Winter Gardening Planting Dates

Seed Resources

 

Happy Solstice from ALM Farm!

Best winter wishes and all the best for the new year!

Summer on The Farm

Summer finds us busy on the farm; seeding, weeding, seed collecting, planning, harvesting, watering and watching the days go whizzing by. To find us at this busy time of year, come say "hello" at Sooke Country Market or Moss Street Market in Victoria, both markets run through the season, Saturdays 10-2.

Winter

Early Summer

[gallery]

There's so much good food coming from our farm with lots of "firsts" coming from the field, squash & their lovely blossoms, potatoes, berries, cukes, shelling peas, tomatoes and beans really soon- enjoy the bounty of early summer. Come see us at Sooke Country Market or Moss Street Market- come out for the Moss Street Paint in this Saturday 10-4

Strawberry Balsamic Jam

• 4 ½ cup crushed berries
• 1 box pectin
• 7 cups sugar
• 3 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
• ½ teaspoon pepper
• Stir together fruit and pectin
• Bring to a boil over high heat
• Add all the sugar- stir
• Return to a hard boil for 1 minute
• Remove from the heat, stir and skim for 5 minute. Add pepper and balsamic, stir
• Pour into sterilized jars, process or seal with paraffin wax

A Sure Sign

We did it- we've seen winter through to spring.

It's here in all it's flowering, mucky, sunny, hopeful glory. We're busy and happy and only getting busier. We had excellent Seedy Saturdays this year and was happy to see familiar faces, meet new growers and talk about our seed collection. Our workshops are underway, box program holding steady and first Moss Street half market this weekend.

Welcome spring to our little farm.

Not Quite Spring

We had a little weather throwback recently. After retiring for the evening we all awoke to the brightness that filled our rooms from the reflection of fresh snow. Such a beautiful blanket covered the farm, hushed the world a bit and gently reminded us it's not quite spring yet. It was a good chance to finish inside jobs, and be very thankful for the wonderful greenhouses we have. Here's to daylight savings and spring just around the corner.[gallery]

A New Season

Spring is sneaking up on us, day by day we're getting busier as the days are getting longer. It's a great time to ready for the season cleaning tools, amending rhubarb, pruning, starting seeds and spending our weekends at Seedy Saturdays. Some of my favorite tasks have been collecting seaweed and cleaning up areas that we usually don't have time for- it's a great sense of accomplishment and good way for my body to warm up to more and more physical work after a winter of seed work inside.[gallery]

Oven base

The sketch shows details of the oven base foundation.

This photo shows the retaining wall complete with posts for the roof supports and rubble fill.

The reason for pouring the slab is to keep the oven from settling unevenly.  Since the rubble may still move as it settles, the slab makes sure the oven doesn't crack as this happens.

Wine bottles are set in clay slip perlite mix to insulate oven so that heat doesn't escape into the rubble below.

Starting the center line of the bricks on the leveled sand before completing the fire brick floor.

Setting up a farmer's stand at a market

Thinking about good displays at our local Sooke Farmers' Market and the Victoria Moss Street Market.  Letting the customers see clearly what's available is important.  Here is the difference Lindsey Snelling made by changing the position of her beets.

Ian King has a great farmer's table at Moss Street Market.

Teresa Wilman from Silver Cloud Farm puts together a great display.  She bought herself a laminator which makes her signs look great.

Effective micro-organisms

Today Kit Warren sprayed our beds, chicken houses, and seedlings with EM, Effective Micro-organisms.  To learn more  you can check out  more here.  In return, I'll spend some time with Kit at his farm. Here are some photos of Kit and his sprayer:

Planning for our Cob or Earth Oven

Holger was out today  planning two workshops to build an earth oven at the farm. We chose a site and drew up plans.  We need to get a small excavator in to prep the site and move some rocks.  I'll try to update this blog as the work progresses. Here are descriptions of the workshops: Earth Oven Building Workshop We are building a wood fired oven using local building materials including cob. Join us in community, learn by doing, and help build an oven. Holger will share various oven designs, materials, and techniques to inspire you to build your own. Bring your own lunch or enjoy an organic farm lunch for $14. Taught by Holger Laerad at ALM farm Saturday July 31. 10am-5pm Fee: $55

