Harvest Season 2010

Well that was a fantastic growing season! The nearly ideal weather we enjoyed during the summer stayed right through to the end of the harvest season, which was fortunate because we had a lot of seeds to gather! The seeds are now long since harvested and many are already packaged up for the new catalogue, while the garden is resting for the winter under a fresh blanket of snow. Here's a long overdue glimpse of some of what we got up to this fall...

-Amaranth and sunflowers are a great pair as we learned.

- Checking the Lazy Housewife beans for maturity, they were a few days away from getting harvested.

-One of the stories of the summer was our amazing corn crop. This is the variety True Platinum, and although only on in four seeds that I planted grew (due to lumpy soil and a lack of rain in May) each surviving plant produced three or four big cobs.

-Soybeans ready to harvest in September

-The new greenhouse

- To dry the corn I left the cobs on the plant for as long as I could, and when rain threatened I harvested them and hung them in the barn from their own husks. The seeds will come off easily when they're dry.

-A kaleidoscope of tomtoes. Clockwise: Striped Cavern, Cole, Azoychka, White Cherry, OSU Blue and Absinthe. Centre: Black Krim.

- OSU Blue tomato, a very unique blue skinned tomato. It was developed at Oregon State University by cross-pollinating a red tomato with a wild blue tomato from South America.

- Removing the seeds from one of our many Musquée de Provence pumpkins. We ate way too much pumpkin soup and pie that week!

- One of the final tasks of the fall, planting next year's garlic. I'm excited about our future garlic plans, it's going to take a few more years of multiplying the seed stocks but I hope to have a limited selection of seed garlic available in the not too distant future...

Of Deer, Greenhouses and Seed Workshops

Finally, some welcome rain and a much needed opportunity for some writing! The garden is growing better than ever this time of year, it seems like every time I look at a plant it's twice the size it was last time. Around here this is the season of weeding and staking, watching things grow and best of all of endless salads. Life in the yurt has been fantastic (I still promise that construction write-up soon!), although it seems to have had the unintended consequence of deterring the deer from the upper field only to drive them into the lower field and the main seed garden. The damage wasn't too severe, a few peas got nibbled and are now re-growing. Ever since I built my funky, improvised deer fence last week out of tomato stakes, twine, surveyors tape and pie plates the garden seems to be secure.

The greenhouse is finally coming together too. The frame is nearly finished now, it's just a matter of finishing the ends (we're having wooden ends with wide double doors) and waiting for a totally still day to throw the plastic over.

Also in the works is a very exciting series of seed saving workshops with both myself and my friend and mentor Dan Jason from Salt Spring

Seeds. Dan is coming out here in late August and we'll likely be giving three separate workshops around the province (details to follow!) the biggest one and the one that's all confirmed is the Watershed Farm Music Festival on August 28th. Organized by Pollination Project at Watershed Farm, we'll have music all day on Saturday the 28th along with organic growing and seed saving demos throughout the day. The following day Sunday will be a smaller, quieter and more in-depth course with the two of us, check out the details: pollinationproject.com/eventsview.php?eventID=85 . I'll keep everyone posted when we decide on the details for the other courses!

Also, here's a photo I've been meaning to share from my time as a guest on The Weekend Gardener the other week. Niki Jabbour hosts the show every Sunday from 11:00 to 1:00 on 95.7 FM in Nova Scotia. I ended up going in to the studio for the interview, which was a ton of fun with such a knowledgeable gardener as Niki. Check out her blog too.

Next up is a weeklong farm tour of sorts to New Brunswick, there's a lot to organize on this rainy day...

