Harvest Time Is A Special Time

Harvest time is a special time in every growers life. To see all your hard work pay off (finally) and to realize that those cherry tomatoes you nurtured from seed now offer you such magnificent tasting fruit that you can't believe it--well, it's priceless!

The heirloom and beefsteak tomatoes, even though huge and beautiful in color, are still a bit watery. Perhaps we have to let them ripen some more in the September sun before harvesting them.

Our squash, zucchini, and cucumber plants are producing fruit of high quality. Some species have been chosen to give us huge zucchini's, so the kids could enter them in the zucchini races at the annual Fall Fair.

Yes, it's back to school time and we look back on the bounty of summer with gratitude, but also a bit of sadness. The time went by much too fast. With a few visits to the beach, water parks and the PNE, as well as a quick trip to Harrison Hot Springs, and it's almost time for our annual trip to Telegraph Cove to connect with the Humpback Whales and the Orcas that congregate in the waters near the Cove.

We've continued to eat five kinds of lettuce from our garden for the past month or two, and the plants just regenerate themselves, as long as the warm weather holds up. Yes, some of them have bolted and gone to seed, but we planted plenty of them from seed, so we have a large array of salad greens to choose from--every single night!

Pretty soon it will be time for Canadian Thanksgiving, and Harvest Time is always a time to give thanks!

Thanks to Iguana Juice and the other great Advanced Nutrients products, once again we are the recipients of the produce from Sara's Garden of Delights! :-)

Post-Olympic BC Celebrates With Flowers

That truly memorable hockey game earned well-deserved gold, and the closing ceremonies spoofed the clichés of our identity (dancing mounties, floating moose, and beavers galore!). Now we're all feeling a collective letdown. Let's face it, we're not going to have a party of this size anytime soon!

Sara and the kids took the ferry and then bussed it as close to downtown Vancouver as transit would allow. They made it to the torch, but drew the line at standing in line for the pavilions. The way Hedgehog put it, "it was bad enough to stand in line for forty-five minutes for hot dogs, but there were no toilets and when we found a friendly restaurant washroom, we had to stand in line for that too!" But when they returned, the family vehicle was festooned with a red maple leaf flag!

Sara's garden decided to bloom early this year, so the crocuses, hyacinths, and daffodils have all sprung forth, with tulips not far behind. Sara used Humic and Fulvic Acid to prime the soil, before applying our 100% organic fertilizer of choice, Iguana Juice. Grow was applied last month, while this month it's Bloom that the garden requires.

The pale pink cherry blossoms are in full bloom, while the darker pink ones are soon to follow. Pink cherry blossoms usually bloom in April, not like this, a month early! The weather report is making noises about snow flurries, but this weekend Sara had the winter tires taken off the family van!

The early spring of 2010 will be remembered not only for the Olympics but for the magnificent flowers that bloomed so early to celebrate Canada's winning the most gold medals at any Winter Olympics in history!

Crocuses Thrive on Organic Nutrients!

We're having brilliant sunshine to celebrate the Olympics and Sara's robust crocuses are blooming! The sun has the warmth of Spring and I hear that the cherry trees are in blossom in Victoria! Oh, glorious West Coast, why would anyone want to live in Ontario?

Busy watching and wishing for more Canadian Gold, so this blog will be the shortest ever. In the meantime, please watch some great videos at vanhydro's channel on YouTube!

A heatwave can be tough on your garden

The heat wave just broke today, but I see on The Weather Network that it’s due to come back the middle of August. Most of July was like an oven around here, and needless to say, Sara’s garden suffered. Not to mention my vegetables, which needed constant watering or else they drooped and were very unhappy.

The catmint hung in there for a while, but eventually it dried up. Some of the roses fought heroically, but eventually they succumbed to the 30 plus Celsius heat. Sara trailed a hose into the middle of her flower garden and kept the water flowing at half strength, but even that didn’t save all of the plants.

The ones that did survive, however, thrived. The golden lilies grew over seven feet tall (“What do you have here, a lily tree?” quipped one of our neighbours) and one of the red rose bushes outdid itself in delivering not only visually beautiful, but fragrant blooms as well. The margaretas or daisies were prolific for the longest time, and the butterfly bush flowered, dried up, and is now flowering again.

Sara took the kids camping in the middle of the heat wave, in addition to visiting many of the region’s waterparks with them. I stayed cooking in my basement home office with three fans aimed in my direction and dreamt of buying an air conditioner.

I had to spray some plants with Piranha, since the constant watering created a fertile ground for mold and mildew. Spraying them with beneficial fungi helps to counteract the damage from the harmful ones and actually strengthens the plant’s immunity system. I usually spray with Scorpion Juice as a preventative, but this time the infestation was so intense that it called for stronger measures.

We’re feeding our tomatoes and blooms with Iguana Juice Bloom, in order to give them just the right ratio of Potassium and Phosphorus (not too much Phosphorus). Once the plants go into their bloom phase, giving them Iguana Juice Grow would be a mistake, because they would get too much Nitrogen, which would only encourage lush foliage with very few flowers.

We look forward to harvesting some prize-winning zucchini and squash, crisp snow peas, our usual green beans and lettuce, as well as some giant tomatoes with the succulent goodness of home-grown produce, fresh off the vine.

Organic Gardening on Gabriola Island

Sara and I spend all our spare time making sure that our plants get fed the best 100% organic fertilizer on the market (Advanced Nutrients Organic Iguana Juice), and are also protected from pests and pathogens through the use of preventative products, such as Scorpion Juice and Barricade.

I sprayed with Scorpion Juice every week throughout the summer. It not only immunizes our flowers and vegetables from attacks from all sort of critters--seen and microspopic--but also ensures that our plants are robust and our flowers and fruits are abundant.

