Pseudo's Summer (northern hemisphere) of 2011 Garden

[Pseudoreality]

Pseudo's Summer (northern hemisphere) of 2011 Garden

So me and the Mrs. are planning our garden for this upcoming season. It’s still bitterly cold here (-45 C with wind chill this morning), but the days are getting longer and dreams of warmer weather are in our minds. We really want to take our garden to the next level this summer. I’ve attached a aerial photo of my house with my proposals for the summer. I’ve had the house for 3 years and have had a modest vegetable garden in the shady back yard. The first season was great, the next season sucked with cold weather and bugs, and last year was just construction of a new fence.

This summer I plan to have 3 growing systems:

1) 1 – 2 sq m (10 – 20 sq ft) gravel filled grow bed to my 180 gal (650 L) goldfish pond for aquaponics.
2) 2’ x 16’ “square foot garden” system.
3) Rear dirt garden for potatoes, berries, and pumpkin.

proposed layout.jpg

I harvest rainwater and hope to use that as much as possible. I’m a little bit concerned about the asphalt shingles so I may build a slowsand filter to treat the rain water.

My climate is cool, dry, and lots of sun with a 3 month and change growing season. I typically start my seedlings inside in April and plant first weekend in June. I think the cool temperature is my limiting factor when it comes to growth. I’m hopeful that raised bed in the squarefoot gardening system will help as the ground never gets that warm. Also, I plan on building a solar hot water heater for my pond to help with growth in the aquaponics system.

If anyone has any advice or suggestions to help make it a successful season for me I’d love to hear it.

[bsegravescollis]

Pseudo, I presume you are at the same seasonal stage this year as last - days are getting longer and dreams of warmer weather.... I can necessarily give you a lot of suggestion but I will share with you my motivational link. These folks have made small scale agriculture an art. Check that, a science. Hope this gets your mind really ticking. http://urbanhomestead.org/about

PS Their site is rich with information, when you sit down have a cup of coffee and a notebook handy.

[GaryD]

I agree.....the Dervais site is inspirational.

Pseudo......your circumstances are so foreign to people like me (I live in a sub-tropical region), that it's difficult to fully appreciate the harshness of your environment.

If anyone has any advice or suggestions to help make it a successful season for me I’d love to hear it.

I guess if I lived in your climate, I'd be looking to integrate my house and any food production systems.

I assume you have central heating (or access to wood heating) so I'd be growing fish and plants indoors in advance of your spring.

With such a short plant-growing season, I'd give aquaponics a miss and opt for year-round cold water aquaculture using something like trout (or whatever other species are suited to the area) and use the water from that system to feed your plants in something like raised beds.

A sun-facing greenhouse heated by a rocket thermal mass heater might give you a head start.

As I write this, it's 24 degrees C (about 75 degrees F) and it's been raining for the past four days. Humidity is very high.....so anything I say has to be tempered with the fact that I would only ever encounter your conditions if I was to venture into a blast freezer.

Gary

[keith_r]

i'm not as far north as you, but it's the middle of one of our strangest winters in a while.. raining and snowing right now, warmest january in my memory.. our last frost is somewhere around mid to late may, with first frost in early october..
i'm really suprised with the growth i'm getting with t8 "shop" lights.. system will expand as soon as i get 3 yards of gravel (a little over 600 gallons/2300 liters)

[GaryD]

Hi Keith,

Can you expand a little on what you mean by T8 shop lights?

Gary

[Pseudoreality]

Gary, I would assume keith is talking about T8 fluorescent lights. They are skinny tubes. In a workshop you often a double ballast with two 4' T12 or T8 tubes. Fluorescent lighting is cheap to purchase and operate, but are required to be very close to the plants have works typically only works for non-fruiting leafy greens. I used fluorescent last year, but right now I'm using a 90W LED UFO light that works pretty well. Unfortunately my aquaponic set-up got banished to the basement this year and its too cold down there to growing fruiting plants right now (~8 C). Next year though I plan on building an insulated area and heating the water to 25 C to support fruiting plants and talipa. At that point I want to have a media growbed with UFO light for fruiting plants and a 4' long set of 3 NFT trays under T8 lights for the leafy greens. That's the plan anyways.

Below is a photo of my outdoor system as of today (-38 C). Any type of greenhouse would require a significant amount of heat and I'd be very worried about condensation. Also, there's really not much sunlight where I live between October and February. March through September there is ton. Someday I will have a heated greenhouse that I can fire up in the spring when its -15C, but I'm not there yet. Every year I make small improvements.

[keith_r]

yup, each shoplight holds 2 48" t8 flourescent 32 watt lights..i use half warm/half cool bulbs

[Caca]

I typically start my seedlings inside in April and plant first weekend in June.

what is temperature is in April?
Or in which month is temp about 10 to 15 C?

My climate is similar to keith_r ,so i have some ideas.

[Pseudoreality]

Daily average temperature for April is -5.3 C and June is when you see 10 to 15 C with a Daily Average of 13.5 C. Climate normals for 1971 to 2000 are shown here:

http://www.climate.weatheroffice.gc....h1=0&month2=12


If you look at things like bright sunshine, we actually do not bad with an annual average better than Vancouver (see rain). We just don't get sustained warm weather to grow things like peppers or cucumbers without a greenhouse. Tomatoes are hit and miss, I'm batting around 75% right now with my annual tomato crop grown outdoors without a greenhouse. I experimented with cold frames using 1/2 PVC and plastic wrap (see below). Problem was they just didn't hold heat in over night. It got warm during the day, but I actually saw colder overnight temperatures inside the hoop house than outside in the spring. My guess is the ground held so much cold is was sucking the heat out of the confined space. Most areas people think of the ground as a heat source, and that's true for me in the fall, but in the spring the ground is frozen over 7m down with some areas of permafrost. So either I need more water to hold the heat or a small electric heater.

[Caca]

All I can think right now, is Styrofoam sheets house at night.
Lol, and I was thinking that I have winter problems.
good luck.