An Early July Look at the Square Foot Garden Beds

In an effort to make my garden update videos shorter I have decided to do them at various times in three separate categories today's is a look at what is happening in the Square Foot Garden Beds. The other two categories are the non pruned Tomatoes in the garden and greenhouse with a look at the things that are growing with them and the last category is The first nations style permaculture three sisters garden. So each future update will cover one of these topics.

A look at what's happening in the Gardens and Greenhouse June 14, 2011

Things are looking good in the gardens and greenhouse in spite of our cold wet spring. I would also like to thank everyone who exchanged seeds with me and show you how the varieties you gave me are doing. Hopefully I didn't leave anyone out, if so it wasn't intentional.

Spring 2011 Planting in the Square Foot Garden

Getting the Square Foot Garden ready for another season. Transplanting the onion seedlings that I started in the house on February 6th., planting Peas, Beets and Spinach. A look at some of the seedlings that I have grown in the light garden and are now out in the unheated greenhouse to harden off before they are transplanted later in the month.

The last of the harvest

A compilation of several short video clips taken over the last three weeks as I harvested and preserved my garden produce as well as a look at my new little chicken coop all ready for my hens when they arrive next summer and a short clip of my indoor cucumbers.

Carrot Harvest

Carrot Harvest, originally uploaded by Campobello Island.

Continuing on with the fall harvest from my Square Foot Garden yesterday I harvested the remaining carrots sliced them, steam blanched them and they are in the freezer ready for several winter meals. Next on the agenda will be the Brussels Sprouts and Kale and the last thing will be the cabbages turned into sauerkraut.

Constructing a Square Foot Garden Raised Bed, planting garlic and this years first frost

Time to get the garlic planted but first I had to build another raised bed for my square foot garden and fill it with the soil-less mix from the grow bags in my greenhouse and add composted manure. We had our first frost of the season last night so I also took a look at it.





I love my new Canon G11 especially the excellent macro features. I was out early this morning on my hands and knees in the frosty grass to get this picture.

Last SFG Update for summer 2010 beets, carrots, brussels sprouts, cabbage and rutabaga.

The last of my weekly updates for this year from the square foot garden. I will continue to do an occasional video from the garden through out the fall, as I harvest some of the late crops and preserve them for winter use.

September 6, 2010 SFG Update Beets,Tomatoes,Brussels Sprouts and Free Seed

A short look around the garden lots of tomatoes, cucumbers, small beets and the Brussels Sprouts and getting bigger everyday. Three varieties of free seed if you are interested just send me a PM with your postal address and I will drop them in the post for you.




Not sure if I've ever grown a Tomato before that you only needed one slice for a sandwich, variety Big Beef, tasty too.

Square Foot Garden Update August 31, 2010

Just a short update from the garden to show how much the Brussels Sprouts have grown in the week since I stopped their vertical growth, a look at some hot peppers and time to harvest those French Beans.

The latest from the garden, free seed and preparing fall crops.

I've pruned the Brussels Sprouts fingers crossed that I will see sprouts developing soon. Removing dead pea vines and some advice on saving the free nitrogen in the soil. A look at the compost building up. At last vine ripened tomatoes in the greenhouse. Free seed Ground Cherry and Buckbee's New Heirloom Tomato, for anyone who would like to have some.

The weekly Square Foot Update and some of the early bounty of the harvest

The garden is at it's peak for this year many things I've been very pleased with and a few that I won't plant again at least not the varieties that I grew this year. All in all it has been a great summer for the vegetable garden and the harvest is increasing everyday.

The Harvest continues

It's a wonderful time of year in the garden, getting more food out of it everyday. Just in the past week I had enough cucumbers to make pickles, I've harvested the Garlic,discovered that I have lovely large straight carrots, dried the blue podded peas for winter use and had my first fresh fennel.

Weekly Garden Update

I'm starting to get enough produce from the garden that I can freeze some. So far zucchini, peas and beans. The blue podded peas are all filled out and I hope to pick them soon and dry them for winter soups. I was surprised to read in my copy of, Preserving the Harvest, that they should be blanched for three minutes in steam before drying them just the same as you would do if you were freezing them. Lots of mystery squash on the vine from the seed packet labeled, Fun with Winter Squash, the latest one that I discovered yesterday looks like Acorn squash, maybe a yellow variety. (Not shown in the video.)

If you know what the mystery squash and tomato are leave a comment.

