Turquoise Energy News #208 - September 2025 Report

I scraped/raked the grass sods from where I had grown the onions.
I had it down to bare soil when I planted, but everything everywhere was dense weeds or grass by late summer.

Dirt to sterilize in oven

Temperature set to 85°C, bake for one hour.

Then I decided to clean it out up to the deer/chicken fence
and dig in recycled plastic plates to keep the grass roots out.
(PP melted from ropes from the beaches.)

View from the grass side.
(My potted trees, birch and black locust, were growing well.
I noticed half the leaves missing from one black locust and found a 2 inch brown
caterpillar on it, similar to the one that had finished off my first walnut tree.)

the garden side. I should be able to raise the bottom of the fence wire almost to
the top of the plates so I'm not grabbing wire with gardening tools when I dig.
The lumps of dirt came out of the oven. The grass turned brown and nothing is growing from them now.

[Sept 10th] Even planted fairly late, peas grow very well in Haida Gwaii's cool summers. I put up poles with ~5-1/2 foot tall chicken wire for them to climb on.
The trouble is the peas grow taller than that. This year they easily passed the top, bending the wire down and slumping over in front of the lower sections.
Next year I really should get a couple of pairs of 10 foot poles and staple on 8 feet tall of wire. Or at least 9 & 7.
I made the sets about 10-12 feet wide and have been reusing them year after year - none of that single use pea netting for me.
I use one inch mesh chicken wire because with two inch, little birds perch in the mesh and eat all the peas, even the stalks.
(Two inch might work if it was oriented verticly with no level area to land on?)

The other pea row (of two), also slumped over on itself, and blocking the path.
I got about 1.2 Kg of frozen peas plus however many I ate over the summer.
This row was planted almost too late (early July?) and was still green and yielding up to cold weather in late September.

Drying purple garlic under the south wall solar panels

In addition to the usual purple variety ("Russian"?) I grew a few "elephant"
garlic from cloves from a single bulb I got at a farmers market. Now
someone tells me they have less flavor. I haven't tried them yet.

I got about 1.25 Kg of garlic from a 4 by 4 foot patch. They should last me until...
gosh, it's October - time to take some of these and plant next year's garlic!

And I got about 1.5 Kg of onions from a similar size patch.
Some of the smaller ones I grew from seed, started in a pot indoors in spring.
The rest were from "onion sets" from a store, planted directly.

I got 15(?) pounds of usable carrots from three small plots,
which is better than usual. (But surely I can do better!?!)

I got some (15?) reasonable (& delicous) cobs of corn from the ones started indoors in spring then planted in the 5 by 8
foot "cold frame" box, where they grew until too tall about the end of June, then I removed the box and they grew in
the open by the south wall of the house until harvest.
Basicly the cool north coast summers aren't warm enough to grow corn easily around here.
In Victoria BC I could grow similar small corn without all the special treatment,
while farms south of Vancouver inland from the ocean grow great crops of corn.

In my greenhouse (lower cob), they just don't seem to get enough light. The ones from Dragonfly Garden in individual pots started
out strongly in the greenhouse but didn't quite make it (lower cob. I've just picked the rest, October 5th. One tiny one had ripe kernels.
I'm saving it for seed for next year.) The ones I had already planted in the greenhouse hardly even grew. But then I don't think the soil was very good.
Next year I want to try that "Dragonfly Garden" 'trick' - keep them indoors in individual pots with good potting soil for longer. Then outside in the box.

Part of the problem is the plastic roofs aren't as transparent as they might be.
The other part is the trees to the west have shaded the greenhouse by mid afternoon.
(You can see the solar collection is about to start diminishing too. Taken September 22nd.)

After and big initial crop and then a lull, even at the end of September I was getting
a big handful or two of nice strawberries every 3 or 4 days from my 3 by 5 foot patch.
And the plants are putting out lots of runners, which they hadn't done for about 3 years.
I may extend the patch next year - or move it entirely to get the weeds out.
Previously I had a variety of strawberries that grew great, had nice flowers, but hardly ever made a berry.
I tried growing them for 3 or 4 years of frustration, then bought some other plants. I did my best to eradicate all the
"imposter" strawberry plants, and I put the new ones in a different area. (Something to watch out for!)

I am also getting raspberries into October, but they have to be used right away.
They go mouldy almost overnight in the fridge. The strawberries need to be frozen or used
quickly too - and picked when even slightly red, before something eats holes in them or they rot.

My Carpathian English walnut finally started growing leaves in July under cover of a plastic bag.
By Late September (22nd) it had quite a bit of foliage.
The little Black walnut didn't grow a single leaf all summer in spite of a bag.
I only hope it comes back next spring! It'll definitely have a bag this time.
What will I do when/if they get bigger?
Someone said he has walnuts in Tlell up the coast from me. He said they're the last trees to leaf out in spring.

Days of __ KWH	September 2025	August 2025 (18 Collectors, DC/ Batteries.)	September 2024 (18 C's - Grid Ties & DC)
0.xx		2
1.xx	1	1
2.xx	5	5	2
3.xx	4	2
4.xx	3	4	3
5.xx	2	5	2
6.xx	6	3	5
7.xx	3	2	3
8.xx	2	2	2
9.xx	1	2	1
10.xx	2	2	2
11.xx			3
12.xx	1	1	1
13.xx
14.xx
15.xx			1
16.xx
17.xx			3
18.xx
19.xx			1
Total KWH for month	179.02	167.06	266.02
Km Driven on Electricity	(Lost owing to 12V battery replacement)	1193.2 @8.2 Km/KWH=150 KWH (much of it from off-grid solar)	1210.5 ~155 KWH