Earth Oven Finishing and Baking Time to put the finishing touches on the oven and test it out! This course will cover plasters, finishing and sculpting the oven, firing the oven and baking in it. Please bring your favorite pizza toppings to create your own edible masterpiece as this course includes making and baking pizzas. Sunday Aug 22. 10:00 – 2:00pm Fee $45

Here are some photos of earth ovens

Transplanting tomatoes seedlings into 4" pots

After newly seeded tomatoes have germinated and got their true leaves, they should be transplanted into 4" pots which have richer soil. Here is a video of the process: Transplanting tomato seedlings

Transplanting tomatoes into the ground

Here's a video of how we transplant tomatoes from 4" pots into the ground.

farm fotos 4May10 023

Flaming a Carrot Bed

Carrots take a long time to germinate and can't take a heavy weed load.  Therefore, we prepare a carrot bed about 1 or 2 weeks ahead of planting and then flame the bed with a tiger torch. Here is a video of Marika flaming a carrot bed to reduce weed load.flaming 2

After flaming carrot beds we plant radishes in between the rows. The radishes will be up and harvested before the carrots get too big.

Summer squash and tracking first and last frost for my farm

We had a frost two days ago.  I think it is the last so I put out my summer squash under floating row cover.  I have been tracking first and last frost for my farm pretty methodically for the past 10 years.  I keep a journal by my bedside and while I drink my morning coffee I write down the weather and main activities from the previous day.  I try to zero in on first and last frost because they affect when to plant and harvest so dramatically.  For my farm I can get a frost as late as May 7th, but the last frost can be as early as April 18th.  The most often date or mean is May 1st.  I can expect a first frost as early as September 22 or as late as November 8th but most likely around October 12th. Jess took these beautiful photos of the frost:

Transplanting alliums and starting cucurbits

Yesterday we transplanted shallots, onions, and leeks into a 100' bed.  We trimmed their roots and tops before transplanting and watered them in well.

Also I transplanted into pots summer squash that I got started in damp paper towels in plastic bags kept in a warm place in my house - on top of my stereo.  I like to start them this way because it helps me plant only the strongest seeds that I know have already germinated.  Also it's faster and takes less space.  Our heat tables are soooo full right now with tomatoes and peppers waiting to get into the ground in the greenhouses.

Spring In The Garden

Spring in the Garden   Green is the color of spring.  At ALM we keep our box program going year-round, our customers get a good sense of the movement of the seasons by the food that shows up in their box each week.  Right now the salad and braising greens are growing strong (still mostly over-wintered greens), the brassicacea’s (kale, cabbage, br.sprouts, purple sprouting brocolli, etc) are making florets, which are highly nutritious and can be cooked like broccoli.  The root vegetables are on their way out, they will be starting to raise up flower stalks to make seed, which compromises their flavour.  If you still have over-wintered carrots, parsnips, leeks, etc in the garden it is time to eat them up.  We have been harvesting rhubarb for the last 3 weeks, the first dessert crop of spring. 

It is a busy time at the farm right now.  We have countless tomatoes that we have been babying along since Feb, they are starting to get big and are becoming more demanding in terms of water and nutrition.  We have planted our first tomatoes into whatever ground we had ready in our greenhouses.  This will continue into May as space becomes available.  We also have lots of lettuce, kale, and other seedlings that want transplanting into the ground.  This wet weather has made it difficult to get onto the soil to till and so we are ready and waiting for our window to till and get beds prepped to seed and transplant. 

Now is the time to start thinking about the heat loving crops.  We are choosing and prepping beds for corn, beans, cukes and squash right now.  We will plant them out by early May to get a jump on the season.  Often we get beds prepped and then cover them with old greenhouse plastic to help warm the soil before we plant the crop.  Both beans and corn will not germinate in the soil if it is too cold, but instead rot. 

Seed into trays/pots to transplant: lettuces, chard, kales, brocolli, cauliflower, cabbage, basil, green onions.

Direct seed outside: potatoes, peas, spinach, radish, carrots, beets, runner beans, parsnips.