Summer seems to have ended but our rooftop garden is now ready for winter.
We harvested lots of onions and carrots.
As well as many red and green tomatoes.
Tomatoes need to be harvested, even if still green. If left on the plant during cool temperatures and rain they will develop blight and turn black instead of red. Wrap your green tomatoes in newspaper and store them in a cool dark place until they ripen.
Tomato plants were then removed and put in our yard waste bins for composting (blight may spread in a cold composter, but in Vancouver yard waste is mechanically composted using heat).
We also planted some more fall crops (many winter crops should be planted in July or August, but due to extreme heat on our roof in these months not many seedlings were started successfully)
We planted overwintering broccoli starts, kale seeds and garlic after amending the soil with compost from our worm bin composter.
Garlic is grown by separating the cloves of the garlic bulb and planting pointy-end up roughly 4 inches deep in the soil. Each clove will form a new bulb. We simply bought local organic Red Russian garlic from a nearby grocer.
Happy autumn!
- marnie
Showing posts with label rooftop gardening. Show all posts
Holy Corn and Potatoes Batman
This weekend was the first rain we've had in Vancouver in weeks but we still had a great turnout at The Cambie Square Garden on Sunday. Noone even minded the rain and worked away together to harvest quite the bounty. We harvested lots of potatoes and corn and some really beautiful carrots too.
SPEC Rooftop in June
Here are some photos of what's happening on our rooftop garden at SPEC.
Strawberries!
Nasturtiums - both the flower and leaves are edible
this broccoli has a great start
these tomatoes are loving the heat on our rooftop
garlic in the vertical planter - the scapes will soon be snipped and sauteed
lettuce starts to replace those that will soon come out.
It's not all problem free - aphids looove fava beans
a chemical free way of dealing with the problem is to spray them off with a strong stream of water
this gives our beans a fighting chance, so that hopefully we can harvest them in the next weeks
happy food growing!
- marnie
Upcoming Volunteer Times
Hi there!
Yey for summer!
Here are our upcoming volunteer times:
Wednesday June 23rd 530pm-615pm - Cambie Square Communal Garden (West side of Cambie between 10th and 12th, up the stairs)
Friday June 25th 93oam-11am - SPEC Rooftop Container Garden (2150 Maple Street)
Sunday June 28th 11am-12 - Cambie Square Communal Garden
Wednesday June 30th 530-615pm - Cambie Square Communal Garden
We hope to see you!
- marnie
June 1st Gardens Update
Spring is in full force and all the hard work and planning from the previous months is truly paying off.
School Gardens
Students from a nearby school recently brought seedlings they started in their classroom to plant on our rooftop container garden.
Rooftop Garden
Fava beans are flowering on the roof!
Lettuce is harvestable!
Tomato seedlings are in! (Started in Carole's backyard greenhouse)
Cambie Square Communal Garden
New lovely signage care of Jodi Mayne!
We've got bees! Mason bees have moved in to our mason condo (thanks EYA!) you can see they've filled the holes with mud.
- marnie
SPEC in April
It's a beautiful yet chilly Friday in April. With the sun shinning brightly it's a great day to take a few photos of our Rooftop Container Garden to share.
We will be starting regular bi-monthly Rooftop work days starting this Friday from 9 to 11am. Come start seedlings with us!
Peas are growing! (Will be transplanted to a larger container)
Anise Hyssop and a Calendula flower
Colourful flowers attract pollinators
Carole brought us these lovely broccoli starts!
- Marnie
New Research Project at SPEC!!
There are new things happening at SPEC!
Four UBC students (L-R):Tara Moreau, Emma Holmes, Kate Menzies (myself), and Melissa Iverson, have come together to explore better ways to grow food in small spaces. We are collaborating with SPEC and West Coast Seeds on a research project we will be working on over the next few months. Our research will investigate the effects of soil amendments
on crop yields.
We have recently set up our experiment on SPEC's rooftop and I will be documenting our experience on this blog! We invite you to follow our progress and learn with us along the way.
Our experiment is designed like this: using a common potting soil (approx. 70% peat and 30% perlite) as our medium we have chosen three different soil amendments to grow our crops. This gives us four soil treatments in total.
#1: potting soil
#2: potting soil + Gaia Green 4-4-4
#3: potting soil + Sea Soil
#4: potting soil + Miracle Grow 24-8-16
We have planted the following four crops individually into each of the four soil treatments.
#1: Lettuce ( C.V Darkeness)
#2: Radish (C.V Altaglobe)
#3: Kale (C.V Red Russian)
#4: Pea (C.V Little Marvel).
Because we have 4 soil types and 4 crops we are provided with 16 soil/crop combinations. We are replicating each combination 15 times so we have a total of 240 containers on the roof!
We will document crop growth and measure the yields after harvest to determine what effect soil amendment choice has on yields.
Our hope is to obtain some interesting results that we can share with growers and improve the success of urban agriculture right here in our backyards (or rooftops for that matter!). Feel free to stop by SPEC and check out the garden or to post questions or comments for us to answer!
Happy Growing... Kate
on crop yields.
We have recently set up our experiment on SPEC's rooftop and I will be documenting our experience on this blog! We invite you to follow our progress and learn with us along the way.
Our experiment is designed like this: using a common potting soil (approx. 70% peat and 30% perlite) as our medium we have chosen three different soil amendments to grow our crops. This gives us four soil treatments in total.
#1: potting soil
#2: potting soil + Gaia Green 4-4-4
#3: potting soil + Sea Soil
#4: potting soil + Miracle Grow 24-8-16
We have planted the following four crops individually into each of the four soil treatments.
#1: Lettuce ( C.V Darkeness)
#2: Radish (C.V Altaglobe)
#3: Kale (C.V Red Russian)
#4: Pea (C.V Little Marvel).
Because we have 4 soil types and 4 crops we are provided with 16 soil/crop combinations. We are replicating each combination 15 times so we have a total of 240 containers on the roof!
We will document crop growth and measure the yields after harvest to determine what effect soil amendment choice has on yields.
Our hope is to obtain some interesting results that we can share with growers and improve the success of urban agriculture right here in our backyards (or rooftops for that matter!). Feel free to stop by SPEC and check out the garden or to post questions or comments for us to answer!
Happy Growing... Kate
