It’s Sunday afternoon and spring has really arrived!! I have finished expanding our number 2 plot, which is beside our propagation/wash-pack greenhouse. It was fenced to house four apple trees, two fig trees, garlic and spring snap peas. I had planted two more apple trees outside the fence, and now decided to expand the fence to protect the new trees from deers, and also have more space for zucchini for this summer season. The area is still covered with weeds, and I will clean-up next week so zucchini seedlings can be transplanted soon.

When I first planned to start small scale market garden, I bought two books, “the market gardener’ by a fellow Canadian Jean-Martin Fortier, and “New Organic Grower” by Eliot Coleman. Both of them insisted the importance of crop planning, so I do it as much as possible. In my 3 years of trial and fail though, very interesting thing is that plants select themselves and grow unexpectedly. When I was digging the edge of our garden to plant sunchokes last week, I surprisingly harvested potatoes, which we planted two years ago, and could enjoy them in my veggie soup. Or, in last year I planted cauliflowers too late, and saw they did not grow to their maturity before dark winter days started, but now I see them forming nice cauliflowers.

Or these volunteer potatoes at the edge of new radish bed…

Nature is still a wonder.

While Kenji was busy at the market last Saturday, Yoko was having fun doing koji workshop as part of IoTA. As per the feedback from the participants, we believe our mission “to prove healthy food can be delicious and fun” has been accomplished.

Our market schedule is as follows:

• Island Roots Farmers’ Market: Beban Park, 2300 Bowen Road, Nanaimo, 3 – 6pm on Wednesday
• AGI Market: AGI Hall, Gabriola, 10am – 1pm on Saturday

Thank you for reading our weekly newsletter. We will see you at the market!