A bleak prospect

Here is how the beehives looked against the stark landscape of PTG in December.  When spring arrives the fields will green up and we will be ready for another season.

Fall Fair 2012

Thanks to Jessica, who provided the beehive material, to Linda who coaxed the vegetables into production and to Marilyn who led the flower garden work, PTG was able to have a respectable display in the arena building at the 2012 Fall Fair. Although the display was mostly unstaffed, several people did drop by to sit for a while and talk to anybody who showed interest. 98 brochures and 69 business cards were picked up over the four days. After the fair, all the produce was freshened up and just over 77 pounds of assorted vegetables were delivered to the Knights Table.

Last Class

What a flurry of activity.
I have not had the opportunity to be at any of this years classes, so when I arrived just before 2pm and found the nursery garden filled with people already assembled and working at assigned tasks I was excited and elated.
Linda, Marilyn and Brian have really stepped up to the plate and without their collective hard work I'm sure we would not be as far along as we are.

Alan has problems with his young pup and as a result was late arriving to this class.

When I spoke with Linda I got my assigned spot in Block D clearing straw from one of the rows and turning over the soil looking for deep roots to clear away, prepping this bed for onion planting.  Because I have had no involvement so far I was virtually anonymous and this cleared me to just be one of the volunteers. There were already three others doing the same task in this Block.  When my row was completed I let the others continue and went on to help two others repair and rebuild two very long cold frames along the back of the beds.  One placed old shingles along the floor to keep the weeds down and we laid old skids over top to place the potted plants for frost protection.  Once this task was completed I moved over to the potting area where there were 4 volunteers potting dahlias to be placed into the cold frames.
There were also 3 or 4 loading hay into the trailer and dropping it off near Block C and 3 working on planting some vegetables in Block C.
People started packing up around 4:15pm and once the potting volunteers started to leave I headed over to check on the peony beds and pull some of the dandelions and other unwanted plants form the area.  I also checked on the rhubarb which needs to be divided.

I hope with the momentum continues. . . . . . .

Strawberries to Whiten Teeth

The secret to this inexpensive home whitening method is malic acid, which acts as an astringent to remove surface discoloration. Combined with baking soda, strawberries become a natural tooth-cleanser, buffing away stains from wine, coffee, and dark sodas. “Be careful not to use this too often, though, as the acid could damage the enamel on your teeth.”

Directions: Crush the strawberry to a pulp, then mix with the baking soda until blended. Use a soft toothbrush to spread the mixture onto your teeth. Leave on for 5 minutes, then brush thoroughly with toothpaste to remove the berry–baking soda mix. Rinse to avoid damage to the enamel. (A little floss will help get rid of any strawberry seeds.) Do not use more than once a week.

It is very important to brush your teeth well after using any strawberry treatment. Strawberries do contain natural sugar, and leaving them on your teeth for long periods of time could cause cavities. And the very ingredient that whitens our teeth, malic acid, can be harmful if left on too long. Any type of acid could eat through our teeth’s enamel, and that also provides ample opportunity for cavities to form.

Anybody do this??

Starting Seeds Indoors

  Update from Alan Hickman

Except for some specialty perennials, starting seeds indoors begins in March so don’t panic and don’t go buying ‘seed started kits’, soil mixes or anything else.  PTG Class #III (11th Feb) is all about soil and will cover the construction of flower and vegetable beds. Class #IV, the following week, is a ‘show and tell’ about seeds, seeding, and tuber and pelargonium propagation. These two classes will discuss what to do, how when and, more particularly, why.

Broadly speaking, all packaged seed sold at retail - by mail or in store - will meet some generally accepted standard of viability and that standard will vary depending on the sort of seed and what sort of growing season the particular seed crop has had. The viability will also depend on how the seed has been handled in shipping and in the store. Also broadly speaking, seeds available in non-specialty outlets will tend to be those which are the most reliable and the most easy to grow.

Regarding the sort of lights which should be used for starting seeds indoors, the best answer is: whatever you can pick up for free. If you have a choice – and beggars are seldom choosers – warm white florescent tubes. The whole setup will only be in use for around eight weeks and growing your own seedlings only makes economic sense if you have no, or a very low, capital investment.

Except under unusual circumstances, after a couple of weeks outside, the difference, between seedlings raised under the most expensive wide-spectrum grow-lights and those grown under third hand daylights or cool whites, isn’t enough for home gardeners to bother about. If you are growing Mary Jane different rules apply.

As to what to grow, because garden space is always at a premium, tend to look for things which are high value and low volume. Most herbs would fall into this category, and what is not used fresh can often be dried for winter use. It make no financial sense, for instance, to grow garlic. 3lb. of fresh, cleaned, vacuum packed, cloves can be had, in the middle of winter, for $3.99. You couldn’t prepare enough ground to grow three pounds of garlic for four bucks, let alone buy the seed, plant, weed, harvest and clean the crop.