Squash are starting to appear on the vines of my heirloom fun with winter squash plants but I not sure what they are, at least not all of them so if you can identify them please leave a comment. The same goes for the mystery tomato in the the garden center it was just labeled Heirloom, I've never had a tomato shaped quite like it before so if you can identify it I would appreciate it. Getting more produce from the garden almost on a daily basis today I had my first cucumber from the greenhouse and more peas from the garden.

Getting produce daily from the square foot garden

It's a wonderful time of year when the garden starts to yeild enough that I'm eating fresh produce on a daily basis. No sign of a ripe tomato yet but that is quite normal for this area I'm usually well into August before I get my first tomato. Some of the ones in the greenhouse are reaching full size though so it shouldn't be much longer.

July 13, 2010 Weekly Square Foot Garden Update

The garden is progressing nicely and seems to be really enjoying this fine summer weather that we have had lately. I've had an unwanted visitor in the garden digging up my potatoes and I suspect it is a raccoon. I've left him a little surprise for his next visit. I had several pairs of robins nest on the property earlier this spring and I enjoyed talking to them as they fed their young and taught them to fly. I wasn't aware that they nest twice in the same season until this week when I discovered two new nests in the gardens.

Green tomatoes in the greenhouse.



Greenhouse cucumber Carmen starting to produce.

Square foot garden update July 6, 2010

At last we had a whole week without rain, next thing you know I will be complaining about all of the dry weather, there's no satisfying a gardener. The week without rain was wonderful and I was able to produce several batches of compost tea and apply it to the garden.

Things are growing quickly now with the warm weather and all of the sunshine. I had some zucchini, kale and Swiss chard for dinner last night and today I had some of my lettuce and radish in a salad, it's great to be getting produce from the garden again. Today I see several of the winter squash are in bloom as well as some of the cucumbers.

My video is a day late this week because for some unknown reason I haven't been able to upload to YouTube for the past 24 hours.

To date there have been 1,893 different people from 56 different countries visit the blog but I don't seem to get many comments. Please take a moment make a comment and let me know where you are from , I would love to know more about who is following the blog.

Special hello to all of my friends in the Yahoo Heirloom Gardening group.

Heirloom fun with winter squash., originally uploaded by Campobello Island.

I want to take this opportunity to welcome the members of the Yahoo Group HeirloomGardening2 who are visiting my blog for the first time. The group is a great source of knowledge and heirloom seed varieties through their seed bank. Click on the link above to have a look at the groups web page. I'm growing mostly heirloom vegetable varieties this year and most of those came from the seed bank. A few photos taken in the garden this morning:

Clicking on any of the photos will take you to my flickr account and more info on the variety in the photo.

The bunny is back

My bunny is back and this morning he clipped a branch off a high-bush blueberry and enjoyed the leaves, this I don't mind just stay out of my vegetable garden and so far that is just what he has done, no garden damage yet.

We had a week of fairly wet weather, 2.5 inches of rain, so I wasn't able to do any compost tea watering this week. I'm pleased with the progress of most things in the garden, so far the only food from the garden has been parsley, lettuce and radish but several other crops are starting to grow nicely now and it won't be long before kale, chard ans zucchini will be ready to eat and preserve.

I took this little clip at Rugosa Rose Alpaca Farm earlier in the week.

Chianti, bred by David Austin, England 1967

Chianti, bred by David Austin, England 1967, originally uploaded by Campobello Island.

I took some footage of this rose in this weeks update but I just had to show you this photo too, it is really putting on a show right now.

As you can see from the video things are progressing along quite nicely in the vegetable garden. I've had a meal of garlic scapes and I'm using my own lettuce regularly now, some time this week I will pick the first crop of French Breakfast Radish I ate one in the garden this week but they weren't full size yet. The weather has improved much warmer now and not so much rain in the past week we only had a half inch of rain, but the forecast calls for showers for the next couple of days so that should give everything a good watering.

I'm still very pleased with the results that I'm getting with compost tea and of course it has the added bonus of being completely organic.

I planted a Plum tree today and in the process dug up a nest of earwigs so I suppose they will be the next curse to hit the garden, my neighbor has made traps which he say work so maybe I should build some too. He filled a 2 inch piece of black plastic pipe with drinking straws, the earwigs hide in there you tap it on the ground and they come out so you can spray them with soap and water which kills the.

After I had taken the video and posted it one of the Blue Podded Peas bloomed. It is every bite as nice as a sweet pea it just doesn't have the nice fragrance.