Want to Start a Business?

Get fed up.

Every person I've met who has started their own business has done so successfully because they got to the point where they could no longer work for someone else. The reasons for getting fed up vary but it all boils down to the same thing.

Want to start a business?

Get fed up.

Then get to work.

Holiday Gift Giving Guide!

It's mid-November, so naturally everyone is losing their minds about Christmas. I thought I would write a quick no-nonsense guide to gift giving.

1. Ask someone if they want a gift.

This sounds very unromantic, but frankly a lot of people I know would prefer their relatives and friends stop giving them gifts. 

Those of us who have a healthy income can purchase what we need/want when we need/want it. Receiving a throw pillow shaped like an owl might be your idea of an excellent gift, but the person receiving might not actually want another pillow, or a pillow that doesn't fit with their style or colour scheme.

On the flip side, when you have a limited income gifts can be also be a burden. You likely are not able to afford to live in a large space to fill with stuff. My experience with uncertain employment involved me moving apartments every 6 months, extra stuff would have been no gift at all. 

2. If the answer to number 1 is yes, ask what they would like.

Again, this eliminates the element of surprise, fine, but even as a kid going out to choose my own Christmas presents was hugely exciting. The anticipation of knowing added to the joy of unwrapping them several weeks later.

Think about it, when someone gives you a gift out of the blue there is stress involved in receiving it. When you open it, no matter what it is, you have to look delighted in order to make the giver feel appreciated.  Opening a gift when you've told someone what you want is much easier. It's good to give people a few options so that they choose what is appropriate to their budget. Knowing what someone wants doesn't take away from your ability to be thoughtful. It's thoughtful to take the time to ask.

If you have children, this is also a good opportunity to introduce the idea that maybe if they have enough stuff that they would like an experience as a gift. Like a rock-climbing lesson, or taking their two best friends out to see a movie.

3. Whatever the person's answer to 1. or 2., respect it.

The expectation that someone needs to love a gift that you give them is unhealthy. If a man buys a woman a drink in a bar, does she owe it to him to thank him so much for his generosity? No. She doesn't even have to drink it. Why would you expect any different from your loved ones?

Consent is something we undermine constantly in our culture. If someone doesn't want a gift and you want to get them one anyway, at least give them an out. They don't want to hurt your feelings, but by virtue of ignoring their wishes, you are hurting theirs. At the very least mention "I really loved this, and I know you didn't want a gift so no pressure at all. If you don't like it, just give it to me and I will happily have this in my house." Certainly do not make them feel guilty 6 months from now when you don't see that sculpture of a dog sitting proudly in the middle of their living room.

4. Zero Waste gift ideas

A lot of items we buy as gifts come with a lot of packaging- I like to say 'no thank you' to having my food  or soap wrapped in garbage! Here is my favourite stocking stuffer gift idea: jars of treats. Glass jars come in various sizes and can be taken to a bulk food store and filled with smarties, chocolates, dried mango slices, cranberries, gummi worms, nuts, whatever! My godmother last year gifted me two decorated mason jars with cake and brownie mixes inside!

Glass, metal, and paper/cardboard are very easy to recycle and compared to plastic much less wasteful and toxic to the environment. Gifts in these kinds of packages are preferable. 

Glass bottles? Think wine, spirits, maple syrup, olive oil and balsamic vinegar. 

Experiences of all shapes, sizes, and budgets are out there, be creative!

5. Wrapping Without Waste

My family has been re-using gift bags for so long, I don't remember ever buying a gift bag.  If you haven't already got a collection of gift bags in your closet or holiday trunk, then I usually wrap a gift in cloth. If it is material that I particularly want back then I mention that to the recipient. Usually people offer it back anyway. Other alternatives exist, like using the pile-up of re-usable bags that you have as gift bags, but I leave that to your own creative minds.

6. Relax. 

Enjoy the holiday with people who you love and stop making something that is about life, love, and family, into something about consumerism. Happiness comes from within.

