This year was a particularly good one for the cockpit branch of the boat farm. I harvested lots of fresh greens (by boat standards), and had quite a bit of fun while doing it. The cabin side of the farm operation wasn’t quite so exuberant, and alas, I mostly forgot to take pictures of that group. This was because I was so busy focusing on the cockpit activity, since the outdoor plants were the ones I had pretty much forgotten to record in 2013.

Here’s what the cockpit plants looked like when they came aboard about a week after launch:
and a little later:

This is thanks to Suzanne, who had found the baby seedlings at the co-op and put them into these containers. Ordinarily we have focused on lettuce, but being the beginning of September when we started this, there were no organic lettuce plants to be had. Instead there was kale, pak choy, and Chinese cabbage. As it turned out, this was great – they grew like crazy, perfectly content in the cool and sometimes wet fall weather, seemingly having no problem at all with the short days.

One of the most important things for this container gardening arrangement is the soil mix. When you get it right, the plants are both vibrant and productive. This goes on for a surprising amount of time, through substantial harvesting. The soil for this year included potting mix, lots of worm castings, 2 kinds of compost, “moo-do” composted cow manure, dolomite lime (this kind of lime adds minerals without changing the pH), and some powdered organic fertilizer, with special emphasis on the worm castings. Worm castings, like all the rest of the ingredients, came in a bag from the garden store. In past years, with the boat and myself getting on the water in the spring, we took advantage of already planted bowls of lettuce that were available at the co-op. The first year these grew extremely well, and then the next year not so much. I think the varied results were probably also a soil mix issue, as they weren’t treated differently otherwise.

Also worth noting in the picture on the dock are the outer trays that the containers of soil are placed in. These are plastic packages from buying baby greens at the store, top and bottom from one package. Holes are poked in the container that actually has the soil, with the outer tray (the inverted package lid) catching anything that drains after watering. Once moved onto the boat, the outer trays aren’t so helpful as trays, because if it rains outside the plants could be swamped. But here’s the tricky thing: if the containers have just been filled with soil and planted, quite a few soil crumbs are going to come out through those drainage holes, even though the holes aren’t very big. It makes a mess. The outer trays can prevent the dirt in the cockpit, but then there is the soggy over-watering in the rain issue.

It turns out that after the containers have been set up and the soil and plants have settled in for a week or two, dirt no longer falls out of those holes in the bottom, even without a tray. This is great news when it comes to moving the plants around the boat, and everything works out fine. It’s just important to get the plants going in their containers ahead of time, on a surface that allows drainage and has room for the errant soil bits to fall out, before the containers take up residence in the cockpit. It’s not the end of the world if you don’t do it that way – just messy for a while.

On the cockpit sole, we have that stuff called dri-deck (as always, I’m not receiving anything for mentioning this). This is available from boat catalogs, in 12 inch squares. It helps protect the wood, where things like water jugs are left for a while, preventing consistent wet spots. It’s also great for allowing drainage through the plant containers. I usually water the plants while they are on the dri-deck, and don’t even worry about overflow, which takes care of itself by draining down and off the back of the boat, or by drying in place.

The lids for the containers, while not so ideal as outdoor trays, make fantastic covers for the plants when they are still small. This is good for possible frost, and is outstanding for protection from spray while sailing. Of course, then the plants get bigger…

Here’s another view, a couple of weeks after they came on board, where you can see the Chinese cabbage really taking off; it’s the group at the lower left:

The parsley, at the upper right in that same photo, does well in a quart yogurt container, and moves inside to the special plant racks for sailing. The main container has drainage holes, and sets inside a second container with no holes when indoors. Parsley is very sensitive to salt spray, but adapts to the indoor location easily. Lettuce in previous years has also been very sensitive to salt spray, tending to get brown spots from even very fine salt mist, just like the parsley. A wonderful surprise this year has been that both pak choy and Chinese cabbage don’t seem to care much at all about little bits of salt on their leaves, staying green and healthy.

