Growing Food Year Round

Mastering Cold Frame production takes more than enthusiasm for food gardening to produce a winter crop. A friend built me two cold frames in early autumn. The resulting excitement over the newest project exceeded my knowledge of how to plan a winter garden. Having mislaid the copy of “How To….” by Island garden guru Linda Gilkeson it was necessary to fall back on my own resources. So, the planting began in early September and I choose kale, collards and cabbages. It was a very warm month and by early October the plants had shot up to three feet in height with unusually broad leaves…green veggies on steroids. By December they were pressing against the glass roofs of the cold frames.
None of the plants really developed into recognizable vegetables, just lots of deep green leaves. The next months have been spent giving away bundles of crisp garden produce to anyone who comes by to peer at my monster plants. Determined not to waste any of this crop I have relied on my signature dish of chiffonaded greens, seasoned with ginger and garlic. Every meal served with a steaming heap of unidentified glistening greens has been a pleasure. What’s been gleaned from this experience is that the amount of fertilizer should be reduced and the glass roofs removed in the heat of day. A greenhouse thermometer might also be a good idea!

This season the cold frames, which are built on top of my raised beds are being cleared of the winter’s stubble, refertilized lightly and planted with cool season veggies. These are starter plants such as spinach, lettuce, arugula, baby bok choy and green onions purchased at the nursery. That will keep me supplied with some salad greens until it’s time to replant with the traditional summer fare. The two cold frames are a humble collection of discarded wooden posts, scavenged storm windows with a skirting of greenhouse quality plastic. The only expense was the skirting. Each pane is independent so all one needs is to lift up the pane in order to gather whatever one needs for the meal.

I have a very small greenhouse and summer season plants can be started there and will be ready for transplanting in early June. My goal is to succeed as a year round gardener and to share this enthralling experience with emerging gardeners who read this column.

Making Maple Syrup

Learning To Tap Syrup from our Bigleaf Maple is a fascinating process and many islanders are successfully producing maple syrup for home use and for sale. It has become a small cottage industry in the Cowichan Nanaimo area. The annual Bigleaf Maple tapping demonstration will be held tomorrow, Saturday Feb. 2 at the B.C. Forest Discovery Centre in Duncan. Here’s an opportunity for readers to learn the secrets of extracting gallons of maple juice from our handsome Western Maples and converting the sap into rich tasting maple syrup. The program includes a tapping demonstration, syrup tasting, luncheon with maple flavoured treats, talks with syrup vendors and of course a demonstration on boiling and syrup making. It may be a bit chilly outdoors but there will be a large wood burning evaporater filled with hot sap. You can bundle up and keep warm while enjoying a bit of maple syrup therapy and sipping on a cup of maple sap mint tea. There will be steam train rides to delight the youngsters. It is short notice for Up Islanders but if you are going call 250-715-1113 Ext. 4 for info or go to www.bcforestmuseum.com. There is a modest entrance fee for the family and the demonstrations continue all day. This rapidly growing industry started on Vancouver Island and has spread to Washington, Oregon and California.

While In Duncan you may want to include the second annual Islands Agriculture Show held on both Friday Feb. 1 and Saturday Feb. 2. It is located in the Cowichan Exhibition Centre and is a unique opportunity to showcase the agriculture industry on Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands. There will be more than 60 exhibitors plus farm seminars that will be of interest to the general public as well as the farm community. For further info go online at http://iashow.ca/ or call 1-250 748 0822.

Many Of My Readers experimented with planting the root end of green onions in order to regrow them. My trial worked well and I was able to “harvest” the next generation of greens. However, when I left the root ends in the soil for a another attempt at regrowing them again all I got were a few exhausted stems struggling to stay upright so I gave them a quick and merciful end. However, I learned that organic onions are the only type that will produce a second crop. As this was an experiment performed on my kitchen windowsill it will be interesting to see if a set of green onions, grown outdoors, can reproduce a second crop if the roots are left in the ground. That really will be sustainable gardening.

Did You Know that North Island College has a course on Feb. 10 called Edible Landscaping. You can have your garden and eat it too! Learn everything you need to know from expert Helena Hartwood about variety choice, bed preparation, planting and harvesting.

Blogging For Ideas Can Be Fun

Blogging For Garden Ideas can be fun and I stumbled across an amazing idea on the Internet. I was searching for a green onion relish recipe when I spotted a sub-head “Regrow Your Green Onions On Your Windowsill” . Now that stopped me in my tracks. I am presently experimenting with regrowing green onions outdoors by using the left over root base after chopping off the green leaves for a salad. This works by snipping off about half an inch of the white end of the onions and sticking them into a bucket of basic soil. They are starting to push up green stems from the core of the original onions but the process is slow and the plants don’t look too happy. However, the writer of this blog claims there is an easier process to quickly reproduce a clutch of green onions. In the writer’s words…”Pop your scallions in a glass of water and they clearly begin to grow. I chopped off some green onions and stuck them root-down in a Mason jar above my sink. I topped off the water once or twice when I saw that it had mostly evaporated, but other than that I did nothing” The blogger goes on to say that she was surprised to see how fast they grew. Within a day or two there was fresh growth, and within a week they had 3-4 inches of fresh green onion on top. She then snipped a handful of leaves to mix with scrambled eggs. Within days there was more new growth. She’s wondering how long a person can keep a set growing. Some of my knowledgeable readers must have experimented with this idea. Contact me at msostler@telus.net so that we can share your successes…or even your failures, as growing food plants is a continual learning process.

A Clutch Of Chicken Lovers will be making an appearance at City Council in late January to present our case for the approval of a Poultry By-law in Campbell River. We need your support to join us at City Hall so mark the calendars for January 22nd and if there is a change we’ll post the time and date in the local papers. Most communities on Vancouver Island now have poultry bylaws. Major cities around the world have similar bylaws and it’s about time we joined the flock.

No Patio? No Balcony? No Problem

No patio. No balcony. No south facing window? That doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy picking a few fresh greens grown right in your living room this winter. You can start by buying a bag of turnips from the farmer’s market or health food store. Eat some of them chopped in strips and enjoy their mellow crispness. Shredded, they make a wonderful addition to your salad. Slice them in wedge shapes and roast them crisp with a bit of olive oil and a dash of Cajun pepper. Now, for the secret of growing fresh greens. Take a few of the smaller turnips and place them in an attractive container, toss in some dirt and stick the pot in a window corner. Miraculously, using only their stored energy the turnips will begin sprouting delicious greens, even if the light is insufficient. It is amazing. Just make sure the turnips have not been dipped in wax. Sometimes producers do this to prevent the turnips from regenerating on the store shelves. If you do have a south facing window save it for your precious winter herbs and find an east or west facing window for your newest experiment in winter food production.

There is still time to plant a few herbs and veggies in November. Broad beans, also known as favas, are a highly nutritious vegetable. They are sturdy, robust and useful as a replacement for garbanzo beans in hummus or as a base for pestos and soups. If you plant them this month you’re going to need a very sheltered part of the garden. A cold frame or a cloche would be ideal to protect them for the next few chilly months. Just be warned…they will grow up to six feet so you may find them bursting through the roof of the average cold frame. You will have to remove the roof and devise another way of protecting them once their growth spurt begins. Another plant that is more than willing to prevail despite bone chilling rain and frozen ground is garlic. There is still time to plant this pungent friend according to the WestCoast Gardening Guide. Garlic is a bulb that that requires nine or ten months of growth. So that means it will be July or August before harvesting. When you finally lift your very own home grown garlic from the warm summer earth you’ll know the long wait was worth it.

Did You Know That…it’s the right time to mulch your perennials with wood chips, leaves, straw and kelp. Don’t dig deeply around your plants as it disturbs the micro biological relationship of the plants with the other growth surrounding them. Remember to mulch, mulch, mulch before winter really sets in. Also wood chips are preferred to bark mulch as the chips have more nutrients and decompose more readily…that’s according to the advise of the course presenter at a North Island College “Lettuce Grow” program. Those NIC courses are so full of information for the fledgling as well as the experienced food gardeners. If you love gardening you’ll love these courses so why not join us?

Three Emerging Professional Farmers

If It Weren’t For The Dedicated Efforts of three commercial food farmers in this city and the support of North Island College (NIC) Continuing Education Dept. food growing programs we would still be treading water these past three years on the vision of becoming a self sufficient community. Kira DeSorcy, who was just awarded the city’s prestigious Stewardship Award, is in the forefront of our “young farmer” movement. Since last winter she has been managing the food production of a remote farm cooperative on Cortes Island. Overlaying that she’s been teaching a program on agriculture and backyard gardening and has developed a film series in conjunction with the city and NIC on food security. The course called “Lettuce Grow” included backyard gardening and small scale agriculture. The series attracted an unexpectedly large turnout and received great reviews. That became the impetous for designing the winter program which is now in progress. It includes bi-monthly events and workshops . Topics range from mason bees to organic gardening, permaculture and hydroponics. Check the NIC Continuing Education website for dates and registration.


Connie Kretz, owner of Coastal Roots Vegetables, is in her fourth season of food production on the Hudson family’s farm in North Campbell River. Working alone, with occasional help, Connie grows more than 20 different crops on an acre of land. She has developed a highly successful box program which supplies a stylish container of freshly picked vegetables every week to her client list. The program wrapped up on Oct 1st but the energetic Ms. Kretz doesn’t take that date as a signal to slow down. She is now preparing soil for her personal winter garden. This includes a broad selection of cold-hardy plants including lettuces,chards and onions.

Third On My List of Active Farmers are Steve Ross and Michelle White of Ross Mountain Blueberry Farm on Peterson Rd. They established the farm three years ago and it has been a long stretch of back breaking work to arrive at where they are today. This summer they harvested their first crop of lusciously plump blueberries, not enough for commercial purposes, but a harbinger of great returns when their bushes reach maturity in the next year or two.

