Back to school

Last week was the fall break and before that my work practise ended. I had been working at the schools garden since mid-June, because i had quit at the food co-op (Lahti ROK). These past six months were way more stressfull than i had expected, the work was physically quite hard, but that was okay, i liked it actually, it was the mental part that was difficult; completely new enviroment and work pace, new people, no friends to talk to and i was dissapointed, that i had to quit at the first place and then come work at the school.

I was expecting more outdoors work here at the school, but mostly i was at the tomato room harvesting, taking out the lower leaves and letting down the plants when they grew or, at the salad/herb room sowing, planting, harvesting, bagging and watering, or cleaning the cold room and filling the vegetable shelves at the store. But i did get to plant some herbs and vegetables to the samplefield, thin out the carrots and harvest beetroots and leeks.

I liked packing the cucumbers and planting the salads, i got really fast at both, but i hated to harvest and tidy up the leeks when they were all muddy, there was so much work at both of those jobs.

 

This photo is from the ROKs greenhouse when all the tomatoes and cucumbers are still tiny.

 

 

 



Practical training at Lahti ROK

So, Lahti ROK is a (ruokaosuuskunta) food co-op. People join in, it costs about 400€ a year, they have 10 hours of "voluntary" work during that year and when there's crop, they can just come and get it, no more exchanging money. Usually being in the co-op comes more cheaper than buying all those (organic!) vegetables and fruits from stores, and you know how the food has been grown and for many people just being in that community is the most important thing.

I was happy that they took me to work there, i was really looking forward to it; it's in Lahti, they have a large range of different vegetables etc., a field and a greenhouse, and  the two guys that i met at the unofficial interview seemed very nice and i was able to understand the Irish guy, but as time went by, i realized that i can't really learn enough stuff at a place where the hired gardener isn't really a gardener, he didn't have the qualifications and the person that signed the contract with me, was never there. It was always like, "He _might_ come here this weeks Thursday, _maybe_ some time after four...", and even when he was there and i asked him something, pretty much whatever the question was, the answer was "Oh, no, that's not gonna happen" (and then it happened) or "Oh, it doesn't matter here, this place is different than those commercial companies", and that's it, no explanation how things should be, what's the optimum, the ideal situation. How could i learn anything in a place where the attitude is "Nah, good enough for us". And when i started asking for more guidance he always said that he's been so busy, that he has so many projects going on, but if he is so busy all the time, then why did he take me to work there, because we trainees, we don't get paid, you don't need to give us money, but you need to give us your time and teach us.

And i thought that the Irish guy would know what he is doing, even without education, because he had been gardening for 10 to 15 years in various co-ops and the like, i mean he didn't kill all the plants or anything, but i had to explain that there really is something wrong with some of our cucumbers when they are half the size of the other cucumbers next to them and when they can't grow more that one or two fruits at the time, and all the rest of the fruits that have just started to develop just die. I know that cucumbers abort some of the fruits when they're small, but not ALL OF THEM. But he didn't think there was a problem "It's just too small to grow more than one fruit at a time." And that's it. Period. He didn't start to think why the cucumber is too small and weak that it can't grow more... And i just had it. I was too tired to live in an constant uncertainty of what's going to happen and when, and i didn't get enough of guidance, i had to figure pretty much everything by myself and if i brought up something, or just asked, they acted like i was overreacting.

Rant over.

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I did realize how big the difference is between American English and British English. A ladybug is a ladybird in Britain. And when i called  lanttu a rutabaga, the Irish guy laughed at me and said that that sounds like some kind of a car... They call lanttu a swede. There was some other occasions as well when i noticed that i speak more American English than British and i was told that sometimes i have a slight American accent.

Also new words to me: couch grass (juolavehnä), shoots (varkaat, esim. tomaatilla), a rake/raking (harava/haravointi) and chard (mangoldi).

Seeds, tomato blossoms and bees.

As one assignment, i wrote and told about collecting seeds, and i just went through my picture files and found some photos i had taken last October, when we collected and washed seeds like rosa rugosa and chokeberry, so i thought i'd share some of them here.

We made quite a mess.

We washed the seeds and poured out the pulp with the water several times, so that all we had left was the seeds.

The chokeberry seeds sink to the bottom. There's still some pulp left.

But, the seeds of the rosa rugosa float on the water.

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Oh, and on Wednesday we went to look at the tomatoes we had planted the week before. 

They had grown quite a bit, but they were planted a tad too early, they should have had one flower already open when they were planted, because now that they got some new soil, the plants might get exited and start growing like crazy and forget to make flowers. So, the gardeners try to slow down the growing with keeping the soil dry. It's always risky to do such a thing, but slowly the flowers start blossoming.

I found about five blossoms that are nearly open...

...and only one fully open.

There was the bumblebee-box/house there and one guy was already flying around, looking for blossoms to pollinate. There's one queen and about 50 to 60 workers per box, and one box costs about 75 euros. 

About last week

Last weeks Monday i finished making the little shelf in the woodwork classes.
Tuesday was all work, no theory classes. We planted some summerflowers in pots, like hundreds of them, and then sowed some herbs, such as dill and basil.

