Rose, Bud, Thorn

Hey veggie-lovers!

It has been a very busy month here at MSEG! “How to summarize it all?” I asked myself.

Then, some wonderful friends of mine, John and Ryan, introduced me to “Rose, Bud, Thorn”, an appropriately botanical form of appreciative inquiry/general reflection:

Roses (highlights):

Rose: We have a tool shed (with tools in it!), and an irrigation system! We are finally starting to feel like a real farm, instead of just kids scratching around in the dirt. Thank you Alison for your kind donations. And well done Kourosh for setting up the irrigation, with the help of Stephen of Ferme du Zephyr.

Rose: Things are growing!

Pauline and Sophie transplanting onions

In the main field the carrots, beets, peas, beans, arugula, and mesclun that we direct seeded have emerged (in almost straight lines!), and are doing well. We were a little worried about the little carrot seedlings. The cotyledons (first leaves) of carrots are almost impossible to differentiate from grass, so we weren’t sure if the carrots had germinated at all. Then, over the last couple of days, they finally grew their true leaves, which are feathery and easy to identify… go little carrots go! Some of the beet seeds did not end up germinating though, perhaps because we didn’t ‘tuck them in’…beet seeds need good soil contact to germinate.

We have also transplanted a number of crops that were started in the greenhouse, including onions, lettuces, and cucumbers. It seems that onions need to be started in the greenhouse, as our direct seeded onions did not germinate.

In our Hort. Center plot, we seeded beets, turnips, kale, broccoli, squash, and pumpkins, and transplanted onions, scallions, sunberries, aubergine, and lettuce.

Rose: We have started to seed some of the herbs and flowers that will be companion plants for the cash crops. On Friday we seeded nasturtiums, orange flowers that you can eat, and which are good companions for cucurbits (squashes, melons, cucumbers, etc) and brassicas (broccoli, kale, cabbage, etc), because they deter a number of pests that target these crops, and also attract beneficial insects that eat or parasitize pests. They also attract pollinators and function as a ‘trap crop’ for aphids, which means they distract the aphids away from the saleable crops.

Rose: There are blueberries growing in the meditation garden! We thought it would be at least another year before the bushes would produce fruit.

Rose: Newspaper pots. They really work! Reduce, reuse, recycle...
http://www.ehow.com/video_1745_create-seed-starting.html

Rose: We experimented with a biodynamic rooting agent recipe for propagating sweet potatoes from cuttings, and it worked! Here is the recipe we used:

http://naturallyspeakingwithcordi.wordpress.com/2011/06/12/rooting-hormone/

Pauline making cuttings of sweet potato plants

Rose: Volunteers we love you! Thank you Sam (the mosquito army appears discouraged now that they no longer have you to feast on), and beautiful John, Salma, Molly, and Jeff.

Thorns (low points):

It seems that all thorns boil down to three things…Bugs, weeds, and weather.

Lady beetle used for white fly control

Thorn: Early in May, we had a white fly problem in the greenhouse. We decided to experiment with biological control (using living organisms such as natural predators to control pest species). We ordered native lady beetles from natural-insect-control.com, and released them in the greenhouse. They didn’t stick around very long, but they did take care of the white flies before they went…success!

Thorn: Flea beetles are eating our arugula! We bought floating row covers to keep them off, but the covers were soon ripped up and deposited in a tree by some spiteful thunder-storm winds. Plan B involves better anchorage of row covers, planting trap crops adjacent to arugula and, if worst comes to worst, a botanical insecticide of some sort.

Thorn: Rain, rain go away! It’s not just MSEG that has been set back by the cold, rainy spring we have had this year. It seems that all farmers and gardeners in the area are a little behind schedule. Farming depends so heavily on the state of the soil, that nothing can be seeded, weeded, or worked until the earth is sufficiently dry.

And the biggest THORN of all: Weeds! More specifically - nut sedges. And I quote “the world’s worst weed” http://plants.usda.gov/plantguide/pdf/pg_cyro.pdf

This weed got out of control so quickly in the main field that we have had to spend much more time and energy than we anticipated fighting it back.

Buds (things to look forward to!):

Bud: The lower half of the field has finally dried out. Alex from Les Jardins Carya has prepared the beds for us and we can put in our tomato and tomatillo transplants this week.