Here’s the parsley, in the indoor location:

That’s buckwheat in the other two containers, which makes a nice treat, picking a number of sprigs every few days. Sunflower sprouts, which in the past have been very successful earlier in the season, declined to do much of anything at all this time around. For the future, here in New England, I’m not going to try sunflower planting after the end of August. Buckwheat, on the other hand, does just fine with the shorter days and cool temperatures. As described in a previous farm post, all of these indoor sprouts are planted in about an inch of soil. At the right season for the particular plant they do quite well, and require a lot less water than regular sprouts rinsed in a jar.

All in all, it was a good year for the boat farm, providing fresh green vegetables long after the ice jug had melted and the cooler was retired for the duration of the trip. It was a treat!

Quite a while back, in writing about fungus gnats and the boat farm, I promised to say something about aphids. As these things can go, my mind wandered off… However, finally, here’s the story!

Aphids are tiny insects that make their living by sipping the juice out of plants. If there are very many, the plants don’t look eaten, but they stop growing properly. Leafy vegetables develop a funny, contorted, shrunken look, and eventually they stop growing at all.

Aphids come in a number of varieties, in a size range of something like 1/16 to 1/8 inch long. Sometimes they are gray, like the ones found occasionally on organic broccoli from the store, and sometimes they are an impressive bright orange, and others look almost black. They multiply quickly once they get going, and are hard to remove by hand picking – you can get the ones that are out on the leaves, but they are quite expert at hiding in the tiny crevices of leaves and stems, maintaining enough of a population that the handpicking (at least in my experience) doesn’t do much good. For some reason, the inside-the-cabin plants haven’t developed aphids at all. That’s a blessing – aphids can be a big problem in a regular greenhouse.

In the first year of the boat farm, aphids got going on the lettuce in the cockpit, but I didn’t really understand what I was dealing with. Hoping for a little more growth, and the harvest of a few more leaves, I kept the plants, even though they were looking more and more bedraggled. Finally it dawned on me that there was no growth happening whatsoever, and the curled little remnants of leaves were not at all tasty. Over the side they went…

Last year, I had lettuce and kale going in one rectangular cockpit container. After lots of nice food from those plants, lasting for a month or maybe two, aphids started showing up on the kale. Based on the previous experience, I took that as my cue for a big harvest, and had an abundance of kale to eat for a couple of days all at once. The roots were pulled out and tossed over the side. Ordinarily, plant scraps go in the composting head, but the insect situation meant going for more drastic measures. On the idea that the lettuce did not actually look infested, I left that in the container, though I wasn’t hopeful.

As it turned out, the lettuce was fine! This was a revelation. Apparently the aphids were so fond of kale that they didn’t bother to infest the other plants, which continued on until they bolted from the heat, without any aphid problem at all. Now I’m thinking that this was a good lesson in companion planting – if you start with lettuce and kale, the inevitable aphids will come, but they will be so fond of the kale that by the time they’ve developed enough to be a problem, you will have had both quite a lot of kale to harvest AND the lettuce will be left alone.

This particular companion planting approach is a theory at this stage, but if I can get it to repeat, I’ll be delighted. Any way around, I’m satisfied with the strategy that at the first appearance of significant aphids, this means that it’s time for harvest. More food, no tending of plants that are destined to stop growing, and a sense of understanding what’s happening on the farm. I’m looking forward to the next round of trying this out, and will report findings.

Now that it’s incredibly cold and snowy around here, but with the solstice long past, the garden folks are working on seed orders. With that in mind, here are some reflections on how the boat farm went in 2013.

Overall, progress was made. It’s still experimental, and a source of treats, rather than a tremendous amount of food, but that’s mainly because it did not get my full, undivided attention. The next round will be easier, with a specific plan in mind, and a firmer sense of what works.

New planting: sunflower, peas, and buckwheat

For starters, being diligent about planting every few days would pay off nicely. Sunflower sprouts fill in well, and once they get going one can harvest each day for about a week from one planting, picking the taller individuals in each container, with new ones growing to harvest size by the next day. They feel substantial when you eat them, so a handful of thinned plants actually makes you feel like you’ve had some fresh vegetables. While the weather is warm, and there are many hours of sun each day, they grow quite enthusiastically. Clouds do not seem to be a big problem, but the shortening days in the fall brought about a gradual end to the success of this crop. This stands to reason, considering that they are SUNflowers!

Once the weather got cooler and the days shorter, I started to focus more on buckwheat sprouts, also planted in a thin layer of soil. These grew quite nicely, so long as the buckwheat was fresh. Old buckwheat that had been in my cupboard for a couple of years (how can that happen??) did not sprout well at all, and was better for cooking. But buckwheat with hulls, bought recently in bulk from the natural food store, grew just fine. This is a more delicate plant, with leaves that don’t have a lot to them. The leaves are broad, but tissue paper thin. Still, they are tasty, with a mild, unspicy flavor. With a diligent planting schedule, and being careful to not let them dry out in the sun, they are a worthwhile effort. Nothing beats sunflowers in their favorite season – thick-stemmed, with sturdy leaves, and growing like a shot – but once the season goes by, it’s time for other possibilities. Buckwheat fills the bill.

I also tried peas, in that cooler time, but they seem slow-growing, both to sprout, and then to grow. This might have had to do with my soil – they don’t seem so slow in the regular garden at home, but maybe I haven’t paid proper attention. It could be that they take some time there also. At any rate, it was fun to have a few sprigs, but they seemed like more trouble. Chard seeds came up nicely, but then grew very slowly. I think that this is also a soil issue, producing stunted, slow-growing plants, which is not the norm for chard that is happy in its garden. I wish I was a better gardener, right off the bat! But experiments continue, and I’ll keep reporting…

One approach that was more of a success this year had to do with watering, for all the different plants. Originally I had the idea that when planting the seeds it was good to water the soil directly, making it thoroughly moist though not soaking wet. However, little bits of white mold were a frequent issue in both sunflowers and peas, and eventually I tried simply spritzing the top of the soil after the seeds were in. This was much more successful, and mold stopped being a problem. Who would’ve thought that seeds would sprout without soaking, and with such a light application of water! They were spritzed enough to be moist on top once or sometimes twice a day, but were definitely dry at times also. The soil underneath was barely moist – and yet this worked.

Another success had to do with learning to live with the fungus gnats. Though I was originally hoping for complete eradication, eventually I realized that the issue was more one of balance. Starting with fresh soil in the container with each planting made a big difference with this, and the only time that they became a problem again was when I neglected to harvest the sunflower sprouts that had quit growing in the fall, short of their normal harvest size (I kept hoping that they’d get bigger). Previous to that, the long-term pot of parsley did have a few gnats, but they didn’t go crazy, and they did not start to take over the other containers. I do think that the parsley, because it was in a long-term, deep container of soil, made it impossible for the boat to be fungus gnat free, but that parsley sure was good! One or two gnats every now and then felt like a worthwhile trade-off. Next time I’ll understand that when the sunflower sprouts stop growing, then it’s time to harvest the final crop even if they are only an inch high (rather than the normal 3 to 5), and move on to buckwheat. Fast growth, making for frequent changeover of container soil, pretty much took care of the fungus gnat issue.

Then there is the subject of fertilizing. This is really important for plants that are in containers ongoing, like parsley, and lettuce, and there are knowledgeable sprouters who say that it makes a difference for short-term crops in an inch of soil, also. I’d agree with that, for the sunflowers, and it was obvious with the parsley and lettuce. There is organic fertilizer, and compost, that are fertilizing options, either applied directly to the top of the soil, or soaked for “tea” that is then applied when watering. And I’m going to go out on a limb here and share that there is another source of perfectly healthy, and safe, fertilizer in abundant supply on a boat. This would be pee, which is a fantastic source of nitrogen. It has to be diluted with water at least 10 to 1, which takes care of the odor issue, as well as being important for the plants, so they don’t “burn.” If potted plants such as lettuce and parsley are given a soaking water with this diluted mixture once a week, they grow like crazy.