Seed Packing and the New Name

The harvest is in, the seeds are dried and sorted and tallied, now it's just a matter of filling as many packets as I can before the 2010 catalogue is released! For the last week my main activity has been filling packets, as boring as that might sound it's actually very exciting work (for me) thinking about the huge potential of these seeds and the many gardens they will sow all over the world. This is the debut of my 2010 packet design, I was working with a local printer (Integrity Printing of Bridgetown) to design a slightly snazzier packet, I'm pretty pleased with the result:

I should also announce that I've decided to shorten the name slightly from Annapolis Valley Heritage Seeds to simply Annapolis Seeds, it's less of a mouthful and just seems...better. I'm in the process of completing the 2010 catalogue, and the plan is to update the website later this month. So far I have 140 varieties lined up for the online catalogue, with more coming soon from my only other seed grower Windhorse Farm. That's about double the selection over last year's catalogue, with way more in stock. Overall I have at least six or seven times last year's seed stock, I hope there's enough of the popular varieties to go around this year.

Also check out the Nov.-Dec. issue of Small Farm Canada (the seed issue), Emily McGiffin did a great write-up of what I'm doing that has already generated a lot of buzz.

So keep an eye on the website for updates!

A big update on a wet 350 Day

Apologies for the lack of posts lately, although there isn't much exciting news coming from the garden this time of year there are still lots of projects on the go. Now that the harvest is all in I've been tallying the crop and writing the 2010 seed catalogue, I hope to have it up on the website in November. I have about 5 times last year's quantities and twice the number of varieties available (with many more grown in small amounts on track for the 2011 catalogue).

Aside from the seed work I'm beginning to focus once again on the forest, I'm working to remove the conifer seedlings from a two acre logged area so to encourage the growth of mixed hardwoods in this patch. The plan is to manage the hardwoods as a coppice, that is cut on a regular and continueous cycle of harvesting and regrowth. The trees send out many new shoots from the stump and when cut as 10 or 15 year old poles they aren't injured. Indeed they can have their life spans greatly increased, basically by being kept in a state of continueous youth. What's most appealing to me is that it's a style of forestry totally human scaled, the trees are cut at a size where they're managable without any machinery, all that's needed for harvesting and working are a few basic hand tools (billhook, machete, axe, bow saw, froe...). This regular cutting creates an interesting symbiosis between the coppice ecosystem and humans. I sometimes think of it as similar to mowing a wild meadow of grasses and wildflowers, both the coppice and the meadow can be cut in a human scaled and sensitive way to provide for us without damaging the ecology of the site.

I also want to mention the new community garden being set up in Middleton. There's been talk going on for a little while but the town council is now on board and we're in the process of selecting and clearing a site. I've been informally appointed the lead garden consultant for the project, the other day I checked out the four proposed sites with the others involved and we all agreed on the old field next to the ice rink (you need to be from Middleton!). It's a central location in town with fertile clay-loam soil and there's a path along side that connects to Main Street. I can invision a sign and an arbour directing people to the bountiful eden behind the trees. That's still a ways away though, we're hoping to get it cleared and plowed before the ground freezes so we can get everyone planting next spring.

Today was the International Day of Climate Action (www.350.org) and in observance I mowed a second "350" in the wet, soggy clover. The rain was too heavy to get photos so I'll post a photo and a better write-up in a day or two...

The Mid-Summer Garden

A rainbow over the soybeans:


The recently staked pole bean patch:


Triple Treat Peas:

Russian Sugar Peas:

Golden Sweet Peas (red flowers and edible yellow pods):

Early Wonder Tall Top Beets:

Lots to update on

I'm finally able to do some writing again after a solid month of garden and farm work. With the help of our WWOOFer Bjoern I got both the seed and food gardens planted weeks ahead of schedule. This year we've got over 60 bean varieties on the go, 40 peas and about 40 tomatoes, among many others. A few of the beans are my own strains that I'm working towards stabilizing. My most promising of these is a striped variation of the pole bean McGrath's Africa. Two years ago in our McGrath's Africa patch I discovered a plant that produced black and white striped seeds in striped green pods, rather than the usual white seeds in leathery purple pods. Last year I grew them out and 95 percent stayed true to type (which is a great rate). If I can stabilize it for a few more years I might even be able to release it as new variety, any name suggestions?


