Week 5 | 2023
It was always an adventure for us kids when Opa pulled his station wagon into the yard because we never knew what would emerge from the back of his car. Before he’d even pull the parking brake, we’d hear a pop as the latch of his trunk released. With eagerness, Opa would emerge in his worn gardening clothes, a small patch of clay stuck to each knee and a hand-rolled drum cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. His blue eyes would twinkle at us kids as we waited in anticipation.
Deliberately rummaging around in the dark recesses of the trunk he would slowly reveal a homemade game, several cabbage transplants, a repaired bicycle tire, a rhubarb tuber, a pail of dry beans, a bucket of seed potatoes and some raspberry canes. With Opa it was always a surprise. Like most gardeners he loved to distribute his bounty but also impart his knowledge and experience. Underneath his rough exterior we found a generous, caring man.
This year, we hope to present gardening course participants with the shoot and root of a sour cherry following in the tradition of our Opa. It’s a symbolic gesture that signifies to each participant that the knowledge and experiences they gain in growing food is a gift they’re responsible for passing on to others. Their children, friends, neighbours, and other community members in turn, cherishing this gift, will pass it on and soon, on properties everywhere, we’ll find budding, blossoming and fruiting cherry trees.
Our aim in the gardening course is to help gardeners get higher yields with fewer inputs while positively impacting the environment. The principles that we will teach in this course will help you eliminate weeds, reduce pests, and extend your harvest allowing you to become more self-sufficient. Using nature as our model we provide ways to improve soil fertility and increase biodiversity to attract beneficial insects, reptiles, amphibians, and birds.
Our course draws from our years of combined experience working with plants and growing food for our families and for the market. Enriched through our stories we give practical ways for you to implement the principles in your garden today. And we offer one hundred transplants that you’ll be able to plant in your garden at the end of the course.
Jack will give you ideas on how to incorporate biodiversity in your growing space and encourage you to think beyond annuals to convert your garden into a beautiful edible landscape with fruit bearing trees, perennial flowers, vines, and shrubs. As a market gardener, Dan will discuss the methods of no-till gardening, mulching, the soil food web, succession planting, crop planning, winter gardening, and composting.
Our Opa was a fierce critic of our gardening skills and sparing in his compliments and sometimes it amazes us that we decided to follow in his footsteps as gardeners and lovers of plants. Undoubtedly, we’re driven by his enduring love for the food garden and the sharing and caring nature that was hidden behind his gruff façade. We see now, in our minds eye, that old car, pulling slowly out of the driveway. We stand waving goodbye, eager for its reappearance with its trunk full of mystery gifts.
Article by Dan (Local Harvest) and Jack (Fruits and Shoots Plant Farm)
Farm Grown Cabbage
The green cabbage you find in our market right now was transplanted in early July and took over one hundred and twenty days to mature. We seed a cool season, classic sauerkraut variety that can withstand temperatures as low as -10C. We picked them before the last cold-snap and put them in the cooler but home gardeners without refrigeration could easily keep these in the field by covering them completely with shavings or woodchips before a cold spell arrives.
A friend of mine tried this and lost his cabbages to rot. When I visited his place, it was apparent that lack of drainage was to blame. If you’re planning to have a winter garden, I told him, make sure it drains well. If it does, you’ll enjoy fresh cabbage and other hard vegetables through the dreary days of late winter.
We grow two different types of green cabbage. The early season, fast-maturing varieties are transplanted in April, May and June, and the slow maturing, winter storage cabbages are transplanted in July. Start your seeds one month before they need to be transplanted. For the Spring planting, choose early season varieties that mature in 65 days or less. That way you’ll beat most of the pests to the harvest.
You may have discovered that cabbages are a magnet for pests but there are ways to minimize damage. For slugs and pill bugs use a mason jar to cover the transplants for the first couple weeks. This of course, won’t keep out the wire worm, root maggots and crane fly larvae that live below the surface but in healthy, established, no-till gardens these guys are seldom a problem anyways. Use floating row cover if you want to keep out the cabbage butterfly. On our scale, however, we don’t use any covering and instead use flowers to attract beneficials. If your cabbage is grown in healthy soil and you have lots of biodiversity there will be no need to artificially protect the plants.