Backyard Project: Slugs and Trench Composting

Attempted break out

After it has rained I go out to do slug patrol. I collect slugs from the garden beds then relocate them to the pond. My sister says they are a good protein for ducks.

I tried another method to build up the soil - Trench Composting.

Kitchen waste was put in a trench dug the length of the garden bed. When it was full I covered it with soil. It is a no sweat technique but it did look unattractive, especially with this bed located right next to where we sit outside. Also, various animals regularly visited the trench at night. I don't want them getting comfortable coming that close to the back door. In hindsight, this was not the best garden bed to try the trench compost technique in.

So I went back to the lasagne method layering 'brown then green.' I added layers of shredded prunings and harvested 'weeds.'

A layer of coffee grounds with their combined green and brown, was added on top.

Rough 'n' loose.

This is the kitchen bed. I want the soil to be high in organic matter and I will keep it damp. This is where I will plant some of the few annuals in the backyard garden - salad greens, parsley, basil and other food plants I will pick from often.

Now to leave the bed to let the soil organisms do their job. I just need to keep the soil damp for them. The soil thermometer will tell me how much action there is. The soil temperature started at 64 degrees F and needs to get up into the green zone at least. I will lightly turn the soil each week to stimulate the break down of material.

Another soil bed is on its way to becoming productive.

Fun with Fibre...Cloth & Wood - An Annual Art Group Exhibition at Tulista Gallery

Dale MacEwan

email - dalemac@telus.net

Each year, around June, a group of 5 local artists install an exhibition in the Community Art Council of the Saanich Peninsula (CACSP) gallery in Tulista Park, Sidney.

Dale makes pieced and quilted compositions reflecting micro views of the landscape she lives in. She often incorporates her photographs printed on cloth and fabrics she has built up with texture using printing, stencilling, and stamping, all in her distinctive warm pallet.

Heather Corbitt

email - khcorbitt@gmail.com

I am going around the gallery to show you how each artist has set up a mini studio to work at during the exhibition. 

Heather makes wearable art garments and landscapes by building up very small pieces of fabric to produce multi-layered textured cloth. Her fabric of choice is dupionni silk.

Maya Brouwer

Brouwertree 

This setup offers the viewer a unique opportunity to talk to each artist about their work or to just watch them at work.

Maya makes large pictorial art quilts. Many of the fabrics she uses she has herself dyed, discharged, and added surface design elements to.

Kathy Demchuk

website

Each artist sets up a display of their work around their work area. Most of the works are for sale.

One of Kathy's techniques is to draw a resist on the ground fabric before dyeing it. Her signature style is to tell humorous stories that make the viewer chuckle. Kathy also makes jewellery using beach glass she has collected from local beaches.

Peter Demchuck

website

I have heard some viewers ask for special finishing requests, place orders, and commission new work.

While Kathy is beachcombing for glass, Peter collects driftwood. To quote from Peter's website, Besides giraffes, I carve bowls, make yard birds from driftwood, and do some wood sculptures, mostly of fish.

It is interesting to visit the gallery several times over the week to see how work is progressing.

And to sample Kathy's daily fresh batch of cookies.

Backyard Project: Working in Different Garden Beds

The cherry tree has fruit. 

My sister says to remove all the beginnings of the fruit forming on trees in their first year. I did as she said, except I left one on each tree. The birds soon found this cherry.

I threw a pile of tangled embroidery threads under the cherry tree for the birds to use in their nest building. But I think I need to cut them up into more manageable lengths.

I planted more culinary ground-cover plants for the path in the Gravel Bed garden.

The soil in this garden bed that I worked on a month ago has progressed enough to plant a cover crop.

I dug up the daylilies (Hemerocallis) growing up the driveway. With the nearby cedar tree now shading them out and the deer continually grazing on them they were struggling.

I dug a hole, filled it with water, and added a treat of crushed comfrey leaves before planting the divided up day lilies.

