this is what became of the single, tiny pumpkin i grew this year

Hope everyone had a happy Hallowe'en!

summer, anyone?

If you're anywhere in the northeastern States or Southern Ontario, you're almost certainly experiencing one heck of a nice holiday weekend. I cannot believe the weather we're having. It feels slightly wrong, even -- temperatures in the high twenties, gorgeous sun, and it's not even close to May yet. I recall snowstorms on the Victoria Day weekend in May, and I'm not old enough to be saying that sort of thing yet. Cold, wet, unpredictable springs are more the norm here than gorgeous, sunny, dry ones.

But I've been taking advantage. The raised bed is ready for its plants, and I intend to put the first round of beets and lettuce in tomorrow. I've planted the peas. I have no idea what is going to happen with the peas, because everything I've seen about planting peas suggests different things. Soak them, don't soak them. Plant them in dry soil. Plant them in moist soil. Plant them early. Plant them just before the last frost date. The only thing people seem to agree on is that peas are cool-weather crops -- but just what that means, they can't agree on.

Whatever. I had no luck with peas last year, period. I have planted 10 pea seeds, and I'm hoping for at least three plants. They're all sugar snaps and I'm really looking forward to snacking on them. We've been trying to cultivate a habit of eating veggies for snacks.

We're attempting a new method of mulching this year, involving newspaper covered in natural cedar mulch around the flower beds. The weather's caused the weeds to go nuts already, although there is this year a corresponding amount of nuttiness from the rest of the plants. When it cools off later this week (frost, even!) there's going to be some frantic running around covering things, I'm afraid.

Meanwhile, upstairs in the sunroom there are little basil plants and little tomato plants making themselves happy. The tomatoes are even growing their first set of true leaves. It looks, however, like I'm going to have to purchase pepper plants this year -- the peppers I started over a month ago have yet to germinate.

But, having seen a phoebe in the backyard this afternoon, I will not complain about recalcitrant peppers; I am very, very glad it is spring.

progress update: bad news, good news

All right. The morning rounds in the garden provided me some good news, and some bad news. Let's get to the bad news first.

SOMEBODY HAS EATEN MY 'PATIO PICKLE' CUCUMBER PLANTS.

I don't know who you are, but they were just finally blooming and maybe going to give me some pickling cukes. Oh, the blossoms are still left. BUT NO LEAVES. There were leaves yesterday. There were lots of leaves yesterday. There are NONE this morning. Mystery animal that eats cucumber plant leaves, you are on notice. If I find you, you will be sorry. I have the feeling you are not sorry now.

Also, my tomatoes seem to be taking this cold, wet weather particularly hard, and don't even get me started on the single pepper plant that has managed to make it out of seedlinghood. It seems to have stalled just past that stage.

Good news, though!

I am going to have more tomatillos than I know what to do with. And the beans are growing! I may even have a few to take with me for lunch today. And the pumpkins! I'm going to have pumpkins, even with this bizarre weather. The pumpkin plants are going nuts, and there are two healthy looking pumpkins so far, and tonnes of blossoms. The buttercup squash seems less enthusiastic, but it's still trucking along. I noticed two honeybees doing their thing in the flowers this morning, and it was fun to watch.

squash blossom

I was doing the morning rounds in the garden -- I tend to do this while my tea is steeping, before I come up here to the computer to check email -- and discovered that the squash has started to bloom. It's a perfect blossom, bright yellow, and unexpected. I thought I might expect blossoms this weekend, not as early as today.

If I had to pick a favourite plant for the vegetable garden, it might be squash. I love tomatoes, and always feel good about my herbs and the garlic. But it's squash that has a special place in my heart. It's the treasure hunt. I love the great, curly, crazy vines, and the hidden little squash plants at the base of the flowers; I love watching them grow over the course of the summer from flower to itty bitty squash to full-blown-keep-me-in-the-cold-cellar-for-the-winter big squashes. This is the first time since I was a kid that I've grown squash in my own garden, and I am absolutely thrilled with it.

a perfect garden morning

It has been a morning of puttering in the garden and I could not be happier. The morning started with me tearing inside so I could grab my binoculars... a new species for the backyard was in range! And he's stayed around all morning, too: a beautiful black-throated blue warbler. In addition, I've heard a redstart singing, a wood thrush, a red-eyed vireo, and chimney swifts, a house finch using the bird bath, as well as the regular cardinal and robin.


And the robin! This year we have a nest tucked on the eavestrough of the garage. And this morning, for the first time, I saw someone other than mom moving in the nest. I am desperately hoping that she can fledge a few, despite the coons and the squirrels and the crow who caused a hella commotion this morning. I wandered over there to make him think twice about nest robbing, but the neighbourhood birds were doing a pretty good job of it without me.

I've planted strawberries, beans, dill and cucumbers this morning, and replanted some beets and chervil that got dug up by squirrels. Yesterday afternoon I planted the squash and the pumpkins. The strawberries, cucumbers, squash and pumpkins are all a bit of a gamble, since they're hot-weather plants, but the next week is supposed to be really warm and then we're getting into acceptable planting time anyways. If we have a cold snap and I don't cover things in time, I'll just plant them again. I have lots of seeds. Well, except for the strawberries.

