Growth on the RV pad

All of our work finally started to pay off in late July when we were able to see some growth and harvest some greens. Here is our attempt at protecting our food from hail damage.

Growth of the herb spiral--lots of harvesting and drying has been done to these herbs.
Strawberries, red currants, and rhubarb--which made an amazing jam when honey was added :)
Crookneck squash--not nearly as productive as the zucchini, but a fun addition to the garden anyhow.

Zucchini plants, 2 blueberries, and a relocated gooseberry near the concrete.

One of 6 zucchini plants

Tree spinach 2 months after planting, it grew to over 5 feet tall by the end of the season!

Siberian Honeyberry bush that we bought in Claresholm, AB early July. It will grow to about 1 meter tall and wide.

The volunteer sunflowers grew much hardier than those I planted, but the bees did not seem to mind one way or another.

Harvest Time coming up next!

Kijiji Queen Wood Mulch

I do not take my nickname of "Kijiji Queen" lightly. I take a lot of pride on being able to get items inexpensively or free if they are reasonable driving distance from our house. Additionally, I LOVE to get rid of things on the site as well (remember all of the wood from our deck removals??). To add carbon matter and ground cover to our future food forest and beef up our outdoor compost bins, I began the search for wood mulch. Within a week or so, I found an arborist that would deliver 4-6 yards of mulch only for the cost of delivery (about $65).

Other than about 1.5 yards that friends took to use, we made use of all of the mulch. Here is a close-up of the mulch. It was steaming and already full of fungal growth--perfect for our pending food forest!

The future food forest looks a lot more polished and ready for some cherry trees.

Next up: Growth on our urban farm

Hot Tub Wicking Bed

After renting the concrete saw for the THIRD time (pity our neighbours!) we finally unearthed all of the blocks from the 4th bed. There was no better sound than the last block being lifted out!

Here is the 4th bed dug out:

After lining the bed with the bed with pond liner, I tried to convince Tim to fill the bed with water and make it into a hot tub instead of a garden bed. At 14' long and wide enough for 2 people, I thought it was a great idea.

Tim won this debate, and we began finishing the bed. Here is the weeping tile being laid:

A total of 200' of weeping tile was used in the 4 beds and garden swales. Next we added chunks of concrete, larger rocks and rock debris from a neighbours pile in the alley to hold the tile in place and to create the overflow area seen towards the bottom of the pic (above).

After weeping tile came the landscape fabric and 1 cubic meter of soil.

After MANY, MANY months of work, our four beds are done!!!

Summer garden update pics are to follow soon!

Woody Plants

It was time to make our yard a bit more permanent by planting some woody perennial plants. After ripping off the lower deck last year, we planted a currant and gooseberry along the south fence. This year after getting the gas lines marked in the backyard we had to change our plans of where we originally wanted to plant fruit trees. Here you can see where we planted 2 blueberry bushes with a cucumber in the middle. This is the space where our higher deck was last fall.

When there are sales mid to late season at any store in town, I have to scope them out. On one of my trips I got 2 other blueberry bushes at Zellers for $5 each and a golden elderberry, seen planted by our pallet composter in the alley along with a volunteer rhubarb and some raspberries.

This year was the first time our currant bush produced! We made the juice from the berries into a beautiful jam along with other fruit from our yard and alley: rhubarb, raspberry,& nanking cherry.

Spiraled Herbs

As we were digging out the 3 beds thus far, we dug through and sifted 8" of compacted gravel and sand. During this part of the adventure, we broke a hoe and spent many hours digging around some rocks larger than softballs. After unearthing them, we piled them in a corner of the concrete jungle while figuring out what to do with them (see bottom right of below pic). Now what to do with these large rocks, some of which were quite beautiful? Build an herb spiral!

Using some free bricks, the stones that we unearthed, some large rocks that my neighbour was getting rid of last year, and 1 meter of soil from our last delivery, I built the spiral in a couple of hours on July 8, 2011. The reason for planting herbs in a spiral is to condense the planting area and create many microclimates for the plants to grow in. The dry, heat lovers are planted at the top and the cool, moist lovers towards the bottom. Many of the plants that I used were discount plants at the end of season, some that I grew from seed, and others divided from friends. Planted from top to bottom of the spiral is: pineapple sage, rosemary, lemon balm, oregano, basil, flat leaf parsley, summer savory, fennel, cilantro, tarragon, chives, echinacea, and chamomile.

After 1 1/2 months of growth, here it is! The spiral size is about 1.5 meters wide by just over 0.5 meters tall. We have harvested and dried lots of the herbs that were grown this year.

Will the perennial herbs survive the winter? Only time will tell!

Bed 3 of 4

Here it was June 12th, 2011 and we were still working on these wicking beds just waiting to plant our seedlings. Many choice words were exchanged about these beds, but we did get some great muscles from all the digging, prying, and shoveling! We made sure to take some time out to have some fun too.

We did not do a great job of documenting the first two wicking beds, but remembered to by the 3rd bed and got even better on bed 4. Here is the story of bed 3... Many of the pieces of 3rd and 4th bed were not cut all the way through which meant a great upper body workout. While chipping out the concrete pieces, we needed to protect our window and patio door from flying pieces. (If you are a neighbour, now you know why we had hanging plastic for a few days!)

After all of the pieces were freed, the bed was dug out, and the gravel sifted, We lined the bed with pond liner, put in weeping tile and rocks to fill the bottom. Here you can see the pipe that we used to add water to the bed:

Laying landscape fabric over the weeping tile.

