Adventures in growing edibles veganically in a small townhouse backyard in Ottawa, Canada. (veganic since ~2021)
Friday, August 1, 2025
GA: Cut down the crimson clover; the bees loved the flowers
Uncovered the two scallopinis (yard)
Wednesday, July 30, 2025
Tuesday, July 29, 2025
Nooooo --- the neighbourhood apple tree is GONE!!!
Monday, July 28, 2025
GA: FOY bush beans!
That's about 65 days counting back to the first ones started May 24th, though there have been a few rounds since then, so who knows which these are from.
GA: FOY carrots!!! They look great!
Woo hoo! So exciting! Nice and long, they look very good. That's 68 days to maturity -- in line with the 75 days google says.
Saturday, July 26, 2025
GA: Belstar broccoli is delicious -- so SWEET! and doing great!
Wow! My first year trying Belstar broccoli and so far I sure do love it! Several plants have given their first head and are now into side shoots. The flavour is spectacular -- it's delicious raw and is actually so sweet when eaten raw! Some of the heads have had "brown bead" (per google) -- where some of the little unopened florets are dried out / brown and tend to fall off -- but I just throw it all into the recipes and it's great, no issues.
The piracicabas on the other hand haven't been doing great. Their flowers are long and spindly/measly. Thank goodness for Belstar to the rescue!
Next year I'll definitely grow more Belstar and fewer piracicaba.
Friday, July 25, 2025
GA: More beets sowed where pulled wilted zuke
GA: Oh no!!! A 2nd zuke lost! (presumably borer, but not pulling it quite yet) --> NOT the borer
Egads!!! The most productive plant has wilted! This makes a second plant lost! I'll leave it for a few days to finish ripening what it has. I didn't check the stem closely because whatever (but will check it out when I pull it to see if it's SVB).
--> Update on August 1st 2025: Pulled it today after harvesting its last two zucchinis. There were some squash bugs on it, and found at least one or two borers in leaves/stems, but the main stem seemed clear of borers. So, I'm guessing it died of some type of disease transmitted by the squash bugs and/or cucumber beetles, rather than SVB.
Sunday, July 20, 2025
MAJOR FLOP: garlic :(
Friday, July 18, 2025
GA: No longer removing squash bugs / cucumber beetles, will see what happens
Monday, July 14, 2025
WTH, garlic -- cloves in the stem!?!
Wow, I've never had this happen -- many of the garlics have a place in the stem where new garlic "cloves"?? are popping out. I noticed this a few weeks ago. Today I pulled on of them -- it actually does have a garlic bulb at the bottom -- pretty small though. I think this was one of the "regular" cloves I planted last fall.
Also, a few days ago I pulled one of the fallen-over plants -- it wasn't a bulb but instead a massive clove. I think this was an elephant one. It never bulbed, I guess the original clove just swelled up. It wasn't the best garlic but it was edible.
Sunday, July 13, 2025
GA: All temporary covers now removed (zukes, butternut, watermelon)
All temporary covers now removed (zukes, butternut, watermelon). I'd been doing it gradually over the past few weeiks.
I've decided I'm just not going to do the insect check with the butternut at all -- it's on its own. Watermelon too probably.
(The permanent covers are still over the potatoes, broc/kale/chard, onions, and leeks -- these covers won't come off at all.)
Friday, July 11, 2025
GA: Oh no!!!! A zuke plant looks struck by SVB already!?!?!?
Oh no!!! Can it be the SVB?!! It feels like only a week or two that I took the cover off. But overnight the plant is all wilty, not due to lack of water. The strange thing is I can't find a point of entry on the stem. Oh well, I'll wait until it's totally kaput, then will have a closer look when I pull it out.
Monday, July 7, 2025
GA/BY: Harvest so far (seems puny)
GA: No squash bugs/eggs last few days --> A few days later, more appeared
Monday, June 23, 2025
GA: SQUASH BUGS!!!!!! MATING AND LAYING EGGS ON EXPOSED ZUKE AND ADULTS FOUND ON NETTING!
Sunday, June 22, 2025
Where are the scapes?!?!? Garlic not looking very healthy
Tuesday, June 10, 2025
GA: Yikes! Even compost layer is like concrete over the recently planted bean seeds!! I hope they can push through!
Argh!! I was hoping to avoid the concrete surface issue by putting compost as the top most layer! I wonder if the compost layer maybe wasn't thick enough (was running low on it)... Hopefully the beans will be able to push through eventually!
GA: Another carrot patch sowed today using basic method (no gel, no holes)
Sunday, June 8, 2025
Unfrosted the freezer for the first time
It was very easy. Put everything into the fridge freezer, took out the baskets, unplugged it, let it thaw, drained it out the bottom (first unscrew the inner plug, then unscrew the outer plug). Let it dry totally off, then plugged it back in the next day. It cooled down quickly.
Saturday, June 7, 2025
GA: Sweet corn soaked in bowl for ~ an hour, now into PT. Once germinated, will sow.
