Honest, the Rabbit ate my beans!

Here we are at mid-August and I'm sad to say that one of the usual mainstays of the garden is in short supply!

What!!! you say, haven't you been gardening?  What's wrong with you?

Well, this year in the garden, has been the year of the rabbit ... specifically, the rabbit we haven't been able to catch.

Go figure, fenced off yard, 2 Shiba Inus patrolling the perimeter most of the day, and yet ... RABBIT BEAN CARNAGE!!!!  At least the green and yellow snap bean varieties.  They've even been nibbling the pole beans down to little nubbins as soon as they get a couple of sets of leaves on them.

So, I have been tucking in bean seeds all over the place over the past few weeks, hoping that if they're planted in enough places, the rabbits will leave some alone.  So far, these Blue Lake pole beans in pots are the only ones to have really thrived, BUT, they are only just starting to flower.

On the bright side, however, the rabbits don't seem to like any of the dried bean plants.  Go figure!  Don't know if the plants themselves are more fibrous, but in any case, they haven't touched any of this bed:
I planted about 4 varieties of dried beans in total, including Montezuma Red (just starting to colour up in the pods here).  These little ones cook up very similar to black beans.
I also planted black beans, Jacobs' cattle beans (which are pretty and speckled), and these bi-coloured beans called Orca, which are just starting to get their distinctive colouring.  The dark parts will get jet black, and look suspiciously like orca markings!
Dried beans are really easy to grow, and I'm really happy with the prospective yields per plant of all the varieties I grew this year.   I'm going to be devoting more garden space to them next year.  Having grown and cooked them in previous years, the taste of homegrown dried beans is also nicer than those you buy in the bulk bins, and they generally cook up a little faster, plus you can get all kinds of really cool heritage varieties with interesting markings on them.

Finally, there is something really satisfying about having jars of dried beans at the ready for the dead of winter!

Oats and Beans and Barley grow...

Oats and beans and barley grow,
Oats and beans and barley grow,
Do you or I or anyone know,
How oats and beans and barley grow?


Well these ones grew without pesticides! The oats and barley have grown great guns, but I have had an ongoing war with the rabbit this year, trying to grow beans!  Apparently it is smart enough to know that the dogs are inside at night, AND that Kimiko and Eric can't get beyond the fence!  Nonetheless, I did get a small harvest of snap beans, to complete the trio for this pic for y'all.  Happily, the dried bean varieties seem to be a little more rabbit-proof.
This year, I decided to grow a few new things, including oats, barley, and chickpeas, all of which were pretty easy to grow.  The barley and the oats don't require terribly rich soil, and both had pretty high yields.   The chickpeas, once large enough to dissuade the rabbit, also grew pretty trouble-free, and grow two to a pod in little fuzzy pods that look like they should be a cartoon character.
Being hulless varieties, they require minimal processing to separate the grains out.  The barley was picked about 2 days ago and has been drying, and only required a rub between the palms to free it.  The oats need to dry for another day or so, but will get the same treatment.  I am surprised the grains were so easy to grow, and will definitely be growing more next year, and may even contemplate growing a patch of wheat!

Cucurbits take over the back yard!

Well, ok, just part of the back yard!

We've had a heat wave here in southwestern BC for the last couple of weeks, and some of the cooler climate crops like lettuce and chard are decidedly unhappy about the state of things,but all of the warm weather crops like the squash and cucumbers are just loving it!

A little while back, I made 3 self-watering containers and filled them all with squash and cucumbers (and one melon!).  I am loving these containers!  They may not be the most chic looking on the block, but they are highly functional.  The raised containers mean the squash roots get nice and warm during the day, and the fact that there is about 8 gallons of water in the bottom means they only need to be filled about once a week.  During this heat wave, the plants are needing more water, but even so, a filling every 3 days seems to do the trick!
These are the plants in the containers 2 weeks ago...

Look what I found growing in the garden!

We have been away camping for a week in the lush growth of Cortes Island, and had prepped the garden by setting up the drip irrigation system on a timer, to ensure we would come back to happy, healthy veggies.  I had also taken some time to take out pea vines that were spent, so that I could start seeding fall crops in their place.

Before we left, the weather had cooled down somewhat, so the hot loving crops hadn't really taken off yet.  While we were gone, however, things heated up considerably and when we came back, the greenhouse looked like a jungle!
 

Meet my other garden pest!

This is Eric.  He is a Shiba Inu, and he is my other garden pest.
In the wilds of suburbia here, we have invasions of rabbits and marauding deer, in addition the routine pests such as cabbage moths, cutworms, pill bugs etc, BUT in our garden, we also have the ravages of Eric to deal with!

One of the methods I use to improve the soil here, non-chemically, is to dig in, and topdress with SeaSoil.  This stuff is amazing!  Highly composted fish and forest fines, that you can add directly to the soil without fear of burning.  It has no discernable smell ... to the human nose.  Eric, however, can definitely smell something, and knows right away when a fresh dressing of SeaSoil has been put down.

