Share your baby pics!

It's fun to see all the weird and wacky ways people come up with to start plants indoors. Do you have a creative method that you would like to share...or perhaps some particularly cute (or odd) babies you want to show off? Send your pics to Barb and we'll post them below...

From Barb: Baby alyssum seedlings in an experimental toilet paper tube growing system. There's a wire screen attached to the bottom of the wood crate that holds the soil in and allows the water to drain out. This way the roots that grow to the bottom air prune themselves and don't get root bound...or that's the idea, we'll see how it works...I need to create a little more air space under the crate. Alyssum flowers attract pollinators to the garden and smell yummy.

Space Saving Gardening Techniques

It has been a long time coming this year but Spring is finally here! If you haven't already planned out your garden plot for the year, here are few good space saving tips for small plot and intensive gardens from Purdue University Cooperative Extension (view the complete document).

Interplanting. Alternate rows with a fast and slow growing crop. When the fast crop is removed, the row spacing widens to allow ample space for the slower crop. For example, plant radishes, green onions, spinach, or lettuce between rows of cabbage, corn, Brussels sprouts, and broccoli. [Barb's Notes: Louis Savier via Eliot Coleman suggests leek/carrot, mache/onion, and radish/romaine interplanting pairs to take advantage of complementary maturity times and growth characteristics. Onions/carrot/lettuce is another popular combo that complementarily mixes leaf forms, light requirements, and rooting depth. I like to plant Buckwheat with my tomatoes (squash and cucumbers too) and then slash down the Buckwheat as a green manure once the tomatoes are big. Lots of room for experimentation!]

Intercropping. Sow a fast and a slow growing type of seed together. For example, sow radishes and carrots together. When the radishes are harvested, then the carrots will be automatically thinned. [Barb's Notes: A classic French intensive intercropping method starts early in the spring (often with help of a manure hot bed or cold frame) by sowing radish and carrot and lettuce transplants, once the radish and lettuce are harvested, replace with cauliflower transplants. Another method by Ianto Evans starts cabbage indoors two weeks before the last frost; then one week before the last frost he direct sows seeds of radish, dill, parsnip, calendula, and lettuce; at week four he harvests radish and plants cabbage in their place about 18-inches apart; at week 6 he harvests the young lettuce; in late spring/early summer after the soil has warmed to 60 degrees or more he plants bush beans in the lettuce holes, then in the fall he plants garlic. Give it a try!]

Succession planting. As soon as one crop is finished, plant another. For example, when cool-season crops such as lettuce, spinach, radish, and peas are harvested, replant with beans, beets, or turnips.

Band planting. Plant crops in bands of double or triple rows instead of single rows where practical. Where mechanical equipment is not being used, wide paths between rows waste valuable space. Smaller crops such as lettuce, spinach, beets, and radishes are especially suited to band planting (see Table 2 for approximate spacings).

Short row planting. Don’t plant more than you will be able to use at one time, e.g. planting a long row of lettuce or two dozen cabbage plants which you can’t possibly use at once. In small plot gardening, it is advisable to plant only the amount needed.

Vertical training. Many vegetables, including peas, pole beans, cucumbers, squash, melons, and tomatoes, will naturally climb a support or can be trained to grow upwards, leaving more ground space for other crops. Support structures include cages, stakes, trellises, strings, teepees, chicken wire, or existing fences let your imagination take over!

Mini Gardening. Vegetable breeders have been emphasizing smaller plants for container and small plot gardening. Although some of the dwarf or mini plants produce smaller fruits, often a greater number of fruits are produced, yielding a good total harvest. Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and peas are just a few examples from the mini ranks. Some new cultivars of vegetables such as tomatoes and cucumbers have compact, trailing growth habits ideal for growing in hanging baskets.

U.P. Food Network

We've seen a lot of great energy focusing on local, healthy food and food systems in this last year...

The Ryan Street Community Garden (RSCG) had the honor of participating in the Keweenaw's first annual Food Day celebration in October.

Food Day is a nationwide celebration and a movement toward more healthy, affordable, and sustainable food. Food Day, created by Center for Science in the Public Interest, is powered by a diverse coalition of food movement leaders, organizations, and people from all walks of life. Food Day takes place annually on October 24 to address issues as varied as health and nutrition, hunger, agricultural policy, animal welfare, and farm worker justice. The ultimate goal of Food Day is to strengthen and unify the food movement in order to improve our nation’s food policies.
 

