July 11, 2009

What a productive week!!!  

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Well Kind Organics had a VERY productive week thanks to George, Amber and Brian. We managed to erect the plastic on the green house and build the doors and wire the electrical, and plant 26 new trays of seedlings and plant the rest of the back garden full of lettuce and even to till under a portion of the weeds that were happily growing around the transplanted veggies from the mini greenhouse. Tamas also tilled all of the rest of the plots-to-be-planted and the poison ivy is close to dead.

This week was really exciting, thrilling, fulfilling and disappointing :( Exciting to accomplish so much; Putting up the Plastic on the greenhouse was thrilling; it was Fulfilling to plant so many seeds and Disappointing to see how little everything has been growing since the rainfalls of last week. We are looking at amending the soil and thinning the weeds as well as using row covers to keep out the bugs. All and all it just needs more attention more of the time. Which is challenging, especially when we are trying to clear the land of stumps and garbage and build structures at the same time as gardening. It will be much easier when we are living on the property to keep tabs on what is going on. Tamas has been there every day from morning until 8-9pm every night and I (Sandra) have been stopping by in the evening after work or all day if I am off. Last week was frustrating due to the rain but this week made up for it in spades.
We re-organized the greenhouse and planted many trays of edible flowers. We discovered why you don't leave the greenhouse doors closed in summer as the temperature soars to 50 deg. C. Tamas could not walk in more than half way before he felt like passing out. (Now that we have the electrical working, we can rely on the fans for air exchange). Brian took many hours to help Tamas with the electrical installation, much appreciated!

The raising of the plastic was the hardest physical labour to date on this project. Tamas, Amber and George did it by themselves and had an unfortunate run in with the wind half way through. When I got there to help out they were all exhausted and covered in dirt. We all helped to attach the plastic to the frame with "Wiggle Wire" which is an ingenious way to attach plastic to metal framing without making holes in the plastic.

Since the flood wiped out much hope of getting a good harvest from the last batch of planted lettuce, I planted 30 rows of new lettuce and diligently covered them with white row covers to keep bugs out. Some of the other lettuces have been eaten by bugs so we are trying a new method and learning as we go along. I finally got to try my hand at tilling with a tiller. Very exciting and powerful! The way it rips up all those weeds and powers itself along. Ours is a pretty small tiller so it is not really that powerful, but I rarely use machinery so to me it was quite thrilling.

Tamas devised a way of creating a fork lift to pull all the large skids into the greenhouse allong with the furnace. I'm not sure what we would have done if the forklift plan had failed, but it didn't and now we have a lovely organized greenhouse. George helped immensely this week going up every day to lend a hand, thank you Tata!

And lastly we had the first REAL fire in our new fire pit. YAY!

Kind Regards,
Sandra Dombi

July 3, 2009

Be careful what you wish for... you could get what you want AND MORE!!!  

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Rain. We wished for it, and it came in droves!! We have not been able to work the land since Sunday, and now it is Friday. We went to check out the situation yesterday since Toronto has had very little rain. WOAHHHH, 3 1/2 inches of rain has fallen since Sunday and all the gardens are under water!!! Now we can see the value of aised garden beds. Initially we did not raise the beds because we really needed to plant as soon as possible and we largely missed the planning phase (March-May), then we did not go for raised beds because we did not have the proper tools to create them quickly and easily. Well it is always good to learn something new. RAISE THE BEDS. I know that there are other reasons as well that raised beds are better. For instance:










  • Raised beds warm more quickly in spring, allowing you to work the soil and plant earlier.
  • Raised beds drain better.
  • The soil in raised beds doesn't get compacted, because they are constructed with accessibility in mind.
  • It's easy to tailor the soil for your raised bed to the plants you plan to grow there.
  • After the initial construction process, raised beds require less maintenance than conventional garden beds.
from: http://organicgardening.about.com/od/startinganorganicgarden/a/raisedbed.htm

As soon as we get in there I'll be tilling the weeds and raising the soil around the plants to increase drainage. Hopefully I'll be able to work the soil as of Tomorrow. Today we won't be waisting another trip up to the property for nothing.

Unlike tomatoes, lettuces love the water, so the lettuces are doing well. So are the weeds. Since all the gardens are in various degrees of tillage, it is easy to see that the ones which were left longer in order to kill off all the grass and weeds are MUCH less weedy. At least the Lettuces are turning over quickly so we'll get another chance soon to do it right. We also have to get our row covers out of storage so we can reduce the heat on the lettuces and also the bugs that are likely to find them as tasty as we do.

The potatoes are looking GREAT! They are so robust. Some of the soil has washed away from the roots though so we really have to get in there as soon as possible for proper maintenance.

And in Greenhouse news, we are still needing to complete the other end of the structure, get the furnace inside and put the plastic on. hopefully this will be completed this weekend, weather and help dependent.

Regarding accommodations, We have arranged with a friend who lives around the corner from the farm that we could move in with him for August 1st if the drama with the farm property continues past the court date on July 14th. (it was moved up) Thus we will be leaving Toronto regardless by August 1st!!! YAY. Lets hope the weather is more moderate this week. WE need a couple of hot sunny days to dry out the fields and then intermittant rain towards the end of the week until we figure out the irrigation situation.

Thanks Kindly for reading.
Sandra and Tamas Dombi