Bud: We are beginning to realize that, as a demonstration farm, it is not just our growing practices that need to function as a model, but also our governance structure and working performance. We plan on making visits to other farms with alternative management systems, to learn about what might be the best option for MSEG now, and in future years. Starting this week, we have adopted an experimental cyclic governance structure, consisting of two-person management teams that rotate on a weekly basis. Exciting stuff!

Bud: At the end of this month we will be starting to sell our produce from our farm stand in the MS Lobby on Macdonald Campus. Thursdays 11am-2pm BYOBag!!

Beans and greens,

Sophie

Never again will I mind being woken up...

Hey everyone.
A belated post about something that happened on April 23rd;
A sunny Saturday afternoon, one of the first real days of spring. We were out at the Meditation Garden fixing up our rose bed.


Note, when planting roses, or planting anything in raised beds, we learnt:

> The deeper the soil in your bed, the more drainage - the soil will get drier, faster. Know the root profile and soil preferences of what you plant to help determine how deep the soil should be.

> If the bed doesn't have sturdy walls that extend to the top of the bed, as soon as heavy weather comes the soil will leach down and settle lower than you intended.
Our soil was in a heap about 3 1/2 feet high - way too much for our roses. Also, the stone wall surrounding it had gaps and was only about 1 ft high at most. 


When we came to fix it, half of the wall was actually submerged in soil that had settled since the autumn. In our case, this meant 3 of our 5 rose bushes had from a quarter to almost a half of their roots exposed. I'm amazed the plants are alive after spending the winter like that! 


Continuing with the story... Pauline and I are shoveling away, removing soil from the bed so that we could level it, have the roses lower, and build a good retaining wall. We've removed a good amount of soil, and I'm shoveling into about a 2 ft deep pile, pretty indiscriminately without giving much guidance to where the shovel goes.
When, the shovelful that I've just thrown in the wheelbarrow catches my eye and when I look back, I realize! Somehow with the sharp blade of the shovel I've scooped up and out a hibernating toad, who is now blinking, startled and thrust into the spring sunshine.
He spent about half an hour with us gathering his wits before Pauline wheeled him over to our bed with Egyption onions and 1000 year old tobacco, where he leaped off and scuttled amongst the rocks.
Moral: what is wrong for the plants (i.e. a huge pile of soil) is probably not wrong for all the other organisms that like these habitats (toads, beetles, and worms to name a few)
And a personal moral: I have now given the most abrupt wake-up call I've ever witnessed (picked up and thrown, along with your bed, 4 feet through the air after sleeping for 5 months?) and in the future have no right to complain if I'm woken up as abruptly.
For lack of pictures I'd like to give you this link where you can check out our first youtube video (completely unrelated):


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJ7hXN9aY1I


Happy planting!


Emily

The first Seeding!

Hey folks!

Spring is finally here…and so the seeding has begun! Last week, we gathered in the greenhouse to seed collards and jalapeno peppers for our acre plot in Senneville, and three varieties of onions for our Hort. Centre plot. T’was a pretty nice time lining up the little seeds in their trays, getting some sun on our faces, and earth under our finger nails for the first time this year - beautiful!

The seeding schedule is planned according to the growth period and temperature tolerance of each crop i.e. how early can it be transplanted outside, and when will it be ready for harvest? The onions, and collards should be ready for transplant in about a month, while the jalapenos won’t be ready until early June.

With the onions and collards already sprouting, the only thing left to do this week is eat, drink, dance, and be merry as we welcome back the sun with the MSEG/McGill Feeding McGill Spring Equinox Contra Dance Party tomorrow!! Woot! We hope to see foodies, farmers, and friends from the downtown campus, the Ste-Anne’s community, and of course, from here at Mac.

Thanks so much to everyone that came to help seed last week! If you’d like to help with some seeding, or if you have any other questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to email us at macdonaldstudentgarden@gmail.com, visit our brand new facebook page, or even better, stop us in the hallway for a chat!

Enjoy the sunshine!

Sophie

A New Year

Happy new year! (A little belated) This entry may be a little dry, but we want to get everyone up to date with what's going on so far with MSEG2011. You can see a map of our land and pictures of the garden coordinators if you scroll a bit : )

We're getting into full swing; our seed orders are in and some have already arrived! Our crop planning for both fields is done, though we're already a few days late in seeding some of our onions and eggplants, pending setting up our greenhouse space. Some exciting news is that we're going to be building a website over the next few months and also working on creating a new logo.

