On-line resources for horticulture, permaculture, and herbs.
BR 2012
Here is a good idea for your west coast winter project !
This article in Mother Earth News has a fantastic overview of the main considerations for a
passively heated green house design.
How to Design a Year-Round Solar Greenhouse
Blogs by Brian Richardson
End2End Walking the Vancouver Island Trail
Vancouver Island Botanical Adventures – West Coast Gardening
Duncan House Dogs – Home Recordings and Re-purposed Musical Instruments
According Farmer’s Almanac Naniamo gets an average of 171 frost free days, and the frost free growing season starts on April 28th. Further south in Victoria the average frost free date is April 19th. Expect a first frost around the beginning of November.
Of course many vegetable and herb plants can tolerate frost. Here is listing of Frost Tolerance of Vegetables to help you get started.
It is always interesting to see how Vancouver Island compares to the rest of Canada for frost free dates and growing season length, here is a handy table put out by the Farmer’s Almanac for various Canadian cities.
October Storm over Vancouver Island
Here is a review of interesting horticultural experiences and news from the past week that I hope will enjoy !
Recipes
I found this great site with Recipes that feature herbs by the American Herb Society.
Soil Mixes for Plant Growing
For those of us inclined to a more scientific approach here is an extensive article on Peat Moss, Compost , Limestone and PH Control.
Fall Herb Propagation Tips for Vancouver Island
The September 1 – Nov 1 time frame is really good for perennial plant propagation by division and cuttings because:
a) Generally a less busy time of year for plant growing, compared to the “spring rush”.
b) Summer heat has passed , so less sun, heat and misting issues.
c) Plants started this time of year are bigger, better and ready earlier than plants propagated early spring.
d) If for some reason the fall cuttings don’t take, you get a second chance in the spring.
e) Additional bottom heat is always beneficial for cuttings, however this time of year there is a natural tendency for the soil to be warmer than the air.
And Finally the Weather !
We have been having quite a storm over the last 24 hours, click here for an interesting real time update.
I have found this seed catalog that has an absolutely incredible amount of information on Leafy Green crops.
Source – Wikimedia
Nutritious, easy to grow and attractive ! Why not grow some dry beans ?
This podcast will get you started.
I bumped into this Meadow Clary plant ( Salvia pratensis ) blooming in the farm’s demonstration garden.. Then I found out that the Royal Horticultural Society have given Meadow Clary their Award of Garden Merit (AGM). Since England has a similar climate to Vancouver Island I explored the RHS web site further and found a really interesting interactive herb plant selector guide. It would be perfect for planning a herb garden since you may search for plants using a huge number of different requirements such as available sunlight, height of plant, when it blooms and many other factors. Check it out ! RHS Herb Selector Guide
Source Wikimedia Commons Cultivo de shiitake (Lentinula edodes) en Pradejón (La Rioja), localidad líder en el cultivo de champiñón y setas en España.
Imagine planting a crop that produces for up to 8 years !
Here is another interesting podcast from Robin Hood Radio – an introduction to Medicinal Herbs.
The first section of this Podcast contains a great overview of the plant Comfrey.
Here are some wonderful gardening podcasts you may download for free. Great to listen to while commuting to work, doing the dishes or while potting up plants in the greenhouse ! Most of these podcasts have new episodes weekly so the fun never stops !
BBC Sunday Gardening with Tim Crowther
AM1020 A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach
An Entire Book ! The Family Kitchen Gardener
If you have a favorite Gardening Podcast, please let me know about it an I’ll add it to the list.
Amazing, I just bumped into this on-line exhibit at the USDA National Agricultural Library with botanical illustrations from the Curtis Botanical Magazine, worth a look ! Many of your herbal favorites are captured in beautiful colour illustrations.
First published in 1787 as the “The Botanical Magazine” by William Curtis it continues to be published as ” Curtis’s Botanical Magazine” by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
Searching for more information, I found the subscription information page for the current issues and a collection of 54 back issues on a DVD at Ebay. You may also purchase articles from the Wiley Library Online for the issues from 1984 t0 2015.
|I could not find anything specifically to do with the Curtis’s Botanical at the The Vancouver Island Regional Library, however this book looks really interesting, The golden age of flowers : botanical illustration in the age of discovery 1600-1800 / Celia Fisher and hey ! if you would like a new project that will get you out into the garden more often, this book (also at VIRL ) might be the one……. Botanical illustration course.
