Gardening

I can’t remember if I’ve already mentioned this or not, but at my last appointment with my ND, we established that my health plans have mostly had the desired results and we talked about my plans for the future.

I really want to do the next step in working on my digestion and she supports that, but the challenge is that it’s a pretty intensive three-month eating a supplement plan. Since we have travel happening all throughout the fall and into winter and I really want to have a little freedom during those times, I asked if we could defer until the new year. She was a-okay with that.

In the meantime, I get to start to introduce new foods to see if they show inflammatory results when I do. The thinking is that the anti-inflammatory diet I’m following cuts out all of the foods that most commonly cause an inflammatory response, however, as unique individuals, we all have our own responses. What works for me may not work for you and vice versa.

Even though she gave me the green light to start trying things out over a month ago, I still haven’t really wanted to disrupt the diet. It felt too risky, like I had too much to lose. Dr. Shannon’s advice was to pick a food that I really miss. I joked that it was pizza. In truth, one food that I’ve been really thinking about a lot is tomato. I thought of it even before we had the discussion and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I promised myself that I’d wait to test it until the tomatoes on our deck started coming in. We’re getting closer by the day and I can practically taste them every time I go out there to water.

Soon.

For years I didn’t have a garden. I lived in a fantastic apartment that had only one flaw: no balcony. I had nowhere to grow anything other than a few houseplants. I was good at that, but I really craved more.

When Kevin and I first moved in together, we lived in a two floor townhouse that had a little wooden deck in the back that got afternoon and evening sun. We moved there in June and settling in distracted us from the possibility of a real growing season that first year. Towards the end of July, we picked up four straggly plants from the nearly empty garden centre nearby: two tomatoes and two strawberries. It was mostly a charity purchase. Their prices were way marked down and we bought them because we felt sorry for them. We took them home, repotted them into fresh soil and put them out on our tiny deck. We were so surprised when they shot up almost immediately and actually produced some fruit (though not much) by the time the season was over.

The next year, I bought more of the same plants, only much earlier in the year and much healthier overall. Again, success. They loved that deck!

That fall, we relocated back to New West and an apartment with a similar facing balcony. More afternoon sun, more happy gardening potential.

After two seasons of proving (mostly to myself) that I could do it, I decided to expand my goals and my season. That was the first year I invested (my money and my heart) in growing seeds. I took so much care in sowing them, watering them, monitoring them. I was thrilled when they sprouted and continued to grow. The first night I relocated them outside, I felt like a parent sending their child off to college. I think it even kept me up that night. By the time prime time summer came around our deck was a virtual jungle of tomato plants. They were everywhere!

The next year, I planted more seeds and supplemented them with nursery grown plants as well. As each new gardening season has approached, I’ve become more determined to grow more seeds and fewer ones that somebody else grew. I like the challenge of growing things from seed and it adds an extra layer of satisfaction when I’m successful. This year, I’m going 100% seed grown plants for the second year in a row.

There is one problem with this plan. It’s that I invariably grow too many little seedlings and have to find good homes for what I can’t grow on our balcony. I’ve cut back this year and am only growing on the deck – no extra spaces in community gardens or other people’s yards. I want to enjoy what I’ve grown and be able to see it every day, sit amongst it, watch its progress.

We spent part of last weekend delivering some of my extra plants to friends and family who welcomed them into their gardens. I’ve taken some to work and convinced people with access to soil, but no use for it to try growing this summer. I really don’t want any to go to waste, but every spring I can’t help but want to spread the gardening love and tomatoes seem like the best breakthrough plant to grow.

I’ve found homes for most of my tomato plants, thankfully. Enough to know that they’ll all end up somewhere even if I have to keep a few more than I’d planned. It’s good news for sure, because the peppers will be ready soon, too and then we’ll need to start all over again!

This is the first post I wrote about the easiest ways I’ve found to grow tomatoes.

