Tag Archives: small garden

Here’s an update and pics on my garden plot!

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I was at my community garden last week and I made some massive changes to the soil.  I have a couple challenges at my garden plot.

One is water – as in too much of it.  I know this is a great problem to have, but apparently the nice people who have been gardening there for the last 3 years say it can make things a challenge.  What happens is, there is an alleyway that trains into the garden property, and then passes through the property to a dry storm pond set up by the city.

This can cause a lot of problems.  For example, when I first saw the garden, there was a white salty crust on top of the soil everywhere.  I believe this is coming from the run off, so I’m hoping it doesn’t sterilize the soil.  Anyway, here’s what I did to fix this problem.

Raise the soil

To keep the plants and soil out of the running water as much as possible, I’ve raised the soil.  I’ve done this by making hugelkultur beds.

Logs burried under the garden bed allows water to be regulated better.

Logs burried under the garden bed allows water to be regulated better.

I believe this will help because the logs will draw in the water over time like a sponge and release it at a more realistic rate.  Also, the added volume of logs and wood chips in the garden will allow water to stay in the soil better.

Here’s some pics of the work I did on the garden.  They were taken on my phone, so they’re not anything great, but I think you’ll get the idea.  I basically split the garden into quarters.  I dug a trench, threw the logs and branches in, then covered them with wood chips, and then covered the chips with soil.  I gained about a foot of elevation which I think will help a lot.

Mushrooms

After watching greening the desert, I learned that mushrooms can take salt out of soil.  I’ve also known that mycelium helps gardens and forests grow in ways we still don’t understand fully.  So in order to hopefully get some of these benefits, I’ve ordered some mycelium that I can inoculate into my garden plot.

Hopefully these changes will help me out in my ventures.  If you have any tips or comments, please let me know.

Thanks

Caleb

Simple Gardening Lessons Both On and Offline On The Cheap!

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Tinyplots.com is a local Calgary gardening website which is offering an instructional set of videos and exercises on gardening in the zone 3 climate.  The thing to understand about this is for many, Calgary is a difficult place to grow in.  We have short summers, and frosty springs and falls.  If you can grow successfully in Calgary, you can grow pretty much anywhere else considering most of the world has longer summers and warmer weather.

I’ve just started my membership with them and after watching a couple videos, I can tell already it’s going to be great.

The instructor, Jordan Brown, is a graduate of Verge Permaculture’s PDC, and I’m always stoked to see someone who’s applying their knowledge of permaculture, especially when it comes to informing the masses.

Check out the demo videos, I think you’ll really like this course.  Not to mention it’s cheap! $50 gets you a course that’s spread over 4 months.  These are simple lessons all in one place, so when I’m weighing doing all the research by myself, or paying the $50, it’s a no brainer.

I’m not being paid for this post in any way, but if you would like to help me out, mention that I sent you, and we’ll both be sent a pack of Alberta seeds such as French Sorrel, Green Kale, Peppery Cress … compliments of Blue Mountain Bio-Dynamic Farms!

Thanks for reading

Caleb

Beautiful Permaculture Garden at The AREA in Inglewood Calgary

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Hey everyone.  I wanted to share a video I posted on YouTube showing a great permaculture urban garden.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

how to control pest insects in your garden using your garden

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How frustrating is it when you put so much work and effort into a garden, and then like out of nowhere, your plants are nearly ruined from insects munching on them?  I’m going to explain how you can control the insects that feed on your precious crops.

blossom!

The key to controlling insects is not pesticide.  Pesticide will kill all the beneficial insects and microbes as well.  The key is flowers.  The effect of the flowers is at least three fold.  They confuses insects that will attack your plants, they attract predatory insects, which are also pollinators.

diversify!

The important thing is variety.  Scatter your flowers throughout your garden.  When I say that, obviously you want to plan so they will be good companions to your other plants, but you want flowers growing along with your vegitables.

Here’s some flowers and plants I would recommend planting:

  • A few marigolds (which are good with tomatoes)
  • Borage is amazing for attracting bees (give it some space it will spread)
  • Sunflowers and bird houses and feeders will attract birds (a bad thing if you have seeds starting, but a great thing if your plants are semi-established (birds will eat the bugs too)
  • Herbs like basil, bee balm, catnip, dill, Echinacea, evening primrose, fennel, lavender, parsley, poppy, thyme and sage will all attract pollinators too.
  • Check out this site too.  It has some great information for specific insects.

