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Earth friendly gardening
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Heirloom Vegetable Garden |
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Pictures taken at
the beginning of September 2006 |
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| Situated between the Purcell and Selkirk Mountain
ranges, the Creston Valley in the West Kootenay region of British Columbia,
Canada, with its temperate climate, is perfect
for growing fruit and famous for its Cherry, Apricot and Apple
orchards. |
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| Every year the Creston Blossom Festival in May
celebrates the beginning of the farming and gardening season, and
the Harvest Ball in the fall the closing. During the season a
farmers market next to Millennium Park, and a Saturday market allow
local farmers and gardeners to sell their fresh produce directly to
customers. |
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| I first saw the garden of Dan and Val McMurray in Wynndel in
the Creston Valley during the 2006 Creston garden tour. |
| At the entry to the garden there was a big sign
posted --> |
| Yeah, it would be nice, I thought, but is it possible? |
| After visiting their garden again, at the
beginning of September, I have no more doubts: Yes, with gardeners
like Dan and Val it is possible! |
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| From the early spring
until October Dan and Val spend most of their time working in their half an acre heirloom vegetable garden. Dan, in his response to
my request for an interview wrote: "… when you get here, don't give up if
there is no answer to a knock on the door - - - we are usually in the garden
most of the day, right up until dark." |
| They garden in Creston Valley since Dan's
retirement as a lighthouse keeper in 2002. |
| Gardening is their great passion. It supplies them with
a healthy food and, what is equally important, with a healthy, relaxing
exercise. |
| A healthy food comes from
healthy plants. No plants can be entirely healthy without having healthy
roots that develop best in the healthy soil, rich in minerals and humus. |
| A lot of Dan and Val's
gardening effort goes into soil building. After
they bought the land and before they started gardening they did soil test
for PH level. They put a lot of effort into initial cleaning, by hand
screening rocks, gravel, and weed roots out of the soil. To increase
the soil acidity they added small amount of sulfur. They continue improving
the soil quality by addition of manure, compost, grass clippings, leaves, by planting cover crops, and by using
a small amount of
commercial fertilizers. Now they have a rich and fertile, well drained, slightly acid loamy soil perfect for growing of any
kind of vegetables. |
| Watering is another
very important gardening task. Too much watering can cause excessive
saturation and /or unnecessary leaching, too little exposes plants to stress
and stunts growth. To do it right Dan has designed his own drip irrigation system which,
depending on the weather, he uses once or twice a week.
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| To preserve moisture, suppress weeds,
and keep plants roots cool they apply a lot of organic mulch.
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| Good gardening
practices help to reduce the amount of damage caused by pests and diseases.
No garden, however, is one hundred percent pest and disease free.
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| What do you do when problems arise? Do you use
organic methods of pest and disease control? Do you use pesticides,
fungicides, herbicides? I ask Dan. |
| "So far, no major problems
have arisen, but if they do they will be handled without chemicals.
The only non-organic pest control that we have or will use is a
systemic spray to control fly maggots in the cherries. Everything
else that we are likely to encounter in our garden or orchard can be
handled with controls that are accepted by the Organic Gardening
Council (for example wasp control is a matter of applying a jet of
water to the nest, preferably from a safe distance). We encourage
beneficial insects like lacewings, ladybugs, praying mantis (kidnap
if necessary). Any harmful bug larva that are discovered become
chicken food. For some pests, like flea beetles, trap crops can be
employed, like summer turnips or radishes placed in a central
location ... the leaves end up looking shot-gunned, and are
unusable, but nothing else in the garden gets touched." |
| Dan is especially interested in growing heirloom
or open
pollinated varieties of Tomatoes. (Open-pollinated: plant
species that have not been genetically altered and are capable of
reproducing in true form from generation to generation.) Why heirloom and open pollinated?