I have not gotten brave enough to try this on the indoor sprout plants – they seem too close to the ground that is being so watered, and beyond even my admittedly fringy comfort level. But it would probably be fine. Plants in the cockpit, that can drain over the side, do just fine, and it’s so simple!

It’s important to make the distinction between using urine for vegetable garden fertilizer and using humanure compost. Urine is generally sterile, while a much more involved process is required before composted solid waste can safely be considered for food plants, and some folks argue that it should not be considered for food plants at all, due to potential bacteria as well as heavy metals. However, urine is a different story, and can be very successful. Because we are talking about small boats, and self-sufficiency, it has seemed that the discussion of boat-farm fertilizer would be incomplete without mentioning it.

Another thing that I learned in 2013 was just how much very fine salt spray finds its way across the cockpit – and the plants don’t like it. Once I recognized this, I started moving lettuce containers into the cabin for sailing, and they started doing much better. Previously, I had just been covering them with a piece of sunbrella fabric when there was visible spray, and wondering at the little brown flecks on the leaves even when there had been no spray at all. Finally I started paying attention to that bit of mist that I could feel on my skin when sailing, even in very mild conditions, and the puzzle was solved. In the cooler weather it had been unnoticeable, with all the warm clothing, but was more obvious after the weather warmed up. Now, the shuffling of plants is a small chore, but very worthwhile.

Overall, while the boat farm is a work in progress, it is showing more and more signs of being workable. It’s fun to have the fresh greens, and sailing alone it’s rather nice to have the company. The little plants are festive in the cabin, green and growing in their special shelves, and I’m looking forward to expanding. Just think what a real gardener could do with this concept! I’d love to see.

Parsley, chard, buckwheat, and sunflowers

A few weeks ago the farm suffered a setback – fungus gnats! After all that care with the “pathogen free” potting soil and everything. The containers in the cabin all had them, as did the containers with deeper soil that generally stay in the cockpit, at that time with chard and chickweed.

On the bright side, I knew what I was looking at. Over the next two days I had a feast on all the sunflower and broccoli and pea sprouts that were inside the cabin, and the soil went into a sealed plastic bag. The cockpit plants got to keep going, since at least the gnats were outdoors (rather than buzzing my face), and Suzanne and I had a shore-support meeting planned for about a week later. The almost immediate harvest of the indoor plants staved off the annoyance of fungus gnats flying all over the place, since their population had not yet really gotten into gear, and because I knew what I was dealing with I didn’t start any new indoor containers while the cockpit population was still present.

Before the gnats issue surfaced, Suzanne and I had already planned to swap cockpit containers. She was bringing a new one that she had started with lettuce plants a few weeks before, and I would be giving her back the one with the chard, which was having issues with its cockpit location. Since the chickweed was especially infested, when Suzanne came she took that container away also – I was sad to lose it, but have some ideas about how to do this better, collecting seeds from the chickweed plants at home rather than digging up plants and soil. Chickweed – so often weeded out rather than harvested – is incredibly nutritious and quite tasty, as well as being a good laxative, and thrives when the weather gets cool and moist, as it does when one goes up the coast and fall comes around. Suzanne also brought a yogurt container with a lovely, thriving parsley plant. At home I eat a lot of parsley, not really as an herb, but as a leafy green. It’s loaded with things that are good for you, is strengthening for bladder issues, and I’ve developed a real taste for it. It’s been a treat to have such a nice, big plant.

For most of the last couple of weeks since Suzanne’s visit I didn’t do any new indoor planting, allowing a bit of a quarantine period for the new containers with the lettuce and parsley, even though they were originally staying mainly outside. No gnats in sight, so about five days ago, in clean containers, I got to plant some more seeds for the cabin racks. Sunflower, buckwheat, and chard, one container each. No worm compost this time – it’s not labeled as “pathogen free,” and it seems like a possible source for the gnats. It’s also possible that the cockpit chickweed container was the gnat source, and being flying creatures, some of them moved indoors, so the idea is to rule out various possibilities one by one. So far so good.

