Broccoli Sprouts as Medicine: Sulforaphane

I've been having issues with my left knee for a year now. When I twist it or run on it, it feels sore. Before my MRI results came back, someone suggested it may be due to arthritis. Well, turns out I had a torn meniscus. This did not stop me from researching cures for arthritis.

Why Sulforaphane?

There are myriad benefits to eating sulforaphane. Some of my favourite benefits are the prevention or delay of:

1. arthritis;
2. Alzheimer's;
3. cancer; and
4. diabetes.

Broccoli Sprouts vs Mature Broccoli

I started researching the role of broccoli to reduce arthritic symptoms and came across broccoli sprouts as a much more potent source of sulforaphane, which is the salient component of broccoli. Three day old broccoli sprouts contain 10 to 100 times the amount of sulforaphane of mature broccoli.

One ounce (28 g) of broccoli sprouts has 10 times the amount of glucosinolates as half a cup of mature broccoli. So your jar of broccoli sprouts is equivalent to eating 50 cups of mature broccoli!

How much broccoli sprouts should you eat daily?

According to Dr. Rhonda Patrick:

1 g of broccoli sprouts has 0.425 mg of sulforaphane.

Studies have shown beneficial effects of sprouts on inflammation, cancer biomarkers, or a reduction of triglycerides with a dose of 40 to 60 mg/day of sulforaphane, or 100-140 g of broccoli sprouts.

Each 1L jar of broccoli sprouts, grown from two tablespoons of broccoli seeds, produces 280 g of broccoli sprouts or around 90-120 mg of sulforaphane. I did not get as high a yield as Dr. Patrick. I was only able to produce 160 g of broccoli sprouts per jar.

Of course, the longer you grow the sprouts, the heavier they become. I weighed them at the four day mark.

In other words, each jar contains sufficient sprouts for two people per day, or about one tablespoon of broccoli seeds per person.

One tablespoon of broccoli seeds produces about one cup of broccoli sprouts.

Increasing bioavailability of sulforaphane

Dr. Rhonda Patrick suggests soaking the sprouts for 10 minutes at 70C to increase the bioavailability of sulforaphane. You must be careful not to overheat the sprouts as this will destroy the myrosinase which is used to create sulforaphane.

How much is too much?

Four cups of sprouts is the limit for toxicity.

Raised Bed Garden Watering

It's been months since I bought the wrong watering kit for my garden.  Yesterday, in a fit of energy, I finally returned the wrong and got the right.

This is the right one, from Lee Valley.  The cost is $26.50.

Here is the instruction sheet.

Sounds easy right?  Well it actually was easy!  From start to finish, it took 40 minutes, which includes time to look for pants to wear, so, um, it really took maybe 35 minutes.

After removing tape from the coiled rolls of hose, I grabbed a pair of scissors to cut the feeder hose to length.  I fretted that it would be hard to uncoil the hose, but it wasn't too bad.

1.  Attach header hose to hose/faucet connector.

2.  Attach hose/faucet connector to faucet, which is off!  This helps to straighten out the header hose, which miraculously became straight after attaching to the faucet.

3.  Lay out your header hose.  I led the hose right to  my garden and lay it along the edge of the long wall.

I decided to use all 5 included sprinklers for my 12 foot bed by putting a sprinkler in every two feet.

For each sprinkler:

1.  Punch a hole in the Header Hose using the Hole Punch.  This compresses the Hose but eventually the Hole Punch will make it through.  You can plump up the Hose after you've inserted the feeder tube by re-shaping it with your fingers.

2.  Each Spectrum Spike has an end connector attached it (picture below, my thumb and forefinger are holding on to the end connector.  Twist it off.  

3.  Push the slanted end into the punched hole.  It may click into place.

4.  Cut a length of Feeder Tube.  It runs between the Header Hose and your Spectrum Spike.  I needed about 2 feet to reach the centre of my bed.  You will need five of these for the five Spectrum Spikes.  I ended up making some too long.

5.  Attach Feeder Tube to the end connector attached to the Header Hose.

6.  Attach the Feeder Hose to the Spectrum Spike and push the Spectrum Spike into the soil.

7.  Attach the End Connector to the Header Hose.

Done!  Unfortunately, my plants are too tall at this stage for the sprinklers.  The maximum height of the plants for the sprinklers is 12 inches.  I should have installed it a long time ago.  So I have been eating the leaves in the way of the sprinkler, but there are quite a few outer edge spots that the sprinkler won't reach, simply because there are plants in the way.

