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Rain barrels are filling - 2025 08 06

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  In the dark, early morning I woke from deep sleep to the sound of rainfall. Not just the light patter of a few drops but the steady staccato of rain falling on the roof of the house and on the street outside. Out of curiosity I checked the rainfall records at  https://vancouver.weatherstats.ca . In the last week I had finally started hand watering with water from the municipal supply. I was able to keep the garden going with my bucket brigade from the rain barrels until the last week of July, when the barrels were finally empty. The combined rainfall in Vancouver for the months of June and July was less than 3 inches in total. My last record of rainfall collecting in the rain barrels was May 29. That was the last time they were filled. That gave me 300 gallons of water to keep the gardens and worms hydrated. When I checked at 5 am, the first 80 gallon rain barrel was filled and cascading into the second barrel. That seems like a huge amount of water to collect since last nig...
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Tomato intelligence - 2025 07 22

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  My tomatoes right now Things have gotten a little out of hand.
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Rain barrels filling - 2025 05 29

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  It was a light rain overnight, but it was enough to fill the rain barrels for another week of watering the garden.  It feels good to collect the rain water and use it to grow flowers, berries, and vegetables. 
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Busy Bees - 2025 05 29

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  In these days fraught with news of authoritarianism it is calming to see the bees busy about their work after a light morning rain.
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Worm release - 2024 12 19

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  Yesterday mid-morning I went to check on the worms in their bins and found the floor littered with dead escapees. I had just changed out another pair of bins the day before - removing half the volume of worm castings, leaving as many worms in the bin as possible, and then refilling the bin with compost soil from the city, alfalfa pellets, greens from the garden and cardboard topper. As I swept up the little carcasses I realized I could no longer manage the work of looking after the worm bins through the winter. I am currently overwhelmed with recovering from caregiving, re-organizing my household, and getting my own health back after dental surgery.  I talked it over with my dear husband and decided to re-home my worm bins to the garden for the winter. I am adopting the hugelkulture method of gardening, creating hills of composted dirt on top of composting leaves and brown materials. To re-home the worms I tipped each bin upside down on the hills of new soil we brought in la...
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First attempt - 2024 11 09

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  My friend, Virginia, is having to dig up her garden to make way for a laneway house. She has given me a collection of plants to re-home. Yesterday I constructed my first garden mounds using the hugelkulur method.  The first step was to dig and rake back the garden soil I put down last spring. The soil that was placed on cardboard last spring came up easily. The sections where I ran out of cardboard were threaded with fine white roots from the poplar tree. It's roots go everywhere. The second step was to pile leaves from the poplar tree to make a thick bed to lay a foundation for each garden mound. The third step was to pile the garden soil on top of the leaves.  The fourth step was to bring a large helping of compost from the kitchen bins. This compost is also full of worms. The fifth and last step was to plant some of the transplants from Virginia into the new mounds.  What I like about this method: The worms can go up and down between the ground and the mound - w...
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Wealth of leaves - 2024 11 09

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  When I finished gardening yesterday I had the sidewalks blown clean and the leaves collected in the gardens. Last night another rain storm blew in and today the sidewalks are covered with more leaf gold. This year I am trying a new method to incorporate the leaves into the garden. Instead of putting cardboard down to create a semi-permeable barrier between tree roots and garden beds, I am laying down a thick carpet of leaves. Then I am piling a mound of dirt made up from last year's beds and new compost from the kitchen, as well as worm castings (and worms) from the worm bins. I'm adapting the Hugelkultur Method to take advantage of the windfall from the poplar tree, but also to protect my garden beds from the moisture and nutrient thieving tree roots that stunt growth above ground. I'll wait until things dry out a bit and then collect up this latest batch of leaves to form the foundation for more garden mounds.
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