Transplanting the Kale

This is my first attempt at blogging from my phone. Let's see how it goes.

Back in January I planted Kale directly in my three recycled blender pots. I spaced four or five seeds about an inch apart in each.

On average each pot sprouted four baby Kale. I have already tranplanted four of these to share a home with freshly planted carrots and peas, but on this day I transplanted the rest so each has it's own pot.


I found five pots at a local thrift store for under $20.

One of them is a cookie jar missing it's lid.


I started with a few rocks in the bottom to save a little soil. This space will also hold water that the soil can soak up as needed.

I mixed the last of my used soil left from our last planting adventure with the Keefers container mix...

and filled the pots.

Because the Kale is still so small I used a tablespoon to remove them from their original home...

and then placed them in the centre of the new pot, gentlely using soil to prop them up. I also move the Kale into the centre of thier orginal pots.

I lined them all up along the railing on the east deck. I find that the plants get plenty of water here when it rains. If anything is getting too much water I simply move it away from the edge until it stops raining or the soil begins to dry out.

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1st Wordless Wednesday

Watch your Peas and Cs

In my quest to dominate container gardening I have drawn out a bit of design. I know what I want to grow and what I'm going to grow it in, and where and on which deck. I seldom follow any of these plans verbatim and this project was no exception. The plan was to find a long container and plant two rows of carrots in one and a row of peas and carrots in the other. This is what happened.

First the container. I had a hard time finding a container long and deep enough for what I wanted, (without building one which I may do later.) This is the best I could do. Not very long but pretty deep. This came from Canadian Tire and is actually meant to fit over the railing. I knew that it would not fit over my railing when I purchased the container, but thats okay. The added depth of the trough will be perfect for the carrots.

Next I had to address the growing medium. Soil. I am currently Laid Off during the Olympics and although I have a job to go back to, finances are tight, so we have put ourselves on a very strict No Spending Budgets. Bills and Groceries only. So I could not purchase any soil specific to this project and had to make do with what I had, which was a partial bag of Keefer's West Coast Container Mix, a hodgepodge bucket of reused potting mixes, left over "garden mix," composted soil from the District of North Vancouver, and a bucket of "junk" soil I tried unsuccessfully to us as a patio sandbox material for Cillian.

For the first pot I combined the "Garden Mix," the reused, and the junk soil and mostly filled the container, then topped it off with the Keefer's Container Mix.

The second pot was a comprised of the Keefer's and garden mix with a little of the reused mix.

This is where I first deviated from the original design. My Kale seedling are still young but knowing that I will need to transplant them soon and having nowhere to put them at this point I decided to plant one on either end of the carrot- peas container.

Using a table spoon I carefully removed 4 seedlings from the fullest Kale pots...

and planted one on each end of the new containers.

Then I made a 1/2" trough along the front of the container for the Carrots.

I poured some seeds from the Johnny's Selected Seeds Pouch into the spoon and began planting dropping them into the trough. I left about six inches from the Kale, so the Kale won't shadow the carrots too much.

You can plant the seeds 3/4-1" apart and then thin the seedling to 2" later. Not wanting to have to toss the unwanted seedlings, I spaced them about 2" apart now.

Then I dug another trough along the back and plant the peas about an inch apart.

I'm not as worried about the peas being dominated by the Kale as the peas are a vine and will grow higher then the Kale and they should live in harmony.

I placed on container on the East deck. I will either move this pot back against the railing or build a small trellis for the peas later.

The second container I put on the North Side against the railing so the pea vines can grow up them. I shuffled the other pots and containers around to accommodate.

The last thing is to water. While at the store I found organic fertilizer from Rubicon made from concentrated seaweed. As per the directions I added 1/2 teaspoon to my watering can which is about one liter.

I watered the contain enough to penetrate the soil and repeated a couple days later. The idea is to keep the soil moist but not swampy or over saturated.

Spring Kale

I managed to use my surprise day off to get some gardening done. Months ago I purchased seeds from Johnny's Seed Company, and put them into a drawer until last week when after eating my found treat and flipping through the new Johnny Catalog I decided it was time to pull out these packets of new life and make a plan for this years exploration of container gardening. Among the paper envelopes I found Winter Kale, something I bought with the intent of planting in the fall, but forgot about and now I am faced with a decision. Do I risk planting now in January and harvest before it get it gets to warm, potentially not harvesting a decent crop and wasting the seeds? Or do I save the seeds until next fall, potentially not having any of them sprout from being too old thereby wasting the seeds? I feel there is really only one thing to do at this stage, and that is to do both options. In the name of Garden Sciences I will attempt both and document the out come.

