keep the speed on low, especially in a small space, otherwise, you'll get dragged around and wreck your back and shoulders in the process.
- High speeds can cause collisions with raised beds.
- Aerate up slopes. You'll get deeper, even plugs (versus deeper down slope plugs and shallow up slope if you aerate accross).

Per our "Healthy Yards" education session, I raked the plugs and put them into the composter as my "browns". I will need to follow this up with a quick layer of compost and perhaps a little sand to add some much needed nutrients. The neighbor used chemical fertilizer right after, so I'll let you know how each lawn does...

Early Years - The Deck (Summer 2005)

Project #1: Build a deck.

Lesson One: Trying to dig holes before the fence goes up might be a good idea. Just don't bring a massive bobcat into the yard when it is saturated. This one was especially hard as I just spent many hours digging up the fire pit and re-sodding it.

Lesson Two: Four foot holes bring up a lot of clay. Clay that really packs down the lawn and kills the grass. The clay-Bobcat combination did more damage than Baxter (the dog) has done in three years of peeing.

Lesson 3: That's okay, the lawn wasn't that nice to begin with, so let's get this deck done and we'll worry about the rest later. Not really a good attitude in retrospect, but I wanted to get that deck done!

Here is a glimpse at my plans built in visio. I may throw out a future post on dealing with the City of Calgary for building permits, but for now... The entire process can be a bit tedious, but in the arena of deck building, if you are prepared and have well thought out plans, the city engineers are happy to make suggestions.

The Finished Product

The Beginning (Spring 2005)

As I am really starting out this effort in cataloging my acitivities relating to the City of Calgary Healthy Yards Program, I figure I should give you a bit of background to show you the yardly efforts leading to this point.

We moved back to Calgary in 2004, and bought a year old house in a new development. On the surface, it looked like the yard was in quite good shape, although it needed some work. However, a combination of a very windy micro-climate, very little top soil, and poor quality sod placed on top of hard packed glacial till made it rough going.

To exacerbate the situation, the existing fire pit didn't mesh well with small children, and I ruined any semblance of a smooth lawn surface my bringing a bobcat onto the lawn in June of 2005 during the rainy season.

These were some of the early challenges that I was to overcome...