The cool thing too is that everything I’ve suggested is edible!  However, be warned that not every part of the plants I’ve suggested are edible.  Do your research.  There’s tons of info out there.

bee houses!

Some other things you could try is making a bee block.  This will help support the bee population and give them a home right beside your garden!

They’re as easy as drilling some holes in a block of wood.

http://www.instructables.com/id/mason-bee-hotel/

Let me know what you do to control insects.  Also let me know if you’ve tried any of these suggestions before and how they worked for you.

Thanks for reading!

Caleb

compost at lightning speed with a bucket worm farm!

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Compost at lightning speed with a bucket worm farm!

Using worms to eat your food scraps is a great way to make use of almost all of your food.  Red wigglers seem to work the best since they’re so active.  One pound of worms can eat up to half a pound of food per day!In this instructable I will show you how to create a slick looking worm bin which will fit under your kitchen sink.

Step 1 – Stuff you’ll need!

The materials for the worm farm can run you anywhere from $0 to $20, however you can find most of the materials in garbage piles if you wish.You will need

  1. 2 Buckets – They should be 5 gallon, but I’ve used 2 x 2.5-3 gallon buckets.  I don’t yet know if this will work with buckets this small.  Check your local bakery for free ones that they’re throwing away.  I tried that but ended up having to buy a couple cheap plastic garbage cans.
  2. 1 Shopping Tote – This needs to be polyester because if it’s cotton, the worms will eat through it.
  3. A newspaper and/or plain cardboard – A regular newspaper will do.  Don’t use the glossy type.  Strip anything non cardboard (like tape) off the cardboard.
  4. Some water
  5. Some method of drilling or puncturing holes in the buckets – a drill, knife, hammer, force of will, etc.
  6. A small amount of leaves and grass clippings
  7. Worms – I’d start small with a half a pound (500 or so) and if you need more, get more after

Step 2 – Drill holes in the buckets

  • IMG_0833 (Small).JPG
  • IMG_0832 (Small).JPG
Worms need air just like most other living creatures, so drill lots of holes in both buckets for ventilation.I put both buckets together like they are going to sit when they’re finished and drilled holes through both of them so that they would line up.

Make sure you drill a few holes in the bottom of the inside bucket.  This will allow water to drain out so your worms don’t drown.

This is why you have two buckets.  The bottom bucket catches the “worm juice” so you can use it on your plants to encourage microbial growth (this is a great thing!).  I haven’t tested this, but I’m thinking you could dilute the worm juice in a 5 gallon pale with water and aerate the mixture with an aquarium pump and a tablespoon of molasses to create a type of compost tea.  If you try this, please let me know how it goes.  If you want to qualify your results, set one plant aside to try this on so you can see the difference in results.  Remember, compost tea’s results are most noticeable in unhealthy soils.

Step 3 – Sacrifice one of your grocery totes

Take a fabric grocery tote and put it in the bucket.  I took the handles of mine, wrapped them around to the bottom of the inside bucket and secured them with parachord so the bag wouldn’t move.  Feel free to use whatever means you wish to secure the bag.The bedding and worms and “canopy” (for lack of a better word at the moment) will go inside the bag.  The bag allows water to drain out freely and air to get in, while keeping all the castings and bedding and compost contained.

Make sure the bag is made out of polyester! If it’s made of cotton, the worms will eat through it.  This wouldn’t be the disaster of a lifetime, but it would potentially make more of a mess than you want.

Step 4 – Time to tear some paper!

Find your least favorite newspaper articles and adverts and shred them into small pieces. Soak the paper in water for a minute or so and add them to the bottom of the bag.  Shake off any excess water.  This will serve as the bedding for the worms.I’m sure you may be wondering about the newspaper print being bad for the worms as I did, however when I googled this, I found out that most newspapers use soy ink.  This doesn’t include paper with shiny surfaces.  I’m talking about your typical newspaper…paper.

Feel free to read for yourself here, or google for yourself.  I’m not going to claim I know everything on this topic.  I’m only sharing what I’m doing and the research I did.

Step 5 – Add your worms

I picked up my worms from this nice lady.  She’s more expensive than a lot of places, but she’s local and fairly close to me, so I know my worms won’t die in transit.  She’s also very helpful.The worms came in a bag with bedding and soil, so I just had to gently dump the bag into the compost bin bag.

Step 6 – Cover the top

In order to give my worms a forest floor feel, I went outside my apartment and found the first pile of leaves laying around which happened to be on a lawn next door.  While my wife and I were grabbing some leaves a lady who lives in the house came over and asked what we were doing.  We felt kind of awkward, but we explained about the worm farm and had a really good conversation with her about her garden and compost.  She was happy to let us take some leaves.Place the leaves on top of the worms to give them a nice homey canopy.

