I had a few aphid skeletons in my closet. Well in my greenhouse actually. These are the little white skins shed from aphids as they grow. They are more obvious than the aphids themselves. It’s all my fault really because I had a big plan to bring in some strawberries from my garden last fall and keep them alive in my greenhouse so that when they started growing I would have the first crop of aphids – oops I meant strawberries.
My babies wake up before I do. They take a drink and grow patiently while I lay about in bed. This is because i set up a timer for my seedlings so I no longer need to pop out of bed in the morning to make sure they are up and growing.
My recent farm field trip in Southern Alberta, courtesy Rudy Knitel, Galimax Trading Inc. was an amazing journey into my own back yard. I found out how difficult it is to farm organically in Southern Alberta. The carrots, for instance, are on a 16 year rotation at Leffers’ Organic farm where the cost to raise a carrot is ten times that of conventional farming.
With inbreeding, it doesn’t matter if you are a royal or a dog or a tomato. Disease builds up and weak traits multiply. With tomatoes the roots are susceptible to disease and are smaller; fewer fruits are formed and plants are feeble. Its no surprise. We have been breeding from the same few original plants for 200 years.
It is early days yet but the tomato competition is heating up as fruits ripen early in the greenhouse. The same varieties planted outdoors are no where near ready but that’s why I built the greenhouse. Okay if you get technical my husband built it – but why be so picky? The early birds come from the greenhouse, not from the sunny, south facing back yard right up against the house.
In the past, when SAIT instructors asked chef apprentices to get fresh vegetables from the school’s large walk-in coolers, they sometimes received blank stares. Names and appearances of vegetables were a mystery to many new apprentices. “The main reason we put so much extra time into the garden is to simply connect our students to the food. It’s one thing to teach them the skills of how to cook but a whole other thing to teach them about FOOD…”