For this season Les Jardins Carya and Ferme Zephyr in Senneville worked with the Macdonald Farm to provide 1 acre of McGill field right next to these farms. This acre is available for McGill students to cultivate as long as there are students willing to do so. We owe a huge thank you to these two partners for this land donation, and will be spending time this summer working with and learning from them.

We will also be cultivating the same 1/4 acre of land at the Horticulture Centre as last year, provided for us by the Macdonald Horticulture Centre and Plant Science Department. The meditation garden which we built last year is going to be planted with permaculture principles in mind, and is located right next to the community gardens on Macdonald Campus.

Here's a map of approximately where our land is, courtesy of Google Maps:



Building on last year, our target market for this season is McGill students. We're still working on how to best market our produce to reach the widest audience, on and off campus. In addition we're looking into providing weekly produce for Herb's Cafe in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, and hope to have a table at the Sainte-Anne Farmer's Market.

Our crops have been planned so that we will have a large quantity of vegetables that will be available throughout the fall, and many storage veggies to keep into the winter. This was intentional, since a certain percentage of our crop will be donated to the Mac student group Happy Belly, which provides a once weekly free lunch at Mac during the school year using items from grocery stores which have been taken off the shelves, some bought ingredients, and MSEG produce.

The students who are working this summer came forward in the fall expressing interest in either continuing or starting to work with MSEG. The garden crew for 2011 is:

Full-timers:
Anna Elbon - 3rd year Ecological Agriculture student
Kourosh Mohtashami - 3rd year Bioresource Engineering student
Sophie Price - 4th year Zoology student
Pauline Richard - 2nd year Agricultural Economics student




Part-timers:
Alice Pradel - 3rd year Ecological Agriculture student
David Crook - 3rd year Plant Science student
Emily McGill - 4th year Bioresource Engineering student




Website developer:
Jerome Boisvert-Chouinard - 1st year Bioresource Engineering student



Our funding applications are in for the Sustainability Project's Fund and Macdonald Campus Students' Society. Before further reviewing by either of these parties we're planning to submit our business plan, which will give us and them a better idea of how our operations are being planned for this season, and especially what changes are being made from last year.

What we're up to this week:
- Prepping our business plan; do you have any tips? Email us!
- Meeting on Wednesday evening
- Thinking up website content
- Confirming greenhouse space and timeline
- Purchasing soil for seeding in the greenhouse
- Alot of other research to prepare for the season!

Happy gardening! :)
Emily

Cool links and an update!

Mornin'!!!

I just found a really interesting (I think) physiological oddity, check out the link:

http://video.ca.msn.com/watch/video/pea-plant-sprouts-from-man-s-lung/17ynz86jc?from=en-ca-infopane

Also!!! An AMAZING website with resources to help transform your eating and cooking habits to be more local, cheaper, and balanced when looking at global food economy:

10in10diet.com

As for the garden, we've had a slow couple of weeks but have released our first newsletter, with the next one coming later today!

Our cucumber plants are struggling with a wilting disease; at the start of the summer, I thought that cucumber beetles were only dangerous to the seedlings of these plants, eating at the stem and causing them to wither. Turns out that cucumber beetles are dangerous once the plants are adult as well, by transmitting a wilting disease from plant to plant. This is exactly what has happened to our cucumber plants, at this point we're hoping to salvage as many as we can though it doesn't look too good. For next year I think I'll recommend that they continue hunting cucumber beetles into the plant's adulthood, though I wonder if that would be effective?

Right now available for sale or for pick up on Thursdays 12-1pm in the Macdonald Stewart Lobby on campus, or Saturdays 9am-2pm at Marche Ste-Anne, we have:

Cherry tomatoes
Green beans
Okra
Kale
Swiss Chard
Spicy Asian Greens
Red Romaine (almost done!)
Cabbage
Cucumber
Zucchini
Hot peppers
Ground cherries
Beets
Turnips
Rutabaga
Asian Radish (larger and stronger flavour than normal radish)
Carrots

If you email us we can put aside a selection of items for you to pick up. We've been having trouble with wasting vegetables since we are only harvesting once a week for the market; so if you are at all interested in receiving veggies during the week other than Thursday or Saturday, please let us know!

