In which part of Canada do you live, and what is your hardiness zone?

South central Ontario, 157 km north east of Toronto, zone 5a or 4a if you use the USDA hardiness zones.

How old are you, and how long have you been growing food?

Age 62, first garden was in 1980, then not again until 1987-88, then not again until 2002, then not until 2007 when we got serious.

Why did you abandon your previous gardens?

Just the demands of life at the time – children, a demanding corporate career, moving.

What would you estimate the age distribution to be among people growing their own food?

Very interesting question. I was at a Seedy Saturday on Sunday, Mar 13 and age distribution was from young parents with babies to quite elderly seniors as the pictures show. It’s not so much the age distribution as it is the numbers which are increasing at an explosive rate if events like this and seed sales are any indication.

What drives you to grow your own food?

There are a number of different reasons. When we started in 2007, it was just part of gardening in general. We had moved from a small 40 x 100 foot city lot (12 x 30 meters) with tiny back & front gardens to a 10 acre property (40,000 m²) in the country where size doesn’t matter.

We had a vague idea about growing perennial flowers and vegetables. Then along came the financial mess of 2008 and I looked more closely at the fragility of all systems including food distribution & production. I didn’t like what I saw so food – growing, preserving, and propagating became a large and growing part of the garden.

Do you have any good sources of information about food security, i.e. distribution and production?

Not really. I don’t actively follow this line of thinking. I find that there’s a great deal of talk and analysis but not much in the way of solutions and even less in the way of doing.  Because of a just-in-time delivery system, supermarket shelves carry about 3 days worth of food.  To put that another way, we are 9 meals  from anarchy. Is that fragile? I don’t know but I prefer not to take a chance. Similarly, there is immense consolidation and concentration in food production, e.g. chickens. I don’t do much digging into this because I see the same pattern repeated over and over again.

Do you mostly propagate from seeds or cuttings?

Vegetables tend to be seeds although perennial vegetables will be by root division. Trees and shrubs depend on the species and variety.  They tend to be mostly cuttings but some are seeds.

Do you have anyone to help you in your garden?

My wife, Joyce. It’s a team effort. I tend to start most of the seedlings that require starting under lights but Joyce takes care of the direct seeded vegetables. The fruit orchard is completely hers. She did/does the research, the ordering, the hole digging and planting, the spraying. I tend to be the one who sources new vegetables to grow. She’s the one who is interested in herbs, mostly culinary but also beginning medicinal. There is no reason for this division of labour. It just seems to happen this way.

What type of grow lights are you using, and where do you get them from?

I much prefer these to the old long tubes:

I can position them exactly where I need them.  They store very well.  And they are cheap. I’ve never seen much difference between the ordinary fluorescent and the grow lights other than the price.  I leave them on for 14 hours a day.

I’ve had problems with seedlings growing long and thin. How much light do you give your seedlings? Do you control the temperature?

Yep. Long and thin is a problem.  I try not to start too early since that tends to make plants long and thin.  I use a bottom heated seed tray with the plastic plant cells.  With care, I can re-use them.

What kind of vegetables and fruits are you growing?

In a cold climate, food isn’t much of a problem in the summer. You eat straight from the garden and can have a steady stream of food all summer long. Of course, that depends on how long your growing season is.  Ours is around 125 days from last frost around May 18 to first frost around Sept 20. Because winters are the problem that’s what we tend to focus on. From there, we looked at the easiest way of preserving large quantities of vegetables for an extended period of time which is root cellaring. So we grow carrots, parsnips, a number of varieties of winter squash, beets.

(Sweet dumpling winter squash, bush variety)

And because we like to experiment – salsify, Jerusalem artichokes, Chinese artichokes, scorzonera. And we grow a number of varieties of tomatoes for canning and freezing whole. For summer vegetables, we grow salad greens including spinach.  We eat a lot of salads during the summer. We also grow a number of perennial herbs such as salad burnet, lovage, and oregano and summer herbs such as basil and cilantro. All get eaten fresh and all get dried for the winter.

(Chocolate mint in the spring)

Joyce’s orchard has cold hardy plums, pears, apricots, and heritage apples. The trees are all dwarf or semi-dwarf because they produce fruit much earlier than standard trees. Last year we added, mulberries and hazel nuts as well as cold hardy peaches. We have two peach varieties – Bailey and Chui-Lum Tao from Golden Bough Tree Farm. Both are rootstocks. We’re hoping that they provide us with peaches for canning.

(Illinois Everbearing Mulberry)

We’ll be grafting one of the wild apples that we found in our woods. Because of the difficulty of finding rootstock in Canada, I’m propagating some of the rootstock I did find so that I have a steady supply.

We grow an increasingly wide range of soft fruits – high and low-bush blueberries, highbush cranberries, low-bush cranberries (not bog cranberries), bilberries, tay berries, Saskatoon berries, goji, goumi, autumn olive (which isn’t an olive an all), edible blue honeysuckle, sea buckthorn, thornless blackberries, blackberries, Boyne raspberries, ever-bearing raspberries, ever-bearing gold raspberries, hardy kiwi.

(Goji)

(Goumi – Elaeagnus multiflora)

(Autumn olive – Elaeagnus umbellata)

We have Bluejay and Reka blueberry varieties. We haven’t focused much on them because we have a very large pick-you-own berry farm near us. I was able to propagate some from cuttings but managed to kill them by not giving them enough winter protection while they were still small.  They aren’t a high priority because the particular requirements of growing them.

This year we will be tip layering wild blackberries, raspberries, and gooseberries that we found on the property last year and moving them to more accessible locations. We also harvest wild grapes for jelly. Joyce makes large quantities of jams and jellies which she sells at our local market each Saturday from late May through early October. $4.00 a jar except for the wild grape jelly which is $5.00.

From a food security point of view, we will be experimenting this summer with a couple of crops – soybeans and black oil sunflowers.  Nutritionally, soy has lots of energy, a wide range of vitamins and minerals, good fats, and minimal bad fats. It stores very well. It’s a nitrogen fixer which means that I add to rather than deplete the soil. And its range of food usages is extensive. We’ve already managed a palatable soy beverage which works wonderfully in coffee and to make soy yoghurt.

We’re growing the black oil sunflowers to see if we can get a decent harvest. If we do, we’ll probably invest in an oil expeller and try making sunflower oil. That would give us a cheap and easy source of cooking oil.

And we will be keeping bees this summer using a topbar hive instead of the more conventional Langstroth hive that you see everywhere.

Joyce has already been able to substitute honey for sugar in one of her jellies and she’ll be experimenting with others this summer as the different fruits come into season.

What advice would you give to people growing in colder climates?

Don’t get hung up on technology such as poly-tunnels. It’s expensive and difficult to maintain and will become increasingly so because of its oil component. Look to cultures that deal with cold climates and see what they were growing before World War II.

(Winter sowing)

Most survived on root vegetables. Look to grow hardy perennial vegetables such as Jerusalem artichokes, wild leeks, wild onions, Turkish rocket. Look at your weeds with a different eye. Use cold frames tucked up against the warm of your house foundation on the sunny side of the house to extend the season and possibly over winter tough greens like spinach. Look for unusual varieties of vegetables such as long keeper tomatoes. We have some from last year that are sitting on our kitchen counter ready to be eaten whenever we choose. We’re actually going to see how long they last.

How do you choose what seeds to use in your garden, and where do you get them?

The seeds have to be organic and not hybrid. That insures no GMO’s or seed treating. Hybrid means that you can’t save seeds and have them come true (assuming you use the necessary seed saving techniques). We also like heritage seeds because of the varieties that exist, the taste, and the fact that they’re likely to be hardier. Up until this year, we haven’t saved seeds. It was on our list but not that high since there was always next year. That’s no longer the case because we will be growing some vegetables that may not have seeds available next year. Either off the market or not available to us in Canada. In particular, Altrei Coffee because it is a rare seed and Laura soybeans because we can’t get them directly from the US anymore. We’re also helping to grow out a couple of varieties from Dan Jason’s Seed and Plant Sanctuary for Canada. So we’ll be saving seeds from everything that we grow this year.

Do you spent a lot of time planning what to do next in your garden?

What else is there to do during the winter?? Actually, we realized this year that our gardening season lasts all year. The winter is reserved for reflection and research. The garden itself doesn’t get a great deal of planning. The garden talks to us and tells us what to do next. This isn’t as silly as it sounds. Gardens are very complex and dynamic. You do one thing in the garden and that often leads you to a lot more things. For example, two or three years ago we had a terribly poor winter squash harvest.  We had lots of flowers but little fruit. That meant a lack of pollinators.  So we started thinking about keeping bees. The research led to all kinds of ideas that we could integrate into what we’re already doing, such as substituting honey for sugar wherever we could in our day-to-day diet.

What advice would you give to people who want to experiment with raised garden beds?

Buy Mel Bartholomew’s Square Foot Gardening book and watch the videos.

Don’t get too hung up on what you surround the plot with but don’t use pressure-treated wood unless you isolate it from the soil with vapour barrier. Don’t cut corners on the soil mix.  Either use pure well-aged compost or build your own using Mel’s formula.

And if you aren’t sure and want to test the water, start small. A 4′x4′ plot (1.2 x 1.2 m) is two 8 foot lengths cut in two.

What books about food gardening do you have on your bookshelf?

Surprisingly few, mostly because it seems there are few good ones. Most of what is written today seems to be written by editors rather than gardeners. The information is collected from other sources rather than from first hand experience. Here are some good ones that we have:

• Perennial Vegetables: From Artichoke to Zuiki Taro, a Gardener’s Guide to Over 100 Delicious, Easy-to-grow Edibles. By Eric Toensmeier
• Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden. By Lee Reich
• The Pruning Book. By Lee Reich
• Royal Horticultural Society: Propagating Plants. By Alan R. Toogood
• Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners. By Suzanne Ashworth, Edited by Kent Whealy
• The New Seed-Starters Handbook. By Nancy Bubel
• Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits and Vegetables. By Mike Bubel and Nancy Bubel
• Putting Food by. By Janet C Greene, Ruth Hertzberg and Beatrice Vaughan
• Rodale’s Illustrated Encyclopedia of Herbs. By Claire Kowalchik and William H. Hylto
• The Herbal Drugstore. By Linda B. White

(All pictures are republished with permission from Mike Higgs)

How about you? Are you collecting seeds, or have you just planted your first seed from the store? … somewhere in between? Please leave your comment below.

This ebook on how to grow tomatoes is written by Lucia Grimmer and Annette Welsford. Lucia has a Masters Degree in Plant Pathology and works as a technical nutrition specialist in the fertilizer industry. Annette has a partial degree in Horticulture. For me as an amateur grower this puts some weight behind the 37,000 words on the 73 pages. I paid $34.90 + $8.72 VAT to get the ebook in .pdf format down on my PC. You can get the ebook here: How to Grow Juicy Tasty Tomatoes

It’s a very comprehensive book with many details so I’ll limit myself and only talk about the things that were new to me.

Definitions

A term I often see when reading about tomatoes is determinate versus indeterminate. In the book there’s a good clarification of what this means:

• Determinate types are the low ones, up to 1 meter. The tomatoes are picked over a few weeks in a concentrated crop.
• Indeterminates grow up to 5 meters and are picked over 12 to 20 weeks.
• Semi-determinates grow up to 2 meters and are picked over 2 to 6 weeks.

Water

There’s a lot of information on watering in the book but some things stood out to me because I realized that I have probably made a huge mistake earlier on with my tomatoes, and potatoes for that matter.

To water correctly you need to soak to a depth of 15-20 cm. So far so good. But you need to do it early in the morning, and only the soil must be watered. No water on the leaves, for God’s sake. If the leaves do get wet it’ll dry off during the day. That’s why you should water in the morning. The problem with wet leaves is that it will be a heaven for fungus and disease spores. If you have read about my 2010 tomato disaster you’ll know what I’m talking about. Drip irrigation, mulching to prevent soil splashing, and water in the morning. That’s the way to do it.

Reproduction

Pollination is still a confusing subject to me. I don’t know if it gets any clearer but apparently tomatoes are self-pollinating according to the book, because the flowers contain both the male and female organs. At least it’s beginning to make sense to me, why a heirloom variety can stay with one grower for a lifetime without outside DNA material. But then again, you wouldn’t want that with humans, right? Weaknesses would build up, but I guess tomatoes can handle that somehow.

And a good tip on propagation: Save your clippings and dip them in a seaweed solution or plant hormone powder. Then plant them in a pot, and you’ll soon have en new tomato plant. That’s easy

Fruits

The advice on the actual tomato fruits goes against what I believed you should do, but the authors recommend picking the fruit before they even have the right color. Thereby the plant will focus its energy on the remaining fruits. Makes sense. The picked fruits should be kept away from sunlight or they’ll overheat and ripen unevenly. Makes sense too. Green tomatoes should be placed in a warm location to ripen at 18 – 21 C (64 – 70 F).