Thursday, June 5, 2025
GA: PT-started popcorn seeds have now been transplanted
GA: Oh no! Half the watermelon kaput already!! Too windy/hot?
Wednesday, June 4, 2025
GA: Using frost cover with clothespins worked well to give some shade to recent transplants
GA: FOY Colorado Potato Beetle!!
Yard almost all planted! Tomatoes, zukes, cukes, zinnias
Yard carrots a total flop -- won't do another round, will just put something else there
GA: Transplanted lots of things. ~80% done. Still a few seedlings and seeds to plant.
All seedlings are now transplanted at GA, except for:
- basil (will wait for a few 12-13 degree nights to pass)
- a few more zinnias / coreopsis / f-m-ns
- cucumbers (waiting for the straw arrival this weekend because the cukes will go in that landing spot)
Here are the seeds left to sow:
- beets round 2 (R1 is looking pretty darn sparse)
- bush beans
- pole beans
- buckwheat
- I think that will be it?
(Sowed round 2 carrots today. Round 1 carrots actually look decent, but still definitely some gaps in coverage. But way better than the yard which had zero germination rate!!)
Sunday, June 1, 2025
Started scarlet runner beans for yard
GA: Carrots, beets, and popcorn update
GA: Compost! It arrived on Thursday; today I put it on plants
Monday, May 26, 2025
GA: Tomato "victim" for experiment! (cool nights coming up, and not yet sun-hardened)
GA: Popcorn planted
Wednesday, May 21, 2025
Yard carrots a FLOP. Re-sowed today
GA: Planted Carrots (readme for technique used), beets, rest of the red onions
Tuesday, May 20, 2025
GA: Planted potatoes, broccoli, chard, kale
Monday, May 19, 2025
GA: Open! Planted onions, leeks, parsley, celery, forget-me-nots, crimson clover
Sunday, May 18, 2025
Round 2 squash (winter/summer) started, to fill in gaps
Friday, May 16, 2025
Oh no! The cut potatoes are moldy! Were upstairs in spare room / hot!
Tuesday, May 13, 2025
DON'T RE-USE SOIL FOR INDOORS STARTS THAT WAS IN OUTDOOR-HARDENING OFF POTS!!! EGGS!!!!
Hoping I dodged a bullet here! For the seedlings that had been hardening off outside and then flopped, I had been dumping their potting mix into the indoor potting mix mixing bowl to use for upcoming starts. Then, tonight when I started potting up the sprouted seeds from a few days ago, what I did I see in there but what I'm sure are insect eggs! They were a few millimeters long and sort of copper-coloured -- like the colour of those orangey long slow insects -- wireworms maybe? -- that I've seen in the yard.
So, immediately I "dumped" that plan and dumped all that bowl into outside garden (I'm not worried about the eggs outside, just don't want some strange insect running ramping inside where there are no predators).
Sunday, May 11, 2025
Cut the potatoes, so will have at least a week to heal
Started cukes, summer squash, winter squash, and watermelon
Saturday, May 10, 2025
Transplanted yard kale, chard, parsley, and green onions
Tomatoes and ground cherries starting hardening off
Mystery: A bunch of outside zinnias gradually died -- piddly roots!
The tray of zinnias that has been going outside during the day and coming inside at night had been looking good (definitely behind the indoor zinnias but that's to be expected). But then, over the past week or so, they've been dying! When I pluck them out, they have almost zero roots. I wonder if it's something with my mix -- maybe too much or too little lime or something like that?
Looks like a few shorts will survive -- hopefully....
Sunday, May 4, 2025
Put a few white onion sets in with garlic to fill gaps
Carrots started via corn starch gel method and burlap
Here's what I did:
- Soaked the seeds in water for a few hours.
- Made the gel by adding ~2 Tbsp corn starch to 2 cups cold water; simmering/whisking until it gels.
- Let the gel cool for several hours.
- Put the cool gel into a baggie; stirred in the carrot seeds.
- After loosening the soil, used a finger to draw troughs.
- Squeezed the carrot seed gel into the troughs. -- Pretty sure there are some longish stretches of no seeds in the gel --- consider using less gel with more carrot seeds.
- Pinched the soil over top.
- Mist-watered.
- Covered with double-layer of burlap.
- Watered the burlap.
Garlic doing well! Most popped up! Covered with a sheet today
Keeping the garlic covered with a tulle-like sheet all season.
All peppers now starting hardening -- and one has a real Hungarian Sweet pepper on it! -- and pruning notes
Tuesday, April 29, 2025
Uppotted the tomatoes that were started 3.5 weeks ago (April 6th) -- grew well in hexagon multi-tray
Wednesday, April 23, 2025
Aha -- found the round 2 Belstar broccolis!
Monday, April 21, 2025
12-hour-soaked peas now in vermiculite
So yes, soaked the peas for just 12 hours instead of 24 hours. They look good and swollen and are starting to split (in a good way).
For the vermiculite container, used a larger indoor container whose holes on the bottom aren't too big and alternated layers of vermiculite and peas.