In Dan and Val's opinion Mother Nature knows the best what is good
for us. They find heirlooms healthier and tastier than modern
commercial varieties. |
| He and Val
especially distrust genetically altered plants produced by Monsanto. Why? As an answer they give
me an address of the website with wealth of information related to genetic engineering:
http://www.gmwatch.org |
| Dan is in touch and
exchange Tomato seeds with other gardeners and collectors around the world. He obtained his
first heirloom Tomato seeds in 2004 from the heirloom grower in Ontario. Since then their collection has grown to over
850 varieties, 250+ being rare or very rare. Their seed origins
represent at least 15 countries. |
| Dan keeps careful documentation of all varieties he
grows. "The documentation includes origin, supposed conformation and
actual conformation of the plant and fruit (type of plant,
size and colour of fruit, leaf form, and days to maturity). There
are literally thousands of established varieties of open pollinated
tomatoes. There are a few institutions (U.C. Davis is one) that even
do genetic fingerprinting (DNA tests) of different Tomato varieties",
he tells me. |
| They start their Tomato plants indoors in March.
"Plants get a minimal start
indoors, and are then transferred to a small greenhouse/cold-frame
set-up. Heaters are turned on at night, only to ensure that the
plants do not freeze, not to keep them warm. This can have an
interesting side effect of cold treating the Tomato plants in a way
that produces an abundance of what is referred to as 'multi-flora'
blossom production. That means instead of a normal string of 6 or 8
blossoms to a cluster, there can be upwards of 50. Another distinct
advantage of having the plants all well hardened off before
transplanting takes place is that the plants are fully acclimatized
before the removal from the hoop-houses (greenhouse/cold-frame).
They may not be as lush in appearance as what is procured from a
commercial greenhouse, but they will not be set back at transplant
time, because they suffer no root or temperature shock on the
process. They usually don't even realize they have been
transplanted, except that they now have more root room, and more
stable root temperature and moisture levels", Dan says. |
| They transplant their Tomatoes into the
ground usually in the middle of May. Climate conditions in the Creston
Valley allow them to grow their plants in the open field without any
protection from weather extremes. |
| This year they grow 350 Tomato plants and over 125
varieties. The variety of colours,
sizes, and shapes of their fruit is amazing. Yellow, orange, red,
cherry, small, medium, big, round, oval, pear shaped, pepper shaped
... |
| The plants are loaded with fruit. Average fruit production from their Tomato
plants is 15-20 lbs. per plant. That means this year's production
should come in between 5000 and 7000 lbs. |
| "Approximately 1000 lbs goes into juice for personal
consumption and another 600 lbs into sauces, salsas, and chili. The
rest is given to friends and other "victims of opportunity"
(visitors)". |
| They are happy to
share seeds with anybody interested in growing heirlooms. |
| During the garden
tour Val asked interested visitors to write down their names and
addresses so they could send us seeds of the variety we are most
interested in. |
| What other vegetables do you grow in your garden?
I ask. |
| "We grow potatoes, carrots,
onions, peas, beans (green beans and dried beans), beets, corn,
garlic, tomatoes, squash, and peppers. We occasionally grow melons,
cauliflowers, broccoli, cabbage... Basically what ever tickles our
fancy come planting time (or depending on what we have recently read
about)." |
| They have supply of vegetables from their own garden that will take them to the next
harvest. |
| "We over-winter our carrots
and potatoes in the ground, with bags of leaves for frost
protection, store onions and fruit in our cold room, and process a
good representation of everything else we grow. |
| First crop in the ground in
the spring is a bed of carrots, beets, and potatoes that will be
consumed over the summer, with special beds of potatoes and carrots
being started later for winter consumption. Since the later
plantings will be able to grow until frost, there is no particular
hurry in getting them in the ground. This can in itself
present special problems if it turns hot early... It requires a lot
more attention to watering (at least twice a day) to get carrots
started if the weather is hot and dry." |
| Dan never stops experimenting, researching, and
improving his garden. He describes it as a
"Continuing research project under constant evolution. Another way
of saying I can't resist tinkering with the process." |
| I thank Dan and Val for their willingness to share
their garden and their expertise with gardeners in Canada and around
the world, who are visitors too the kootenaygardening.com website. |
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To see more pictures of their Tomatoes, together with names of the
varieties, and to learn how to construct a hoophouse go to
Dan's album and click on one
of the entry pictures there. |
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Contact Dan and Val |
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