Tips & Tricks

• One way to plant out your tomato seedlings earlier in the season is to use a ‘wall of water’. It’s a device with several vertical tubes filled with water surrounding each pot. The water absorbs heat during the day and releases it during the night.
• The book also has a tip on compost that’s new to me: Earthworms hate onions. So keep onion scraps out of the compost.
• If you use red plastic as mulch on the soil below your plants they’ll think they’re overcrowded and grow even more. I think it has something to do with the color of the fruits?
• In an organic garden you should consider using neem oil / margosa oil if you want to actively fight pests. It has been used in India for a long time against almost any type of insect.
• A greenhouse made from polyethylene has several advantages: Low cost, ease of replacement, high light transmission and good heat retention. I didn’t like the artificial look, but with all these advantages it’s quite interesting compared to traditional glass.

What I LIKE about How to Grow Juicy Tasty Tomatoes

• It comforting to know that even the experts from the industry agree that the quality of supermarket tomatoes is very low these days (no flavour, few varieties, hard as apples).
• A chapter about biodynamic growing is included.
• Quote: “The advent of Genetically Modified Food is a revolutionary change to our food that offers no nutritional improvement, but increases the profitability and market power of global seed and chemical companies. Changes include incorporation of pesticides and weedicides within the DNA of the plant. If the ingredients and chemicals were properly labeled, like our processed food, some might be defined as pesticides!” Oh? And we’re supposed to eat that?…
• It comes with a huge online variety database
• The book covers the whole world and considers different growing conditions depending on location.
• Great info on heirloom versus hybrids.
• Easy to read and understand.
• Thorough nutrition problem key to use if you find sick looking plants, so that you can diagnose and treat the problems.
• Includes organic bug killing recipes.

What I DON’T like about How to Grow Juicy Tasty Tomatoes

• Some of the text on the illustrations is unreadable.
• It’s important with references but I prefer to have all of them in the last chapter and not ind the middle of the book.
• Pictures and charts should have a higher resolution in the .pdf version.
• The book mentions that drowned snails can be tossed into the compost heap. I don’t think that would be a good idea as they would attract slugs that would eat the dead ones. At least that’s what Arion lusitanicus would do.

Who should buy How to Grow Juicy Tasty Tomatoes

It’s a very comprehensive book and a lot of the information is not directly related to tomatoes but of course if you’re serious about growing tomatoes you would need to know all of that too. And the specifics about tomatoes are in there too, so if you want to build a business around growing tomatoes you’re all set. A complete beginner could probably do with half the price, half the number of pages and half the details. The fertilizing scheme alone makes my head spin, despite the fact that I’ve already grown almost 10 kilos of tomatoes.

I doubt I’ll ever need another book on tomato growing so if you serious, knock yourself out and buy this one. If you haven’t grown a single red one yet you could probably do with less.

You can get the ebook here: How to Grow Juicy Tasty Tomatoes

I don’t think much have changed regarding gardening techniques – the instructions in the video could just as well be used today. But the battle for victory is different as I see it. It’s still a battle, but it’s for your health. Growing your own food is just healthy. Plain and simple. Exercise, sunshine, vitamins. It reminds me why I even bother writing this blog, but what it all boils down to is preventing muscle atrophy and depression and avoiding fast food.

Although the quality of the video is poor it still moves me. Young people doing meaningful work in the field – exercise, sunshine, vitamins. They even work with a horse in the garden. I can’t remember the last time I even touched a horse. (… no, Jim, not in that way.) Completely disconnected from nature. I think it’s unhealthy and dissatisfying. Look at the amount of vegs they pull from that ½ acre (2000 m2)!

In the video they talk about:

• Early vs. late crop
• Crop rotation
• Fighting pests (with some nasty looking spraying I doubt would be legal today )
• Crazy over-sized swiss chard (what IS that?)

And remember what grandpa said:

No work – no garden. Get what that means. No work – no spuds. No work – no turnip, no tank, no flying fortress, NO victory. Bear that in mind, all you victory gardeners, and work – for VICTORY!

… Your good health, that is.

Four pieces of round pressure treated poles are placed in each corner:

I’m using metal chicken wire to form a box. In the picture below you can get sense of the heavy sloping of the garden down towards the stream at the lower end. There’s a 10 cm (4 inch) gap in the right corner of the box due to the slope of the ground:

The lazy man’s guide to fixing chicken wire to a pole (I really have to cut down on my use of plastic cable binders – they don’t decompose well):

Finally I have room enough to store composting material separately before building the entire compost heap. Notice the open field in the background. It’s a pleasure to be this close to nature, instead of the bricks and concrete I was used to:

The reason for storing the different composting materials before building the heap is that the different materials will be more likely to get good contact with each other, because you’ll be able to spread out thin layers of each type:

In the past I used to throw in a very thick layer of grass cuttings each time I mowed the lawn (‘greens’), and much later I would throw in a lot of ‘browns’ and the materials would not get mixed and start to decompose. In small places a compost tumbler would be preferred as this would ensure that greens and browns would get properly mixed.