Open Gardens on Full Moon Sky

With delectable food & sweet friends, we enjoyed our Open Garden Pot Luck yesterday. It was good for me to hear the comments and questions that came up as we were going through the garden. It gave me some perspective and insight on first impressions of the Gardens. For example, a comment that came up about the Meditation Garden was that it seemed as though it had been there for some years already. To me, that meant we had done a good job at designing, for the area had somewhat of a "natural" design to it. We had planned to play music, dance, do several tours of the gardens, do some 'official' talks... All of this, except one garden tour & a roundabout the medicine wheel, was, lets say 'postponed', for better enjoyment of food and friends. The food ended up taking the bigger part of our attention... Even the 'un-kosher' peaches and hard boiled eggs :) We had prepared pizza with veggies from the garden, as well as brucetta with tomatoes from Carya Farm (graciously offered :), and coleslaw with cabagge and carrots from Coop Tourne-Sol. The B.O.V. was probably not advertised as such enough, but the one brought was a success. I was surprised at the end of the evening that even the 'muddy punch' with green froth -kale, swiss chard, cabbage, carrots, celery, cucumber, beets, apple, lime) got almost finished :) Thank you all for coming and joining us for our gathering and open garden tour :)

Transitions & Communications

Last tuesday, July 13th, Emily and I were on the air with Ryan Young's show Ecolibrium (CKUT 90.3 fm) Check out: http://www.ckut.ca/cgi-bin/ckut-grid.pl

It was a great experience for all of us. Thanks to Ryan for inviting us!
We've been up to so much in the last few weeks. I can hardly realize 3 weeks have already passed since the end of june!

Liberated greenhouse plants

It all started with having to liberate the greenhouse by the first week of july for a "heat treatment" they (Greenhouse managers at Mac) are doing to prepare for the school year. Since our beds for the Meditation Garden weren't ready yet, we started building them with stones from the piles accumulated over the years of field cleaning at the Mac Farm. We had first thought of wood beds with untreated wood or pressure treated wood. Then we thought or rock beds for they would last longer. People we asked around seemed to disagree about which would be better in the end (practicality) so we started dreaming of this other option which, instead of buying and contributing to the consumption circle, we could "recycle" these local field stones :)

Beginning of a raised bed

Not quite the obvious task. None of us had done it before. We didn't build very high beds for security sake and anyways, we will not have plants in there that necessitate so much rooting space... or so we thought (stay tuned :)

Now the shrubs are in. 3 seating areas are created with rocks, wood stumps and hay (on a little hay hill ;) The soil has been delivered. Our task this week is to get the beds all ready. This means turning over the grass killed by the cardboard that has been laying on it for a while now. Hopefully this will be enough to discourage unwanted plants to grow there and be food for worms&friends. We'll mix some compost also from the Gorilla Composting of Macdonald Campus (our tripartite partner :) perhaps even leaning towards the "Lasagna" gardening style. Still need to look into this further.

Check out http://urbanext.illinois.edu/compost/layering.html for composting & http://firstlasagnagardener.blogspot.com/ for lasagna gardening

So in terms of beds for the Meditation Garden we are still planning on building one more. We were given funding by the Macdonald Community Garden to get shrubs and vines. As we were waiting on getting the foundations (the stone beds) established in the space before transplanting the shrubs, we will start taking pictures to show all of you via this web spider (uploading pictures on a Picassa Album -blogs are not the best for them, unless we just couldn't figure it out) how it now looks with those beautiful shrubs (blueberries, black and red currents, rasberries, roses, elderberries). We placed them in the space thinking of access to the fruit shrubs -harvesting!- and the beds, the general flow of the walking area, the visual pleasure and keeping a sense of enclosure while fostering the openess of the gardens.

And since this is an Open Garden... we would Love to see you too! So this is an invitation to all of You to come and Celebrate with us on the 25th of July.

This sunday at 6pm at the Meditation Garden (beside the Mac Community Garden) we will be holding a pot luck to thank all of you for making this happen and introduce you to our Gardens.

I would also like to invite you to join us for a Yoga/Chi Kung/Dance session at the Meditation Garden (under the CC's roof if its raining or too wet). Sessions are resilient to the participants. I'll guide a movement/centering hour were each participant can feel good after. Days are 6:15 to 7:15 monday evenings and thursday mornings. Contact us for more information. Check out my myspace for credentials postalpoems It's free :)

Andrea H
p.s. these pictures date from a few weeks back

Picasa Album
http://picasaweb.google.com/108130111427628017229/McGillStudentRunEcologicalGardens?authkey=Gv1sRgCPWP_oL-9Je-6QE&feat=directlink