E

Deadlines

There are deadlines in all lines of work. In agriculture deadlines come in the form of weather forecasts, lambing season, ripeness of fruit, moisture content of crops, inspector visits, customer orders, and availability of labour.

One thing I have learned about myself in the year and a half since planting my orchard is that I am fundamentally a lazy person. If I don't have to do it this week, I put it off until next week. I have a huge to do list and more often than not when I cross something off it is usually because I have finally admitted to myself that particular item was simultaneously ambitious and completely pointless. 

This is surprising to me since every time I work for someone else, I give my all. Yet when left to my own devices I struggle to move on things. My to do list could be completely crossed off in two full days of work, but I procrastinate and procrastinate.

Except when there is a deadline. 

In the winter I plan my tree order for the spring and when the trees arrive it is a race to get them in the ground. Now, in the fall, I received two hundred flower bulbs (I want to experiment with bulb propagation) and as the weather forecast promised a week full of rain I spent a couple hours of my Saturday preparing beds, amending the terribly sandy soil I have at my home, and planting my bulbs in tidy rows. 

My to do list still has many items on it, with deadlines as far away as next spring. Some items, like protecting my tree trunks with wire cages, have more urgent deadlines. Realistically, having now begun to understand my relationship with my own self motivation, I now know I will likely get the cages onto the trees a few days before the first snowfall is forecast. 

Why should I be so surprised? This is how we were trained! Study the night before a test, do your homework the day before it's due. Deadlines got me this far, soon an orchard full of different fruits with different fertility, pruning, and harvesting deadlines will be managing my life and keeping me moving. For now, let's just do what needs to be done today.

Benjamin Franklin — 'Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today.'

Eden Valadez — 'For now, let's just do what needs to be done today.'

Between Stress and Semi-Retirement

This time last year my job involved driving an average of four hours per day. I bought food in take away containers. I stayed in motels every other week, and used the tiny disposable shampoo bottles. I opened the plastic wrappers on bars of soap. I made coffee in the motel room and no matter what the coffee maker situation was, this was always guaranteed to yield several items of garbage.

Suffering from imposter syndrome (thinking that I had got into my job by accident rather than merit) I worked seven days per week and didn't bill all my hours because I wasn't sure that I had been as productive as I should have been. I guess my employer must have liked my results because every time I was nearing the end of my client list I would be sent another inspector's client list and asked if I could expand into their region and take over their clients.

The result was that I was stressed out all the time. The job itself was great and I believe in the work the company does, but it wasn't allowing me to live the kind of life I wanted.

Less than a year ago I left that job for a lower paid position that I am extremely qualified for (so no need to worry about imposter syndrome!). I also decided to work part time instead of full time. In order to make my decision look more deliberate and impressive in the eyes of my peers and family I refer to my 'part-time' employment as 'semi-retirement'. I work 38 hours in 4 days, and have three days off per week. 

Since adopting this simpler life, I have been able to devote more energy to what I care about beyond my career. Mainly, the environment. I got myself into the zero-waste movement, and have a zero waste kitchen. This summer I have been bicycling to work almost every day. I use my car once per week. I have time to read about the issues. I email politicians. Because of my research I can have more intelligent conversations and have occasionally broken through to someone who was willing to do more but wasn't sure how. 

The past few weeks have been busy . As my time becomes more in demand and my levels of stress increase, so has the use of my car and my cravings for sugary or salty snacks wrapped in disposable wrapping. It is useful to notice that stress and a lack of time are so heavily linked to our reliance on convenience. The less time we have to fulfill our own personal needs, the less we care about the needs of others.

Working four days a week has been incredible for me. Five days per week going to school, then as an adult working five or seven days per week meant that the majority of my time belonged to someone else. Now I feel my life is mine and I have an adequate amount of time to pursue my hobbies, see friends and family, and sleep! By the time Monday rolls around I am looking forward to going back to work, and by the time I start looking forward to the weekend, I am already very close to it.

