Dessert Auction will be June 18th

The Dessert Auction Returns!

When: 2:00 pm, Saturday, June 18th 2022

Where: Beacon House, Protection Island

(Covid-19 protocol will be masks optional)

Welcome back to the “DIGS Dessert Auction” at Beacon House, a fundraiser!

We are pleased to bring back one our favourite events, which brings our Community together and gives support to the Community Garden.

These creative masterpieces showcase the artistry of islanders. While you take a tour of these tantalizing treats, enjoy some light refreshments & lilting harp music.

This is a bidding auction, where the 1st prize for the dessert with the highest bid will go to the dessert creator and will be a lovely dinner for four, courtesy of D. Essig, either at his house or the winner’s house. Other prizes to be announced.

We will be accepting desserts from 12:30 to 1:30 pm on June 18th 2022.

The doors will be open to the public at 2:00 pm when bidding commences and bidding will stop at 4:00 pm. Come enjoy the afternoon with us, where sumptuous, desserts await your taste buds.

Lettuce & Radish Harvest

Dear Garden-Lovers,

Just a reminder that any of the many DIGS gardeners can join this blog as an author and can post about what's happening in the community garden, and put up photos too! Just get in touch with Marg at the above email, and we'll send you an "author invite" email. Using this blog is very easy and usually there are three or four blog authors at any one time. It's a good garden journal with dates and photos showing over a decade of garden events, so do join in! Handy to put lists and links too.

Radish Harvest

(click on photos to enlarge)

Today in the garden we harvested lettuce and radish. The radish are not "hot" and are very juicy and delish, plus completely worm-free as they were grown beneathe "Reemay" cloth which keeps those bugs OUT! 

See photo collages below, and inventive radish recipes to try! So nice to taste the first produce for salads after a long cool spring that's lasted til today! 

mounding potatoes & transplanting scallions

(click on photos to enlarge)

Also check out the mounding potatoes which are developing so fast now that the weather is warming up. There is so much to see in the garden these days! Go have a look at the herbs and asparagus!!!

A reminder from the garden meeting about cutting asparagus: if you just break the tip off at ground level it will not re-grow. If you scoop away a little soil and use a knife to cut it off below the soil level by two inches or so, it will re-grow.

The "cut and come again" Mesclun that's between the reemay rectangles of radish is cut down to two inches when it is four to five inches tall, so it can re-grow one more time; so wait for it.

Recipes below for all those radishes!

Radish Recipes

Dear Garden-lovers,

We will be harvesting many bunches of red radishes this Saturday (part of our "Coleman Project" where we imitate the Paris Market Gardens of 1875 mass plantings) and those who take them home might want some interesting red radish recipes, so I've dug some delicious sounding ones up for everyone to try. I'm curious to try them roasted!

Please feel free to write new recipes in the comments or email them along (email at top of page).

Red Radish Recipes: Naturally green salad, potato salad and coleslaw are all regular radish uses, but here are some different styles of radish cookery.

General information: Interesting ways to cook and serve red radishes.

Note: For speed, use the "Jump to Recipe" button near top of each page. 

Soup/Salad/Pickles:

Red Radish Soup with yogurt and ginger

A second Red Radish Soup with coconut milk and cumin.

Thai-style stuffed radishes

Cooked Radish Potato-style Salad.

Asian Radish Salad.

Radish spicy hot pickles.

Main: (I tried this tonight and it was delicious served with Thai noodle salad)

Thai Beef Salad with Radishes.

Side Dishes:

Roasted Red Radish with pork.

Roasted Red Radish in bacon cream sauce.

Roasted Radish Risotto.

Honey-roasted carrots and radishes.

Grated Radish Flatbread (I'm bound to try this soon!)

Plant Sale Photos

 We had a fun and successful plant sale today, even in the rain and slippery mud. And we'll let everyone know how much was raised to support the DIGS garden. Here are some photos of what it looked like today. Such glorious plants and greenery. Thankyou to everyone, especially Jim and the DIGS volunteers!

Note that if you took home transplants such as Tomatoes, Basil or Peppers, or other heat-loving plants, that you'll want to keep them warm at night until the weather gets much warmer than it is at present. Look for night-time temps of consistently 10 degrees C before you set them outside overnight.

The DIGS Community greenhouse was where we were protecting all the crops from this very cold spring. Once those plants are outdoors, the greenhouse will be made ready for ground-grown summer crops such as Melon, Eggplant, Peppers and Tomatoes.

We're also planning a field trip to see the new big greenhouse at the Nanaimo Community Garden.

Plant Sale Sunday May 15

 Here is the plant list for the upcoming plant sale; Sunday May 15th, 2022:

DIGS 2022 Plant Sale List and Pricing   

Sunday May 15th, 2022  - 10:00 a.m. to Noon

 

Please bring loonies, toonies,  paper money or cheques.  No change will be available.  Honour  box only. 

Memberships available - Family $15.00, Single $10.00.   Exact change please.  Bring pen/pencil.

Bring wagon, wheelbarrow, or boxes to carry your plants.  Re:  Quantities - Please remember your 

neighbours, and you are welcome to go through again.   Please - no children & no dogs.  Masks are optional.   