Finally, probably the first place I should of looked….. Pinterest
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The very early Vancouver Island spring seems to have everyone thinking about getting plants started, here is a fantastic guide for starting herbs for coastal British Columbia by West Coast Seeds.
I just read that there is an average of 230 WordPress posts every 10 seconds… wow !
One of my most popular posts last year was the 2015 local seed supplier guide. Here is the revised and updated list for 2016. Please let me know if I have missed anyone.
Cheers !
Brian
A Listing of Local Vancouver Island and Gulf Islands Seed Suppliers for 2016
Black Creek Good Earth Farms
Coombs Goldstream Gardens Ltd.
Cortez Island Green Space Organic Seeds
Ladysmith Fairhaven Farm
Ladysmith Yellow Point Propagation
Metchoscin Metchosin Farm
Parksville Organic Blue Farms
Parksville Sugar Shack Seeds
Qualicum Omega Blue Farms
Saltspring Island Eagleridge Seeds
Saltspring Island Saltspring Seeds
Sooke Full Circle Seeds
Victoria Brother Nature Seeds
Victoria Raven Song Seeds
Victoria Rebecca’s Garden
More wonderful winter reading, Pollinators of Southern British Columbia from the Elle Lab at SFU. This is an easy photo based guide for identification of pollinators, as well as lots of great information on the selection of landscape, and native plants for supporting pollinators.
Bumblebee Map of Western North America as of January 14, 2016
By now you have downloaded and printed your Bumblebee Identification Guide from last weeks post , so now you can view this Bumblebee watch map to check out bees on Vancouver Island. There is often a picture of the bee if you click on the green dot.
When the weather warms up and the bees are out , you may even want to upload bumble bee information to the xerces.org Bumblebee Watch and put your pollinator garden on the map !
Buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) Western Canada
To learn more about pollinators, it is nice to be able to identify them. Here is a great little pocket identification guide that will cover many of the bumblebees found on Vancouver Island. Print and Fold Bumblebee Guide
I like to introduce predators to the propagation greenhouse early in the season to get a jump on the pest situation. I view them as 1000’s of extra employees that work for free 24 hours a day !
Here is a fantastic and easy to use visual guide to common greenhouse pests and options on how to control them.
Commercially Available* Biological Control Agents for Common Greenhouse Insect Pests
“Aphidoidea puceron Luc Viatour” by I, Luc Viatour. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aphidoidea_puceron_Luc_Viatour.jpg#/media/File:Aphidoidea_puceron_Luc_Viatour.jpg
Another interesting horticulture subject for winter review !
Below is the link to a PDF document on native bees , A USDA Forest Service and Pollinator Partnership Publication written by Beatriz Moisset, Ph.D. and Stephen Buchmann, Ph.D.
Wonderful information on habitat and bee families. I am hoping this document will help me identify bees I come across next spring.
Here is another “horticultural activity” to help fill those long winter evenings….. listening to podcasts. Actually I usually download horticulture based podcasts to my MP3 player and listen to them while I pot up plants in the spring, or during my commute to work.
Here are some interesting podcasts to get you started:
Cheers !
Brian
It is almost winter, and a good time to find and study new information that might be helpful for the next growing season.
Here is a Webinar that may “fill the bill”.
The theme is growing your farm business locally. For more information go to webinar Info.
Source – Wikimedia
Get ready for another great year of vegetable and herb growing on Vancouver Island. Here is a collection of links to help you get started !
1) Seedy Saturday 2015 Calendar
The first thing you need to know is when the “Seedy Saturday” seed exchange and sale is coming to your community.
Listing of Seedy Saturdays and Sundays on Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands for 2015
2) A Listing of Local Vancouver Island and Gulf Islands Seed Suppliers
Cortez Island Green Space Organic Seeds
Parksville Organic Blue Farms
Parksville Sugar Shack Seeds
Saltspring Island Eagleridge Seeds
Saltspring Island Saltspring Seeds
Sooke Full Circle Seeds
Victoria Two Wings Farm
Victoria Brother Nature Seeds
3) Indoor and Outdoor Seed Sowing Dates
Once all of your seeds arrive, check out the West Coast Seeds Planting Charts to determine the best time to sow them.
Another great resource for herb and vegetable planting is the Gardenate monthly calendar, simply select your gardening climatic zone to get a month by month sowing and transplanting calendar. You can even subscribe to Gardenate and have regular planting reminders E-mailed to you.
