Although I’ve kept herbs and occasional greens growing next to the deck, I haven’t grown a proper garden since (checks blog archives… ) 2008. That must have been the point at which the water line broke, and I started taking
Spring Forward
The time changed yesterday and today it felt like spring. Spring has been teasing us for at least a month. Yes, a month, since the beginning of February. We’ve had almost no winter this year and almost no snow since
Bokashi experience so far
Last fall we started using a bokashi waste system. All food waste, including meat, bones, dairy and small amounts of oil and fat, went into a plastic 5-gallon bucket with a lid, combined with sprinkles of a microbial starter. We
Bokashi
Bokashi bin, and wheat-bran starter Okay, it isn’t pretty, but it’s pretty cool. We’ve been outdoor composting for more than 20 years. We tried indoor vermicomposting for a while, but despite our best efforts couldn’t entirely prevent fruit-fly outbreaks. We
Macro perspective
I put the magnifying lenses on the DSLR camera the other day and Fiona had fun shooting up-close photos around the garden. A change in perspective is truly magical. Thyme Parsley Lupin top Rosemary Hawkweed Hens & Chicks
Tea progress
Fiona’s tea business is taking shape. Some organic ingredients have been purchased. These have been combined with wildcrafted ingredients like rosehips, peppermint and wild ginger. The wild ginger in particular has entailed several trips along trails for collecting but we
Fallow days
We’re enjoying a well-deserved few fallow days. Besides the bike rides, runs and swimming days, we’re attending to a few lingering jobs at home. We finally finished disassembling the play structure. This involved sawing timbers away from seized bolts and
Moving a pond
This is where the pond and waterfall used to be. Under the apple tree about 20 metres from the house. A lovely shaded area, but with no seating nearby we rarely enjoyed it. Now that we have a deck, I
Milo, and the Slide
Fiona and I went to the garden center in Nelson this week. We bought some bedding plants as well as some shrubs and herbs for the garden we’re creating in front of the deck. Our old kitchen garden was clear-cut
Silted up
I love our water system, I really do. Our supply is gravity fed, fresh mountain spring water and it’s free and plentiful and all ours. It comes from high up a mountain that has no human activity on it. It
Spring dinner
I love this time of year. Garden fresh lettuce, chickens laying like crazy, the rhubarb is still plump and vigorous. Down the road it’s calving and lambing time. Tonight for dinner I think we’ll have lettuce and wild greens with
All mucked out
Oh, look at this stuff! It makes me so happy and proud! Procrastinator that I am, I prefer to just keep adding straw to the chicken coop to keep it relatively fresh. I do one big mucking-out a year.This was
First crumble
It’s hard to believe, from looking at this, that there was 8 inches of snow on the ground a scant 3 weeks ago. Temperatures are still cool here, but the rhubarb is loving the weather. Fiona’s peas, chard and spinach
Community garden cleanup
Every spring and fall we participate in a big clean-up bee at the community Reflection Garden. This year’s spring clean-up seems much earlier than in past years though that’s really only an illusion resulting from our unusually long winter. It’s
Hubba-hubbard!
Sophie specializes in seeds. Typically her aim in her garden plots, both at home and at the GRUBS community garden, is to grow a lot of stuff that will produce a lot of seeds. She could probably start a radish