Garden Open House - Sat July 18th

We're opening our fence gates to give our neighbours and friends in the community a better look at our garden on the UofA campus!

This Saturday, July 18th, from 10am - 4pm, we'll be having an open house at the garden. There will be a market of fresh produce, herbs, potted plants and compost available for purchase (be early!), as well as an opportunity to observe our plant growth, and learn our gardening techniques.

RSVP on Facebook
RSVP via E-mail

See you all there!

Volunteer Opportunities

For Saturday, we will need volunteers present for the following activities:

• Setup - 9:30am - 10am
• Transplanting demo - 10:30am - 11am
• Composting demo - 11am - 12pm
• BBQ - 12pm - 2pm
• Setdown - 4pm - 4:30pm
• Being present - 10am - 4pm
  

If you are available for any of these activities, sign up on the right column under Open House Volunteer Shifts!

My schedule in the garden this week (weather depending) is:

• Mon July 13 - 12pm - 4pm
• Tues July 14 - 12pm - 4pm
• Weds July 15 - 6pm - 8pm
• Thurs July 16 - 6pm - 8pm
• Fri July 17 - 12pm - 4pm
  

Stop on by during these times if you'd like to work in the garden, and would like a helping hand.

See you all soon!

Those Thieving Magpies!

Some guests to our garden are exceptionally friendly and resourceful; others aren't so much. As mentioned before, we are growing raspberries and strawberries, which have been blooming and riping since the end of June. However, someone's been coming into our garden and eating them.

Let me introduce to you, the common Magpie. The Magpie is not a welcomed guest to gardens, as they like to steal fruits, pull out plants, and attack or scare away other, more friendly birds. To get them out of your garden and to stay out, as well as with most pests, there are two organic methods one can use and should become familiar with: exclusion and frightening.

Frightening animals is a safe and highly recommended method of pest control in our garden. In the Magpie case, we installed a few additions to our garden:


In this picture, you can see a shiny pin-wheel at the bottom, and a hanging tin-foil tray at the top. These things refract light, move with the wind, and occasionally cause small noises. Inconsistent and unexplained shining of light, noises, and movements tend to scare most birds. Putting these things next to and on our berry producing plants has successfully reduced the amount of Magpies hanging out around them.


This is a scarecrow, and an actually morbid one at that. Scarecrows give the illusion that there is a gardener present, and even further, you can see that this gardener is reflecting light. Other recommendations for scarecrow construction include faces with eyes on both sides of the head, lose fitting clothing that moves in the wind, and shiny objects in their "hands," each of which would mimic an actual gardener, without one being present.

Without causing harm to the actual animal, you can exclude it from entering your garden. In the case of a magpie eating our garden's berries, you can cover plants in a breathing blanket, or chicken wire. This method, however, becomes very complicated and frustrating, if you're working with a lot of gardeners. It can be efficient for some pests, if all that is necessary to exclude the animal is a fence around the garden.

Our Naturalization Project actually had a hare visit while I was writing this. They came right in, hopped over to our Saskatoons, and just started eating the leaves off of it. It began to eat whole plants, and grasses in our native bed. In this case, we'll have to keep a gate closed in order to prevent hares from getting in, or wanting to get in, to eat our plants.

Happy gardening, and good luck with your pests!

Sweet Successes to Savour

When June arrived, we had a lot of challenges with the excessively hot and sunny days, which damaged or killed off some of our plants. However, in the Campus Community Garden, there have been lots of successes!

We appreciate all the volunteers who had laboured heavily in the garden during these dry periods, and watered constantly. One of the fruits of their labour is the collection of some of our harvest. In June, we've harvested at least 24lbs of mixed greens, including Spinach, Red Mustard, Arugala, and Red and Green Leaf Lettuces. However, when the volunteers have had their fair share of salad mixes, we donate the rest of our harvests to the Campus Food Bank. At least 10 lbs of the harvest was donated throughout June.

Half-way through June, we noticed our Spinach bolting. This is when the plant produces less leaves for consumption and more seeds for spreading. It results from the longer and hotter days in the summer, which means that the early spring is the best time to plant and early summer for harvest, or late summer for early autumn.

We're going to give planting spinach another shot in the shadier garden areas, and in between existing rows to see how they will turn up. We're also figuring out ways to reduce pests in our garden and what to plant in mid-summer. So check out our blog shortly for these updates!

Growing Up, Out and Growing Pains

In June the Campus Community Garden has seen a lot of growth, both in our space management and vegetable plants. Here, we'll explain how the Campus Community Garden grows up and out, while pointing out some of our growing pains in this month.

We take advantage of vertical space at the campus garden to increase our vegetables' yield and to diversify the species of plant-life in our garden. We do this by encouraging the vertical growth of trellising plants, and building troughs - a new edition to our greenhouse. Our trellising plants include:

• Snow Peas
• Tricolour Pole Beans
• Grapes (variety to be determined)
  

As well, we will be planting pumpkins for July, which are able to be trellised and will be ready for October-November. When they start to flower, a net will have to be designed to hold the pumpkin, so that its weight does not cause it to prematurely fall off the trellis.