 

Flowers

6 Packs  - $3.00 – alyssum,  bachelor buttons, cosmos, dianthus,   impatiens,  lobelia, marigold, nicotania,  pansy, salvia, viola 

3 ½” pots – $3.00 – geraniums, petunias,  fuchsia 

Basket stuffers 2 ½” pots – $2.00 -  bacopa,  petunia 

Viola Hanging Bags - $10.00 

Spring Hanging Baskets (viola and pansy) - $12.00 

Vegetables

6 Packs – $3.00 – basil, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, dill, ground cherry, kale, lettuce, parsley, pepper

2 ½” pots -  $2.00 - pepper 

3 ½ “ pots - $2.00 – cucumber, giant leek,  squash , zucchini 

Tomatoes –  3 1/2” - $2.00 -  Arbason (beefsteak),  Early  Girl, Mountain Merit, Old German,

Red Robin (patio cherry), San Marzano (roma), Sun Gold, Super Fantastic, Sweet Million (cherry)

Perennials

1 gal - $5.00 – coneflower, delphinium, fox glove, hellebore, hollyhock, grass, hosta, hydrangea, iris, lamb’s ear,  lavender, lily, red hot poker,  rose,  sweet pea 

3 ½ “ pots -  $3.00 – arabas, aubrietia, bee balm,, columbine,  daisy, delphinium, fox glove, grass, hellebore, hollyhock, lavender, lily, lupine,  nirene, phlox, poppy blue, poppy scarlet, saxifrage, veronica,  yarrow  

   - mint, oregano, rosemary, thyme,  sedums

5 gal pots – $5.00- asparagus, blueberry, fig, grass

$10.00 pots – raspberry, rhodos, rhubarb

Happy Gardening!!!

March & Coleman's veg begins

 Dear Garden Lovers,

Here are some updates on what's been going on this month in the community garden!

Take a look at some of the winter veggies we have growing beside the usual winter Broadbeans : Kale, Chard, Sprouts and more. Click on the photo to enlarge it and to peer at the Purple Sprouting Broccoli.

Next, we have our Eliot Coleman "market gardening in Paris in 1875" project, which I will just call "the Coleman project". It's from the Coleman Winter Gardening book we all were reading in February. 

We are very very closely spacing the seeding of radish, turnip and later carrots, to imitate the very densely planted market gardens of Paris (which had the benefits of tons and tons of horse manure, which we must do with seaweed instead).

To this end, we have use very precise spacing techniques, and a giant green "dibbler" to space radishes at 2 and a quarter inches, and turnip at four and a half inches. It is already sprouting, if you lift up the floating row covers!

Click on the photo to enlarge this collage.

The hope is to produce lots of food in very little space, a topic also hit upon in Linda Gilkeson's latest newsletter . 

It is so cool to experiment with, and very fun to see the results so far! Huge thanks to Jim for thinking it all through, and organizing us to do it, all the while producing seedlings for the upcoming plant sale; amazing!

Comments welcome and will post more photos as the first, densely planted, spring crops come up. I'm kind of excited about two different colours of radishes too!

Cold but Clear

This week: The Community Garden plots are now looking clear, clean and weeded. The Saturday work parties have been fun and informative. Everyone is wanting to plant seeds, it's been so warm in the day, but last night there was SNOW! And there may be ice ahead, so we must clean our tools, mend our fences, and hold back from planting just yet! :>)

Outdoor sowing of peas was begun, and the community garden's broadbeans are looking great in their mulch duvet! It's still too cold to plant radish, turnip, spinach and pak choi, unless you sow under a cover, but according to the planting charts,  it's a good time for starting indoor seeds for leeks, onion, New Zealand spinach (good for cooking!) and perhaps a tray of cut-and-come-again mesclun if you have indoor lights or a not-too-cold greenhouse.

We enjoyed tasting cider (and one beer) at the social part of the work party. And laughs are had by all. Very enjoyable to be back. 

And, if it's too frosty to plant seeds, we can listen to a podcast interview about seed saving!

_____________________

Podcast Topic: 

Diversity of locally-sourced seeds needed to ensure food security

Listen here on i heart radio

Fiona Hamersley Chambers, owner of Metchosin Farm, speaks about the importance of genetic diversity in seeds and why locally-sourced seeds are needed in order to maintain our food security.

________________________

P.S. Oh yes, and I've updated some of the links in the right sidebar (but not all). Photos are welcome for put up here too, from gardeners!!

February inspiration

 Happy 2022 and welcome back to this blog!!

It's February and here are some new gardening inspiration sources from Cate!

1. Library book: Huge news!  A single book by Eliot Coleman from our own library, blew minds this week.

The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep-Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses by Eliot Coleman

Update: Here is the author himself in a 2018 presentation explaining how winter gardening in a cold greenhouse works: (video)

Feb 12/22 update: We plan to do two beds in the DIGS garden with radish, turnip and carrot rotation to be planted in March. Today (Sat workparty) we fertilized (RealMcCoy), limed, turned the soil, and topped it up with compost. Mike tamped it down with a rake. Looks good. Jim is ordering specific radish seed. After seeding, it will be covered with row cover cloth.

Also from Cate early February:

2. Book: Stephanie Hafferty and Charles Dowding book in the VIRL library.

3. Video: From Lawn to No-Dig abundance in five months

4. Magazine Article: Community Gardens of the World: In Chicago

Enjoy the information everyone, welcome back, and thanks Cate.

P.S. One more interesting presentation from Eliot Coleman! (video)

5. Eliot Coleman discusses "real organic" as opposed to co-opted corporate labels of 'organic':

Best,

Jen

DIGS Plant and Bake Sale May 13, 2018

Thanks to Francois for these photos.

Busy Little Gardeners May 5

Little Diggers were busy labeling their Mothers Day baskets and making baskets for their dad for Father's Day.

Potato Tower April 26

The Little Diggers were not put off by the rain last Sunday. They were building a potato tower - their favourite lesson!