Long time, no blog!

Hello everyone,

As you may have guessed from the lack of updates, we’ve been busy around here! 

I find I am more of a reader than a writer; once darkness falls and the baby is in bed it is more tempting to read and relax than to update the blog. However, I’ll try to do better – in the meantime here’s a brief update about our life at SBG…

-Nearly all the transplants are in the ground, yahoo! Thanks to Colin and Mira (CSA members), Johan, Pam, Lynda and Debby, we have planted thousands of transplants this year (300 tomatoes), more than ever before. We’ve been mostly a direct-seeding operation but with the CSA it’s important to expand our range of veggies. Everything looks green and happy, and I’m happy that we don’t need to water trays anymore.

-We haven’t had to water much of anything. It is as though May was mixed up with June – June was very rainy while May was hot and sunny. I wonder what July will bring??

Tomato transplanting

-All is well in the field. With the rain, we’ve seen high weed pressure.  Really quite severe and very frusterating- corn spurry, chickweed, hemp nettle, ugh! I would plan to spend an afternoon weeding and end up chucking my hoe across the field and storm away muttering. Nevertheless, the lettuce continued to grow and after a few focused sessions the crop is ahead of the weeds in most spots. We’ve been OK for pests (knock on wood), with some flea beetle, aphids, and slugs – but nothing we can’t handle!

-There are tiny tomatoes on the Latah and Stupice, and wee little zucchini too.

-We’re officially Certified Organic (by EcoCert) – more on this soon!

-Five CSA deliveries for our Club SBG are done. Last week’s delivery had garlic scapes, swiss chard, sugar snap peas, podding radish, edible flowers and a large bag of salad, of course. We love interacting with our great customers – below is a shot of one of the pick-ups (with Ollie’s new friends/fan club)!

Drop off at the Belgravia B&B

Club SBG is SOLD OUT!

Just a few of the 54 heirloom tomatoes sprouting in the glasshouse…

Wow!!! We have had an overwhelming response to our box/CSA program (Club SBG) and have sold out of the 20 shares for the 2009 season. There are even a few people on the waiting list… just in case. If you would like to be on the waiting list, do let us know.

Our advertising for this program was done by word of mouth, emailing our market customers and posting flyers in our favourite places to shop and eat here in Truro. Thank you to all our great customers! It gives me a happy warm feeling and makes me even more excited about getting into the field to get those veggies planted.

Club SBG member Barb interviewed us about the CSA concept and our program for her CBC Information Morning Truro report – listen if you can on Tuesday at 6:15 am. Oliver has agreed to make sure we’re awake!

We did our first outdoor planting tonight – 2 days later than we planted last year. The weather looks warm and wet for this week… perfect for germinating seeds! They’re saying +17C, which is hard to believe after such a long winter. Our tomatoes can’t wait to get outside.

Salad Bowl Gardens: Season IV

In Nova Scotia we seem to move right from winter to summer. 18 above today so we broke out the tiller and started making beds. It felt unbelievable to be out working the fields and feel the dirt under the fingernails.

We are still doing the website using iWeb, but the blog will be in WordPress from now on. We had a couple of reasons for the switch but the main one is that we can author blog entries from any computer, whereas with iWeb we needed to be using the Mac at home. Finding time ti write the blog from home usually meant trying to find time when we weren’t in the garden. Now we have a new tool for procrastination at the day job. WordPress also has some features like tags that will make the blog more functional. The blog will also now be listed with search engines.

The move to WordPress is just one of many changes at Salad Bowl Gardens in 2008. We’ll go into more detail in future entries, but here is a sneak peak:

• we are a real farm now, we just bought a pick-up truck
• we have purchased these huge coolers to store lettuce and transport it to market
• we are entering a formal year of certified organic transition. As our property has been managed using organic methods for the past 20 years we should be able to be certified in the 2009 season!
• we are employing more methods promoted by SPIN Farming (www.spinfarming.com) such as 2 foot wide beds (we were using 4 food beds) relay planting (e.g. spinach then radish then lettuce) and some other tips and tricks to increase efficiency and workflows. SPIN (Small Plot INtensive) style farmers are usually found in urban and peri-urban areas, squeezing the most out of small acreages.
• remember that greenhouse? well it is finally, nearly complete and shouldn’t fall down this year
• we really want to blog more, talk more about balancing life, full time work and farming and connect with the world of new farmers. It is an incredible time to be involved in growing, sharing and eating good food.

and the biggest news is…. we’re having a baby! Yep, Roxanne is due at the beginning of September. We are obviously thrilled. We are not quite sure what the last half of the summer will bring, but it will be a wonderful adventure one way or another.