 

Community gardener, Beth Murrell, hosting the RSCG table at the first annual Keweenaw Food Day celebration.

RSCG is excited to be part of these local efforts to build a strong regional food system in the Upper Peninsula. In January, Natasha Lantz from from the Marquette Food Co-op and Michelle Walk from the MSU Extension came to Houghton to talk about the U.P. Food Exchange (UPFE). The goal of UPFE is to connect local food activity within each of the Upper Peninsula's three distinct regions (Eastern, Central, and Western), and to coordinate local food efforts between the regions. The project aims to establish both online and physical aggregations sites for farm products, improve local food storage capacity, and educate consumers, farmers, and institutional purchasers about the resources and benefits available to them via this network. The website will be up soon.

The Western Upper Peninsula Health Department (WUPHD) is leading this effort locally to create the Western U.P. Food Hub. UPFE defines a food hub as "a business or organization actively working with farmers and buyers to coordinate supply and demand. This is accomplished through the aggregation, distribution, and marketing of source-identified local and regional food products, primarily from micro to mid-sized producers to individuals, wholesalers, retailers, and/or institutional buyers."

For more information about UPFE or the Western U.P. Food Hub visit the links provided above or contact Sara Salo (the Health Education Coordinator at WUPHD) at (906) 482-7382 x114.

The tin man gets a green thumb...

Local artist/designer and Finlandia student, David Sarazin, who participated in the Ryan Street Community Garden's Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs mini-grant this summer, decided to keep the art-in-the-garden focus for his student design studio project this fall by refurbishing an abandoned student sculpture for the garden. The "tin man", as he was formally known, has been lurking around the metal shop for years. David repaired and rebuilt the base, creatively outfitted him with hands that hold an oversized rake and shovel, and crowned him with a head that only a gardener could love. We look forward to installing him in his new home once the snow melts this spring. Thanks David!

A refurbished tin man ready for the garden. 

Before his garden makeover.

Cycle those nutrients!

All year we've been withdrawing from our soil nutrient bank when we harvest and eat the tasty vegetables, fruits, herbs and flowers that we grew. Now it's time to make a deposit so we don't go broke next year! Adding a well composted layer of horse manure (free of antibiotics and steroids) to our garden beds in the Fall is one of the ways we do this at the Ryan Street Community Garden. Then we top things off with a nice thick layer of straw to protect the soil through the winter. A perfect activity for a cool October day.

Our new entry kiosk!

Our entryway project is moving along. Today we put up the new entry kiosk. Another beautiful design by artists/designers Dave Sarazin and Rick Loduha, part of our 2012 MCACA mini-grant project to bring art to the garden. The kiosk design includes two bulletin boards, a bench, and bike rack.

Unloading the kiosk...

Artists/Designers Dave Sarazin & Rick Loduha stand next to the arch and kiosk they created, part of our 2012 MCACA mini-grant project to bring art to the garden.

Our bench testing crew is eager to get started.

Look at those beauties!

Our 4-H Lucky Charms!

Today the "Lucky Charms" 4-H club showed us what the four Hs in 4-H stand for—Head, Heart, Hands, and Health. They put all four Hs to work today at the Ryan Street Community Garden as part of their community service pledge. Thanks for all your hard work!

Washing their freshly harvested carrots!

Preparing the planting holes for our Rosa rugosa bushes.

Erecting the Arch!

Last post we visited Dave and Rick in their shop for a sneak peek of the arch in construction. Today we get to see the arch going up...

Rick and Dave assemble the arch components and prepare to erect the arch.

LJJ Construction generously donated the concrete and labor for the arch foundation.

The arch is up!

Next step is to construct our information kiosk next to the arch and start building the flower/herb bed along the sidewalk.

Garden Entry Arch Coming Soon...

Thanks to the Copper Country Community Arts Center (CCCAC) and the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs (MCACA), the Ryan Street Community Garden was awarded a 2012 mini-grant to bring art to the garden. Part of our grant project includes the design and construction of a sculptural entry arch.

Ryan Street Community Gardeners get a sneak peek at the garden arch in construction.

We employed artist/designers Rick Loduha and Dave Sarazin to design and build the arch. The arch is made primarily from salvaged materials that have been creatively repurposed. We can't wait to see it at the garden! Thanks for your great work Rick and Dave!

