Life in Cowtown

I’ve already endorsed my main gardening resource by my man Ed Smith, and it’s a wonderful beginner’s book. However, just yesterday I received, opened and fell in love with another wee gem unusually titled Gardening When it Counts – growing food in hard times by Steve Solomon. I’ve heard lots of great things about this book from many a reputable source, but since it wasn’t available on Amazon (whom I single handedly keep in business some months, I swear), I’ve never tracked it down to check it out.  But the curiosity persisted, and one day some weeks ago I found another site that carries it, and ordered a copy.

I started reading right away since I have a garden to plant and all, and was immediately smitten. Written in a conversationally informative tone, the author promises to be the ‘gardening grandfather you never had.’ Once upon a time Steve Solomon ran a seed supply company and learned a great deal about growing vegetables. To run a good, meaning honest and ethical, seed supply company one needed to learn a great deal about seeds, where they come from, what their quality is, and plant many trials to see how the plants actually perform. Will they germinate at an acceptable or excellent rate? Will the vegetables grown be useful, properly formed and productive? Do they resist insects or diseases if grown organically? Are they well suited for the local climate? All these things can only be determined by growing many plants from seed and trying many different techniques while doing so.

The book teems with useful and informative bits – the stores of how your local garden centre may NOT be the best place to buy either plants OR seeds, was enthralling.  The expose of the seed business and why the pretty packets may be full of crap seeds entertained me thoroughly. How few tools you really need and how to select them eased my worries that I don’t know what a hoe is or how to use one. How vegetables use the nutrients in the soil and their root systems would typically be a boring subject, but this book makes it interesting, applicable and useful.  The gold mines for me were two: The complete organic fertilizer (COF) – a mix of soil amendments that work on any soil at all and will provide a complete nutritional supplement to veggies, all mixed by you from common sources and guaranteed to make your garden the best ever. And a complete (pretty current) list of reputable seed companies that actually do their own trials, set high standards, and stand behind the quality of their product. These he recommends as the companies to serve the bulk of your garden needs and they are split by geographic region, including many Canadian companies.  Many surprises in that section alone.

Other great things (that this book is chock-full of) include great techniques for starting seeds (which the author actually doesn’t recommend for most veggies), building beds and hills, techniques for using tools, making compost and irrigating intelligently. Every page of this unassuming book was an unexpected gold mine of information and I learned a phenomenal amount of actually useful, tried and tested information. He encourages his readers to grow the bulk of their vegetables, shows how easily this can be done on a 3,500 sq foot plot with minimal irrigation, and provides a ton of useful advice. Like the tile promises, if I only had one book and had to feed a family, I would feel safe and secure that this is it.   

Baby Seedlings

·         Cucumbers: 2-4 plants

·         Peas: lots – spaced three inches apart go for at least a six foot row

·         Tomatoes: estimates vary from 2 to 8 plants

·         Peppers, sweet: 2-4 plants

·         Zucchini: 1-2 plants

·         Carrots: at least one 4 foot row

·         Herbs: one healthy plant should suffice

That covered the bulk of what I wanted to grow. I’d probably plant half as many radishes as carrots, and I had a rough idea that about a sixth of the bed would be entirely lettuce. I’d plant a succession of green onions and since they’re compatible with most veggies I’ll intersperse them here and there.

One thing I was sure of is that I wanted to grow heirloom seeds.  Most veggies today are bred for qualities other than taste, like shipping endurance and shelf-life and often taste like cardboard bought from the supermarket out of season. Wanting to enjoy the old-school taste of vine-ripened produce picked at the peak of quality, I turned to heirloom varieties sold by our very own Salt Spring Seeds.

Seduced by delicious sounding descriptions I ordered oh so many seeds, and at least five varieties of tomatoes. My little pouches arrived promptly, and planting began.  According to the seed packets most of my seeds should be started 8-10 weeks before last frost, which in Calgary is May 23.  So last Thursday the 26^th was planting day.

I share a home with three curious cats, so leaving seedlings in a cat-reachable area was out of the question. The only cat-proof room in the house is the office which does not get great sunlight, never mind the fact that nothing in Calgary gets great sunlight this time of year. Therefore a grow lamp was in order. I bought a long fluorescent full spectrum tube for about thirty dollars from the garden centre, and a large seed tray with a tall plastic lid that has an indent on each side. Once the seedlings germinate, you can cut out the indented parts and stick the tube right through the lid giving the new plants abundant light at about the right height. Without plentiful light the seedlings will get ‘leggy’ – tall and thin as they try to stretch toward light and that weakens them so they may not survive. Most veggies require a long-light day – 14 to 18 hrs so a light is pretty much mandatory in this region.

For optimum growing conditions and to avoid diseases, you want to start your seedlings in a soilless growing mix, not in garden soil.  An easy way to grow seedlings is to use the little Jiffy Peat Pellets available at any garden centre as well as Canadian Tire. From my extensive reading I found out that overwatering is a common problem with seedlings, and ideally they should be bottom watered – absorbing all the water they need by osmosis rather than from the top. This ensures a steady sufficient water supply and prevents the force of the water falling on the pot from disturbing the fragile seedling. Many companies recommend a watering mat which holds water that the pellets can draw from, which is a great idea, except for the fact that they’re expensive and not readily available. My solution is to pour a good layer of vermiculite on the bottom of the pot – about a half inch which is also very good at absorbing water and holding it for plants to use.

I set the Jiffy pots on top of vermiculite, added warm water until they all expanded fully (they should at least quadruple), planted two to three seeds in each pot, estimating the suggested depth on each packet, covered them with their dome to help hold moisture and warmth, and stuck them in the office. That was five days ago, and not one seedling has come up yet. I feel like a hovering mother hen waiting for her egg to hatch.

seedling in tray