The first step I need was to find something to plant the Kale into and to give some organization to the East deck. Believe it or not this is an improvement. Two boxes went down into storage and some cardboard trays left over from berry picking last fall finally made the voyage to the recycling.

I decided to use the old Blender Pots to start with. These blender have burnt out motors. Instead of spending more money then they are worth to fix or throw them away, I have recycled them. Loosing the cord I made them into pots. The soil in them had dried out and compacted so much that I need to dump it into a pail, then mix some other soils from smaller pots to loosen up and improve soil quality. This will allow water to penetrate the soil, and for the soil to hold on to the water molecules better. This will ensure in part that enough water is available for the seeds in germinate and later for the roots to soak up to feed the plants.

This mixture was put back into the the Blender Pot and topped it off with Keefer's West Coast Planter Box/Container Soil Mix. I have used a lot of Keefer products in the past because they are local. Keefer Farm and Greenhouses has been family owned and operated in Richmond BC for more than 50 years. That means that these soils are extracted and treated right here in the lower mainland. Why is that important? The environmental impact of buying soil shipped from the other end of the country or from the US, or even overseas is enormous. I try to consider local products whenever possible. I even choose local over organic. Once the point of organic if it has travel 1500 Kms to get here right. I suggest finding a local source for all your soil needs. If you are in the lower mainland Keefer's products are available at Garden Works, David Hunter, and Maple Leaf Garden Centres.

With the new and improved soil in the pot I placed 3- 5

seeds on the top, then pushed them about 1/2 inch into the soil. After 4 weeks I will thin out the plants if necessary as they will crowd each other too much this close together. If this happens none will do very well and will likely be sick, which will attract unwanted insects like aphids. Health plants will not attract unwanted pests and act as a natural insect repellant. When I thin them I will transplant the unwanted Kale into other pots.

I repeated this process with two other Blender Pots and two other unused pots.

Cillian was eager to help out as much as possible. At my last home we had a portion of garden that he could play in. That is something we will have to work out in this unique gardening situation.

Once all five pots where plants with Kale seeds we water them using my new watering can from my father and mother in-law. Thank you very much!

Once these start to sprout I may plant a couple more pots, this way they can be harvested at different times.

Old Man Cherry

When we first moved into our last home it was Sept 2006. In the back corner of our yard stood a great old cherry cherry. In a neighborhood where cherry trees line the streets, this was the grand daddy of the all, spending his retirement creating the cool shade of my back yard. He must stand 25 - 30 feet tall with a wide reach. This tree may not live much longer and the year we moved in there did not appear to have been much of a crop. There were no pits or stems on the ground or in the alley way under his stretched out limbs. The next year was much the same, no crop. In the summer of 07 I added some composted top soil underneath to start a small garden, and started a compost bin underneath as well. (Side note, a compost bin under a tree is not usually a good idea, but with the age of this cherry I don't expect its roots to grow up into the bin.)

I think that with those two steps combined with the dry spring and early summer, which allowed for more pollen to float around and find its way into the cherry blossoms, this year we got a bumper crop of delicious dark red cherries.The challenge of harvesting a cherry tree this age is the height. There are no branches low enough to reach the ground and I do not own a step ladder. I started on the roof of our carport the first day. The second day I tried to get a ladder in the alley before the neighboring produce store's multitude of delivery trucks started their daily pilgrimage of keeping the store stocked with fresh produce and clogging my alleyway. When the first truck did arrive I was up an extension ladder resting on an old tired arm that swayed with my every movement, with my wife holding the base and trying to maintain control over our 2 year old running around the hood in a diaper. The drivers offer their assistance.
Being able to get up on the truck gave me access to many branches with have to move a ladder around and I was able to fill two containers within 30 minutes.
We snacked on some, a pie was made and the rest went into the freezer to be enjoyed in the winter.

Our new home, an apartment you will learn more about in future posts, does not present the opportunity to pick cherries right in the back yard, but it did come with a deep freeze, so we have been making more trips to the farmers markets and u-pick berry farms and filling the freezer for winter. The next few years will bring a chance to learn many new things, like the art of freezing and container gardening. We are also gearing up to learn more about canning and preserving.

I hope you will continue to read and learn along with us.