4) Seed Sowing Tips
Check out Eagle RIdge Farms Seeding for Success and the Organic Gardening article 14 Simple Tips for Starting Seeds to review the basics of sowing seeds.
5) Just for Fun
While you are waiting for your seeds to germinate, check out this 30 second time lapse seed germination video.
Thanks for dropping by! Please let me know of any other Vancouver Island & Gulf Island seed suppliers that I can add to the list by leaving a comment in the reply box at the very bottom of this post.
Echinacea purpurea ‘Primadonna Deep Rose’ Photo by Brian Richardson
More fun for winter !
ASC Distance Education offers these free mini courses including one on Vegetable and Herb growing.
http://www.acs.edu.au/free-courses/default.aspx
Remember all the posts are sorted by categories which are available on the buttons along the top of the page. For example if you want to look at other useful on-line resources for gardeners click on the ” “ON-LINE RESOURCES ” button for a complete listing.
This course offered by Columbia University may interest you !
WIKIMEDIA Commons – Pacific Ring of Fire
The article on growing bananas in Iceland started me thinking about Geothermal possibilities right here in BC.
It turns out that EnergyBC has done a bit of research on the subject with promising results. Lots of information on Geothermal Energy and potential sites in BC can be found at this site:
http://www.energybc.ca/profiles/hightempgeo.html
Apparently BC is on the “Pacific Rim’s Ring of Fire” , (sounds scary to me ) and according to DESMOGCANADA, we have enough Geothermal energy resources to power the entire province.
http://www.desmog.ca/2014/10/07/New-maps-reveal-bc-geothermal-potential-power-entire-province
Now I just have to cross reference the geothermal areas with maximum average annual sunlight areas of BC to find the perfect spot for my dream greenhouse !
Healthy Soil, Healthy People, Healthy Planet is the tag line of the UK based Soil association. Founded in the 1940’s with the vision that ” Farming must be fair, humane, healthy and ecologically based”, they have come up with a very detailed plan for the future in the report “The Road To 2020”
http://www.soilassociation.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=jtqYSMwxR7c%3D&tabid=303
Photo by Dwight Burdette Source Wikimedia Commons
Celebrate World Soil Day by learning more about the subject !
A world view of soil by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations
http://www.fao.org/globalsoilpartnership/world-soil-day/en/
A backyard gardener’s view of soil by Washington State University
Source Wikimedia Commons Photo by André Karwath
Time to start thinking about interesting gardening projects for next season. How about coming up with your own custom tomato variety ?
Tomatoes are really good self pollinators, however special techniques are required if you want to try to cross different varieties to create a hybrid. Wouldn’t it be fun to come up with your own hybrid tomato ?…..if it works out you could name your own Tomato Variety, after yourself or maybe your Favorite Aunt !
At any rate, here is an excellent article on the subject !
Here is another free on-line course on plants that I found to be interesting and fun !
“What a Plant Knows” presented by TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY via Coursera.
The short grey winter days are heading our way here in South Western BC. I tried to convince my wife that we should move to Australia so I work during the southern hemisphere’s main plant growing season and then return to BC for our spring growing season, but the idea didn’t fly, then I tried to get her to move to Yuma Arizona so I could grow lettuce during their November to January growing season… nope. Best thing I could come up with is staying home and learning more. Here is an interesting link I found this morning that is loaded with free horticulture mini courses.
More “stuff” on soil microbes….
Here is a very comprehensive article I found on soil microbes for agriculture, including information on C/N ratios, effects of tillage, and environmental factors affecting the breakdown of organic materials.
Monkshood ( Aconitum napellus ) can be deadly to animals and humans. This member of the buttercup family ( Ranunculacea ) contains aconitine, which is one of the most toxic plant compounds known. ( Ref. Encyclopdedia of Herbs and Their Uses, Deni Brown ) It is often called the Queen of poisons. In fact many common garden plants can be toxic to pets and/or people. For a list of potentially harmful plants checkout RHS harmful plants.
Don’t make tea from this Chamomile! Anthemis tinctoriais a traditional dye plant. If you want to get more from your garden than just a bunch of cheerful flowers, check out this article on planning a dye garden.