Here is the sad result!  This bed had beans and radishes well underway, and two squash plants that had been transplanted and dressed with SeaSoil.  Within 1 hour, he had hopped right in and had a merry time digging around.  Notice hes looking slightly guild-ridden!
The good news is that all that soil amendment makes for strong plants.  While the radishes didn't make it, the squash and most of the beans survived!  Meanwhile, any new plantings are being covered or fenced off!  Besides, who would want to use pesticides on such a cute pest!

Well aren't you happier when you are warm at night?

At the beginning of the growing season this year, I was perusing seed catalogs and came across the fabulous offerings from Heritage Harvest Seed in Manitoba, and made a bold decision.  I was going to attempt to grow Montreal Market Melons.
If you are familiar, these are a heritage variety that around the turn of the century, used to arrive in New York, Chicago and Boston, with great fanfare.  They were noted as being extremely delicious, and people shelled out princely sums for a mere slice!  The area they grew in in Montreal has since been developed, and the seed was thought to be lost until recently.
Now we here on the West Coast do not have weather that is normally considered conducive to melons.  We get cool breezes off the water, that dip our nighttime temperatures a little too low for supreme melon happiness.  Nonetheless, I was smitten, I was going to grow the Montreal Market melon!
Despite a rocky start to the season, I ended up with 3 starts, one of which I put in the greenhouse, one in one of the self-watering containers I made.  I gave away the last one to a
neighbour.
For comparison, here is the melon in the self-watering container (2nd plant in the 1st container).  Healthy looking, but decidedly smaller!
 Finally, here's a couple of pics of the reason we do it all!  This is today's harvest of broad beans (2 squares in my Square Food Garden).

Barley, Oats, ... and broccoli for dinner

Quick video update on how the barley and oats are doing...and picking a small head of broccoli for dinner while I'm out there!  Don't mind the odd hole in the broccoli leaves.  I've been a bit lax about picking off the cabbage moth caterpillars in the last week!

Sleeper hit of the late spring garden

.... "Russian Sugar" pea!
One of the things I like about gardening is that every year is different, even if you plant the same things!  I decided early on to try a new variety of pea this year called "Russian Sugar"  This is a heritage variety grown by the Mennonites in Saskatchewan, and is eaten pod and all, like a snow pea.  They also have really pretty bi-coloured flowers, which is a bonus (I love plants that do double duty!)
Well, weather being what is has this year (first too cold and wet, then too hot!), seems to have really confused some of the veg, BUT the peas have just had an explosive growth spurt, and the Russian Sugar have surpassed everything,  I tucked in plants all over the garden, and to be honest, had forgotten some of them until they started flowering!
You can see the comparison here, on the backside of the greenhouse -- Russian Sugar on the right, and regular snow peas on the left.  Planted at the same time, in the same soil mix, approx the same maturation dates, yet I have been harvesting from the Russian Sugar for about a week now, with lots still to come.

DIY Self-watering containers

I had a few cucumber and squash seedlings that were leftover after I put things into the garden.  Not wanting to toss them out, I was looking around the yard the other day for prospective spots to put them, and came across a stretch by our gate to the back yard that looked like a good spot.  Our back yard is fenced with deer fence, so we get to eat the veggies (as opposed to the deer!), and our 2 Shiba Inus can roam free.  The fencing in this spot looked like it would make a perfect climbing spot for cucumbers and squash.  The downside, however, is there is no water running to that spot on a daily basis.
...Self-watering containers to the rescue!
These are pretty easy to build (I used these instructions).  I had a couple of these bins in the crawl space, and got a couple more on sale at our local home store.  The plans I used take 2 bins for each container, one of which is cut off short to create a separation between the water on the bottom, and the roots of the plant (held a little bit above the level of the water for aeration).  The black tube is the filler, and with this size container, they only need to be filled about once per week.   They get nice and warm in the sun, which the squash, melons and cucumbers will love.  The other step I haven't done yet is to put some mulch down on the top to prevent water evaporating.  These would also be great for growing on a patio or balcony.  They do get heavy though, so make sure you decide where you want them before you fill with soil and water! 

These bins are UV treated, so should last a few years provided they come in during the winter.  The pipe I used is ABS tubing like you use in your home plumbing (Don't use PVC as it leaches nasty stuff into the water).

Even the leftover bin tops will go to good use.  With the inner portion of the lid cut out, and filled with greenhouse plastic, they will make great mobile cold-frames I can put on smaller portions of the garden when it starts to get chilly.

... oh, and the other benefit?  pill bugs can't climb that high!

Daphne spurge and Ivy and Blackberries, Oh My!

We have one part of our yard that has been neglected in the past year, as more attention was being spent on the edible-producing areas of the garden.  Here's the "before" shot (partly cleared already).
This part of the yard was overgrown with daphne spurge and english ivy, both of which are considered noxious plants in this neck of the woods.  They have started to expand their territory, so it was time for them to go!  There really is no solution other than hard digging -- hard enough to break a shovel while I was at it!  To make things more challenging interesting, there was also himalayan blackberry and lots of stray holly sprinkled liberally throughout:  a recipe for a sweaty afternoon!

Here's the after: