It’s summer and plants are growing fast. When I first moved to Gabriola, I heard people say that someone’s zucchini grew so much overnight and he would not know what to do with it, so he would throw the giant zucchini into your car if it is parked with windows open. I wanted to see really how fast summer veggies grow, and decided to measure one of our Suyo cucumber plants. On Saturday afternoon around 5 pm, we measured the distance between green trellis clip and the tip of the plant as shown in the photo below. It was 24.5mm.

And we measured the same distance on Sunday morning at 9 am, and as shown in the photo below, it was almost 25.5mm. In the span of 16 hours, this cucumber plant grew by about 1 cm! No wonder we needed to add trellis clips every 2~3 days so that the plant top would not droop down from the trellis string! If the plant grows 2 cm every day (Saterday was not particularly sunny day. If the weather would be better, it should have grown more). Unfortunately, our zucchinis are not growing like this, though. I think it is because they were planted too close to a fir tree which may be robbing water and nutrients from them… (One master gardener I talked to in the spring at Island Roots Market said fir tree’s root can reach up to 20’ from its trunk bottom. Our zucchini patch is within this range). Otherwise, I could have proved those anecdotes of zucchini growing to giant size overnight!

Most of the plants prefer slightly acidic soil to flourish. However, if the soil is too acidic, plants cannot efficiently absorb nutrients. We have some crops that are not doing well this season, such as beets that did not grow , or collard greens in one section of our garden which are really struggling. I asked one of our fellow island farmers for advice. He recommended us to have our soil tested as it might be too acidic. If that is the case, we should amend it with lime. Our garden is 4 years old from original forest state and we have never tested or amended it with lime. It was fine for the first 2 seasons with lots of compost given, but we had a few issues last year. Forest floor, particularly with pine (or fir, I guess) needles decomposed is naturally acidic. When the garden was made and truck loads of compost were added, PH neutral compost might have corrected PH to some extent. However, as we wrote sometime ago, our original soil is very sandy with lots of rocks, and our place is up high on the hill, therefore, drainage of our garden is too good (water drains down the hill with essential minerals in the soil). When minerals such as magnesium is lost, the soil becomes acidic. Besides soil test, you can tell your soil PH by what kind of weed and crops flourish. One weed which likes acidic soil is plantain and we see lots of them in our garden this year.

Potatoes also thrive in acidic soil and they are in fact doing great this year.

Amending our soil will be another project to be completed during coming winter and early spring.  

Despite all these challenges, we could bring first cucumbers to the market last week, and we see tomato fruits on their vine!  

We are grateful we can grow these delicious vegetables in our small garden on this beautiful island.  

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 – 2pm on Saturday

Thank you for reading our weekly newsletter. Have a warm summer week!