The Putting Your Garden To Bed event attracted a great turnout at St. Patrick’s Church library last Saturday. The Comox Strathcona Waste Management on-site educator Elaine Jansen invited master gardener Lorraine Waring of Courtenay to present a program which included advice on bedding down the veggies as well as lawn care, pruning shrubs, composting and fall planting. One topic that particularly interested me was her admonition to lime, lime, lime. She strongly believes that Vancouver Island soils are very deficient in this valuable mineral and suggests we amateur gardeners can easily test our own soil with an inexpensive kit purchased by mail from West Coast Seeds.

Did You Know the horticulturist at world renowned Kew Gardens in London says you can insect proof your garden with a simple spray mix of one egg yolk, a litre of water and one tbsp. of baking soda. Now, that sounds easy!

What Has New York Got That We Haven't?

What Does New York City Have that Campbell River hasn’t got? Legal chickens in their back yards…housed in coops on their fire escapes and on their roof tops…that’s what they’ve got. And here we are in our pleasant seaside community housing potential criminals who are secretly raising chickens under bushes, in their basements or cooped up in derelict cars in order to avoid the fearful eye of the bylaw officer. We know you’re out there…you residents of Willow Point and Campbellton and Quinsam Heights. You are forced to go undercover by your desire to have fresh eggs for morning breakfasts, gardens free of black slugs and destructive insects, pesticide free berries and veggies for your families plus plenty of droppings for the compost pile. More than a year has passed since the city conducted public surveys and posted very specific questionnaires on the development plans for the communities. The question of support for backyard chickens received full support from participants except for the No Vote of a former mayor who confided in me that he thinks chickens are dirty. Perhaps, as a child, he was chased by a depraved chicken. On the other end of the stick another retired mayor secretly raised chickens for many years inside municipal borders and thinks the naysayer mayor is “crowing in the wind.”

The Agricultural Steering Committee, of which I am a member, will be coming forward to city council in late September to appeal for a poultry bylaw that will allow these cuddly cluckers to live life to the fullest. It will free their masters from the terrifying possibility of finding a bylaw officer checking under bushes and peering into basement windows. A poultry bylaw will be a gift to the environmentally concerned residents when we can at last keep family birds with big benefits. Chickens have great personalities and are interesting to observe. They will joyfully eat and recycle all our kitchen waste, thereby reducing municipal organic waste. They provide insect control and contribute rich fertilizer for gardens and composters. They allow families to take control of their desire to “eat local” and become more food secure. And…best of all… the city’s support for a bylaw will allow Campbell River to join the ranks of island municipalities with visionary ideals. Those include Victoria, Oak Bay, Metchosin, Esquimalt, Saanich, Langford, Duncan, Nanaimo and Port Alberni.

Could Spaghetti Become The New Gourmet

Could Spaghetti be Gourmet? Well, it could be pretty close to gourmet if you take a fresh bowl of steaming pasta, a ladle of tomato sauce and top it off with a dollop of pesto. Definitely, the addition of pesto would upgrade your repast from good to outstanding. Basil, the main ingredient in pesto that has such an impact on sauces and salads, is not easy to grow. But, there is a way around that impasse. My solution is to buy a mature basil plant in the grocery store, find a spot in your kitchen with at least partial sun and your basil will produce a regular supply of deliciously pungent leaves for months on end. The trick to keeping your basil reproducing is to regularly nip off the upper leaves. This means there will only be one or two sets of leaves left on each branch. It is astounding to see how quickly the plant regrows. Now try mixing basil, pine nuts, a garlic clove, olive oil and Parmesan cheese in the blender. Freeze the pesto in an ice cube tray and then transfer the squares into a freezer bag. Use these as a topping, not only on pasta but on baked fish or grilled chicken. For those not partial to basil you can always replace the herb with cilantro or parsley and still have a great dish.

Sowing A Winter Harvest Garden in August while the summer sun is still producing abundant food may seem a bit strange but it captures the essence of sustainable gardening. The twelve vegetable varieties that are suggested are cold-hardy and will grow slowly, or sit dormant, while awaiting the harvest. Some of those on this basic list will benefit from the protection of a cold frame, a cloche or mulch, but all of them can be enjoyed well into December and sometimes into the following spring. On this list are arugula, cilantro, corn salad, lettuce, parsnips, brussel sprouts, carrots, collards, kale and turnips. Read the directions on the back of the packages to assure your selection is a winter seed. You can create a very inexpensive cold frame by buying a large class window frame at the Habitat For Humanity Restore on Willow St. Prop the frame on an angle against a south facing supporting wall. This would work for a yard, a patio or a balcony garden. Just tuck your plants in under the cover, water when necessary and make sure they are mulched well with leaves or straw to protect them from cold days. You could be munching on your own greens all winter long.

Did You Know That…seaweed, which is abundant on our shoreline, makes a fabulous liquid fertilizer. Half fill a drum or garbage container with seaweed, top it up with water and let stand for three months. The beautiful rich liquid is very strong. You must dilute it in a solution of one cup of seaweed to four gallons of water. Your plants will love you and so will the earthworms.