Fresh and tasty food grown with love on the Saugeen/Bruce Peninsula
Preparing for a local Seedy Saturday today has me thinking about my journey as a gardener. On reflection, I realize that I am entering my 27th year of growing veggies, herbs and flowers. Wow. 27 years!
Growing in downtown Kitchener, then growing in small-town Wiarton paved the way to growing on our rural property and finally growing for market. I guess I might have a little to share with budding enthusiasts, after all.
Written by Peter
Picking up the irrigation equipment order was a journey full of holes. Early in the day, I lost precious time trying to locate a local irrigation salesman who’s business has yet to embrace modern standards of advertising, especially when it comes to LOCATION. From the third parking lot deep in Old Order Mennonite Country, at least I finally found him on the phone.
He drawled, “Aww–you’ve come all that way, and now you’re actually pretty close to us. I’d like to meet you, but I have a family reunion and I have to leave now or be late.”
Ironically, that made two of us. I zoomed away towards the store where my order waited, passing many places I’d loved to have stopped if the time thief hadn’t stolen my savings. I arrived at the store with just enough time. It was a good thing the order was pre-packed, because it was expensive and took many lines of typing to put into the computer.
An elderly salesman gathered my order, and added a few new items I’d chosen. Sheepishly, he then informed me, “Uh oh–I think I just accidentally deleted the order.”
Not funny. I tried to think sympathetic thoughts, while he re-entered the entire order, line by line, with the speed of someone who’s first language did not require typing. Upon purchase, I whisked the boxes to the car and ignored the first rule of parcel pick-up: check your order. Upon returning home many hours and hundreds of kilometers later, I realized he’d accidentally double-billed me on one item. That would prove to be easy to remedy; at least I had everything I ordered.
Everything except the irrigation kit! During the initial phone order, I’d included numerous non-essential items and add-ons to customize the kit to our needs. But I never added the actual kit order number. So there was no kit inside the boxes I picked up.
Nevertheless outside, temperatures were climbing, plants were drooping, and watering by hand was still the only lifeblood of the tomatoes. Continue reading “Irrigation Irritation”
Post written by Peter
Mmm. Sundried tomatoes. Concentrated yumminess that tasted so good in our pasta salad. We grew ‘em, harvested ‘em, froze ‘em and a year later, ate ‘em. In between, we watered them and then, via drying, de-watered them.
It seems a little silly to take water out of something you put water into, but if you don’t get the water into them when they need it, you won’t have anything to take water out of later. If you put a greenhouse roof over tomatoes, you better get the water into them that the roof is keeping out.
I got water into them one warm morning in early July. After a lengthy and jumbled episode of sweatily hoisting hoses, and painstakingly pouring pails of water, I resolved that a little water automation would go a long way to reducing Erin’s workload. And mine.
The question was: how to automate? I already collected water off of the greenhouse roof. While it was enough to use on a few potted plants periodically, they barely survived the unpredictability of the precipitation. And a greenhouse is just a big pot topped with a moisture exclusion membrane. Continue reading “Godzilla Zukes versus Tiny Tomatoes”