Step 7 – You’re done!

Now place your lid on top of your buckets and put them wherever you wish…well sort of.  Keep them at room temp.

Place your veggie scraps under the leaves and watch them disappear.  Well that would be boring.  Just put the lid on after and trust they’re disappearing.  Keep an eye on the worms health and make sure they’re doing okay.  Research worm farms for yourself and make changes if you need to.

Please share any ideas you have or edits you’ve made.

Thanks for reading!

how to fertilize your soil organically, easily and cheaply!

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A while ago, I learned a technique to fertilize a garden or lawn using a method that’s cheap, easy and organic!  I’m so stoked to actually get to try it.

tea for your garden!

Now this method doesn’t actually put biomass down on your garden as fertilizer, instead, it increases the microbial growth in your garden by a million times! (results may very)  Your plants will love this!

compost tea ingredients

You will need:

  • very little intelligence – this is very easy!
  • a 5 gal bucket (or 19L bucket for you metric peeps) – you can probably get them free from a baker or restaurant.
  • an aquarium pump – $5 – $20 – get a medium-sized one.  I think I spent $10, but this will last you forever if all you’re using it for is
  • an air stone – $1 – $5
  • about 3 feet of air tubing – $2 ish?
  • a hand full of compost and/or manure – make sure if you’re using manure, it comes from a vegetarian animal or that it’s been in the compost for 6 months or a year or so. – I didn’t have any compost, but a dude at the hydroponics store near my house just gave me some.
  • a water permeable bag – this doesn’t have to be fancy.  An old pillowcase will work, a burlap sack will work too.  I got this mesh bag thing from the hydroponics store, but that was before I thought about using a t-shirt or pillowcase.
  • molasses – a few tablespoons or so
  • water – you want non-chlorinated water.  I’m not going to get into a water debate over this, all I’m saying is chlorinated water will kill the bacteria you’re trying to cultivate, so use a Brita to filter it or you can even pick up some activated charcoal (which is what is in a Brita filter) at the aquarium store for way cheaper.

put it all together!

  1. fill your bucket with water
  2. put the compost into your bag and put that in the water
  3. add your molasses and stir the water to mix the molasses in (maybe do the molasses and stiring before the bag goes in.)
  4. put your pump and hose and airstone together (this is really simple, just read the directions if you don’t know how)
  5. drop the stone in the water and let the pump run for 24 hours.

fertilize!

You have to use the tea immediately.  About an hour after stop airating the water, your microbes start dying at a huge rate, so don’t store the tea.

The great thing about this stuff is it doesn’t burn your plants.  You can dump the whole bucket on your garden and be fine.

Lots of people spray the tea on their plants as well as add it to their soils.

If you’ve tried this, let me know.  I’d love to know what you use for your compost ingredients.

Here’s a video by John Kohler describing what I said.

Thanks for reading!

Caleb

one of the cooler places I’ve been in calgary

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I was reading a while ago about people who raise backyard chickens in their cities.  I thought this was such an awesome idea.  It provides eggs, chickens are very quiet when compared to a dog or even a cat in heat (ugh…), they provide nitrogen rich manure which goes great in a compost, the scratch the soil making your grass grow thick if they have enough of it.  I’ve heard of people growing food in their greenhouses in the winter using chickens body heat to heat the greenhouse.  Lots of benefits.

Then I looked for people who raise chickens in Calgary and found out, Calgary has a bylaw making it illegal to raise chickens in the city.  I couldn’t figure out why this was the case.  They’re totally safe, they’re penned in, even if they get loose, who cares?  It’s a chicken.  What’s it going to do?

Here’s a cool site on urban chickens

Anyway, I’ll skip a 10 page rant that I could write about how stupid I think this bylaw is and talk about a super nice dude that’s actually trying to do something about it.

His name is David and he’s the president of “the AREA“.  David is working on a pilot project to raise urban chickens the AREA’s yard so that the city can study and monitor any issues that might arise.  I read about this about a year ago and just last week, I finally stopped in for a visit.

I don’t know why, but I felt embarrased about how much I knew about the place.  After I read about the chicken thing, I also read quite a few more articles about how they put on art shows, concerts, parties, permaculture design courses, etc; so when David showed me around I was reluctant to tell him how much I had read.  Seriously though, I don’t know why.  He’s a super nice dude and would probably just be flattered.

