Hazelmere Farm: 3月 2009

2009年3月24日星期二

Shit loads of eggs

Today we went to the beach to gather an ingredient for our compost: seaweed. More precisely, seaweed and herring eggs. This is that time of the year when herring spawn eggs. Tons of eggs got washed ashore along with seaweed. Seaweed itself is a fabulous ingredient for compost, seaweed in combination with herring is simply a God-sent! Fish eggs are awesome, awesome addition to our compost since we don't raise many livestock and our sources for nitrogen-rich manure are limited.
The enormous amount of eggs are just staggering! The beach is just caked with herring eggs! we happily loaded two truck loads of them!

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David, our first WWOOFer of the season. Hails from our motherland Taiwan, he had worked in an organic farm in Taiwan for 3 years and started his journey last summer from Oregon to New York to Vancouver Island. He's had experiences with premaculture, horticulture therapy and eco-village life. A well-traveled, multi-faceted fellow!

A truck load of seaweed and eggs

unloading seaweed and eggs. they are to be mixed with bark mulch

2009年3月7日星期六

Seedy Saturday!

We went to Courtenay's Seedy Saturday today. Seedy Saturday (I think this may be a Canadian thing, but i could be wrong) usually happens in February or March, and is an event where people come together to swap seeds, especially heritage varieties.

apart from seed exchanges, the seedy Saturday here is also a horticulture trade fair. There were many participating vendors: BC owned seed companies, local growers/nurseries, local NGOs, gardening suppliers etc. There were also several workshops taught by local expert gardeners/farmers. Back in our Wasabi days, we used to sell wasabi plants at Seedy Saturdays in Courtenay, Nanaimo, Qualicum Beach, Victoria.

The event began at 10am. We arrived shortly after 10 and already there was a huge lineup outside of the event hall, and inside it was just absolutely jam packed! It's amazing to see that the local horticulture community is so bustling with vigor and enthusiasm!

2009年3月6日星期五

What's in the green houses now?

our tiniest green house, designated for seedlings.

clockwise from front-left: beets, beets, fig, fig, fig, green onions and garlic chives, clover, compost

left to right shelling peas (lower relative to sugar snap peas) ,
over-winter kale and chard,
newly transplanted lettuces protected by remay, fava beans,
sugar-snap peas with the high poles

fava bean

shelling pea

Eliot Coleman's double covered beds

Inspired by Eliot Coleman, the author of Four-Season Harvest (He and his wife raise vegetables and salad greens year-round on their organic farm in Maine), we started putting floating row covers over our just transplanted spinach and bok-choi in the green house. We placed flat-topped wire wickets every 4 feet along the growing beds, rest a layer of remay on top of them and use clothespins to clip the remay. This keep the vegetables cozy and warm over night. The temperatures still go down to about 0 at night these days. We haven't been attemping to grow much greens over the winter, however this tested method should be very condusive to growing and harvesting in winter. After all Maine is much colder than Courtenay.

Cover crop

We seeded crimson clover as a cover crop in the vegetable beds after the last harvests before winter. It's ready to be tilted in anytime now. Clover is a legume and the bacteria living close to the roots of leguminous plants have the ability to capture nitrogen from the air and provide nitrogen in a form that can be absorbed by plants. Apart from nitrogen fixation, clover's root system can help to hold on to the nutrients in the soil from leaching over the winter. It also helps to suppress other weeds and add organic matter to the soil after it's tilted in.

2009年3月1日星期日

City Farmer

My mom and I went to Vancouver last week to run some errand. I dropped by City Farmer at the end of our day. City Farmer teaches people how to grow food in the city, compost their waste and take care of their home landscape in an environmentally responsible way. I've been hearing and reading lots about City Farmer and I've always wanted to pay a visit there. Unfortunately I arrived late (they close at 4pm) so I only caught a few minutes to chat with Sharon, the lady who works there. She left the door unlock for me to poke around in there. It was a brief visit, but enough to make me fall in love with this place! I post some pictures up here to share with you. Bear in mind that this is still early spring/late winter in Vancouver. Imagine this place full of lush, colourful plants, chirping birds and buzzing bees, people chattering laughing and tending vegetables, all in the middle of the metropolis of Vancouver!