Little Explorers in the Garden - July

Our budding naturalists had an amazing day at the UBC Botanical Garden! We had two wonderful volunteers from UBC help guide us through the garden. In awe, the children were quiet and serene, awashed in green. We were impressed by all the leaf litter on the ground and leaf skeletons! The ground was also incredibly soft from all the soil and organic materials, something we don’t normally feel in the city.

Our volunteer guides then spotted an owl! This was a first for many of us as we looked above at the owl, and the owl looked below at us. As we made our way through the garden, we also spotted a yellow swallowtail butterfly dancing around.

A real highlight was the canopy walk, suspended in the trees, the kids were able to imagine themselves as the owl seen earlier, all of us now perched high in the garden. As we went through, we got up close and personal with some Western Red Cedars and Douglas Firs! Excited and with a bit of an adrenaline rush, we made it from beginning to end safe and together.

We then went through the Moon Gate and Tunnel. Because the inside of the tunnel was lined with corrugated metal, we pretended we were beans in a can! On the other side of the tunnel we made our way to the vegetable garden. There we saw lots of different veg including beans, peas, tomatoes, and more. Each of us got to try a pea, yum! 

Such an amazing day we won’t soon forget! This event was sponsored by the UBC Botanical Gardens and their generous contributors. Thank you for providing us with this opportunity to learn!

Guided Work Party - Aug 3

The perfect temperature for gardening, partly overcast with nice breezes! 

Checking on our vertical gardens!

Citizen Seed trial, bush beans

busy working away!

We harvested a whooping 1.5kg of blueberries. Our blueberry bushes have been so productive that there will be many more to come! Our wonderful volunteers also weeded out plantain from our pollinator flower beds to make room for more pollinator flowers. 

The paths around the garden were also looking a bit sparse, so we redistributed mulch around the garden. There was so mulch mulch, and it was tumulchous to move around but we did it! Puns courtesy of Art! The mulch had only been sitting around for 5 or 6 days but had already started composting and reached a whooping 45 Celcius! Our resident soil expert Art mentioned that if you needed to rid your compost of pathogens you’d want to have your compost reach 55C for over 15 days. 

Thank you very mulch to devinearboriculture for donating the mulch (contact information below)!

Selina gave us a great demonstration on how to make Calendula and St. John Wort infused oils. So simple, why not give it a try!

Jan

St. John’s Wort

Selina teaching us about home made salves

Making calendula oils!

Little Explores in the Garden - Aug 2

Today we welcomed 22 new explorers into the garden! We began with a discussion on companion planting with the blueberries and strawberries. Everyone got to try one blueberry each, yum! We all exclaimed a big thank you to Amy and Rita for going in and watering the plants to keep the garden looking healthy.

In the garden we then asked each other, are humans part of nature? Some said yes, because we take care of the planet. Some said they weren’t sure if humans were part of nature. Then we asked, where humans do humans come from and how do we fit into the natural world around us? We talked about how the world became oxygenated long ago by cyanobacteria to support all sorts of life. How the plant was once connected into one supercontinent called Pangea. Then how the world became populated by tree-like trees in the Devonian period! We talked about the history of the planet’s geology. Lastly, we thought about how we and many other species diversified, dispersed, and adapted over time until we got here. In the very core, we are a part of nature!

Being part of nature, we discussed how humans have used plant materials to express and build our cultures. In that fashion we made and decorated crowns out of willow and fireweed stems!

Everyone looks so majestic adorned with crowns!

Crowns adorned, we then went into the garden to plant nasturtiums, kale, and beans we started together several weeks ago. We also weeded the paths. Plants were chopped and compost was turned, what a wonderful day for our budding naturalists!

Jan

Chopping up materials for the compost!

Taking turns planting kale

Discussing, “what is a weed?” while weeding!

Into the ground the beans go!

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