See you at Class number III.

Secateurs

 Update from Alan

The fourth item to come out of last Saturday’s class was the unexpected result of the secateurs ‘prune off’ demonstration. For those who weren’t in the class, we tested how much force was needed to cut through a piece of dowelling using a range of secateurs. At one end of the range was a really cheap ‘no name’ tool that someone had thrown away in a bag of leaves. I’d picked up the bag at the side of the road and dumped the contents into my composter and, some years later, found the secateurs in an advanced state of corrosion. At the other end of the scale was an $80.00 tool, manufactured by Barco, which seems to be well regarded in the grape growing industry where pruning is an intensive year round activity. Examples from the ubiquitous Felco line, found at better garden suppliers, were also included.

This game has been played every year since the classes started in 2004 and the results have always been consistent. All the blades were razor sharp, as shown by their ability to cut a sheet of paper, but the more costly the tool the less effort it took to cut the standard dowel. Much the same result ensued on Saturday until Troy produced his Fiskars pruners. The ‘Power Gear’ model sliced through the dowel not quite like butter but clearly with less effort than the Barco pruners at three times the price. How come?

The selling ‘feature’ of the Power Gear is a rack-and-pinion arrangement which rotates the lower handle as the jaws are closed. I bought the model, disengaged the pinion and could detect no degradation in blade’s ability to cut the dowel. The ‘gear’ appears to be a marketing device used distinguish the design and to justify the $32.00 price tag.

Of the examples used, the Barco has a large head - it can cut up to 1.25 diameter if the wood is soft enough, the Felco has a medium head, and the Fiskars have a small head - up to maybe 0.75" dia capacity - but, as they were all cutting the same size stick, what has this got to do with the required force? Turns out, everything.

For a given size of stick, the bigger the blade is the greater the distance between the pivot and the ‘sweet spot’, the actual contact point of the cutting edge. For an 7/16 stick, the Fiskars distance is 1.1” for Barco 1.8”, a more than a 3:2 mechanical advantage in favour of the smaller head. In other words: the handles of the small bladed tool need only two thirds of the squeeze force of the larger bladed tool to exert the same cutting force on a given diameter of stick.

Price and ‘quality’ have nothing to do with how easily secateurs will cut a stick, simple geometry determines that. P & Q have to do with durability, functional design details, balance and what can be best described as ‘feel’. I have never seen this written down anywhere and, but for Troy giving me the gears, I’d likely never have given the matter any thought.

This is why I teach the classes. I learn stuff.

Glen said: This kind of information is exactly why the Peel Teaching Garden classes are so useful. It is unlikely a salesperson at Rona, Canadian Tire or Home Depot or even Humber Nurseries could give this kind of insight and guidance.

Spade Sharpening

Update from Alan
The difficulty that left-handed gardeners have when it comes to sharpening a spade had never occurred to me. In the write up http://www.teachinggarden.org/sharpening.html I glibly glossed over the problem with the admonition “Sinisters make the usual adjustments.” It turns out that a right handed single cut file cannot be used left handed, the teeth are going the wrong way and will not cut. A left handed file - so far as I can discern - is not manufactured. What I demonstrated in the class was not left handed filing, it was just awkward right handed filing.

There may be a way around this using the tool as a draw file but, because I’m a bit ambidextrous, I’m not sure if I’m filing left handed or just back handed.  Between now and the next class I’ll try to sit down with a left hander and see if there is any way to do the job other than learning to file right handed.  Either way, I’m going to have to rewrite part of the document which has been on-line these past five years.

Class #2

Update from Alan

Class number two, last Saturday, was well worth me getting up for. I ended up with at least four things that I had never given any thought to before. In this post I’ll deal with the easy one:

In my story about the old geezers standing out in their front yards on warm weekend mornings with a squirter on the end of a hose ‘watering the lawn’. About them sending a fine spray into the air and me watching most of the moisture drift off in the breeze either to fall out in the road or to evaporate never to be seen again. As soon as I said that they wouldn’t live long enough to get the requisite one inch layer of water on the lawn, I realized that I really had no idea how long it would actually take.

In the story I used the floor space in front of the tables in the classroom as the size of a small lawn, about 10' by 20'. 200sq.ft. one inch deep requires near enough 17 cubic feet of water. So, how long does it take to get that much water through the squirter? The picture shows how. 50' of ½" hose connected to the washing machine faucet and a bucket that just happened to be half a cubic foot in volume. It took a minute and five seconds to fill the bucket or two minutes and ten seconds to pass one cubic foot.

Assuming all the water reached the ground, it would take a tad under forty minutes to water 200 square feet of lawn. Taking into account evaporation and drift, the vagaries of water pressure, hosepipe length and diameter, and faucet size, probably an hour to an-hour-and-a-half to do the job properly. Not a lifetime perhaps but totally impractical and actually damaging to the grass.