I cut them right back and left the cuttings around the plants to break down into the soil.

I added a thick layer of matured shredded prunings as  a mulch to keep the weeds at bay and the water in the soil.

These lilies with their extensive root system will do a good job holding the soil at the bottom of the slope. They will be in reach for me to pluck the edible flowers for a salad. The hummingbirds love to visit them too.

I was reluctant to add this extra row of pavers to make the dining area on the upper patio more useable. It meant greatly reducing the size of the garden bed nearest to the kitchen. But in the end, I agreed it was needed.

I filled the remaining gap with a compost soil mix then planted everbearing strawberries and chives dug up from other beds and supplemented with a few more from a nursery. I covered the soil with sawdust made when Sammy cut rounds of logs to make the gardener's path.

Strawberries and chives make good companions helping each other to grow well and to stay healthy. 

In the meantime, Ron put a new soil mix into these 2 planters and planted 2 different tomatoes, one determinate, and one indeterminate, one called Beefsteak and the other called 'Sweet 100.' They will like this warm sunny spot. With the concrete and stone walls holding in the heat they should do well if we can keep the water up to them.

Lots of little tasks completed in different beds will all come together at some stage to start looking like we are making progress in implementing 'The Plan'.

Backyard Project: Progress in Zone 3 - The Fruit Hedge

Earlier in the spring we made a start on establishing a fruit hedge as the beginning edge of Zone 3 in the Backyard Project.

The soil was so compacted because it had been the materials storage site during the construction of my studio.

A raised bed in the lasagne style was built up on top of the compacted soil - green then brown. The layers still weren't broken down enough when Sammy brought the trees for the hedge so he planted them in their positions but left them in their pots. 

It was an awkward shape to water without watering the bare ground inside the 'U' shape at the same time so we decided to use it as a place to make more soil.

We marked out a path with untreated boards left over from the studio construction to smother any grass that might be tempted to grow. In the middle of the 'U' we built up layers of paper, cardboard, coffee grounds, grass clippings (until the mower broke down), and shredded prunings in alternating layers with a good watering between each layer.

We had Douglas-fir chips left over from making garden paths so we put the rest on top of the wooden board path which will provide fungus for the nearby soil but we can easily pick it up again if we want to make another path in the garden.

We put a border between the path and hedge soil bed using hucked logs from the last 2 trees that had to be cut down. Hucking - a forester's term for cutting logs into manageable lengths - makes them small enough for me to carry in my wheelbarrow from the forest to this bed and I can lift and maneuver them in place.

By this stage, we decided the layers in the hedge bed had decomposed enough (the soil temperature had dropped below cooking level) to take the trees out of their pots and put them in the soil.

Fig trees alternating with 2 feijoa/pineapple guava trees.

I gave them a light prune and a deep watering.

Now they can get down to growing while they spread their roots.

This is the beginning of Zone 3. I haven't designed any more of this zone because I am focusing on implementing my plan for Zones 1 and 2. It is always such a temptation to keep developing new areas before the bulk of the work is done in the zones closer to the house. We want to work on manageable chunks, getting the beds to the stage where they look after themselves before moving further out. Otherwise, it might all become overwhelming.

Backyard Project: Soil Building Continues

These are a few of my favourite tools that I haul around to work on building up soil in different beds. Not shown are my trusty wheelbarrow - a birthday gift from Ron, and my pruning shears that I always wear on my hip when gardening.

I have planted 4 different types of potatoes to add biomass to the soil. Any potatoes we harvest will be a bonus. 

A deep layer of straw covers the soil. Drip irrigation hoses have been laid around the beds to help with the watering until the irrigation contractor can come and install an irrigation system.

This fooled me. At first, I thought it was a drip hose out of place. Then it moved.

Once I realised what it was I was pleased to see her. She and her snakelets were residents before the backyard project began and I was concerned the recent rock bed construction had chased her away.