Here are the sprinklers in action.  Adjust the sprinkler output by screwing/unscrewing the top cap of the sprinkler.

Consulting with a Gardening Guru

A garden that screams "My gardener is absolutely clueless."

Who could resist?  An offer from my friend to have his gardening guru friend come and take a look at my garden?  Larry is someone with experience since childhood in the ways of growing things, and was one of the folks in charge of BARAGA, a huge community garden in Burnaby.  I first heard about Larry when my friend offered me some leftover leek seedlings just waiting for a home.

Larry's leek seedlings

I was curious about what Larry would say about my garden, the type of garden which screams, "My gardener is absolutely clueless."

The first thing he noticed was the lack of irrigation.  I sheepishly explained that I water the garden by standing there with a hose.  He suggested a tube system, 25 feet, with 16 emitters placed every 2 feet, plus a pressure relief valve, or to avoid turning on the water full blast.  I took his suggestion and headed to Lee Valley and picked up the $34 Fence Mount Sprinkler Kit, because it was the only thing I saw online.  Later I found that there were definitely more options when I did a search for irrigation.  There is a specific Raised Garden Bed kit, which is cheaper at $28 than $33 and does not require my purchasing mounting clips.  I've got to go back and make the exchange soon!

We went through the different vegetables planted in my SFG.

I had carrots still in the ground from last year.  He said that carrots are biennial and that once they flowered, they would turn woody and be no longer good to eat.  Well, thank goodness my kids plucked most of the carrots out (without my permission) a few weeks ago.  The carrots are only just beginning to flower this week, the middle of May.

As for my leftover kale, once it flowers I need to pluck off the flower and it will continue to taste all right, but I should soon yank it out.

Tomatoes should be chosen on the time to maturity.  Our growing season is not very long and tomatoes need warm weather to come to maturity, so I should aim for 60 days as a maximum time requirement.  Days to maturity can be tricky: it is not from when you plant the seed, but from when the plant first comes up that you count the days to maturity.  The gold nugget variety is not as flavourful as the sun gold.

As for my horrendous beets, which seem to develop lush tops but skinny roots, he suggested not to plant too early.  Early April is as early as it gets.

Foreground: Beets.  Background: Spinach.

He chuckled at my zucchini, asking whether I knew how much room it would take up, since I planted its square right next to my mizuna square.  Yes, I was aware that it would soon take over a huge space in the garden, but I figured the quick growing mizuna might make it to a big enough size before the zucchini went Godzilla on me.  He said it would take FOUR square feet when grown, which I confirm is the case from my plant last year.

From front to back: zucchini, mizuna, peas.

We discussed aphid control.  Last year my broccoli was rendered inedible by aphids and cabbage white larvae.  He said that depending on how adventurous you are, you can blast them off with water and they will often not come back or get drowned.  Best are baby ladybugs--to be obtained from vacant lots with lots of flowers.  Unfortunately we noted that in my area, with lots starting over $1M, that vacant lots are fairly rare!  The baby ladybugs like eating nectar from flowers.  If I bought adult ladybugs, they would *maybe* eat some aphids before they flew away to someone else's garden!

Broccoli, put in two seeds.  I will cut off the top of the smaller one.  Beet from last year in the square with the broccoli.

I could also spray the broccoli with BT, or squish the eggs of the cabbage whites.

My rhubarb was looking very sad and yellow.  He suggested that a hilling a pile of compost around the plant is the best thing.  Not being that into rhubarb, I'll take this under advisement.  Ha!

I bought a male and female kiwi plant pair which are supposed to bear fruit after three years, but this being my third year, they look fairly sickly.  The leaves are eaten away almost to nothing every year.  I need to come out at night to see what is eating the leaves.  It could be weevils, slugs, or pill bugs.  If weevils, I could knock them off at night (11-12 pm) and into a container of water.  I also need to learn how to prune the thing to promote fruit.

My blueberry bushes must have the dead branches cut off or they will continue to draw nutrients.  I need to cut them back 1/4 or 1/3 to help it grow back stronger.

My first year planting baby bok choy.  Boy, do these grow fast... I only planted the seeds a week ago, and they mature in 21 days.

This whole consultation took only 30 minutes.

Larry has started up his own blog at Larry's Organic Garden where you can read up more detail of his extensive experience.  You might want to contact Larry for some advice about your own garden.

SFG: Mistakes, I've Made a Few

Okay, I've made more than a "few" mistakes. I admit it.

