Guided Work Party and Pruning Workshop - July 20th
What a busy and hot day!
Our plants need shade just as much as we do.
Possibly feeble attempt to shade the tomatoes from the extreme heat
and Kale!
Now is a good time to “edit” out plants in the garden to make space to plant fall crops! In the legume bed we picked the rest of the peas and cut them down, NOT removing the roots, and laid the pea plants down on the soil. This way we leave the organic materials to decompose and give back a bit to the soil, the plants act as mulch, and we don’t disturb the critters and microbes in the soil!
The sun was unrelenting, so we put up some tents over the veg garden to make things more comfortable while we worked! Lots of weeding and removing grass in this shade.
The pea vines were cut down and laid on the ground to mulch
Covered work area to shield us from the sun!
After a quick turning of compost, harvesting some lacinato kale, and summer squashes, we had a wonderful lunch from chickpea on main street! So tasty, the Kasum pitas with crispy fried cauliflower, sautéed turmeric-covered mushrooms & onions & lemon garlic sauce were a hit!
Turning compost is such a joyous time~
Pita wrap lunches, yum!
In the afternoon Alex ran a fruit tree pruning workshop! In Alex’s words, the most important take-away is to cut at the collar of the branch to promote healing (see figure 8 and figure 9). Some of Alex’s other tips include:
Clean your pruners! Before you start a pruning session, after your pruning session, and after you’ve made a cut on diseased tissues.
The three D’s: Dead, Diseased, or Damaged branches should be removed
Your branch might look dead… but it could be alive! Take a small peel of the branch and if you see green, the branch is still alive! If it's fully brown it's probably dead.
July is a good time to prune because of the climate in BC. The dry weather means that there’s reduced risk of fungal infections on new cuts.
But there was so much more information! Join us in our next workshop~
Jan