Moose on the loose

Winter this year is pretty reach in snow at our place.  At this point we have close to two feet on the ground. Last weekend we use snow shoes to take dogs for walk as we just got fresh delivery of about 5-8" of snow.  In addition to lots of snow, we had this moose becoming fixture in our back yard.  Actually, this animal is big and dangerous, it chased our dog and it was lucky to survive and it is not a small dog, it is german shepherd.  We are getting tired being awake by alerting dogs in the middle of the nigh whn moose stands in front of the window and nibble on shrubs.
I guess he is here to stay until conditions improve and he will finds other source of food under the snow.
In terms of garden, we have ordered seeds and expect to receive those in the next couple of days.  We will start indoor nursery around mid month, in preparation for planing in the hoop tunnels.

Winter is here and to stay I think

We have got winter weather for past week.  It was interesting as previous Saturday it was +23 deg C, following Saturday we had -23 deg. C.  So Swing of 46 deg in one week.  Some people were reminiscing of one day in 1989 whee temp  swing of 20+ degrees in 4 hrs.  That is the nature of living at high elevation.  Garden is tucked away till next spring, including planting garlic.  X-country ski season is open!

Photo Update

Today, having nice day and phone camera handy I am providing photo update from the garden, including tunnels.
Tunnel #1
tomato and  cauliflower, not to mention lettuce

 Here is usual shot of rhubarb bush

 lettuce in tunnel #1, we have been consuming it for the past two weeks.

 Cauliflower plants doing very well

 Beans and peas in one of the plots

 Our first cucumber that I am going to harvest today

 .. and again different view

 .. we will eat this one for lunch

 Potato in full display.

First fruit ...

I can't believe it, but despite harsh conditions my cucumbers that I had to move to the "tunnel" so early, due to flowering, has produced first "offspring" this season (see picture). This is amazing so see it, as after transplantation, they did not look too promising.  Love to see this.  We have been eating fresh lettuce from our garden, fresh reddish and soon might have cucumbers.  Season looks good. The only issue, some of the tomatoes that I transplanted outside got a frost bite yesterday (0 deg) and only one might survive out of six.  It was calculated risk and will have to go and buy now new one to replace as the one that I am still growing (started too late) indoors might not cut it.

Wind Test ...

On Tuesday, my hoop tunnels underwent extreme wind testing and I am happy to say, it was success.  We had extreme weather conditions, strong winds and lots of (horizontal) rain and a bit of snow.  Wind was blowing all evening and night at speed between 40-80 km/hr, and with rain going at the same time, it was miserable weather.  Had to take dogs for short walk ion the evening and it was not fun at all.  The walk was rather speedy for that reason.  We needed the rain so everything is getting even greener.  almost everything in my garden has sprouted to life and it looks good.

It is done!

I have completed seeding and planting my garden for this year.  Maybe small tweaks here and there are required but in general it is finished.  Things are looking good in the garden, my rhubarb is a good indicator as you can see below, it is doing well.

My tunnel is looking good, picture below is a bit old (week) and things look much bigger now.

 

And here my dog relaxing after hard day work.

Garden Update

Well, weather definitely has improved and it is hot, not kidding it was hot on a days, that i rushed to seed as much as possible and even planted potatoes, as ground is pretty worm.  I have been working hard to till (by hand ) all containers and seeding them.
My garlic that we planted last fall is out and growing like crazy. Lettuce in the tunnel will be ready for consumption in ten days or so.  Just in time as California bad weather this winter started to impact veggie price ( lettuce head goes for ~$5).  Can wait to eat healthy and tasty lettuce from our garden.

Still have few more things to seed and will be doing it over next few days.

New Develpments

Well, spring is here and spring activity started in the garden.  First of all, I have re-built small hoop tunnel into tall one , same as the other one. Now we have tow double walled high hoop tunnels.
Since my tomato seedlings have grown so much, i had to transplant them to the tunnel last weekend.  Did the same to cucumbers, as they started to flower (wow that was quick).  Tunnel with water canisters as heat accumulators provide consistent 3 degree temp differential between outside and inside.  So far did not have to use additional feat source  to maintain positive temps.
Today Iw ill be planting and seeding the new tunnel.
It looks like we will have summer weather this week as temps supposed to be 21 tomorrow, 25 on Thursday and so on.  I think I will have to seed outside containers as well.
Been busy aerating grass and cleaning the yard.  So much work right now, but it is so rewarding.