Reader iEye commented: "...I actually live in the same area and I'm about to start square foot gardening myself... Considering we are practically neighbors; do you have any concerns, problems, or advice that are more specific to this city and environment?"

Not sure how many of my problems are specific to this local environment. This is more a listing of my regrets. Here is my wisdom, for what it's worth, as a veteran of 2.2 years of SFG in Vancouver. It may be a case of the blind leading the not so blind, but here goes.

Location

If I had to do it all over again, I would definitely choose a better location for the garden. When I moved the garden, I found that the soil was overgrown with a strange root system, very strong and fine roots, that managed to grow up through the landscaping cloth.

I figured out later that it was the tree roots from the neighbour's forest. Somehow the trees managed to find my trove of fertile soil and shot out roots 5m away into my yard and up into my raised bed. The solution is either to get better landscape cloth--mine was quite weak after only two years--and to locate it further away from any nearby trees than you might think necessary. There were no visible above ground roots anywhere near my garden in its first location. I bought the cheapest landscape cloth. This time out I bought professional grade landscape cloth.

Planting Too Late

I tried to follow the advice this year of not planting until after a certain nighttime temperature was held. That was a mistake. Every year I don't plant early enough. This year I planted in mid-May. One of my expert gardening friends planted theirs a good 3-4 weeks before me. Do you think *they* waited for the right nighttime temperatures? NOPE. Their garden is doing much much better as their plants were already very far along before I even planted a single seed. Already my spinach is bolting and looking gangly. I should have planted it much sooner, and planted new plants every two weeks after. Next year I'm planting in April.

Patience: Compost Not Ready

Second point. This year's garden is doing fairly well, but the percentage germination seems to be lower than I remember with my older seeds. The carrots are maybe at 50%. Neither of my kabocha (squash) came up at all. Either the seeds are too old, or maybe the compost was not quite ready yet when I used it. If I did it over again, I would wait at least a few days before planting the seeds, and wet the soil thoroughly. At least that would eliminate the soil as being the problem.

The Grid Material

I originally used thin wood dowels from Kerrisdale lumber for the grid system. It fell apart two years later. I'm now using wild bamboo harvested from my neighbour's invasive bamboo which is growing in my backyard. It's free and it's not likely to fall apart. The wet weather in Vancouver was just too much for the thin wood dowels.

Sharing Seeds

I now have about 10 envelopes of seeds. I bought too many seeds for such a small garden. I should really split the seeds with a fellow vegetable gardener, because even the smallest quantities I bought from Westcoast Seeds are too much. Seeds have a shelf life of a few years at most (some longer) and as they age, fewer will germinate.

Strawberries

This is my third year and finally I was able to harvest a few berries without the animals getting to them first... Containers off the ground are better for strawberries in my "wild" urban backyard in the middle of the city. I'm not sure what is eating my berries, but my guesses are: rats or birds. When I transferred the garden over, I potted some of my strawberry plants and put them in a raised area under netting. So for the first time, some berries coloured and were eaten by me. Unfortunately, the berries are sour and not sweet like store bought, so it is the first instance where what I have grown is not as good as the store. I bought the strawberries from David Hunter Garden Centre, and they are just not doing all that well under my novice care.

Zucchini
This is my first year growing zucchini. The plant is already taking over a substantial amount of real estate and no zucchini yet. I should have planted it in another location, because those big leaves shade so much of my other plants and make those squares useless.

Planning

Okay, well this is not a mistake I made. It's just a great place to share this fantastic planning tool I found at Gardener's Supply Company. This tool allows you to map out what you're planting. Very cool.

Compost: Soil Amendments for the Square Foot Garden

Time to Move the Garden

It was an unusually cold spring, but all the while I was thinking about the work involved in moving my garden.

That's right. Moving my garden. I had located it about 6m from a neighbour's prolific pine needle dropping tree. I suppose the needles ruined the ph of the soil, because I have to blame someone or something for my garden's failure last year! I moved the raised bed garden walls, which didn't fit together well anymore once I rotated and mixed them up (foolish!), and the Frame-It-All planks didn't sit well because the ground wasn't exactly level. But somehow I managed to get it in place again after two hours of fiddling with the &*^% planks.

Moral of the story: when choosing a location for the garden, look up.

I really digress. This post is meant to be about compost. Focus... focus...