We've harvested the Snow Peas and the Scarlet Runner Beans, and most of our Tomatoes have gone into salads or soups. Our Cucurbits have grown to incredible weights and sizes and they served the noble purpose of making sure that Hedgehog and Jim did really well in the Zucchini Races at the Annual Fall Fair.

The last Rose buds of the season are opening, the Clematis is still going strong, and our Geraniums are enjoying the late Summer, early Fall sunshine, before they get moved indoors for the winter. Our Black Eyed Susans are very prolific this year and our Upside Down Tomatoes have all been harvested.

The big job of pruning all the Roses and deadheading our wilted flowers remains, and pretty soon it will be time for planting our Spring bulbs. Sara managed to get a whole bunch of Hyacynth, Daffodil, and Tulip bulbs from a Vancouver park (she carted them over in her new bought trailer) and she will be transporting compost and manure all Fall and Winter to rejuvenate her flower beds and my vegetable beds, as well.

Organic Gardening Pays Off in Spectacular Blooms

Sara's flower garden is the talk of the neighborhood. Passers-by are constantly asking, "how did you get your Roses to grow so big?" "How is it that I try to grow Phlox, and they're three feet maximum, while your Phlox are six feet tall?"

Sara has asked me to print out a page from the Advanced Nutrients website on Organic Iguana Juice. After all, this 100% organic plant nutrient is the secret behind the robust plants that she grows, whether using Grow during the vegetative stage, or Bloom, during flowering.

So now when people ask, she just hands them the page and smiles. "It's available at your local hydroponics store," she adds. And we've had many neighbors make a beeline for such a store and purchase this fish based miracle food, because they've seen the results.

We also use other AN products, such as Scorpion Juice to keep pests and pathogens at bay, but most of the glory should go to Iguana Juice, and of course Sara's diligence in creating the best, most fertile soil on Gabriola Island.

"The soil on the island is quite sandy. So we've brought in trailer loads of composted horse manure and kitchen parings, and bought the best, organic soil stocked by our garden shop," explains Sara to Melanie, a single mother from further down the road, who brings her six-year-old daughter each day to see the pretty flowers.

"We have nine different kinds of Phlox, Black Eyed Susans, two different kinds of Cone Flower, ten varieties of Hybrid Roses, three or four Lilies, and the Anemonie is in flower right now, with its graceful canopy of delicate blooms."

My vegetable garden needs some catching up to do, even though last night we enjoyed some fresh Snow Peas with our meal and our Zucchini Squash are growing big in anticipation of the Zucchini races at next month's Fair.

Our upside-down tomatoes are thriving, but I'll leave that 'til the next posting, when I'll have some close up pictures of the fruits of our labor.

Organic Gardening Pays Off With Gigantic Flowers

Six-feet-tall Campanula! Seven-foot-tall Foxglove! Even taller Delphiniums! Sara’s garden hasn’t seen flowers this high ever! Last summer her blooms were spectacular, but she’s been building up the soil of her flower beds consistently ever since. She uses composted horse manure, composted kitchen parings, Mother Earth Super Tea Grow and Bloom, and grass clippings as a form of mulch. All this, in addition to our super-growth-inducing primary 100% organic fertilizer—Iguana Juice Grow and Bloom**.

Complementing the Campanula, Foxglove, and Delphiniums, Sara grows about a dozen different kinds of Roses. The Hybrid Tea Roses Brandy, Blue Girl, Sunflare, and Intrigue are especially beautiful this time of year, and the Cecile Brunner Rose is particularly prolific, with it’s delicate blooms popping up all over the place and the plant reaching heights of five or six feet.

Sara’s Catmint plants are especially beautiful this year with their purple flower-covered branches bursting forth from the centre into all directions. Her Lilacs have bloomed in late spring with their lovely scent and she is growing three kinds of Peonies, all of which are still very much active.

Hedgehog’s barrel has reddish Lilies this year, along with an assortment of colourful annuals and Sara’s Honeysuckle is attracting hummingbirds to its prolific array of flowers. The sweet nectar of this plant is like a magnet to these tiny birds with their wings flapping a mile a minute.

The upside down tomatoes are flourishing. Out of the ten buckets, only one pepper plant died, soon to be replaced by a fledgling tomato plant. It’s a challenge watering the buckets, but if we aim the hose just right, the arc of the water enters from the top. Some of the buckets are open at the top with annual flowers gracing the opening, some still have lids on them with only a two inch hole for the water to enter.

Sara and I get a great deal of pleasure working in our respective organic gardens. My vegetables this year include Sweet and Hot Peppers, Cherry and Beefsteak Tomatoes, Kale (which Sara prepares with olive oil, garlic, and slivered almonds), Spinach, Cucumbers, Zucchini, Squash, and four kinds of Lettuce, from Butter Lettuce to Crinkly Leaved Red and Green Varieties.

With the contamination of the commercial tomato crop, it’s nice to have a safe source of tomatoes within a few yards of our home. Sara and I have been talking about setting up a hydroponic grow space in our basement, so we could grow vegetables year round. A great way to reduce our carbon footprint! Not to mention cutting down on our car trips to the store and reducing the amount of money we spend on the outrageously high priced gasoline.

**Iguana Juice Grow and Bloom are beginning to be known in our neighbourhood as “that magic plant food that Sara uses.” A number of our local gardeners have written the name down and have gone to the Advanced Nutrients website to check out this product, as well as Humic Acid, Fulvic Acid, and that other Grandma Enggy organic wonder product, Seaweed Extract. The most avid gardener (next to Sara) has actually purchased Iguana Juice (both varieties) at a hydroponics store in Victoria.