Planting in LaPoile

Cecil Francis has discovered the secret to having fresh carrots all year round.

The La Poile resident has two tubs in his basement filled with mud.

"When we start pulling our carrots in the fall of the year, we fill those two boxes full of mud, then put them carrots in just like this."

He plucks a carrot from the tub as if it was in the garden. The stem is still green, and the carrot looks as fresh as anything you would see in September.

"It's the same as it came out of the garden," says Mr. Francis. The carrots he has replanted in his basement aren't continuing to grow in size through the winter months, but they do remain alive; bright in colour and as fresh as the day he picked them.

"They say put them in sand and they'll keep, but they'll turn pink. I don't know because I haven't tried it," he says.

The stores in La Poile offer fresh vegetables, but one never knows when a shipment will be delayed due to weather.

That is one of the reasons why Mr. Francis has been growing his own garden. He has tried different crops over the years, but now he's down to just four essentials.

"Strawberries, beets, carrots and rhubarb," he says. "Those are the only things we use."

With spring in the air, Mr. Francis is starting work in his garden again. He says it is important not to start too early. He learned that lesson the hard way about four years ago.

"We had an early breakup. I planted those carrots over twice. It came too cold and killed the first lot of seeds. Then we cleaned it up and planted them all over again. You know what? We never got one carrot - that was the first time that ever happened to me."

Mr. Francis' garden is hard to miss as you walk along the main road in La Poile. He has several wood boxes filled with soil, but what catches most people's eye are the two satellite dishes filled with dirt and propped up off the ground with poles. They look like big white bowls.

"We find they grow better - it's up off the ground so you don't get insects," he says.

He has strawberry plants in the dishes. They come back year after year - no planting required. He grows two types of strawberry plants. One produces the berries all through the season, while another gives better berries for a short period of time.

Mr. Francis' carrot output is nothing to sneeze at. He says he often gets between 2,000 and 3,000 carrots in a season from what looks to be a rather small bed.

He ends up with two cases of bottled beets. The rhubarb and strawberries are picked as needed through the summer months.

As for soil, which is sometimes thinly spread out along the rocky coast, Mr. Francis mixes his with sand to give it added weight. He says it keeps the mud from drying out and blowing out of his satellite dish planters in the winter.

Other than the mussel shells that turn up in the sand, Mr. Francis only uses a bit of store bought fertilizer. No compost here.

"I buy one bag of fertilizer. One little bag, about nine kilograms, of 5-10-15," he says. "The rest of it, Mother Nature takes care of it."

reporter@gulfnews.ca

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