Physically, the garden has expanded outwards in a plot at the Eco House and to the north our fence-line. Of course, with building new plots, we always respect the space necessary for volunteers to travel through, with equipment, or for comfort. Most of our expansion this year has been acquiring new space. In these new plots we've planted:

• Potatoes
• Mokum Hybrid F1 Carrot
• Strawberry Spinach
• Crisp Mint Lettuce
• Space F1 Spinach
• Monnopa Spinach
• Mizcina
• Red Russian Kale

We'll be updating on the condition of these plants as frequently as we will with the other plants in our gardens.

Finally, we say good night to the plants that did not make it through the Edmonton climate between planting in April and through the month of May. Cold weather (accompanied with snow) mid-May, followed by excessive sun and heat, mixed with cool evenings caused a bit of crop and seed damage. Here's a list of transplants and seeds that did not make it through the early part of the season, and which we cannot update anyone on anymore:

• Most of the Lemon, Diva and Sweet Success Cucumbers
• Milkmaid Nasturtiums
• Calendula nana Candyman Yellow
  
• Orange Thyme
• Some of the Windsor and Blue Wind Broccoli

However, with every loss, there is a gain. In some of their places we are growing the Tricolour Pole Beans, as well as Radishes and Mammoth Sunflowers. We will be updating as to the conditions of these plants and how they're growing.


Right now, we are having a huge success with our Strawberries. We do not know the variety yet, but when we do we will let our blog readers know about the success we have with these berries in our climate! Here's a shot of the little berries. They began to flower at the end of May and have produced a few red ones in June.

More updates on the progress through June will be coming up!

Campus Garden Grows Again - 2009 Edition

It's been an incredible time for the ECOS garden this year, which saw its first planting in mid-April. The volunteers and gardeners have been busy building new projects for the space, extending it, and seeing a lot of new vegetables sprout up!

Like always, the garden is organically grown, which means we use non-GMO seeds and organic weed and pest reduction methods. The garden is communally gardened, instead of a plot-based system, and open to student and community involvement. If you reside in the Edmonton-area, stop by and visit the garden near the University of Alberta campus on 89th Ave between 110th and 111th Street.

I'm Ashton, the Coordinator for this year's garden, and I hope this year's blog can help connect the volunteers, gardeners, community and interested web-goers to our garden online. Here you'll be able to have updates as to the status of our garden, observations of vegetable behaviour, tips and tricks in the garden, and then some recipes when the vegetables are ready for harvest.

Here's what's new for April 2009:

• Extended the garden north even further
• Lots of new beds in the garden with different shapes and sizes
• Acquired a plot of land next to the Eco House residence for gardening

Here's what's planted from April 2009:

• Beans: Snap Bush, Purple Royal Burgundy
• Roots: Scallion, Allysum Bull's Blood Beets, F1 Hercules Carrot, Garlic
• Leafy greens:Red Mustard, Red Russian Kale, Red Velvet Lettuce, Euro Red and Green Lettuce, Smooth Leaf Spinach, Tyee Spinach, Romaine Lettuce, Arugala, Red Leaf Lettuce
• Cucumbers: Lemon, Sweet Success, Diva
• Squashes: Green Tint Patty Pan, Table Ace, Yellow Zucchini
• Tomatoes: Green Zobra, Red Zobra, Mexican Midget, Juliet, Red Brandywine, Oregon Spring, Yellow Cherry, Silvery Fit Tage, Black Seaman, Purple Prudeuce
• Flowers: Milkmaid nasturtium, Candy man yellow calenvula
• Herbs: Italian Large Leaf Basil, Mrs. Burns' Lemon Basil, Lime Basil, Nayoletano Basil, Creeping Thyme, Orange Thyme, Savory, Common mint, Korean mint, Cumin, Curled Parsley, Dill, Chervil
• Berries: Strawberry, Raspberry
• Other: Sunny Vee Hybrid Corn, Rhubarb, Jerusalem Artichokes, Windsor Broccoli, Blue Wind Broccoli, Snow Peas

So if you have any of these varieties of plants in your garden and want to compare to send input, then keep visiting this blog, and feel free to post comments. Hope to hear about other's success stories.

The next update will include what's new for May 2009, and what will be coming up for the rest of the summer. Stay pruned!

The dirty hoe gardening show

Well, I have been very busy lately with the garden, but I think now that things are slowing down that I will be posting more regularly. Here is a link to Alex Bolivar's show on CJSR featuring our garden. Well done everyone who contributed!

http://www.cjsr.ualberta.ca/news/news.php?s=dirtyhoe&ep=1314&

I encourage you to listen to other episodes of Alex's show. It is on CJSR on Fridays between noon and one, and on Mondays at 2pm. Or, of course, you can listen to it as a podcast.