After soil was added and our seedlings were finally planted, we tested out the overflow area. This picture shows the water draining out of bed 3 into the swale that is connected with main garden. Works great!

Here is the with 3 of 4 beds complete!

Now we were seriously considering if we should finish bed 4 or just leave it alone...

Finally the wicking bed construction!

This is the moment you have all been waiting for...how we built the wicking beds out of concrete!

Step #1: Offer to provide drinks and food to a great friend with strong arms, good endurance, and a great analytical mind in exchange for their help. Meet Pam!

When we were not digging, sifting, and hauling soil, we talked about those things and planned out the wicking beds. Here are Tim and Pam marking out the pond liner to line the 4 beds with:

We did not document the first 2 beds very well, but here you can see the pond liner, rocks and weeping tile filled with water. Because none of us thought ahead to how we could connect the 2 beds, we had to improvise a bit. I am digging the drainage swale at the end of the beds that connects with the garden.

Collectively, we decided that it would be best to not connect the 2 beds if we wanted to grow food in the beds this year. The growing season here is 100 days if we are lucky, so no more delays could happen! Here is what we came up with for drainage:

We wrapped a cinder block in landscape fabric to allow water to drain out of the first bed into the gravel drainage area between the 2 beds. If the overflow water gets too high, it will go over top of the vertical concrete piece that separates the gravel and garden swale. FYI: none of us are engineers, so this is our best guess at what will happen. Either way, the excess water will infiltrate back into the ground and not be lost to evaporation.

After lining the beds with landscape fabric and adding the beautiful soil--our first two beds were planted on June 12!

Only 2 more beds to go! Time for a food break first though :) (Refer to step #1)

Bring in the soil

Since we did not want to wait for a year or more to build and make soil, we decided it would be best to bring in 4 yards of compost/loam mix from Western Canada Compost. They have a great mix of organic matter, no bio solids (municipal sewage), and maintains good water retention.

Finally by June 10th we were able to plant our seedlings in the garden, now with our swale system in place and slowly filling in with gravel as more was dug out of the beds. In the background you can see the black buckets and tires where we were trying to grow potatoes for the first time.

While the swales were filling in with gravel, I sprinkled this product (which is really just clover seeds) around the edges of the swale to aid in holding the soil in place and fixing nitrogen at the same time. Some of it grew, but much of it was washed away in the heavy rains in June. Additionally, we broadcasted daikon radish seeds as a cover crop to help us deal with the compaction of our mainly clay soil.

Up next: How we built the wicking beds!

Using what you have

My original thought to use wood mulch (instead of gravel) in the swales on top of the weeping tile was changed quickly after we pried up the concrete and it revealed that we had 8" of gravel and sand under the RV pad. We did not want to use the sand-gravel mixture as is because the sand would settle in the air spaces, so I built a sifter with 1/2" screen and lumber that was already in the garage. The larger rocks were saved for our planned herb spiral, sand was sifted into a cubic meter bag that we saved from the landfill, and the gravel was put directly in the swales.

Here is the sifted gravel on top of the weeping tile. Looks good to us! And even better, we saved a ton of money by not hauling in gravel. Sifting gravel from 2 of the 4 beds yielded enough gravel to fill over half of the swales.

When your wicking beds start to look like graves, it is time to stop digging!

The pathway to the patio door until June 4th was a few old boards that were saved from the deck. Since our beds were planned out and we determined that we had enough pieces to spare, we built a walkway. Locating all of larger pieces that were not marked for another purpose, we began moving the pieces into place. But there was something wrong about the path. It needed a really big piece... which we pulled out to the back alley last fall. Though we were getting some good muscles with the concrete moving, we were just not quite strong enough to move the piece by ourselves. Here is where "building community" comes into play! We asked our generous (and very strong) neighbour and his brother to help us move just one piece. In 6 minutes, they picked up the piece and put it in place. Thanks Chris and Anthony!

Using the sifted sand for a leveling surface, the pieces fit in place like a puzzle.

Concrete Cutting #2 & 3

Since our first intention was to cut the concrete and get rid of it, we cut it in 1-2' square pieces. Then permaculture entered our plans and everything changed. We rented the concrete saw for another day and got most of the cutting done before the saw broke and we had to take it back. Turned out that Home Depot forgot to put on the bolts to hold on the safety guard, they were surprised that it ran for 4 hours. They quickly told me that the rental would be no cost since it was their fault. I am sure I heard the neighbours sigh when they knew we would have to rent the saw for a 3rd time 2 weeks later!

Next came the fun part--moving the concrete, digging the beds, and swales! Here is the vision we had laid out in boards and fencing:

While Tim was prying up the concrete, I dug swales in the garden. Following a similar rainbow pattern to last year, we added made sure to add in keyholes so that there would be no need to walk on the soil and cause compaction.

Here you can see the two beds closest to the garden are laid out and Tim is working on the 3rd bed.

After digging the swales, keyholes, and approximately leveling them, I began laying in the weeping tile covered with fabric into the swales. By the time I finished all of the swales, Tim was just about finished moving the concrete from one of the beds.

While we were prying and digging, our plants were yelling out words of encouragement so that they could get in the ground before summer started.

Now what to fill our swales with? We planned to use wood mulch for adding carbon to the soil and we figured that it was easier to dig out than rock if we changed our mind on using swales. As usual, our plans changed due to our concrete situation!