Here’s an update on our garden space this summer: just when our massive balcony was being overtaken by very happy tomato plants (among other plants as well) of five different varieties (Black Krim, Green Zebra, Old German, Yellow Brandywine which is no longer on the site so not linkable 🙁 and my old standby, Early Girl – hollar at me if you need tomatoes this summer!) we were granted a community garden plot on the rooftop garden in our building. Hurray! And they’re serious about their plots at this community garden – ours is 161 square feet and the garden manager told me that it’s one of the best ones available.

So, a few of the tomatoes from the balcony were transplanted which is good and bad. Good because they’ll have more space, etc, but since they were already blooming flowers, I’m a little worried that they might not adapt to the change. Only time will tell…and until then, I’ll lay awake in bed at night wondering about my tomato plants. That’s the bad because I’m only partly joking.

Earlier today, I saw that my favourite seed company asked on this Instagram post, “what are you harvesting today?” and it reminded me that a little harvesting had been on my to do list.

Last week I’d started to notice that my beets were getting quite big and busting up out of the surface of the dirt so I’d been keeping a close eye on them. Last night when I’d checked, I could see they were ready to go, but at the time I knew it was something I wanted to deal with when I could focus so I waited until today.

beets!

Last September, I told you how I go about raising my tomatoes and that once you grew some of your own, you’d want to grow something else. Today, I’m going to talk to you about beets.

First of all, it’s super easy. I’m going to give you a few pointers to make sure you learn the things that I wish someone had told me. No fear, okay?

Second, here are a few of the best varieties that I’ve tried over the years – Chioggia (the fancy candy cane looking kind that you sometimes see at farmer’s markets), Beet Blend which is exactly what it sounds like: a blend of different varieties in case you don’t want to choose just one (and there are a lot to choose from!) and Red Ace. The beets in the picture are Red Ace.

With tomatoes, I encouraged you to start them indoors early and only put them outside once temperatures had risen. Beets are the opposite. In fact, they do quite well when they get a cool start. That isn’t to say that you can’t start them in the summer – quite the opposite, in fact. If you have the space, you can start them every few weeks so that you are continually harvesting throughout the summer and into the fall. Their ability to withstand the cold just means that you can start them outside earlier and keep them going for a longer season.

Another way beets are unlike to tomatoes is that you’ll want to plant the seeds in the ground where they will grow. This is called direct sowing. With tomatoes, we started the seeds in little peat cups or egg cartons, but your beets won’t do well if you don’t plant them right in the place they will stay until harvest.

Here’s all you’ll need:

• Seeds
• Dirt in a pot or right in the ground
• A shovel or other small garden tool

Now, remember I said it was easy? Well, I’m going to need you to think way back to when you were in grade school and planted beans. Remember that you dug a little hole in the dirt, put the bean inside, covered it back up and watered it? That’s exactly the technique you’re going to use with beets.

One caution: before you get started, you’re going to want to work the soil where you will be planting the seeds. Loosen it up and turn it over a few times. Make it as fluffy as you can. If you’ve bought some potting mix from the garden centre, then you’ll be good to go, but if you’re planting in a garden or a pot full of dirt that’s been kicking around for a while, then you’ll want to work it over first. What I’ve found is that if my soil is too hard, my beets will be more compact. And if you love beets like I love beets, the bigger the better! If you’re planting in the ground, you may want to add a layer of potting soil to your garden and work it in before planting.

Now that your soil is prepared, poke holes that are about one centimetre deep in the ground and make them approximately two centimetres apart. Pour seeds out of the package and into the palm of your hand then put one seed in each hole. Fill each hole in with dirt and then water the area.

You don’t want to water your beets too much or too often. If it’s raining, that’ll be enough to keep your beets going. If your area is in a dry spell, you’ll only need to water every seven to ten days.

Expect sprouts a week or so after you’ve planted the seeds and then watch them grow. You’ll want to do a check to make sure they aren’t too crowded together. If they are, decide which is the biggest, strongest plant and then pluck the others out of the ground. You can also just pinch the smaller seedlings back.

As your plants grow, more and more leaves will emerge and they’ll get bigger and bigger. At that point, the only thing left to do is wait. Most beets will take between seven and ten weeks to mature. You’ll know it’s getting close to time to harvest when the tops of the beets start to push up above the soil. Watch them and once they’re about the size you’re going for, then they’ll be ready to go.