This is a new plant we are growing this season and so far it seems to enjoy living on Southern Vancouver Island. A common plant in the Swiss Alps Sweet Treefoil ( Trigonella caerulea ) is another nitrogen fixing member of the Fabaceae (Pea) plant family. This week I found another amazing on-line database, this time on spice plants and uses. One strength of the Gernot Katzer’s Spice Pages is he has indexed the information in several different ways. A “regular” index in English and German, but also the spices are indexed by Spice Mixtures they are used in, Geographic location they are grown in, a Botanical index, and a Morphological index which sorts the plants by the part used in cooking. Best of all there is an index of herbs and spices listed in several different foreign languages. This would of been very useful for me last week when I was trying to help a Turkish couple purchase herb plants, but they only new the plant names in Turkish !
http://gernot-katzers-spice-pages.com/engl/spice_index.html
Here is wonderful on-line resource for BC herb growers. I find this herb growing calendar by a local BC seed supplier very useful. Herb Planting Chart
This is a picture of the calendula bed 1 month later, ready for the first of many flower harvests. Note the small Arbutus ( Arbutus menziesii ) tree hanging over the fence in the top right of the photo stretching for the sun.
Well, those people in the UK are at it again ! First it was “Be Nice to Nettle Week ” and now it is officially ” National Insect Week” with the tag line ” little things that run the world” . Hey ! if you don’t believe me just check out http://nationalinsectweek.co.uk/. This may not be the best picture of this critter I have taken, but it is the most complete one I have in terms of identification. I originally thought all you had to do to ID a Lady Beetle was to count the spots …. but there is a bit more to it than that ! A click on the picture will take you to a really interesting visual based ID guide.
So what type of Lady Beetle is this anyway ?
Here is a snap shot of the Golden Variegated Sage (Salvia officinalis ‘Icterina’) in the herb demonstration garden. The plant is so big it spills out of the raised bed into the pathway, but it looks so good nobody wants to cut it back. For a historical view of sages you may want to check out Culpeper’s Complete Herbal at http://www.complete-herbal.com/completeherbal1814.htm, it is certainly an interesting read !
This time of year seed collection is added to my farm work day things to do list. These Sweet Cicely seeds are not mature enough to collect yet, but they sure taste good !
Anyone who has tried to start herb plants from seed quickly finds out that some are easy to germinate but some can be quite difficult ! Special tricks are sometimes required to mimic nature such as cooling the seed for a period of time called stratification or mechanically disrupting the seed coat a process called scarification. Fire, the digestive tracts of various animals,humidity,temperature and light levels can also play a role. If you are having difficulty germinating a specific seed, this resource my help you, it is information from an out of print “Thompson & Morgan Successful Seed Raising Guide” and it appears to be quite detailed. http://www.backyardgardener.com/tm1.html
Well am off to work to see if any new plants have germinated last night.
In addition to the more common blue flowered variety, we have white flowered Borage growing on the farm. Borage attracts bees, has an edible flower and is a good planting companion for squash, strawberries and tomatoes. Click on the photo to view an extensive companion planting guide in PDF format.
The first line of text you read when you go to the Holistic Agriculture Library is “Health begins in the soil” . This amazing on-line resource provides dozens of books and articles on soil providing information galore and preserving many out of print books on the subject. ( http://www.soilandhealth.org/01aglibrary/01aglibwelcome.html ) Red clover (Trifolium pratense) as well as being an important medicinal plant, is an excellent cover crop for improving soil by providing nitrogen fixation, reducing erosion and by sending down deep roots to mine out minerals that increase soil fertility. Click on the photo to learn more about Red Clover from the Oregon Clover Commission.
This blooming plant has got me thinking about medicinal product safety and government regulations. Valerian ( Valeriana officinalis ) has been used as sedative and relaxant for thousands of years. In Canada natural health products go through a listing procedure. I searched the government database and found 514 registered products that list Valerian as an ingredient. Why not check out your favorite medicinal herb at http://webprod5.hc-sc.gc.ca/lnhpd-bdpsnh/index-eng.jsp and see the sort of products it is used in ?
Rue ( Ruta graveolens ) is often planted in herb gardens for its interesting foliage. Long ago it was used as a protector against evil, a snake bite antidote and a enhancer of “inner vision”, however, this plant is poisonous and even handling it can cause phytolphotoderamtitis. Click on the photo for a very informative article on dermatitis caused by plants , complete with lists of plants to handle with care.
We sure have a lot of deer on Vancouver Island ! To assist with selecting deer resistant herbs, I have set up a “Deer Resistant” category in this blog. Simply click on the category title and pictures of all of the deer resistant plants I have mentioned will pop up. For even more information click on this photo to go to the Master Gardeners of BC deer resistant plant list.
Vancouver Island Gardening Adventures 