Why I Needed Compost

Each year, and indeed each time after you finish using a square in your raised bed in the Square Foot Gardening method, you are supposed to add a little trowel full of compost and work it into the soil. Two years after putting the garden in, my soil volume had markedly decreased and was looking sort of dry.

The compost that Mel recommends is a mix of 5 different kinds. I only managed three the first time.

Here are some sources of compost I dug up.


1. City of Vancouver: $250 delivered for 6 cubic m (minimum purchase)


I spent many hours researching where to get compost. First, the City of Vancouver is giving away 1 m3 of free compost in the month of May per resident. According to posters at the UBC Botanical Gardens forum, the compost there is what some organic farmers use, but is "rough and full of cedar and bark." I'm not crazy about driving down to the landfill location in Delta to pick up the compost, even if it's free. The cost of delivery, amount being a minimum of 6 m3, is $190. Since I only need 1 m3, delivery is out of the question.


2. Craigslist: Free but you shovel and deliver yourself


Also, I tried Craigslist. Someone in Richmond was giving away their compost, which they had delivered from the City of Vancouver. Even though I emailed the same day the listing came out, it was all gone by the time the poster got back to me. Craigslist has multiple listings for compost delivery, but all were too expensive for my small amount as they all charged a flat fee.


3. MyGardenBag: $170 delivery included.


Another possibility, if you're flush with cash and lazy (I am the latter, not the former), you can try mygardenbag.com. The price for 1 cubic yard of soil amendment is $170, delivery included.


4. Lawnboy Enterprises: $63 delivery included.


Finally, my research turned up Lawnboy Enterprises, just a short distance from my home! Located around the north end of the Canada Line bridge at the foot of Cambie Street, is a little place that reputedly caters to commercial landscapers. You'll see big piles of earth as you bicycle by (as I do on a regular basis!). I'd read a range of reviews of this place on Googlemaps, mostly drumming them for being rude, or not knowledgeable, and giving smaller quantities than promised ("a cubic yard is more like a jacuzzi full, not a bathtub" as they tell you). Since this place seems to have a target customer base of professional landscapers, and not single homeowners, the critics seem like a bunch of whiners to me. What you are getting from them is low cost bulk product, not service and knowledge. That's not their game.


When I called them, they were definitely not knowledgeable about their product or the use of the product. I asked her what was in the compost. She had no idea, but she referred me to the company that produces the compost, giving me their phone number. She asked me whether I could call her back to tell her the answer once I had it. (The answer from the company was: brush, vegetable trimmings, yard trimmings, no manure). Later I asked her why the product was steaming and whether it would burn my plants. Again, she didn't know, and so I called the compost supply company. They assured me that the compost would be all right if I wetted it down and mixed it with the other soil. I called Lawnboy back with all this information as requested because, hey, I'm a nice person and it only took a few minutes out of my day.


How low cost was low cost? Only $29 for the cubic yard of compost, and $34 for delivery. Yeah, you heard right: $34 for delivery! That is less than half of the cheapest quote I received or saw for any compost delivery company. Total cost: $63 plus tax, much lower than any other alternative (except the free compost on Craigslist, but then I would have had to shovel the stuff myself--)

When the truck arrived, the delivery guys were really helpful and patient with me. They let me set up some boxes underneath to catch the falling compost, and one of them even stood under the flowing compost to put my wheeled yard trimmings container to catch the compost so I would have less shovelling to do--his suggestion, and a smart one. This method ended up catching only a small amount, though, while my containers on the ground were perfectly filled. A tarp would have been a good idea as well.

I was quite concerned because the compost was literally steaming as it poured and as I shovelled it. In fact, the next day it was still warm in the containers as I added it to the bare garden bed for mixing. Also, it smelled like poo. Not a good smell. But two days later, it just had a nice earthy smell, a bit woody. The compost quality seemed good: dark, mostly fine, with some wood chips (2 cm x 4 cm) and short sections of branches. Some disturbing contents: 4 small bits of plastic (garden trimmings are in bags and as they are "de-bagged" by machine, sometimes it's not perfect), and a piece of metal the size of half a cigar! Weird. But that may have been in the truck bed, because the rest of the pile was fine.

Mixing Mel's Mix Using the Power of One

First step: line the bed with weed blocker. The black plastic cloth came in a roll of 3x25 feet. Since my bed is 12 feet long, I simply folded the cloth back on itself and cut it in half with a pair of scissors. This was more difficult than it sounds because, my luck, it was windy.