 

Rules of Gardening

While reviewing garden rules - there are none - I drew a parallel between piano playing and gardening. A piano has a number of keys and using two fingers almost anyone can knock out a recognizable tune. The repertoire expands with the knowledge and virtuosity of the player. Horticulture also has a number of keys, simple techniques and principles, and with little more than ‘green side up’ and ‘snip off the dead bits’ something garden like can be achieved. Just as a piano contains every piece of music ever composed, (someone is going to jump on this I just know it) so every garden ever created was based on one combination or another of basic horticultural notes.

So how many garden ‘notes’ are there? I really have no idea, but like a piano I’d guess that the most used ones are clustered around the middle. Last Saturday I couldn’t remember how many keys a piano had, but I can now definitively state: ‘standard’ is 88, a few have 85, and the Bosendorfer 9'6" concert grand has 97. Isn’t Google wonderful. Trouble is, the 97 key job is just screaming to have its own limerick and that will be a challenge.

Comment from Patty : While most pianos have 88 keys, there are thousands of plants to create a myriad of gardens. Alan teaches you things you didn't know you didn't know. Like how to buy a proper corn broom that will last you 20 years. Glad I'm taking this course!

 

Update from Alan Hickman

It’s Monday after the first class and my head has now stopped spinning. In case it wasn’t obvious, once I get a head of steam going I’m in some other dimension. By the time 4:30 rolls around and I land, I’m left wondering where I’ve been. Fortunately, Marilyn and Brian managed to catch the biggest bloopers and kept me roughly on track so it wasn’t all a total disaster. Looking at the pictures of the session, it seems that there was a fair bit of interaction during the break and that is encouraging. Also, about half the class has now ‘friended’ or ‘liked’ the two Facebook pages so we can now communicate easily.

As the Facebook setup is new to PTG, I really don’t know what to expect or how it is going to work. As I used up all the time we had on Saturday, there was no time left for class input and there must be questions still out there. So, give me some practice. Post whatever to the PTG ‘wall’ and let me try to come up with answers.

Class #1

Update from Alan Hickman

We have the results of Saturday’s gardening quiz. The overall average for the class was 46% which is where it would be expected to be. The range was 8 - 21 correct answers.

It is a noteworthy reflection of the power of marketing and popular miss-information that 15 of the 19 papers had the wrong answer to question #4. Organic means? It is absolutely not a guarantee that the product is safe to eat. For instance, one is just as likely, perhaps slightly more likely, to get e. coli contamination on produce labelled ‘organic’ as on any other produce.

The following abstract is from an ‘Eclectic Gardener’ column.

“While promoting food as being organic by itself is about as misleading as advertising cholesterol-free broccoli, come 8th December 2008, when the Organic Products Regulations (Canadian Organic Production Systems General Principles and Management Standards CAN/CGSB 32.310 and Permitted Substances Lists CAN/CGSB 32.311) come in to full force, products carrying the Biologique Canada Organic logo will have a valid distinction.

Unfortunately and contrary to what most consumers probably believe, the industry and government officials who constructed the standards make a point of stressing that it is only the methods of production which are being regulated. The quality of the resulting products is not the focus of the legislation. Certified Biologique Canada Organic produce has to meet exactly the same standards of quality, purity and safety as the produce resulting from non-certified methods. Any Canada ‘fancy’ grade apple will meet the same standard, regardless of how or where it is grown. If it doesn’t meet the standard the apple isn’t a ‘fancy’ grade.

The framers of the legislation also state clearly that certified products are not guaranteed to be entirely free from the residues of prohibited substances or other contaminants.”

My subversive (garden) plot

Update from Alan Hickman

Everyone who has signed up for this winter’s garden classes, and past students who are planning to sit in, should take a few minutes to watch: www.ted.com/talks/roger_doiron_my_subversive_garden_plot.html. While I may not agree with his solution for future food production, his analysis of the magnitude of what has to be done is truly awe inspiring.

Roger Doiron: My subversive (garden) plot | Video on TED.com

www.ted.com

TED Talks A vegetable garden can do more than save you money -- it can save the world. At TEDxDirigo Roger Doiron shows how gardens can re-localize our food and feed our growing population.

