Student Commons

Welcome to our new Student Commons page!

This is a private area for Seed to Table students to connect with each other.

Our former Classroom forum space was built on a platform that is no longer supported by my web host. Therefore, we'll be transitioning to using this "groups" platform for our online interaction. Supposedly, the old Classroom forum pages will be accessible until March 2026, but posting there will soon be disabled and the pages may become dysfunctional before then. If there is an old post you would like to view there, click here to visit the old Classroom forum.

Here's a quick introduction to help you become familiar with the new space.

I should also point out a couple of helpful icons on the top right of the page, as circled in the image below. The red circle highlights a search bar function that you can use to help find things once there are more things here. The green circle highlights three dots that you can click to adjust your notification preferences. This is important if you wish to be notified when anyone responds to your posts here.

And to lead by example, I suppose I'll share a few photos from our latest garden work. I don't like to overwhelm this Student Commons area with too many of my photos, because I have lots, 🙂 but I'll share a few today. Remember that you can always find a ton of my stuff on the Field Journal page or past garden tours on the Recordings page.

Our kitchen garden has basically been copied and pasted into this new little nook in front of our barn. It's got eight 3x5ft raised beds and a border of landscape fabric to fend off the grass for the first year or two. Once the grass is taken care off, I'll likely remove the fabric and put down a thick layer of wood mulch like we've started in between the beds.

The new market garden area has a mix of grass killing work and full planted beds right now. In the foreground here, I've just pulled off a tarp to assess how much life there is in the grass. This is where our greenhouse will be assembled in the next year, hopefully some time before the snow falls, but we'll see if that makes it to the top of the priority list.

Further back in the market garden, we've got some pretty typical beds with my preferred style of production. These are all 20 foot by 30 inch beds. I'm using a bit more landscape fabric that I would normally because this area was all grass last fall and since I didn't have enough time for a thorough kill it's going to be poking through by vegetable crops all summer long. In the background, you can see that the other half of the garden is still tarped. That tarp will remain there all summer so that the grass beneath it is killed once and for all...without me having to did it up repeatedly.

On the other half of our property, I'm building a new u-pick garden area with much longer 100ft beds and a crop selection more appropriate for u-pick. The four central beds in the above photo will be our first big strawberry patch eventually, but this year, the grass pressure was too much to deal with and I didn't want grass to be poking through our strawberry patch for 4 years, so instead of strawberries this year, I've just planted two crops that can be thoroughly mulched so they can grow in the space while eradicating the grass. Under the white row covers is winter squash, and amongst the mulch are potatoes.

To the left and right of our squash and potato beds are some new raspberry beds, also flanked with landscape fabric to take out the grass. There's a foot or so of space between the fabric that has been heavily mulched, and there's drip line running under that mulch as well. The raspberries are starting to come back to life so it looks like the transplanting was a success. As for raspberry varieties, we've planted two 100 foot rows of Boyne, one 100 ft row of Nova, and one 100ft row of a golden variety that is unknown, maybe Anne or Honey Queen. We inherited it from a neighbour at our old house, and it's delicious so we're bringing it along with us.

The winter squash are cozily tucked under row cover for some added warmth this June and also for protection from the stronger winds out here. Unlike the raspberries, each plant has been transplanted through a 4" hole in the landscape fabric for the best possible grass suppression. Drip lines run under the landscape fabric. The row covers will come off when the flowering begins or when the plants are too big to be contained, whichever comes first.

To the left of that squash/raspberry/potato patch is more grass killing, just a 100ft by 25ft tarp doing its job quietly everyday. I had dreamed of planting some Saskatoon berry rows here this spring already but it's been a busy few months and if I start this planting now, I'd just be battling the quackgrass in this area for the next decade. So instead, I opted to delay the Saskatoon berry planting until next spring and let the grass die thoroughly first.

At the back of our property is the apple orchard where we've started some mulching. Each tree is getting a surrounding ground cover of cardboard topped with a thick layer of wood chips. Eventually, I hope to turn these patches of mulch into full rows of mulch along the rows of trees so that I'm not having to mow ridiculous patterns throughout the orchard, just a few straight strips of grass between the rows of trees.

Lastly, one of the fun new projects this spring has been grafting apple trees. Unfortunately, we don't know the varieties of apples in the existing orchard here, and we'd like some improved varieties as well, so I thought I'd try my hand at grafting. Earlier this spring, I bought a bunch of dwarf rootstock and scion wood from desirable apple varieties, and basically sliced and taped them together as carefully and correctly as I could. There were some deaths in the process, but I'm happy to report that many trees survived the experience and we'll have some new apples to add to the orchard at some point. I should also say that it's just the large pots that contain apples. The crates are filled with extra raspberries.