I decided to put the cloth in so it would go up the sides, leaving a 2-3 inch overlap in the middle. I used masking tape to stick the cloth to the tops of the sides so it wouldn't move, then I placed newspapers two layers thick on the bottom of the bed, directly on top of the existing grass and weeds. The wind kept blowing the newspapers around, but with one quick spray of the garden hose, the newspapers stuck to the bottom weed cloth like paper mache. Yeah!

Next, I put a tarp over one of the ends of the bed so that the sides of the tarp were elevated like a rim.

Then I did some mental calculations and came up with this plan. I would mix each component in 55L amounts. The number 55 was simply half the 110L bag of vermiculite. So for for the first batch:

1. Dump in half bag of vermiculite, 55L;

2. One bag of mushroom manure, 25L;

3. One bag of Sea Soil, 32L; and

4. 1/2 bag of 3.8 cubic feet (ft3) Peat Moss, 1.9 ft3 (expands to approximately double volume).

This was about 1/8 of the total volume of the bed. This was still a large volume of material to be mixing all at once. It was truly back breaking labour. I couldn't even lift up the huge block of Peat Moss. I had to roll it end over end to get it anywhere near the bed. Clunk. Clunk. Plop. Then, when I got it to the edge of the bed, I couldn't lift it up to put it inside the bed. Simply too heavy. The peat moss was so compact that it was hard to any quantity out from it. I tried attacking it with my fingers in gardening gloves, and that worked to some extent. Later I used a spade to break it up and scoop it out. Even when I had managed to get it out of the bag, the peat moss was clumpy. I had to break up the clumps with my fingers.

I tried lifting one side of the tarp to mix it, as Mel suggests. Mel also suggests doing it with a friend. That didn't happen. I was by myself and didn't want to wait for my husband to help. I wanted to get it done immediately. The tarp was incredibly heavy. I sweated and sweated. It was pouring down my face, and it was fairly cold outside, 15C.

I also did this while wearing an N95 dust mask. The vermiculite and peat moss are dusty, and the vermiculite may possibly be harmful to inhale. The mask made it worse, as did wearing my glasses, which fogged up from all the action.

Raking the mound did not work. Neither did scooping it up in spades and turning it over. Later I refined my technique and mixed it this way:

1. Add 1/4 bag vermiculite, 27.5 L;

2. 1/2 bag mushroom manure, 12.5 L;

3. 1/2 bag Sea Soil, 16.25 L;

4. 1/8 bag Peat Moss;

5. Repeat.

This way, there was more layering of ingredients and I could mix it more easily. Then I started mixing it with my hands, and gave up on the tarp rolling method. After I finished mixing, I simply moved the tarp to the other side of the bed and dumped it out.

It took me three hours in all to create "Mel's Mix." Nice stuff it is. I enjoyed moving my fingers through the mix. It was so loose and airy, not like ordinary soil. After filling the bed, I removed the masking tape.

My calculations were a bit off. The mix doesn't come up to the 12 inch wall edges. It's short by about an inch. That's okay, since SFG only requires 6 inches of depth most of the time.

I created the square foot grid by buying round maple dowels from Kerrisdale Lumber for 81 cents for a 1/8 inch dowel four feet in length. The 1/4 inch dowel was 1.29 each. The dowels were various lengths, but the shortest was at least 4 feet long. I marked off 12 inch lengths on all 20 dowels and used them as a measuring guide. I cut all width dowels to fit just inside the walls of the bed, using a rose clipper. I tied the dowels together with twist ties. Unfortunately, a few of the dowels were not straight, so I have some wonky squares in the bunch. This whole process took me 1.5 hours! I did not cut the lengthwise dowels, but let them overlap. I made three grids of 4x4.

Finally, I planned out the garden, basing the location of plants according to how much shade they needed. I labelled coloured popsicle sticks with permanent marker: red for beets, orange for carrots, green for peas, blue for spinach, yellow for celery, purple for mizuno. I accidentally planted a carrot square next to another. This violates SFG guru Mel's rule against putting two squares of the same thing next to each other.

Now to wait for something to come up!

Building the Square Foot Garden

Around 10:15 am, my long awaited Scenery Solutions Frame-it-all 8x8x12 Raised Bed Garden Kit from Costco finally arrived. It came in four 4 foot long boxes. The hardest part of this job is screwing the joints to the planks and levelling the ground. The handy video I watched at the Scenery Solutions website made it seem so easy.

http://www.frameitall.com/raised-bed-gardens.html

Well now, I take a look at the video again. Ha. They start the video with the joint pre-screwed onto the planks! Cheaters! Liars! For the life of me, I can't figure out why they didn't pre-drill the holes in the planks. Some of my planks are misaligned by 1-2 mm. I hope I don't see a lot of dirt creeping through the imperfections.