Artist/Designers Rick Loduha (left) and Dave Sarazin (right) talk about their design process with the gardeners.

A new crop of kids!

This season in the garden has been extra fun with our new crop of kids. Here are a few of our young sprouts...

Enjoying a healthy snack on rock island in the sea of clover.

Taste-testing chive blossoms. Flowers you can eat!

Trying to behave with the watering hose...who can resist a little fun?

Spring projects...

Starting to sheet-mulch the upper tier of the garden in preparation for our perennial crops. Sheet-mulching is a method for improving soil, also commonly referred to as sheet-composting or the lasagna method, that involves laying down a "sheet" material such as cardboard and covering it with layers of seed-free organic material. We are fortunate to have access to a plentiful supply of aged horse manure (thank you to Beth and her friend!) and semi-composted leaves so that's what we used, plus we topped it off with a layer of straw mulch. For more information on how, why, and when to sheet-mulch see Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway, Designing and Maintaining Your Edible Landscape Naturally by Robert Kourik, or do an internet search.

Unloading a trailer full of horse manure to be used in our sheet-mulch beds. It's handy to have a place to unload materials uphill from our work area so we can work with gravity, if only this trailer had a dump mechanism!

 

A clever idea one of our gardeners found for marking your rows. That's Popeye on the spoon—we all know what he likes to eat!

School Food Tour Visits RSCG!

Sara Salo of The School Food Tour stopped by the garden today to talk about her 5,000+ mile self-supported bicycle tour promoting healthy eating and cycling for both transportation and recreation. Sara ended her long tour last Friday (May 11) in Houghton and has been visiting schools and community gardens in the area to share her story and learn more about our local food network in the Keweenaw. Thanks for stopping by Sara! Learn more about Sara's work at http://schoolfoodtour.org/.

Our first garden work day of the 2012 season...

Gardener and artist Joyce Koskenmaki adds a little color to the garden with her hand painted sticks used as plot dividers in the raised beds.

Many hands make light work! (Background) Spreading a fresh layer of woodchips in the paths. (Foreground) Preparing to sheet mulch the perennial garden area.

The starting line-up...

One of the ways we extend our growing season is by starting plants indoors in late winter/early spring. The warm indoor climate tricks the seeds into germinating and growing weeks earlier than they would if you planted them outdoors. This step is especially important for gardens with a short growing season if you want to grow plants like tomatoes and peppers that take a long time to reach maturity.

But there are many other benefits to starting your own plants. Most importantly you are in charge of selecting the varieties you grow which allows you to choose plants that are best suited for your climate, garden conditions, and culinary preferences. Choosing open-pollinated varieties gives you the option of saving your own seed so that you are no longer dependent on someone else from somewhere else to sell you seed. With a little love and care, your plant starts will be much better quality than anything you can buy from a commercial nursery.

When to start your plants depends on your garden's last frost date. Cold-hardy plants and plants that require a long time to reach maturity are started earlier. For our sunny Hancock garden site, this process starts in late February/early March. Here's a look at the starting line-up...

Spinach starts hardening-off in an unheated garden shed before transplanting to the garden. These plants were started on 3/2/12 potted-up into bigger containers on 3/20/12, and moved here to harden-off on 4/7/12. They will be transplanted to the garden after about a week of hardening-off and covered with protective row cover as needed.

Leek and onion starts hardening-off in an unheated garden shed before transplanting to the garden. These plants were started on 3/2/12, and set to harden-off on 4/7/12, they are not potted-up. 

These young broccoli and cabbage starts were potted-up this very morning on 4/11/12. They were started on 3/20/12. They will remain indoors for a couple more weeks before hardening-off and will be transplanted to the garden in early May.

Broccoli micro-greens, a tasty byproduct of starting your own plants. When you pot-up plants you select the biggest, strongest seedlings—the rest can be eaten!

Celery babies just about ready to pot-up to individual containers. These plants were started on 3/2/12. They will be transplanted to the garden mid to late May.

These young basil plants don't even have true leaves yet. They were planted on 3/29/2012. They have a ways to go before potting-up. They won't be planted in the garden until all danger of frost has past.

Like the basil above, these peppers don't even have their true leaves yet. Peppers, like basil, are a warm weather plant and will not be transplanted to the garden until all danger of frost has past. These were planted on 3/29/2012, a little later than usual.

The Ides of March

Sunrise at the garden. Promise of an early spring?