Lately the parsley seems happier indoors, and I’ve taken to moving the lettuce container inside whenever I am sailing, even when there is no obvious spray. Little brown spots on the leaves have looked like more spray than is apparent is getting to the plants. They go out for the coolness in the night, and for days in harbor, and seem to do well with the rain and fog we’ve been having. The lettuce had been starting to bolt already when it arrived, what with that intense, ongoing hot weather that was all over southern New England in July, but since things have cooled off it does not seem to be shooting right up, so I’m hopeful that I’ll have it for another while. The parsley is growing fast enough to replace the sprigs I’ve been picking every day or two, which is very encouraging, and it makes a pretty kind of house plant here in the window. Still no gnats in sight, even with the deep-soil containers coming indoors.

So now the sunflowers are sprouting, as they do so readily, and I’m happy to say that both the chard and the buckwheat started coming up a few days ago. The buckwheat is particularly energetic, so I guess the reason it wasn’t working before had to do with old seeds. When Suzanne came to South Freeport she brought fresher ones – I’d had the other batch in the cupboard for longer than I should have, probably two or three years. None of these were seeds for planting, just raw buckwheat, from places that sell raw foods. The ones that are doing so well came from Raw from the Farm, an Internet store by that name, but it’s very possible that any bulk buckwheat groats from the natural food store would do just as well. It’s probably good to get the kind that still have their hulls.

So that’s the latest on the farm. I’m really liking how well the yogurt container with the parsley is doing, and am thinking that two or three more yogurt container plants, with more substantial soil than the little sprouts containers, might work out just fine. If the tiny chard sprouts grow well, then in addition to harvesting small leaves, one or two of the plants might work as transplants in yogurt containers, intended to grow larger for picking big leaves.

The broccoli from the previous batch of planting started off with very leggy little plants, so I started putting the container outside for full light when it was convenient, and harvested the really long skinny ones. The next ones that sprouted were behaving better (all before the big gnat-inspired harvest). Some time with outdoor light may be necessary for the chard also. So far the buckwheat, which sprouting resources refer to as “buckwheat lettuce,” seems to be growing properly with the available indoor window light, with broad little lettuce-like leaves, though the plants are still only about an inch tall. The sunflowers always get a bit tall, but they have nice thick stems, and the stems are just as tasty as the leaves, so it feels like a perfectly fine way for them to grow. And they love the heat inside the cabin, so they just get to do their thing in here.

That’s about it for plants excitement. What with lots of recent visiting, folks have been bringing me everything from blueberries, microgreens, and a new supply of romaine lettuce, to garden lettuce, zucchini, and foraged seaside greens and flower petals, which have all been a huge, enormous treat. Thank you, thank you, Patsy, Polly, and Reilly! With the farm still being in development – and then round two of the fungus gnats – it’s been a real treat to have an abundance of vegetables from off the boat!

Sailing the Farm is the title of a book written by Ken Neumeyer in the 1970s. Used copies are sometimes available on Amazon. Details of the book may or may not be perfect, but I find the concept an absolutely outstanding model, and I am working toward putting it into practice. A movable homestead, and a boat undertaking that provides for itself in some of its most pressing needs, from water to fresh vegetables. I’m also very interested in foraging, but that does involve getting to land and all – except for seaweed, which is tasty pulled out of clean water as it floats by!

On the growing front, so far sunflower sprouts have been particularly successful. This in soil in deli containers – a shallow container with holes poked in it for drainage, set in a pint one that catches the drips. This boat has tremendous windows, and we made removable racks (thank you Theo!) with cutouts the right size for holding deli containers, yogurt containers, and the fancy sprout containers made by The Sprout People. Turns out regular sprouts haven’t been so successful, because of wild temperature variation in the cabin, and the enormous amount of fresh water needed to keep them rinsed. However! It also turns out that another way to do some kinds of sprouts is in about a half an inch of soil in a container. This has been much, much more workable. A couple of tablespoons of water and consistent spritzing keep the plants perfectly happy, and the sunflowers grow like crazy. They’re quite tasty, pinched off at three or four inches tall. And simple: half-inch of soil in the container, sunflower seeds from the natural food store (with hulls) spread over the top of the soil so they are just touching one another, water and spritz. In a few days they start growing. As you snip and eat the tall ones, the slower starters get going, so one container produces for many days.