Working four days a week is not accessible to everyone, I know. My luck in life has gone up and down and this part of my life is clearly an up. There have been times, and I am sure there will be times in the future, where I needed to take all the hours I could get just to pay my rent. But if semi-retirement is accessible to you, and having more free time is appealing to you, then I highly recommend it. 

A cool way to approach it if you are paid hourly is to ask your boss for a raise. Then say you also want to work fewer hours per week. The employer spends less money paying you and they'll be getting a fresher and more productive you for the hours that you are working. It is a win for everyone.

Whatever your life struggles are; everything is temporary. If things are good, enjoy them while they last. If not, well, it's only a matter of time before things change.

Gardening for Butterflies

After my last post I received an excellent question: apart from leaving milkweed in my garden, "How else can we encourage the monarchs?"

Milkweed is known to be critical for monarchs as it is the only  plant upon which monarch caterpillars can feed. The adult monarch butterfly however, can feed on any nectar producing flowers. If you want to give them a nutritious pit stop, plant flowers in groups. This allows butterflies to hop from one flower to another using relatively little energy while getting a full meal. 

Here are five great flowers for attracting butterflies.

Coneflower

Purple Coneflower

Aster

Aster

Black Eyed Susan

Black Eyed Susan

Bee Balm

Bee Balm

Lupine

Lupines

This is a beginner's guide as the truth is any flower/plant is useful as a habitat or source of food for an insect. Clumps of grass are great shelter during rough weather, for example. There are flowering charts and extensive lists of flowers and plants that attract butterflies for those who want to be meticulous.  If you aren't interested in having a binder of study material rest assured that having a diversity of plant species is guaranteed to attract winged visitors. Hummingbirds will certainly be attracted by the red flowers of your bee balm.  The only way to go wrong when planning a butterfly garden would be to create a lawn or to use pesticides. 

Biodiversity is the best thing you can offer. Try having perennial flowers that will flower at different times during the season, so that there is always a nectar source. Indigenous weeds are awesome when your gardening budget is low, letting them grow to flower before pulling them up is a great way to create a mini habitat with a huge amount of biodiversity. Indeed, these plant might be host plants for caterpillars from other species of butterflies.

Simply put: have a garden! Your garden is a space you are sharing with wildlife and insects. It is a refuge for these species from the acres of conventional fields and from the pavement and buildings that cover our cities and suburbs. 

Lastly, do them one huge (obvious) favour; don’t cover the plants and soil with pesticides and herbicides. The land might be in your name, but the earth cannot belong to a person. Animals and insects constantly have their food poisoned for something as superficial as a 'perfect' rose bush.

Go forth and make Eden rise! Really, it is that easy.

Milkweed

Milkweed flower

It is important for the survival of the monarch butterfly that there is a 'milkweed highway' from Canada all the way down to Mexico. This is because milkweed in the only plant on which monarch caterpillars feed. Growing milkweed does not have to be just for this reason. The flower is attractive and the smell is strong, which makes it an appealing nectar source for other insects as well. Honey bees can harvest the nectar for their honey, solitary bees, and other butterflies come feed too.

Monarch caterpillar

The most fascinating part of my milkweed education was learning that it is food for humans too! I love all things edible, and as an environmentalist farmer I like finding perennial food sources that don't require any digging! 

Here is what I learned from a book called Backyard Foraging by Ellen Zachos:

Young milkweed shoots are tender and can be harvested when they are 6 to 8 inches tall, just snap them at the base. Then, remove the mature leaves but leave a few immature leaves at the top of the stem. To eat milkweed, you need to boil or blanch the plant before cooking with it. This removes the bitter sticky white goo inside. Once it has been immersed in boiling water for 1 or 2 minutes, treat it like green beans. They taste similar to green beans, but better (according to Ellen!).

The unopened flower buds are described as being tastier than broccoli. Harvest when they are still tightly bunched together, green, and golf ball size. Again, you must blanch first. Then try steaming them with salt and serve with olive oil.


The immature seedpods (1 1/2 inches long, inside should be all white- the seeds should not be turning brown yet!) can be harvested and blanched. Then, try them in soups, stews, or stir-fries. 

Eden is a place where we can live from the land without destroying it. What better way than to allow this 'weed' a place in your garden. The monarch gets a place to lay eggs, the bees get a drink of nectar, and you get to try eating one of thousands of plant species we have forgotten.

Fantastic!

I Will Never be Vegetarian

I assume everyone reading this blog knows about the impact eating meat has on the environment. If you don't, and you want to educate yourself here is one link out of hundreds of resources available to you:  https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/meat-and-environment/ I am not a scientist and the point of this blog is not to bombard you with statistics, so please look elsewhere for those icy numbers.

For years I have been toying with becoming Vegetarian because I know it is the Right Thing to do. For a few years I wasn't doing it because I was in a relationship with someone who was very outspoken against vegetarianism and veganism (he genuinely believed if my friend would eat meat she could be magically cured of a chronic illness). Then for a couple years my excuse became that I didn't want to inconvenience my family.

Two months ago I learned that I suffer from co-dependency issues. I am afraid that by standing up for my beliefs and my ethics people will not like me, so I let myself disappear into the background. Having vocabulary for behavioural patterns is instrumental in being able to alter them. This is impacting several aspects of my life, including my diet. I wasn't becoming vegetarian, something I have always believed in, simply because I was afraid of setting a boundary.

I will never be Vegetarian. The label "vegetarian" is associated with hippies who love animals and think with their emotions first. I have worked on farms that produce animals for meat, and I have plucked the heart from the bodies of many dead turkeys in my line of work. I do not want to be a Vegetarian.

I do practice vegetarianism and I do eat a plant-based diet because I am an Environmentalist. I no longer eat meat. I want my intake of animal products (products like eggs and cheese) to be a very occasional treat. Eating fish of any kind has been off the table for me for awhile since I educated myself on the effects of fishing on our oceans (which will be dead by 2050 if we continue as we are). 

If you are an environmentalist I strongly suggest you practice vegetarianism. If you aren't sure how that would help, there is a lot of information out there that will convince you without a doubt that it is a necessity. If you suffer from a fear of judgement the way I do, start small. Setting boundaries for people with co-dependency issues is very difficult, but you need to. None of us should be afraid of being ostracized for doing the right thing. Practice vegetarianism for meals when you are alone at the very least. 

This is the simple biggest thing you can do to reduce your impact on the environment. It is time to start.

The Us Versus Them Bias

At lunch break my colleague expressed sorrow for the people who saved up money for a holiday and had to come home early because of hurricane Irma. Another colleague said yes, but they were lucky because she knows that some people weren't even able to book another flight-- they had to stay for the storm.
I frowned over my lunch and quietly said "yes, it is a shame for the rich people* who have gone on vacation. I think it's probably worse for the people who actually live there."
They immediately agreed, but it hit on a theme I had been thinking of for a few months. 

I remember in middle school we learned about the rainforest in science class. The ongoing destruction of this delicate forest for more farmland. What they didn't teach us was that this farmland was used to grow crops that would feed livestock and that by eating meat we were contributing to the destruction of forest ecosystems. They also didn't teach us that Canada's forests are also continuously being cut down and burned for agriculture. Instead, they taught me that people in these almost imaginary far off lands were less educated than our class of 12 year olds. They were cutting down these precious forests because they didn't know any better. 

By that age I knew enough about Canadian history to know that all the farmland around my school had once been a mature forest. It seemed that if we cut down forests in the past, that was okay, but people cutting down forests now was bad. And since all our forests were cut down a long time ago, we can no longer take any of the blame for ongoing climate change.

Last year I worked as an organic farm inspector. Before I go on, I want to point out that I do believe in organic farming and that all farming should be organic by default. Pouring poison directly on our shared planet and directly on the plants that feed us is frankly horrifying. But here is something problematic I discovered during the course of my work.

In order to avoid the three year transition phase for a conventional field to produce organic food** farmers were clearing forested land in order to plant their organic crop and earn certification in their first year. Because this land had never been farmed conventionally there was no need for a transition period. 

This is the problem when ethics clash with capitalism. Farmers are business people. They want more money for the business. That forest is not generating any income, we need to downsize the parts of the business that do not generate income and expand into new product lines that do. Hence, cut down the forest to produce organic buckwheat, hemp, corn, soybeans. Of course, this goes against the philosophy of organics, but it is hugely wound in our society's way of perceiving money as Good above all else. We worship the thing that makes us slaves.

Blaming people across the world for practices we ourselves perform, and then feeling sympathy for our own when natural disasters (exacerbated by our thirst for carbon and our destruction of perennial vegetation) is all part of the same problem. We see Us as something different than Them.  We are all humans that share one planet. If we could do away with borders, maybe we could see that more clearly. What affects one person in our global community affects us all. 

It can be overwhelming as an individual to realize our way of life is being attacked by capitalism and climate change from all directions, and yet we do have power to change things. Want to fight back against capitalism? Stop consuming more than what you need. Want to reduce your impact on the earth? Stop participating in practices that are known to contribute to climate change. In the meantime, we need to stop blaming the Other and start holding ourselves and our neighbours and our communities accountable for what we have the power to change.


*I know that not everyone who goes on holiday is rich from the lens of someone who lives in Canada. Compared to their neighbours they may not consider themselves rich, but compared to the global community, they are.

**Farmers want to avoid this transition period as the first years of transition have lower yields and as the crop is still considered conventional, they cannot demand the higher prices that make organic production competitive.

Drinking to a Healthy Community

Buy local.

We all know we should do it, and there are some pretty obvious ways we know how. Choose the local strawberries, shop at your farmer's market, buy soaps and Christmas gifts from local small businesses. 

Even though in principle I know I ought to buy local, there are some areas of my consumption where I had never connected the dots. Possibly because it had never occurred to me that there was a local alternative to the brand names with which I was familiar. 

I'm talking about spirits and cocktails.

My first priority in moving into my very own apartment was to have a fully stocked bar. Yes, nothing screams privilege like having your own bar and I was a good little consumer for wanting one. Luckily my mother made me the first offering toward my home bar; a bottle of gin distilled only an hour's drive away. This opened my eyes to the fact that I previously had thought nothing of buying gin imported from England, despite always choosing wine based on geographical proximity (anything but Merlot and Chardonnay, obviously).

To my delight there are several other flavourful Canadian gins(one is certified organic)! It doesn't end there, in the winter I am fond of Baileys in my coffee. Would you believe there were two Canadian cream liquors available in my local boozery? Not only that but I found Canadian coffee liquors, vodka, and whisky. Everything I wanted for my bar had a local equivalent. Though the brand name was different, the flavour and price were basically identical. 

Eden's Rise is about making our world more habitable, for ourselves and those who share this earth with us. What better way to be an activist than by choosing to consume products that have travelled a shorter distance?

Cheers to you!

Climate Change

"For more than forty years, the view of the Earth from space has been the unofficial logo of the environmental movement- featured on countless T-shirts, pins, and bumper stickers. It is the thing that we are supposed to protect at U.N. climate conferences, and that we are all called upon to "save" every Earth Day, as if it were an endangered species, or a starving child far away, or a pet in need of our ministrations. [...]

When we marvel at the blue marble in all its delicacy and frailty, and resolve to save the planet, we cast ourselves in a very specific role. That role is of a parent, the parent of the earth. But the opposite is the case. It is we humans who are fragile and vulnerable and the earth that is hearty and powerful, and holds us in its hands. In pragmatic terms, our challenge is less to save the earth from ourselves and more to save ourselves from an earth that, if pushed too far, has ample power to rock, burn, and shake us off completely."

-Naomi Klein
An excerpt from the book This Changes Every Thing - Capitalism vs. The Climate 

Minimalism Inside and Out

Last year I got very excited about decorating Eden's Rise with upcycled objects, and wrote a post about it (link here). I have since adopted minimalism, or simplicity, as a lifestyle. At its most basic, living simply means living with what you need, what you use regularly, and removing the excess. 

When I look at decorations in people's gardens, and my own attempts at adding decorative flourishes to Eden's Rise, I am embarrassed by the enthusiasm I had in this regard last year. Man-made objects deteriorate rapidly when exposed to the elements. My neighbour on one side has a crumbling concrete bench, another has a rusting statue of a knight in armour, another has a peeling lawn gnome. My decorations are no different. The post I wrote about upcycling was called "Paradise or Junkyard: The Fine Line". What keeps objects on one side of the line is regular maintenance. 

Part of the philosophy of minimalism and simplicity is that even though you are not aware of the 'stuff' in your house taking up your time, they do require maintenance. Whether literally, in tidying up, or in a larger mortgage to afford the space to store all those useless (to you) objects. I was blind to the fact that my orchard decorations would become a drain on my time-- I prefer to spend my time working with the plants, not repainting decorative gates or repairing raised beds. 

Here is a quote from Francine Jay to start your week:

"Strive not to get more done, but to have less to do."

Plants Have Problems Too

My gooseberries are having a rough time. The leaves began to show small black spots, then eventually they dropped off the plants. As of now they are all still alive, a couple new leaves are growing on each plant, but I doubt they have had enough of a chance to strengthen themselves in order to survive a Canadian winter.

What is happening? 

Black spots on the leaves are usually the sign of a fungus. This fungus comes from leaves that fell last year; the spores flew up to the new foliage in the spring. What annoys me is that this makes no sense; I planted all of these plants this spring before they had any foliage and there were no gooseberries in my field previously. There is no cure or remedial action to be taken. The recommendation is to plant gooseberry varieties which are resistant to this disease/fungus/mystery death. This means I spent $400 on plants that were doomed to die because of their genetics. Fantastic.

My currants are looking a bit yellow as we approach fall. I wonder if their feet are too wet, or if there is a lack of nitrogen in the soil. They have grown about 8 times the size that they were in the spring when I planted them, so they seemed happy enough until a couple weeks ago. I did add manure to the plants a month or so after they were planted. I wasn't overly generous as I worried applying manure when plants were so young could burn the immature root tips. In the fall and spring I will apply more generous amounts in order to increase the nutrients in the soil, and continue with regular applications of manure every year.

Yesterday the blueberries received their aluminum sulphate, which should work to reduce the soil pH. I also applied some peat moss below the bushes which increases soil organic matter and acidity too. I picked the last of the blueberries yesterday, as well as eating a couple plums and chums. I wasn't supposed to let them produce fruit until year 4 (this is year 2) but I wanted to sample the fruit to know which trees are worth ordering more of.

That's the update from the wee orchard!

A Better Life

When I visited the village of Barauli, Nepal in April I fell in love with the place. The houses were small, on half acre lots where the land was perfectly levelled and filled using a system of ditches connected to the river ankle deep with water. Rice was growing in perfect rows and women hand weeding the fields, barefoot. 

Through the streets there were women walking their small herds of goats, or water buffalo. Many of them wear dresses in vibrant colours- clothes I would never dream of wearing for farm work for fear of getting them dirty! Around the houses there were chicks, chickens, and ducks. I walked all of the streets of that village on my own, everyone said hello as I walked past, and I felt safe and at home and more than anything I wanted to live there.

When I visited a city less than an hour from my home two weeks ago (Perth, Ontario) I was surprised to find it equally appealing, with flowers exploding out of every possible nook and cranny, the main streets are full of stores, pubs, and cafes run and owned by local people. The farmers market had live music and lots of interesting vendors. I wanted to move there too!

The problem with this thinking is that it doesn't allow me to fully appreciate my role in the community where I currently live. If I want my community to become like Perth or Barauli, I have to be part of that change. I have to stop looking with jealousy at what another has and put that energy into turning what I do have into something that is worth appreciating. 

My village has that look of a place which might have at one time been bustling with a lively centre but which has since been slowly dying. The symptom of nearby box stores offering people lower prices along with lower quality of life. 

If I want to live in a place vibrant and alive like Perth or Barauli (without moving there), I need to be the change I want to see in my community. I can make my front yard explode with colour and plant life. I can create a garden that can feed me, and share the excess with my neighbours. I can say hello to everyone I walk past. I can go to the art studio across the street that hosts live music on Sunday mornings to show there is a demand in this little village for affordable entertainment. I can give up the uncomfortably tight waistband of jeans and wear my beautiful dresses that I usually save for 'special' occasions that never come. 

This theme of making our place on earth more beautiful was a big part of my choosing to start Eden's Rise. I chose the name "Eden's Rise" for my orchard because I like that it invokes the idea that this orchard is where the Garden of Eden begins to reclaim the earth. 

I want to invite everyone to take their own journey and remember what is really important to them. Quiet the voice of culture and listen the child that lives within you. The version of you that survives societal pressures to conform. When you think of where in the world you would prefer to be - or what in the world you would prefer to be doing - I want you to really acknowledge those thoughts. Don't push them aside. There's no thought too big to be worth exploring. 

I have started with very small ways I can make my world better today, but I dream of living in a world where women are not still sold into sex slavery, a world where there are no borders preventing people from living in areas where they can find better work, a world where everything doesn't need to be wrapped in plastic, a world where we place more importance on preserving biodiversity than on making profits, a world where we care more about the health of people than profits.

We cannot do the work of improving this world if we don't first imagine what a perfect world looks like. Once we admit there is a problem with the current state of things we can begin to find a solution. Perhaps together we can make our world even just a little more like the Eden of which we dream.

Blueberries turning red in August

There's a lot to be said about doing your homework and learning from the experience of others, rather than reinventing the wheel. In many areas of my life I do learn in that way, but sometimes you have to learn by making your own mistakes.

Intellectually I knew my soil was far too alkaline for blueberries, and while I made some small effort to mulch with pine needles I did not think that the effects of a high pH would affect my blueberries this early on. I was under the impression it would reduce the amount of berries the plants produced years in the future. I have been growing uneasy throughout the summer as my blueberry leaves have been turning gradually redder and now I am forced to admit I should have taken action months ago. 

The pH of a soil will not kill your plants, what happens is that the acidity of the soil affects the plant's ability to take up certain nutrients. Nutrient deficiency leads to weak plants, and eventually death. Since blueberries evolved in areas where soil acidity was higher, they are adapted to take up nutrients in a pH of around 4 or 5. Most other plants seem to like a slightly acidic soil of 6.5. 

My blueberry plants are now bright red and waiting to be rescued. I was able to buy a tiny amount of aluminum sulphate which lowers pH, and I sprinkled it around all of my plants. There was nowhere near enough in the tiny box which was likely for people who own 4 rhododendrons. I ordered 25kg of ammonia sulphate which will be more than enough for my 60 blueberry plants. I read online that coconut coir can also help blueberries in neutral soils, though it didn't seem clear to me why this should be. I happened to have kept half a dozen old bags of coconut coir that were used to grow tomatoes in a greenhouse; I mulched the blueberries with this yesterday. It is my hope that this will help them struggle through this period until I can give them their "medication". 

There you have it, I knew what I needed to do to have happy blueberry plants and yet I needed to see the effect of not doing it before I bothered taking action. This is not a good trait to have, but learning first hand helps the information stay in my brain permanently. 

A small harvest

Have a lovely week,

Eden

Fix it or buy Refurbished

After my last post I decided I would finally take my blog seriously by releasing a post on a weekly basis and really digging into gardening and environmentalism. Life has a way of throwing us curve balls. As I began research on a new blog post my laptop, which had already been consistently giving me a hard time, spluttered and died. 

As a person born into a society where when something breaks it is easiest to go buy a new one, I was tempted to donate the computer for scrap and buy myself a shiny new one. However, as someone who is becoming increasingly environmentally aware (attempting zero-waste, using reclaimed materials for renovations, cycling to work, eating a mostly plant based diet, etc.) I decided this was a perfect time to practice what I preach.