We are getting used to each other. She doesn't slither away as quickly anymore and will often just stay put and smell me with her flickering tongue while I work. She appears to have made a new home deep down between the new rocks.

Snakes are a sign of a healthy garden. They eat slugs, frogs, and insects and leave the plants alone. 

I am experimenting with mounding up different materials around the potato stems. When the light is blocked out new potatoes are encouraged to grow out of the stem. Soil is usually mounded up but there is not much extra so I am trying to find other materials on hand that will do the trick.

I am beginning to understand that gardening success is a combination of active observation and experimentation.

Rough and Loose, Green then Brown - Two Gardening Mantras

An ant nest found under a mulch of coffee sacks. The ants were forced to move their colony because I was ready to work on the soil in this bed.

While attending the Organic MasterGardener course Ron and I learnt two very important mantras that continue to guide me as I work at building up the soil in all of the garden beds.

Coffee sacks and a woolen blanket have protected this soil bed until I had time to work on it.

The mulch is removed. The ants are moving out.

A deep watering of  the soil to encourage the soil organisms to get active.

The first mantra is 'Green then Brown'

To make compost whether insitu ontop of the soil or in a trench, or in a compost bin the materials need to be layered by alternating different types.

First the green. I harvested most of the comfrey now the flowers have finished and they are no longer visited much by the bees. It is high in minerals the tap root has brought up from deep in the soil and also high in nitrogen. Comfrey is the 'green' and was the first layer put on the soil.

Next I added shredded branches that are high in carbon as the 'brown' layer. 

The 3rd layer was coffee grounds that are high in nitrogen, a 'green' layer. Technically the grounds I pick up from coffee shops are also high in carbon because there are lots of paper products such as filters and paper cups in the bags. 

So the mantra goes, 'Green then Brown, Green then Brown' which translates to 'nitrogen-rich' then 'carbon-rich' then 'carbon-rich' and so on, until you run out of materials.

Time for the 'chicken scratch' while repeating the 2nd mantra, 'Rough and Loose, Rough and Loose.'

I make like a chicken, lightly mixing the layers together while leaving the surface uneven and light. I avoid standing on the soil as much as possible. This method creates the ideal conditions for supporting soil organism activity.

After a deep watering and the addition of  a final top mulch layer, the bed is ready to hand over to the soil organisms to do their job of making a rich friable soil. 

I ran out of time so put the coffee sacks, blanket and cardboard back in place but will replace it with shredded plant material as soon as I can.

'Green then Brown' - 'Rough and Loose'

Cryosphere - Hydrosphere completed and out there

Cryosphere II - Hydrosphere, 80"h x 50"w, machine sewing, dry felting, stuffing; nylon, polyester, net, cotton, beads, glitter, Timtex, cotton and rayon thread.

An exploration of the way water changes its molecular structure each time it shifts from a frozen state to a solid-state and back again. It is a process known as a phase change and is unique to the water molecule. 

Stuffed icicles of frozen water with bead-filled ends.

Attaching all icicles and flowing water panels together.

Attachment to the hanging device

While visiting hardware stores, fishing stores, pharmacies, a haberdashery and chandleries I bought clip-rings, lure swivels, silicon hair ties, tapes of hooks and eyes and nylon cord. I worked with them all to find a hanging device that would allow the panels to hang freely, hang straight and reposition themselves after being moved.

I settled on the tapes of hooks and eyes.

I bounced ideas off Ron, my resident problem-solver. He made a solid wooden frame to hang the work from.

All packed and ready to go with one and a half hours to spare - just enough time for a shower before I have to leave for the gallery. 

At the gallery attaching the hooks to the eyes.

Velcro to hold on the pelmets. An eye screw and carribenna type attachment to hold the wire to suspend the work from an overhead beam.

Cryosphere - Hydrosphere was my entry in the recent Vancouver Island Surface Design Association's annual exhibition 'Current Threads 2016' installed at the CACSP's Tulista Gallery.