Tiny paper labels on the planks state that the material contains "less than 1% formaldehyde." Eeek. Didn't even know it had any formaldehyde at all. Maybe I should let it off gas a bit before I fill it with soil. These babies were backordered, which explains the big wait for the kit, so they would likely be fresh off the factory presses.

The planks are darker than I expected, and clearly look plastic, despite the faux wood texturing. They are difficult to drill through. I tried handscrewing to start the drilling before switching to my power drill, but eventually found that I needed to stand over the joint, laying it on the ground, and use brute force downward into the screw to make the drilling faster.

I laid the first 5.5 inch layer of planks on the ground to see whether I need to level the ground. It looks not too bad, but I was just sort of hoping that the ground would be level and I wouldn't have to do anything, because I didn't get any tools to help me with levelling.

Oh my... I have just received delivery of my soil/vermiculite/peat moss order and the vermiculite is... fine grade. I cringed as I sent the fine vermiculite bags back, knowing that this means another delay in getting my garden ready. The garden centre will be speaking to their supplier on Monday to special order the coarse or medium grade vermiculite for me. Or at least that's what they said.

So back to sourcing vermiculite again. Endless Google searches, and now finally I turn to Metacrawler. Still nothing. Looking at a website about Samaurai Gerberas leads me to a recipe mix including coarse vermiculite. I call to ask where they get their coarse vermiculite. The kind lady points me to Sumas Grow Media in Chilliwack and West Creek Farms in Langley. I call Langley and their office is already closed at 4:30 pm on Friday.

Monday now. Coarse vermiculite is not available here, as far as I can tell. West Creek Farms has only medium and fine grade. David Hunter has advised that they only have medium and fine. I am going with the medium, at $30 a bag. West Creek Farms sells the medium for $20 a bag but they are located in Fort Langley and I am not prepared to drive to save $40 for 4 bags, or to pick them up in Burnaby. David Hunter will receive my special order on Friday and will deliver them after. Sigh. Another week to wait before I can put in the soil.

Square Foot Gardening: Vermiculite Sourcing

I'm waiting to get my raised bed kit from Costco. I ordered it on May 2, and it is due to arrive on June 26. Not quite the 7-10 days I was originally promised by Costco... I missed most of the early growing season!

Read about Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening (SFG) method. More garden for less work. Anything requiring less work sounds great to me! Mel advocates a mix of 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 compost, and 1/3 coarse vermiculite. Well, easier said than done... The peat moss is easy enough to find, as is the 5 different kinds of compost. The problem is the holticultural grade vermiculite.

Many discussion groups interested in vermiculite seemed to be marijuana hydroponic growers! They recommend buying vermiculite by mail order through Worm's Way, http://www.wormsway.com/detail.asp?sku=VER944. It's a very reasonable $25 US there for 4 cubic feet. It's reputedly easier to get vermiculite in Canada.

Through the Square Foot Gardening group at Facebook I discovered that Sun Gro makes vermiculite. Sunshine Strong-Lite Horticultural Coarse Vermiculite. The Sun Gro website directed me to a few locations near me: Prickly Pear in Richmond was one. They sell 8L bags for $3.99. Home Depot sells a vermiculite (but not coarse), 9L for $6.99.

So I did my calculations. I will be building an 4x12 box with a 12 inch depth. That requires 48 cubic feet of Mel's Mix. One third of that would be 16 cubic feet, or 453L. Hmmm... that means I'll need to buy 56.6 bags of 8L vermiculite for a total of $226.50 plus tax. So, I put in a telephone call to Sun Gro headquarters in Bellevue, WA. They referred me to Customer Service at 1-888-797-7328 who referred me to local Sun Gro representative for BC, Fred Wickens. He was very kind and helpful. He noted that vermiculite used to be mixed into their potting soils but that is no longer done, and that it is not cost effective to ship vermiculite from the East Coast to sell here. The vermiculite available locally is shipped from South Africa. So much for buying local...