On Wednesday we had english, it went fine, but after that we were supposed to have some theory about raising chilis with Tiirikainen, but we had to go plant some tomatoes in the greenhouse, i wasn't dressed properly for that, i wasn't expecting any physical work for that day, so i was a bit pissed. And i was kind of pissed off also because we have so little time with Tiirikainen, only two hours a week, and then we have to go do something else during her lessons... After that we had some finnish lessons, where we did nothing, the teacher was arguing with couple students about what is a vocational skills demonstration and what is a competence-based qualification, because they didn't know the difference, so we just sat there doing nothing.

On Thursday morning we had Pessis classes where we listened about plants that bind nitrogen and nurture soil. After noon we had bussiness classes where we did some unfinished assignments. 

On Friday we had Pessis classes again, but this time it was about seedlings and sapplings. We went to look at the seeds of flowering quince that we had put in the cooler in November, i think, and they had germinated. In November the seeds needed a cold-treatment, so we had put some fine sand in a plasticbox and we moistened it and sowed the seeds in there and then covered it with plastic. Some of the seedlings had a disease in their roots caused by Fusarium-fungus and in the box there was also some grey mold, but many of the seedlings were fine, so we planted the healthy ones in seedlingtrays. We also put some cuttings of saintpaulia in pots to grow. After lunch we had fruits and berries -classes where we presented the assignments, that we had done about different plants. I did it about appletrees and how to defend them from pests, diseases and weeds using organical means.


...I'll edit this at home, and add some of my photos of those germinated seeds of flowering quince...

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edit: 9.3.2013

Well, here's the photos that i promised.

 Here's a couple of seedlings with the root disease. The roots are clearly brown and droopy.

And these are healthy seedlings, the roots are white and firm.

Here's the box where the seeds had been for five months. I had remembered wrong, we collected and sowed the seeds in the beginning of October, not November.

And here they are, almost a week later, in the seedling tray.

Monday

It's monday morning and the winterbreak is over.
Last friday i went to Tapolas community garden for a job interview. It's quite far away, so my brother drove me there, and if i can go work there, this spring, i'm going to have to take two buses there, from Lahti to Niinikoski. One bus goes there in the morning and one bus goes back to Orimattila in the afternoon. They have all kinds of vegetables there and appletrees and currantbushes that we're going to trim. They also have eighteen milkcows, one bull, some calfs and chickens (hens). The woman who interviewed me talked a lot, i almost didn't get a word in, but she seemed nice.

A week before that i went to an interview at Korso, Vantaa. It was at Vantaas Steiner-school and the fields are right next to the school. It was Rudolf Steiner who established biodynamic agriculture. And both of the gardens i'm applying are biodynamic gardens. It means they use compost, manure and preparations. Crop-cycling is an important thing and they use astronomical planting calendar, meaning they plant and harvest the crop when the mooncycle is appropriate for the plants. It's also about the diversity of the nature, maintaining and enhancing the ecological harmony and life in general. In these communities people work closely together and respect the animals and see them as workmates, not as production units. I can't say much more about it yet, i'll see what it's really like, in practice, at the workplaces.

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My favorite vegetables:

sweet corn and
broccoli.

Favorite berries and fruits:

cherries,
avocados,
blackcurrants and
watermelons.

Favorite flowers:

poppies,
sunflowers and
cornflowers (aka batchelor's button).

Favorite trees:

larch,
cherry- and appletrees, and
lilac.

Favorite herbs:

basil,
lemon balm,
rosemary and
thyme.

Alliums and other favorites:

garlic,
artichokes hearts (as food),
chickpeas.

edit:

I changed the title of the blog, but the address is still the same.

"A picture heavy post"

I don't get to make that mushroom stool, because the teacher said that it's too much work. So, i started (and almost finished) making a small shelf.

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Here's some photos (that i have taken myself) of flowers, from last year. I don't even remember all of their names, let alone their scientific names. We haven't dealt with flowers that much lately, just with poinsettias and hyacinths, but these sure are pretty. (I'll try to look them up and find their names.)

Now, that's a white lily, i'm sure of it.

Poinsettias. The lighting is on, that's why it's all yellow-looking.

And here are some summerflowers from last May.

Fuchsia. (Fuchsia triphylla)

The herbs from the previous "open house" -day, in May 2012.

Sunflowers can be used as fallow plants in Finland, but it's kind of useless to grow them for oil or seeds, there's not enough of processing business going on here. Or, so i've heard.

 A Swallowtail?

Here's the corn from the schools samplefield. 

And here are some members of the cabbage family.

Schools sample field. I don't know how else to call it.

Peppers. Capsicums. These are the cone-shaped ones, and i'm not sure what is it's full name. I'll try to look for it.

...

There are some many different kinds of peppers, that i just can't find the exact one.

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I'll probably post some photos next time as well, but i'll try to write something about every picture. 

I don't really know what else to write. Perhaps sometime later i will write about the planting plans we've made.