We also planted an acre of Sorghum x Sudangrass in the newly cleared upper field as a green manure crop. Without the ideal equipment of a harrow and some power source to pull it (animal or machine) I ended up broadcast seeding it and then zipping over the field with the rototiller set to it's fastest speed. I set the tines very shallow so that it only mixed the top two inches or so of soil, it worked almost like a rake. A small corner of the upper field we've enriched with tons of manure and we've planted sunflowers, tomatoes, peppers, adzuki beans, chickpeas, millet and corn, as well as a huge patch of squash planted on mounds of manure. We're experimanting with these mounds as a way to stretch what little valuable manure we have. The roots of the squash will be growing in almost pure manure while the vines can sprawl over the less fertile soil around the mounds. We'll see how well it works.














Now that the garden is planted and Bjoern's keeping the weeds under control I'm starting to put some more time into the yurt. Last January I took a great yurt-building workshop held by Alex and Selene Cole of Little Foot Yurts over in the Gaspereau Valley. Over the winter I cut, peeled, shaped and cured the poles for the yurt, and starting now I'm trying (emphasis on trying) to get it assembled. If I'm sucessful, updates to follow...


The yurt poles after we carried them in from the woods. Note the frames used for shaping the khana poles (wall poles).

Spring Update

Has a lot ever happened so far this spring! It's been so busy I haven't had time to write about it. It's kind of funny, in the winter I have lots of time but nothing to write about while in the spring I have everything to write about but no time to do it!

The seeds are still selling and I'm sold out of about 3/4 of the catalog. It seems like every week this time of year there's another Seedy Saturday somewhere in the province. Most recently was Halifax and before that was the very successful one in Wolfville. This could be the busiest time of year around here just because I'm still doing my seed rounds while at the same time the garden is coming back to life and the rest of the farm needs work as well. In the garden the garlic has sprouted and Colin has planted the first peas.

An exciting recent discovery is that the old chicken run is built on top of what's best descibed as an ancient manure deposit. I think what happened is that the previous several owners simply swept the manure out the back door of the barn until over the decades it built up into this incredible four foot deep pile of fertile black earth. I've spread over 100 wheel-barrow loads over the garden so far with lots still remaining. When the pile is gone we'll build a much larger and sturdier run to contain both the chickens and goats for the summer. The chickens currently have the run of the farm, scratching in the forest, raised beds and compost piles and dust bathing en masse along the warm foundation of the house. They can't complain too much about their new summer enclosure, at several thousand square feet it would be paradise for the average battery-hen.

We're having the newly cleared upper field plowed for the first time in a few weeks. After the roots are raked out and we get some manure spread to enrich the poor sandy soil we hope to grow some seed and food crops up there this year. What's good about having two seperate fields like this is that we can isolate crops like squash and corn for producing seed. My plan with squash is to plant them on hills of manure which should make that limited resource go further. We'll just have the root-zone heavily enriched while the vines can sprawl over the poorer soil. I'll plant about an acre of alfalfa in the upper field this spring as a long-term green manure crop. The deep roots bring up nutrients from the sub-soil while at the same time fixing nitrogen. What the field really needs though is more organic matter. The hope is that the alfalfa will produce enough biomass that we can mow it several times a year to add to the soil. I suppose we'll see how it goes.

Bessie is really enjoying being out on the pasture again. Although not much is growing yet you can tell she loves being out of the barn. We think she'll be giving birth any day now. Stay tuned...

A Bushel of Seeds

Here's the result of all that seed packing! An oveflowing bushel apple crate of seeds!

I'm not exactly sure, but I'd guess there at about 1,000 of my seed packets to the bushel. The Farmer's Almanac should add that to their mesurement tables.

Now I just hope the conference goers need lots of seeds!

Gearing up for the ACORN Conference

I'm currently preparing like crazy for the ACORN Conference at the end of the week (Feb. 26-28) in Truro. I'll be selling and/or trading my seeds at the Seedy Saturday (free admission!) being held on the 28th, so I have to get lots of new packages made up! Here's the link to ACORN for anyone interested in attending.

Now back to packaging seeds...