He referred me to Eddi's Wholesale Garden Supplies in Surrey, BC. They sell 110L bags but they would not sell to me as I am not a retailer. So back to the local garden centres. Mr. Wickens had mentioned Gardenworks, which sells the 110L bags for $40. Jackpot! 110L? Now we're talking! Unfortunately, they sold out over the weekend. Hearing that got me into a frantic state of mind, so I tried to order my things over the phone for delivery to get my claws on the next shipment. Well, the vermiculite they were expecting that day showed up, but only two bags. I need four. Also, it was medium grade. I find it strange that the supplier would only ship two bags. I would have to wait until perhaps Thursday for the last two bags I needed.

So I was back to calling around for vermiculite sources. Art's Nursery only has the 10L Dutch Treat bags for $5, despite being "one of Greater Vancouver's largest retail and wholesale garden centres." I did discover, however, that they offer Sea Soil for $65 a "tractor scoop", which is "60-70% of 1 yard." After some calculations, I figured out that I need one tractor scoop. The problem is that delivery would cost $100. If I was willing to truck in the soil myself, this was definitely the place to go for Sea Soil. http://www.artsnursery.com/bulk.asp

For Sea Soil, another option would be to have "Got Dirt Ltd." deliver the dirt to me directly. They did not have peat moss or vermiculite, and I would still have to pay the high delivery charge (less than $100 but more than $50, can't remember). I would rather get the one stop shopping thing done to save on delivery charges. I just couldn't picture myself lugging bag after bag of soil from the store to my car, and from my car to the house.

Ward Teulon of City Farmer also offered to supply me the soil, for $385 plus taxes, which includes laying down newspapers and putting the Sea Soil in the box and amending it with organic fertilizers. Alas, it would not be Mel's Mix. He suggested 25 bags of Sea Soil, which was far less than I calculated for total volume required for the bed.

By searching online, I found a supplier in Vernon, BC, Briteland Distributors, who had the 110L bags along with an interesting assortment of supplies ranging from organic gardening supplies to janitorial and food service indudstries, among others. Shipping costs to Vancouver would be prohibitive, as the supplier would have to find a freight company to ship. Well, if you live near Vernon, this might be a great place to buy your supplies. They even have bat guano!http://www.briteland.com/wecs.php?usetemplate=formatted_organics

David Hunter Garden Centre was mentioned on the Sun Gro site, so I tried there. Bingo. The 110L bags are in stock in the Surrey store, for only $27! Yeah! Other items were also cheaper than GardenWorks, all except Sea Soil. How puzzling.

Here is what I'm buying:

4 x 110L medium grade vermiculite @ $27
2 x 3.8ft3 peat moss (which expands to 16 ft3)
8 x 25L mushroom manure (horse poo) @$3
13 x 32L organic sea soil @ $8
Landscape cloth, $5 for 3x25 feet.
Delivery $25

TOTAL COST: $275 plus tax.

The large bags of vermiculite will be sent up from the Surrey store since the Arbutus store has none.

For comparison, a similar purchase at GardenWorks (Mandeville):

4 x 110L medium grade vermiculite @ $40
2 x 3.8ft3 peat moss (which expands to 16 ft3) @ $17
7 x 30L mushroom manure (horse poo) @$5.50
13 x 32L organic sea soil @ $7
Landscape cloth, $13 for 3x50 feet.
Delivery $70

TOTAL: $409.50 (but 25 feet more landscape cloth and 10L more mushroom manure) plus tax.


Miles at the Arbutus store of David Hunter spent lots of time laughing at me on the telephone when I asked him for his opinion on what composts to buy. He ended up critiquing the whole venture. He had heard of SFG, but thought I would be better off simply digging up the soil in the ground and filling it with mostly mushroom manure, as my mix was not cost effective. When I said that the SFG was supposedly foolproof, he said it was more simply "foolish." Ha ha. True that spending $275 for everything delivered (plus taxes) is fairly exorbitant for a vegetable garden. It would take me forever to recoup the costs if this was a commercial venture. He didn't understand the need for vermiculite at all. So while I am worried, I am going to go on blind faith that the guru of SFG knows what he's doing. I appreciate that Miles had good intentions, and I am appreciative. Heck, I've spent more than $275 on tickets to Beauty and the Beast for the whole family, so I'm not terribly worried. He also suggested I scrap the worm castings as being too expensive ($23 for 20L). This was the piece of advice I did listen to. I was just trying to follow the requirement of five different kinds of compost that Mel prescribes.

I wish my own compost was ready. I've been composting since 1997, but the oldest compost in my new home is about 3 years old and only a small amount seems to be ready. I already used it when I planted some mini pumpkins in the existing garden bed.