Anyway, I wanted to give the place a shoutout and hope that tons of people will go there and meet David and his peeps and support the place.  Like them on facebook and send them a tweet or an email.  They really seem to have good hearts and from what I’ve seen they give back everything they receive.

Thanks for reading

Caleb

a herb I want to grow lowered my high blood pressure

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So last week I went to a clinic and found out that I have high blood pressure.  When they tested it, I was at 146/100.  This wasn’t a one time thing.  I’ve seen before that I had high blood pressure for probably a year and just didn’t deal with it.

The doctor and nurse were saying that I need to change my diet and exercise more and probably go on blood pressure pills very soon.  Two of these things are true, however, I don’t like taking medication if I can take care of myself naturally instead.  I’m not gonna get into why I don’t believe in the pharmaceutical industry or why I don’t trust their products, but I will share what I did to lower my blood pressure to nearly optimal levels in 3 weeks.

what’s recommended

I googled hypertension to find out some natural ways to lower my blood pressure.  Most of them were saying:

  • Exercise more – I will
  • Lose weight – I’m not overweight
  • Quit smoking – I don’t smoke
  • Lower sodium intake – I’ve done more research on this and found that lowering sodium actually doesn’t work very well.  It might lower your blood pressure a couple points, but nothing significant.  Long story short, I haven’t changed anything as far as my diet goes yet.  If you want to know more about the sodium thing, check out this site and video.
  • take vitamin B – I’m taking a B Complex every day now
  • Vitamin C – I take 1000 mg every day
  • Vitamin D – I take 5000 mg every day
  • Vitamin E – I take 1 pill every day, but I’m not sure how much that is
  • Ginkgo – I take this every day
  • Co-enzyme Q10 (CoQ10) – I’m not taking it, but I might later.  I’ll see how things go
  • 2 cloves of garlic per day – I love garlic and I have no problem with this, but I’m not currently doing it
  • Hawthorn – I’m not taking or using it
  • Fish oil – I’m not taking it
  • Folic acid – This is possibly in my vitamin B complex pills, but I’m not sure
  • the DASH diet – 7-8 servings of grain per day, 4-5 servings of fruit…this is the stupidest diet I have ever seen!  Read Gary Taubes book called Good Calories, Bad Calories and The Dark Side of Fat Loss.  This diet will make you diabetic and overweight in no time.
  • Calcium, Magnesium and Potassium – I’m taking 2 calcium/magnesium pills every day. I’m not sure how much that is.
  • Mind-Body Interventions – I need to do more of this and I will be also.

Of the things that I tried, I only noticed a 2 point drop in my blood pressure.  I’m not necessarily going to stop taking the vitamins because I do feel good taking them, but I don’t think they’re helping the blood pressure.

what worked

I was out eating at an Asian market and noticed a Chinese herb store.  While I was eating I googled Chinese herbs and noticed that ginseng can have an effect on your blood pressure.  Taking 3-5 mg can lower your blood pressure, however taking 30 mg or more can raise your blood pressure.

I went into the store and spoke to one of the people in there and he recommended a certain ginseng which for blood pressure.  He said I will see results right away.  I was really skeptical about this because of the vitamins not really working, but I bought a month worth of ginseng anyway to try it out.  I asked him about what I read where it can raise your blood pressure, and he said yes that is the case if you take Korean ginseng, however if you take American ginseng, it will lower your blood pressure.

He was very confident in what he was saying so I thought, I don’t really have much to lose.  The pills only cost $5 per bottle which is cheaper than anything else I’m taking.  I started taking them right away.  I’m supposed to take 3 pills, 3 times per day.  I went to test my blood pressure at the end of the day and my BP came down 3 points.  I waited a couple of days and tested again today and my BP is now down to 126/90!  While this isn’t perfect yet, this is only after 2 days of taking it.  I’m very impressed and will definitely continue taking the ginseng while closely monitoring my blood pressure.

i want to grow it

Ginseng will be the next thing that I research for how to grow it.  I have looked a little bit so far and have seen that it takes 3-5 years to grow to maturity.  Also, some years it just lays dormant and doesn’t grow at all.

If anyone has any information or experience growing ginseng, I would love to hear from you in the comments section.

Thanks for reading

Caleb

grow tons of veggies and flowers while you live in an appartment!

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This video shows demonstrations of a really cool technique of virtical gardening using a product called the garden stick.

I can’t stand buying something that I can easily make myself, so I’m planning on making one this year. It’s a great idea.