To harvest, take a firm grip of the greens and gently pull them out of the ground. Cut off the greens (don’t throw them out!) and wash the dirt off the beets. You can store the beets in your fridge or another cool place. Treat the greens like you would any other dark green leafy vegetable – think kale, chard or spinach. Wash them off and store them in the fridge. Use them in a smoothie, saute them with some garlic or steam them up.

Have you ever tried growing beets? Do you have any tips to add?

This is a tweet I look for nearly every month:

Seeds to start in June!https://t.co/noQMQFA6Ud pic.twitter.com/T2RKac6HUa

— West Coast Seeds (@westcoastseeds) June 1, 2017

I’m relatively new to gardening and I haven’t had a garden of my own that was actually in the ground since I lived with my folks nearly twenty years ago. For more than ten of those years, I didn’t even have a balcony so gardening was totally out of the question, but since then, in all three places Kevin and I have shared, I’ve made the most out of the outdoor space that we had. In our first place, it was a tiny porch. In our last place, we had a balcony that was slightly bigger. Now, we have a whole 150 square feet of opportunity and I’ve been using as much of it as I can.

our gardens over the years

Last year I expanded into breaking actual ground in a couple of places beyond the containers. One was the limited space that was called the community garden at our old apartment. It was actually only about four feet of space in a raised bed in a communal area of the building. It’s an area that could be accessed by the public and that was a virtual dumping ground for people in the apartments above them. We were constantly finding old potatoes and garbage in our plots or the others. Once we started having peppers grow on our plants, they were constantly disappearing and that broke my heart. I would happily donate food to people in need (they often used this area to sleep in during the warmer months) but I somehow doubt they were the ones munching on my JALAPEÑOS.

My second space was one I called My Remote Garden. It was over in the backyard of some friends of ours and I owe all the credit of the arrangement to Keith. He was living in a house with another dude and they often entertained in the back yard, but they never actually used the garden. I think the whole transaction consisted of a text exchange exactly like this:

HIM: Hey, you like gardening. Do you want to use my yard?

ME: YESSSSSSSSSS

Kevin did the heavy lifting, clearing out a garden bed that had been neglected for years and we tried several different plants in there. We weren’t as successful as I might have hoped, but we had a couple of things working against us: bad soil and pests we could never quite identify. We never solved either, but every year we get another chance, right? Due to some other commitments that I had, we haven’t started on My Remote Garden yet this spring, but we’re in the planning/watering duty negotiation stages right now.

One haul from My Remote Garden’s 2016 season

There’s nothing like the opportunity of having a garden to plan

I took it as a great sign when on the first day we started moving into our current building, there was a notice in the elevator saying that if residents were interested in a community garden plot, they could email the committee. I did a few weeks later, but got a reply that said all spaces had already been assigned. The coordinator told me that he would keep that email and contact me if something became available. This past Friday, he let me know that not only was a space now available, but it was one of the best spaces out there! We checked it out today and we are definitely moving in!

So, all of a sudden, I have two garden spaces to begin working on. My kneejerk response was “BUT JUNE IS TOO LATE!” Sure, in some cases it is, but coaching and information sharing from the folks at West Coast Seeds has left me knowing better than that. Sure, there are some crops whose planting (from seed) window has passed, but there are still plenty of other options even now. I love knowing that a garden, when tended with care, can be functional all year long.

grow something

I encourage everyone to start a garden even if that means just one plant pot outside (or inside if you have to) their door. I refuse to believe that there is any such thing as a person who is bad at gardening. They probably just didn’t have their facts straight. 🙂 And there really isn’t anything as rewarding as growing your own potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, flowers, anything.

So, now, go check out the West Coast Seeds list of seeds to start in June, head out to your favourite nursery to get some seeds and get to work. Don’t let a small space get you down. And if you need a little camaraderie along the way, you know where to find me!

Where do you garden? What are you growing this summer? What have you always wanted to grow?