Redundant question ..

This is in relation to previous post.  Today, we again got between 5-10 cm of snow on the ground. I man ground was totally covered by it.  In five hours it was all gone but not before wreaking havoc on morning drive.
I had to stop doing work in the garden due to rain or snow over past few days.
My focus was on upgrading low tunnel to tall one.  Using experience  from constructing one last year, I have rebuild the low one by  utilizing all of the materials from it, but of course, had to get new face build, so had to buy some lumber to do so.  Anyway, tunnel is ready to be covered and I forgot to mention, that it is double walled as well  (based on my previous experience).  I have plastic for inner tunnel ready, as well as, my outer shell.  Waiting for better weather with no wind or at least minimum wind, as with such large surface, we are dealing with sail like structure.  We already attempted to install the shell, but wind increased and had to abandon the effort.
Will try this weekend as the weather supposed to change for better.
In the other news, I seeded carrots and beats and my transplants are ready to be moved to tunnel (tomato).

Spring is here, or is it?

This morning we have got surprise (not really surprise) snow!  Ground was covered within 10 minutes.  At least we are getting moisture and grass will look good.  I already seeded lettuce in the tunnel last Saturday, but it is still cold and night so no sprouts yet.
Getting ready to upgrade low tunnel to full height this spring.  Will post progress of project once it starts.

Digging but not the garden, snow

Well, we has a spring at the end of January and last weekend, fresh snow arrived.  We were looking forward to new fresh snow as bare ground showed up after warm weather and it was icy.   Out wish came true, but delivery was a bit excessive.  We got about 40cm of snow since it started on Saturday.  Had to remove snow from my driveway twice yesterday and more was coming.  Did it again this morning and more is coming.  It is still -19C but, watch this, forecast for the weekend is +8C so we will have a bit of a mess.
nature, you can't control it so enjoy it.  We been x-country skiing on sunday and it was funs, especially for our dog.

2017 Plans

Our garden last year had a very successful year, partially due to utilization of the new high, double walled tunnel.  I did not have much to go about before I made decision to built this tunnel. I knew that it must be "high" as our "low" tunnel did not work that well due to hight restrictions.  We have been struggling in early spring with frost exposure and as such decision to try double walled tunnel.  Used regular poly for inside tunnel and woven 11 poly for outside.  The result was difference of about 4 degree, so when temp went down to -4deg C, inside was still at ) deg C.  One thing I regretted and will have to change this year, was use of non-clear poly for inside tunnel.  This was due to the fact that this was the only one available at HomeDepot at that time.  I will have to replaced it as tape that connected two poly sheets has failed and they would have to be reconnected anyway.
One thing on my mind is how to heat effectively tunnel in the spring during low temperature spells (lat year we had frost up till first week in June).  So far, we used candles, they seem to be working o.k., but I am looking for environmentally friendly way, perhaps solar panels, small heater, and RV battery that is sitting in my garage.  I know from reading and calculating that this might be difficult to achieve with 100-150 solar panel setup.  Will have to think about this as using solar heat sink is not feasible due to tunnel sitting on top of raised beds (cross members inside).
I will have to search for some alternative way of providing heat during low temp times (peak low temp) which is basically between 2:00 Am and 6:00 AM.

Last year we had very wet July and some of the crops were affected by this.  We might reduce how much lettuce we will grow as we had abundance of it, despite sharing with family and friends.

I will have to figure how I can grow seedlings inside the house with new puppy present, especially, that this pupp is gardener and loves digging in our pots inside the house.  Definitely will be challenging.

We have planted garlic in the fall and hope that this will result in good crop this year.
 
Slowly we have to start thinking about what to seed and when in prep for spring.

Wintery Update

My dog chilling out in the wintery weather and she loves it.

Winter is here

Well, I have been quiet for a while.  There were some changes in our life.  Our beloved golden retriever has left us for good after 14 years. 
Now we have adopted new dog, 6 months old puppy and with it busy time.
November was very nice, warm and almost snow free.  We have enjoyed that time and then came December and a change in weather.  As of Monday our high temp. are at -18C level.  In fact that was warm, as next few days it will be high of -21C with pretty significant wind, it feels like -37C.