I do not like to support big box stores if I can help it, so I found a website that some dude in my village created claiming he can fix broken laptops. I contacted him, brought the laptop to his home, and waited. I'm still waiting.

My friend shared this website with me as an option in case I decide to give up waiting for my freelance geek: https://www.newegg.ca/Refurbished/Store

Refurbished electronics, yay!

It can be inconvenient to be eco-aware. I've been without a laptop for over one month now and it makes paying my bills on time more difficult, I miss watching videos (I don't have a TV so all my visual entertainment came from the laptop), and I want to have a computer again. After living 16 years of my life in steady presence of technology I do miss it. I am strong willed enough that I will not sacrifice my dedication for the environment in exchange for convenience, so the wait will continue. 

I hope my readers will consider making the same choices.

Before buying something new to replace something broken, try to fix it or try to buy that product second-hand or refurbished. No matter what it is. I had a second-hand flicker-y lamp, and rather than buy a whole new lamp I just had to buy a tiny new plastic part for it to work properly. Let's try to recycle the resources we've already extracted before mining for new ones and increasing our polluting influence on this planet.

Have a lovely week and continue to practice the art of patience!

Why Does my Tree Only Bear Fruit Every Other Year?

Last summer someone wondered aloud to me that there were not many wild flowers. This year, walking through the forest and wild meadow on the way to the orchard flowers are exploding from the ground, trumpeting life and the air buzzes with insects. I knew that 2016’s drought was a heavy one for our area, but the stark contrast with 2017’s wet spring is shocking.

My fruit trees are growing like fireworks, currant bushes I planted as twigs in May have quadrupled in size. The blueberries I planted this spring have already outgrown the ones that struggled to survive the dry summer. The grass last July was brown and flattened against the earth, now it makes a solid green curtain reaching my navel. It has turned the orchard into a maze where I have to guess the general direction of my Honeyberries to find them. The grass is taller than most of my berry bushes, but they don’t seem to mind. They all have a small radius where I have weeded and mulched the 'root zone'. After all the rain we’ve been having and my application of manure last week the orchard is singing. A monarch butterfly flutters past, floating above the tall grasses and flowering milkweed.

This week I’d like to address a question sent by a reader asking why their apple tree did not flower this year. I commonly get asked about this sort of fruit tree behaviour. The alternate version of the same question is: Why does my fruit tree only bear fruit every other year?

Trees run on a two year cycle when it comes to flowering. Trees want to produce fruit and seeds in order to create offspring. Imagine this year your tree is not producing any fruit. It is going to put a lot of energy into creating flower buds which will be able to produce fruit next year. Fast forward to next year, the tree is loaded with pollinated flowers and it is using all of its energy to ripen its immense load of fruit. This means that during this second year the tree has not been able to invest energy into next year’s flower buds. Year three we are back to a tree with no fruit.

In commercial orchards farmers control the fruit set by spraying the trees (in both conventional and organic agriculture this is a permitted practice, though the chemicals and techniques differ) in order to make them drop two thirds of the potential fruit load. This means the apples, or peaches, or plums that are left on the tree will ripen bigger and more flavourful.  At the home scale you can thin fruit by hand and ladder. My second year working in agriculture I spent a few days in spring thinning fruitlets on peach trees in a greenhouse in northern Ontario.  It is a slow process, but it improves fruit quality and ensures a harvest for next year.

Once trees have gotten used to biennial bearing, it is very difficult to restore them to annual bearing. As far as I am aware it is not impossible, but the ease at which you can bring those trees back is largely affected by how long they have been allowed to bear fruit in this way.

Your berries won't need thinning, they are pretty good at self-regulating. You should thin your grapes to improve flavour. The amount of grapes you leave on depends on the vineyard, the use for the grapes (wine or fresh eating), and the climate. Go with your gut, trust your instinct. Often when it comes to plants the power of observation will lead you to the right place.

Hoping you enjoyed a lovely summer solstice, have a lovely week.

-E.V.