Sunday, April 20, 2025
GA: Weeding almost finished!
Peas (x100 seeds) started (will soak for 12 hours; then into indoor vermiculite until germinated; then directly outside to soil ---- i.e. almost same as last year)
A bit of a late start due to a cold, rainy, cloudy spring so far. Anyway, today I started soaking the peas (100 of them, just because that sounds like a nice round number, and I plan to buy another t-post to expand the vertical section of the yard). Then tomorrow I'll put them into indoor vermiculite, multiple layers / treasure hunt -style. Then once they germinate (NOT once they pop up -- just once they have a root as seen when I'll go digging in the vermiculate), they'll go directly outside into soil. This is the approach I used last year, which worked well to avoid critters digging up / eating unsprouted seeds. -- Though a difference is this year I'm only soaking for 12 hours rather than 24 hours.
Thursday, April 17, 2025
More Belstar broccoli started today
Wednesday, April 16, 2025
Belstar broccoli doing badly; best 3 are piracicaba; too hot in grow room for Belstar?
Sunday, April 13, 2025
First direct sun for hardies (just 15 minutes)
Saturday, April 12, 2025
Basil started -- for real this time! (forgot it on April 6th)
Sunday, April 6, 2025
Belstar broccoli round 2 started --> ?!? I can't find them? -- so started another round of Belstar on April 17th
Started tomatoes (many varieties), ground cherries, and zinnias -- MEANT TO DO BASIL TOO BUT FORGOT UNTIL APRIL 12TH
Zinnia: The usual mix of short and tall, and the last of the yellow store-bought.
Ground cherries: The packet bought a few years ago.
Tomatoes: All the varities I have except for Scotia. So this includes, by memory:
- Damsel
- Big Tofu Plus
- Mortgage Lifter
- San Marzano (my first time trying these)
- Jasper
- can't remember what else
Saturday, April 5, 2025
Cauliflower all kaput
Friday, April 4, 2025
Hardening day 2 -- and now living downstairs full time (hardies only)
Monday, March 31, 2025
Hardening off started today! Shade only, ~+5 to +8
Sunday, March 30, 2025
Bad weather -- delayed in starting to harden off -- no room left under lights!!
Argh, the three main shelves are completely full so I desperately want to start hardening things off so that there will be space next week when the next batch of seed-starting is due.
I'm hopeful that the weather will cooperate this week, to get started. But first, I want to finish placing the chicken wire, to hopefully be sure that the local rabbit(s) can't come in and have a feast!
Sunday, March 23, 2025
Last year's potatoes are sprouting (most of them)
I'll use them to grow some of this year's potatoes.
Thawed peppers great in hash browns!
Uppotted the bigger broccoli -- they're too big with 2 months before can plant at GA!!!
Saturday, March 8, 2025
Saturday, March 1, 2025
Started sweet bell peppers, coreopsis, and forget-me-not
The bell peppers are all California Wonder -- some from my old tin foil set, some newer.
The coreopsis are all from the seeds I collected last year from a GA.
Forget-me-not are all from 2021.
Sunday, February 23, 2025
Tuberous begonia update: Zero signs of insects (phew!)
(Also zero signs of begonia yet, but that's normal at this stage.)
I'm still keeping it in the kitchen though rather than the plant room, just in case.
Saturday, February 22, 2025
Started kale and chard
Kale: The same as last year -- Vates Blue Curled -- but mostly using seeds collected last year, and a few of the bought seeds separately.
Chard: Good old Fordhook as always.
Saturday, February 15, 2025
Started some peppers, and more celery and stevia
Wednesday, February 12, 2025
Tuberous begonia update: NOT eggs after all I don't think
I unbagged the pot a couple of days ago (keeping it in the kitchen) -- what looked like eggs no longer look like anything. I'm guessing it was some type of fungus maybe? But everything looks decent now. Will leave downstairs in the kitchen though for a while longer, just in case.
Sunday, February 9, 2025
Started stevia round 2 and New York onions round ~3 or 4
(To fill in gaps.)
Saturday, February 8, 2025
OH NONONONONO!!!!! EGGS ON TOP OF THE TUBEROUSO BEGONIA SOIL!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
Sunday, February 2, 2025
Tuesday, January 28, 2025
Started cauliflower, and round 2 of leeks and green onions
Cauliflower = Early Snowball. First time really trying cauliflower.
And more leeks and green onions because the green onions had bad germination rate and not enough leeks.
Thursday, January 23, 2025
Started round 2 New York Early onions -- directly in mix
Monday, January 20, 2025
Saturday, January 18, 2025
Started broccoli (Belstar & Piracicaba), parsley, and celery
Started broccoli (Belstar & Piracicaba), parsley, and celery.
Belstar is new to me this year, recommended by Susan M.
Wednesday, January 15, 2025
Saturday, January 11, 2025
Started onion seeds: Frontier, and green
- Frontier onion seeds x 16 (left over from last year -- didn't realize so few seeds were left)
- Green onion seeds x a lot (from 2018 collected seeds)