Miles also suggested that I use a rototiller to mix everything together. When I mentioned the SFG idea of putting the soils on a tarp and mixing by lifting up the corners, he laughed again. He suggested physiotherapy might be in order after I'm done!

I hope it doesn't matter much that I have medium, and not coarse vermiculite. A quick look at others asking the same question on other gardening forums shows that medium vermiculite is okay, but will break down sooner.

Delivery of the soil is now timed for delivery of the garden bed kit. Dreading the back breaking work of putting it all together.

Update:  March 22, 2012.  I called David Hunter to ask about vermiculite.  I am concerned that the medium vermiculite has now broken into smaller pieces.  It is now $35 for 110L of the coarse vermiculite.  They now have a Broadway location again, at 2560 West Broadway between Larch and Trafalgar.

Update March 13, 2013.  David Hunter (604-733-1534) has medium vermiculite, 100L for $50!!!  Wow, in the course of four years, the price has doubled.

Creating an Urban Garden

With the spectre of the swine flu lurking, I thought it was high time to grow our own vegetables. The kids would love seeing the food growing, learn about food production, and I could avoid paying $5 for five organic blueberries. I was going to follow Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening methodology, a way of increasing yield for a small space that would require minimal garden maintenance. Last November I received a quote from Ward Teulon of City Farm Boy for a raised garden bed, 6 inches deep, made of treated red cedar, 4 feet by 8 feet, for $685 plus taxes. This would include everything. I wouldn't have to lift a finger. The bed could be built from pine (much cheaper) which would last around 3-4 years, or oiled cedar, which would last around 10 years.

I spoke to a very helpful person at City Farmer http://www.cityfarmer.org/ and found out that I had missed all the seminars on urban gardening in the month of March. She tipped me off that seeds are sold out everywhere in Vancouver. Oh boy. I'm part of another trend. She directed me to two online seed order companies. She also told me that I could find blueberry bushes at David Hunter Garden Centres. In a frenzy, I snuck off to David Hunter while my daughter was in her drama class and bought four blueberry bushes and a kiwi plant. I didn't even have a garden yet. I figured I could just plant them in my rosebush beds. When I got home, I discovered that the kiwi plant was female and needed a male to produce fruit. Doh! I called David Hunter and put a male kiwi plant on hold for pickup later.

I researched how to build my own raised bed, and found that they are easy to build. Just cut up lengths of lumber, put together with deck screws, put in landscaping cloth to stop weeds, and load it up with soil! It wouldn't cost much, maybe $42 US per 4x4 box: http://allaboutsquarefootgardening.com/?p=9 I found great instructions at http://www.sunset.com/garden/perfect-raised-bed-00400000039550/ for a 4x8 box for $187 US. I still could not envision myself cutting the wood and loading it into my car at Home Depot. I decided to go the easy way and pay Ward to set up the thing for me. I sent off my cheque for a $300 deposit, and he picked it up the same day.

Crazy impulsive person that I am, on the same day I also ordered $27 worth of seeds from http://www.westcoastseeds.com/. Beets, celery, carrots, cherry tomatoes, spinach...

While checking my emails, I got a spam from Costco.ca directing me to their summer savings event. There, to my horror, I discovered that Costco carries an 8x8 raised garden bed kit , made with composite wood (60% recycled plastic, 40% wood flour), from Scenery Solutions for $360, delivered. It has a flexible configuration, with 4 foot sections and hinges that can be bent in any direction, so it seemed. This way I could get a 4x12 bed with a 12 inch depth. I called Ward immediately to call off my order with him. I ordered the Costco version on a Saturday night. By Monday, the item was no longer available at Costco. Maybe I bought the last one? I could find very little written about the Scenery Solutions bed, although I spent quite some time searching for reviews.

I picked up the boy kiwi from David Hunter, and also grabbed five strawberry plants at $3.50 each. I did some further research on kiwis only to find out that they really need an arbour built above them for the vines to climb up, and the kiwis would hang from the overhead beams. It would also take 3-4 years for fruit to be produced. Sigh. Also, since I did not buy hardy kiwis, the plants would need to be protected every winter should the temperature drop below 0F. This was more trouble than I had bargained for.

I am now waiting for the delivery of the package from Costco and the seeds. In the meantime, I need to look into how to get 48 cubic feet of mix into my backyard. The mix suggested by Square Foot Gardening is 1/3 vermiculite, 1/3 compost, and 1/3 peat moss. I need to figure out where to buy these amounts in Vancouver.