Gardens-Return to sustainability menu

I have a lot to learn about gardening but I seem to produce a lot. The compost from the sunflower meal and composting toilet seems to be the answer! It takes about a year to get it ready for the soil.

2010

Febuary 23, 2010

This is will working on the fanning mill for the garden.

Updated by Clare

2009

	Sept 21, 2009 Just to give you an idea of the beauty of these plants! There are hundreds of insects on them as well! And this is against the bylaw!!! Just where is our council headed??
	Now who else with their golf course type lawns can show me a such a dragonfly! There have been quite a number here... which incidently catch mosquitos!! This looks like a Swamp Daner but my book says it is Uncommon in southern Ontario.
	Chicory! Such a fantastic colour.. and again against the law here in Bayham.
	So this is my jungle filled with wild flowers, insects, birds and even a large salamander and his friend the toad.
	I am so proud of the arrival of the Monarch butterfly but they are not in the other yards around here as they have no flowers.. just short cut grass!

	There is the cleaned rye!
	And finally I get to use the fanning mill. It was old and needed work but the end product was still fine. Even made rye bread just to make sure the product is good for eating - it certainly was!
	August 18 2009 The chaff flying from the threshing machine
	August 18 2009 Mat doing more threshing
	August 18 2009 Mat starting the generator for the threshing machine
	August 5, 2009 OK now do not laugh... yes I am actually threshing the rye that I planted. I got the idea after walking with Connie and I picked up an old vacuum cleaner. It was the old fashioned style with the rotory blade. I made up the unit nad it worked fine on small grains... so why not use a bigger one for the rye which is what I did. So I took over the dust collector amde a few simple modifications and there it is! I removed the top dust bag so the chaff and straw blow out.. what remains is the rye berries at the bottom. Note the sunflowers in the background.


	July 1, 2009. South garden looking west.
	/July 1, 2009. Lettuce in the foreground, beets on the right with chard and squash on the left.Onions on the far right.
	July 1, 2009. The garden has really taken off with the rainy weather. Beside the chicken coop is the flax.
	June 8, 2009 And more gardens.
	Tomatoes in the foreground and the famous chickens in the flax with more gardens beyond!
	Suddenly everything is booming! Strawberries in the forefront and rye ( neighbours call it long grass) in the background.

	April 29, 2009 Looking northerly on the reclaimed parking lot I have rye sowed but I have tilled half of it for sunflowers
	April 29, 2009 Yes those are onions sprouting up! In the foreground there are radishes
	April 29, 2009 My cold frame for lettuce.
	April 29, 2009 Looking towards the chickens. Garden in front of chickens is just dug. I had a tree taken down here. Last year I had flax here.

2008

	Summer 2009 And the sunflowers really took off. This is the place that I put the sunflower meal when I was expelling oil this past winter.. obviously it has great properties.... and really makes the compost hot too!
	June 21, 2008 Anjali Sharma intern digging a place for some tomato plants.
	The planting table.
	June 20, 2008 Here is the start of my flax patch.
	Some tomato plants and a few peppers.
	The potatoes do very well each year.
	The tree that gives the best pears is doing really well. I was worried that the Bees did not do their job this year... but I guess some got though.
	The sunflower patch beside the compost box. I piled the sunflower meal on this spot and it really made quite a difference to the growth of the sunflowers!
	June 2008, The stawberry patch is getting better!
	June 20, 2008 A great patch of lettuce
May 12, 2008 So here is the lawnmower that my sister donated. I removed the worn out inadequate battery and put in a 32 amphour battery by cutting the case to allow for a larger battery. The controller sits on top but it will be housed in a better fashion once this mover is deemed satisfactory in all aspects.
Well here is the solar powered lawn mower. I plug it in the charge the batteries from the windmill and solar cells. I'm not much of a fan of mowing lawns! Mowing lawns is a waste of energy but I do some of it to please the municipality.... its agains the law to have grass over 8.5 inches... about the dumbest law ever made!
Summer of 2008: I got started early with working with the compost pile through the winter. The Sunflower meal really made that compost hot and I turned it frequently. I dug all of the gardens by hand and then put the compost on the top. The picture on the left shows good promise for pears this year. In the foreground is parsnips planted last year. They are wonderfully sweet!
The cherry tree has also come to life... but I worry about the pollination as I have not seen many bees around the flowers.
Peach blossoms! Last year the peaches did not do well as the tree had been accidently sprayed with roundup by the previous owner. I cut back as much as I could and this year we have blossoms but the tree is really in bad shape. The new peach tree that Ron brought over although very small has some blossoms!

	The front garden early august 2007. There are sunflowers in the foreground, cabbages, carrots, parsnips, tomatoes, peppers, egg plants etc behind that and in background there is a patch of flax!
	The test plot of flax . This was a real success evn though we got very little rain this past summer of 2007.
	Thats Broccoli! And I had broccoli all summer and in to December!
	More of the garden.