I watered my new compost heap after building so if everything goes well it will start to heat up and turn the waste materials into new compost to be used in the garden.

Spinach seeds are clustered in small spots on the stems. I’ve counted up to 10 seeds in each cluster but some only have 2. The seeds are beginning to look like “pro” seeds :

I look forward to finding out if they’ll actually germinate and what the next generation of spinach plants will look like and taste like.

In the video you’ll find:

• Experimenting with growing wheat and amaranth
• Growing a medicine border
• Growing sun flower seeds
• Greenhouse for starting plants from seeds
• Drying herbs in greenhouse
• Dog kennel as chicken house
• Growing food for your animals
• Crimson clover as nitrogen fixer

and some other small but interesting things:

Radish is also known as Raphanus sativus in Latin and is a member of the Cruciferous family. It’s an easy crop to grow making it ideal for kids starting their first garden.

Soil
Radishes will grow in average soil that has been worked down to 15 cm (6 inch) with any stones removed. Fresh compost should be avoided.

Sowing
The seeds should be sowed 1.5 cm (0.5 inch) deep and 2.5 to 5 cm (1 to 2 inch) apart. Rows should be 20 to 25 cm (8 to 10 inch) apart.

Growing
Radish seeds will germinate in a few days. When the seedlings are 5 cm (2 inch) tall thin them to 5 cm spacing. Remove weeds as the radishes grow. They are likely to bolt in hot weather and won’t bulb above 28 deg. C (82 deg. F). If they grow too slow the taste will be bitter and hot.

Harvest
It takes 20 to 30 days before the radishes are starting to mature. Summer varieties takes about 3 to 8 weeks to mature, but winter varieties requires 3 to 5 months.

Storage
Radishes don’t freeze well, so keep them in the refrigerator. Remove the tops before putting them in the fridge to keep the moisture and nutrients in the roots. They can be stored for about 5 days in the fridge.

Ah, this is what you want, more than 80% of the floor is visible. The energy flows and it’s way easier to get something done when you have space to operate. At the moment I need space to build and prepare projects for the next year in the garden.

But why is it so hard to clean up? I mean, just do it, right?

I always had a problem earlier, where I would go into the garage, or any other room for that matter, full of energy and ready to kick some garbage. I would look at thing and go yes, this I definitely need to keep. And then on to the next thing, also a keeper. And this one needs to go into the garbage… garbage… keep. And hey, what is this? Ah, I forgot I still kept this one. Ah, what memories. And this one, sweet memories.

I could go on like this for half an hour, maybe even move stuff around. Around this time my eyes would return to the very first thing I looked at, when I started “cleaning up” the garage or room, and realize, that I didn’t actually clean anything up, not even in my mind. And it was all in the mind. Then it’s very easy to feel overwhelmed and discouraged and just quietly close the door and go back to watching TV hoping that the mess will go away by itself. But it doesn’t.

I found another way that works every time. Of course it’s best to have a habit of keeping the floor or room free from too much stuff or mess, but sometimes it gets out of hand. Free space has some kind of magnetic attraction on things, whether it’s useful stuff or just garbage. In these cases this method can be useful:

1. Allocate some free floor area in another room or outside, at least as big as the room you will be cleaning up. Yes, this is often hard to find.

2. Divide this free area into four new areas:

• Keep
• Sell
• Charity
• Trash

3. Start emptying the messy room one thing at a time. The rule is that once you have picked up a thing you’re only allowed to put it down in one of the four areas. No cheating, make the decision and move on to the next thing, and empty the whole room.

4. Clean the empty room

5. Put the things from the “Keep” area back and organize them just the way you like it. Now there’s room to do it properly.

6. Rid yourself from the rest of the stuff, i.e. sell, charity or trash.

7. Start a new project that needs a lot of floor space. Or go watch TV. You deserve it

• Avoid washing potatoes before storage. Moisture causes them to rot

• The location must be:

1. Cool – Heat will make them sprout
2. Dark – Light causes them to turn green and poisonous
3. Dry – Moisture will make them rot

• Ideas for storage:

1. Brown paper bag
2. Cardboard box
3. In pantyhose separated by knots
4. Root cellar
5. As chips in a freezer

• Storage temperature must be 7-10 deg. C (45-50 deg. F). Freezing temperatures will change the taste and appearance of the potatoes.

• Remove potatoes that have turned soft, dried up or sprouted

• Potatoes can be stored for 3 to 6 months