Things that matter for deli container gardens: it seems like it would make sense to use soil from the garden, and it seems like all those garden books that talk about sterile soil are a little over the top. However! Speaking from experience, it’s worth picking up some of that “pathogen free” potting soil. This is because of a little creature called a fungus gnat, that can be just hanging around waiting to get in gear in average garden soil. Out in the garden, it’s not a big deal – they come, they go, they fly away. Indoors, they know exactly where they want to be – moist soil, with plant roots for their larvae to eat. And the only place for that in a boat cabin (or your living room) is all those nice containers with a half-inch of soil, or anything else potted… Besides being really annoying when they fly around, they’re bad for the plants. Which do need their roots intact, after all.

An alternative to buying potting soil is to start with soil gathered from the ground and then heat it – some people use their oven, and I have the idea that spreading it thinly in a clear plastic bag in the sun would do quite nicely. But for now, it’s potting soil. The other thing that can help is to add something that feeds the plants. Worm compost is nice – another thing from the garden store. It’s nutritious, not smelly, easy to store and use, and the plants love it. A couple of teaspoons in the soil in each deli container gives it a little something extra, and is easy to manage. So all in all, the boat farm supplies include a couple of quart bags of potting soil, a yogurt container of worm compost, plastic deli containers, some seeds, and a small spritzer bottle. And the best part, the plants give you somebody to talk to!

I’m still experimenting with different seeds, so far with mixed results. Will report more on that when some of the details are better worked out. But for now, those sunflower sprouts are exceptional, especially in the hot weather. Many thanks to Jules and Helen, for sending me in the direction of sprouts-in-soil, and sunflower sprouts in the hot summer cabin. Funny how all it takes is the right information at the right time, and next thing you know, you have fresh food!

This is an experiment. At home with the sewing machine, Suzanne and I made this fabric thing, hemmed on the edges, with loops at the corners, and a funny fabric funnel stitched into a 4 inch hole cut in the fabric, which then ties onto a length of PVC tubing. This is a variation on a suggestion made by Lin and Larry Pardey in their book The Care and Feeding of Sailing Crew. I’m using cotton fabric rather than plastic, or waterproofed fabric, on the theory that if this works I will use it for drinking water, and I’d like to have fewer chemicals in the water. Never mind that I’m storing the water in plastic containers… Seriously, the same chemicals that make a plastic sheet flexible enough to not crack are keeping everything soft enough to also come away in the water.

It’s a work in progress – first comes seeing if it’s possible to collect enough water with this small sheet of fabric to be practical. This first water will be for freshwater washing, and for watering plants. Then I get to work on hygienic strategies for drinking water, or resign myself to filtration.

Here’s the good news! Today we had a good soaking rain for about an hour, and at the end of that I had refilled the 2 quart wash water jug, AND the 10 quart plastic bucket. That’s great news on the sheet size. I have a small plastic manual bilge pump dedicated to wash water transfer, so half the bucket got pumped into the freshwater tank (which topped it off) and the rest went for rinsing the salt out of those orange fuzzy rags that are so nice for dealing with stray water where it doesn’t belong.

Still to go is drying the rain catcher cloth, which I didn’t leave set up because the wind was picking up and I was worried about it getting thrashed around. But once dry, it’s easy to store, and stays clean and salt-free. Not to mention free of stray dirt and bird droppings. I believe it’s going to be a workable system, and I’m ecstatic about being able to keep up with water for plants so easily.

With that for inspiration, more planting has gone on in the interior containers that go in racks under the windows. More on that when they’ve grown enough to be a little more photogenic. Meantime, here’s a try at including a picture of the rain catcher in action. Outdoor cockpit plants are slightly visible toward the back left, behind the bucket.