Fall update

Garden is pretty much shut down for winter.  We still need to plant garlic for the next year but it seems that weather next week is summer like (according to forecast) so we will wait another week or so as it will be too warm.  We also need to put some tulips bulb in flower bed for the spring.  In general, I was planning to continue to mulch  leafs this weekend, but unexpected snowfall on Friday, delayed these plans.  Our two mountain ash trees produce so much of leafs, and so late in the season that this is big challenge to keep up with management.

We lost our Molly and she is dearly missed.  The best dog ever!  

Fall cleanup

After -9 C on Tuesday this week, nothing survived in the tunnels  and garden and officially garden season 2016 is over.  We will still plant garlic for the next year crop, in about two weeks time.  We cleaned garden, our compost is full to the point that nothing more can fit into one of the composting bins and left some space for day use in the other one.  Weather was great today despite forecast calling for rain and cool weather.  At one point my weather station recorded +12C.
Now we are still processing harvest and enjoying fresh produce as well. 
We had pretty sad week as we had to make decision on "putting down" our beloved golden who reached age of fourteen and her conditions deteriorated so rapidly that we decided inevitable.  It was and still is so hard on us as she was such a wonderful dog.  RIP Molly.

Winter...?!

IT has been a while since last post, so decide to provide quick update on state of the garden.  It is Canadian Thanksgiving and snowy one here.  It has been snowing everyday for the past two days and the effect left about 4-5 cm on the ground, making my dog so happy. Snow would melt at the end of the day, but today it was snowing again and ground again is covered by wet snow.  It was also be unusually cold and I mean cold as temps are around 0 most of the time and hardly reaching into positive territory.  My large tunnel double wall design proved to be a winner.  I have temperature recording device and it shows me the lowest and highest temps and also current temp, humidity.  Even at days where temp went down at night to -3C it was still positive temp inside and during the day when it was very cloudy and temp. outside was at -2C, we had +6C inside.  So we still have tomato plants growing and producing red tomatoes.  We still have quiet a lot of green tomatoes. I decided to evacuate sprinkler system and thus close water to the garden.  We have covered lettuce but lots of wind moved cover to strawberries that surprisingly, are still producing and I had strawberries last Wednesday straight from the plant.
We have now assumed that small tunnel is done, despite kale still growing in it.  In the next few weeks we will focus our energy on cleaning our garden and prepping it for winter.

Harvest time ..

Last weekend we started harvest in the garden.   Here are some pictures from  potato harvesting and carrots.  Some of the potatoes were huge, more than 1 lb in some cases, 2 lbs.  I think we have collected about 150 lbs from plot that was approx. 10 sq ft  garden plot.  This was definitely the best year for potatoes, despite getting bit of frost in the late spring, they still produced above expectations.  Now is the question how long they will last in our "cold room" that really is wine room.  We will observe and see.

Strawberries

I wanted to focus this post on amazing strawberries in my garden operation.  We have planted strawberries last year and they did o.k., most of them survived winter  and spring frost did some damage but nothing serious.  There was not much fruit in June or July, hardly any, maybe due to wet July.  Now, I cannot believe how many berries are there.  It is amazing crop, berry patch is full of fruits and they are big.  Frost hit us but did not affected strawberries and we are enjoying it a lot and there are still lot of them despite the fact that it is getting colder.  I do not remember having strawberries fruiting so late but that is the fact and they look so healthy now.

quick update, my big pathway rebuilt project come to fruition and below is the final product.

Frist ... Brrr

Yeas, that is reality of high altitude gardening, early onset of cool watcher which translates to frost.  In the past two days the the temperature reading on my weather station showed 0 dec C and some effects are now visible int he garden.  Lettuce has shown sign of frost, I have been keeping tunnels closed to protect tomatoes crop and hope that they have not been affected. Also, I have big landscaping project on the go so that keeps me away from blogging.  It seems that this experiment is for my own self fulfillment, and does not look like I have lots of following.  Will try to keep updating for my own records so I will be able to compare events.