High Temperature:
Actual: -5°C
Average: 1°C
Record: 12°C in 1957

Low Temperature:
Actual: -11°C
Average: -7°C
Record: -31°C in 1942

High Temperature:
Actual: 1°C cloudy Wind W33km/h P.O.P.22%
Average: 1°C
Record: 13°C in 1957

Low Temperature:
Actual: -6°C cloudy Wind NNW16km/h P.O.P.1%
Average: -7°C
Record: -24°C in 1942

High Temperature:
Actual: -4°C partly cloudy WSW11km/h P.O.P.6%
Average: 1°C
Record: 8°C in 1957

Low Temperature:
Actual: -14°C partly cloudy SW28km/h P.O.P.3%
Average: -7°C
Record: -20°C in 1973

High Temperature:
Actual: -6°C mostly cloudy Wind NNW6km/h P.O.P.1%
Average: 1°C
Record: 14°C in 1984

Low Temperature:
Actual: -14°C cloudy Wind SSE6km/h P.O.P.40%
Average: -7°C
Record: -22°C in 1980

High Temperature:
Actual: -1°C mostly cloudy Wind NW24km/h P.O.P.1%
Average: 1°C
Record: 15°C in 1984

Low Temperature:
Actual: -5°C mostly cloudy flurries .30cm Wind NW12km/h P.O.P.3%
Average: -7°C
Record: -23°C in 1951

High Temperature:
Actual: 8°C cloudy rain Wind WSW37km/h P.O.P.40%
Average: 1°C
Record: 14°C in 1975

Low Temperature:
Actual: -4°C cloudy rain 7.40mm Wind W29km/h P.O.P.51%
Average: -7°C
Record: -21°C in 1943

High Temperature:
Actual: 0°C cloudy Wind SSE22km/h P.O.P.20%
Average: 1°C
Record: 15°C in 1975

Low Temperature:
Actual: -4°C cloudy rain 3.60mm Wind SSW27km/h P.O.P.75%
Average: -6°C
Record: -18°C in 1940

High Temperature:
Actual: 2°C mostly cloudy Wind W9km/h P.O.P.3%
Average: 1°C
Record: 13°C in 1991

Low Temperature:
Actual: -9°C partly cloudy Wind W8km/h P.O.P.1%
Average: -6°C
Record: -21°C in 1958

Update from Alan Hickman

On Ants and Nuclear Power Stations

When discussing the meaning of ‘natural’ in last Saturday’s class, I put forward the proposition that a nuclear power station is just as natural as an anthill.

Ants take natural sand and natural spit and use them to modify the environment for the benefit of their species. Humans take natural sand and natural pebbles and natural limestone, to make concrete buildings; they take natural iron and natural carbon to make steel structures, and they take natural uranium to make fuel, all to further the cause of the human species.

Anthill technology is just as cutting-edge to the ant species as nuclear power-station technology is to the human species. The difference, such as it might be, is one of degree, not one of kind.

Both the anthill and the power station are made of natural stuff dug out of the ground and processed. If the power-station is deemed to be not natural, then it can only be because the humans who made it are not natural. And that poses the question: ‘When did humans cease to be natural creatures?’

A couple of points which I did not bring up in class are here taken from Wikipedia:

“A natural nuclear fission reactor is a uranium deposit where analysis of isotope ratios has shown that self-sustaining nuclear chain reactions have occurred. The existence of this phenomenon was discovered in 1972 at Oklo in Gabon, Africa, by French physicist Francis Perrin. The conditions under which a natural nuclear reactor could exist had been predicted in 1956 by Paul Kazuo Kuroda. The conditions found were very similar to what was predicted.

Oklo is the only known location for this in the world and consists of 16 sites at which self-sustaining nuclear fission reactions took place approximately 1.7 billion years ago, and ran for a few hundred thousand years, averaging 100 kW of power output during that time.”

Additionally, “Plasma physicist John Brandenburg has detected anomalies in gamma ray emissions from Mars in data from the NASA Mars Odyssey orbiter. This points to an abundance of radioactive uranium, thorium and potassium, especially in one particular spot on Mars that indicates that there was once a thick layer of radioactive substances, and the likelihood of a natural reactor.”

There is probably not a whole lot that humans do that nature hasn’t already done without out help. Like harnessing fire and water we’ve merely figured out ways to get the energy stored in atoms to do work for us.

So what do anthills and power stations and the possibility of fission reactors on Mars have to do with gardening? The immediate object of the proposition was to show the importance of saying what you actually mean. Do not say unnatural if what you really mean is man-made. How an individual explores and resolves the deeper implications of the proposition, will influence how all sorts of decisions are made, both in and out of the garden.

High Temperature:
Actual: 1°C mostly sunny Wind WSW8km/h P.O.P.0%
Average: 2°C
Record: 19°C in 1946

Low Temperature:
Actual: -8°C mostly clear Wind WNW9km/h P.O.P.2%
Average: -6°C
Record: -20°C in 1988

High Temperature:
Actual: -2°C mostly sunny Wind WSW22km/h  P.O.P.0%
Average: 2°C
Record: 13°C in 1979

Low Temperature:
Actual: -12°C mostly clear Win dWSW22km/ h P.O.P.0%
Average: -6°C
Record: -27°C in 1977