The tomatoes are just about ready to be transplanted to their big home containers, and the tomatillos are soon ready to go into the square-foot bed. The ground cherries got repotted this morning, as did the artichoke. The basil and peppers are being really slow again, but with the hot weather coming (it's supposed to be up to 27 C today, and 29 C tomorrow) I think they'll take off.

I can't think of a better way to spend a beautiful sunny morning. I'm inside now to avoid the heat of the day, but I know I won't be able to stay inside for long on a day like this. I might even just sit in a lawnchair and do all my necessary computing outside on the laptop in the shade...

I still don't understand squirrels

The lettuce is up in the enclosed bed. Or at least, the green lettuce is. I haven't seen sign of the red lettuce. Nor the peas, which is very disappointing. I wanted peas! But I'm not ruling them out yet. The shallots seem to be coming up, surprising me. And there are lettuce, spinach and radishes showing themselves outside the safe zone, so we'll see how long those last with the bunny around.

Something I've noticed this year: the squirrels are leaving my tulips alone.

What is with that? I saw one tulip with its top trimmed. Just one. Last year the squirrels did a number on at least half of the tulips. I am not complaining about this, I'm just surprised. And curious. Is it that they got fat on my birdseed? Is it that there are less squirrels? (Not that I've noticed). Is it that there's a big tomcat prowling around, presumably making life a little more exciting for the squirrels? I have noticed that the squirrels are doing a number on the protected bed, because they get in there and dig. It doesn't seem to be malicious, just bored. As soon as I've planted a few more things in there I'm going to have to cover the top with chicken wire, too, so that the squirrels don't destroy everything. But they're ignoring my tulips.

it's productive city over here

This morning I finished off the square-foot garden by adding a bit of peat moss, sectioned it, and surrounded it with chicken wire in the hopes of keeping marauding bunnies out. Then I planted snap peas and shallots. Then, because I was feeling like it, I planted spinach, Boston lettuce, and radishes in the bed that will eventually go over to squash and pumpkins. It was a pretty half-assed planting, but we'll see. None of those seeds were purchased this year, so I'm not even sure what their viability is.

Inside I planted my ground cherries (weeks late, but better than never) and artichokes. The tomatoes are starting to get their first true leaves, as are the asters. The tomatillos are just sort of puttering along, but they look healthy, as do the rudbeckias. Grandma gave me a pineapple sage plant again and this time I'm going to keep it alive. The one she gave me looks pretty good -- I'm going to have to re-pot it eventually because it's going to outgrow the pot before the summer is over.

Next, I have to decide whether to sharpen my secateurs before I do a bunch of the spring cleanup, or after. I will definitely have to sharpen them before I do any spring pruning, but for cutting away dead perennial stalks they should be fine. I also want to get those hostas moved. I've identified a good spot for one section of them, but I'm not sure where to put the rest. And we've got Easter dinner coming up, so I'm not sure what else I'm going to get done this afternoon, if anything. I feel good about what I've accomplished today, though.

Friday Photo

I think I maybe don't post enough of photos of my garden on here. So today, I thought I'd show off my little rhubarb:

Cute, huh?

reaching for the sun

It has been raining all day today, and too cold to put the plants in the sunroom. At this time of year, if the sun isn't shining, the temperature in the sunroom is only a degree or two above the outside temperature. So in the interests of giving my plants some light but not freezing them, I took them downstairs this afternoon out of the dark hall.

It's maybe been an hour and a half, two hours since I did that, and all of the seedlings are bent at nearly 90 degree angles trying to climb out the windows. Even without the sun actually shining. It's quite impressive. I'll leave them down there until next week, because unfortunately it looks to be both cloudy and cold for the foreseeable meteorological future.

square foot gardening: oh, my back

Someday I will have a wheelbarrow. Until then, I must be satisfied with getting lots of exercise for a relatively small payoff. But the good news is, the little square foot garden (it really is little) is nearly ready to rock.

A couple of weeks ago, fishy and I got lumber and worked together to build a little 4x4 raised bed. It's not exactly 4x4 inside; it's a little smaller, which means that I'm going to have to limit one side of my growing space to half a foot. So I'll have 12 square foot plots, and 4... less than square foot plots. This is okay. For things like basil or lettuce I don't need a full complement of plants.

Today I mostly filled it. I mulched the base with leftover Lee Valley packing paper. I used a bag of mushroom compost, the pile of soil leftover from when I dug the other veggie beds, some leaf litter, and four or five shovelfuls of our own awesome compost. It still needs a little more, so when I'm at the nursery on Sunday I'm going to pick up a bag of peat, a bag of vermiculite, and another bag or two of compost. When that's all mixed in with the organic-rich, sandy loam, I should have a soil that defies any vegetable not to grow well.

What was even more fun was that while I was shoveling, a robin stopped by to see what I was doing. It followed me around, waiting for poor worms and other critters that got exposed by my digging and plucking them up. It didn't seem to wary of me, which pleased me to no end, even when it was chewing its way through my helpful invertebrates. Too bad there are no earwigs for it to enjoy yet -- it can have as many of those as it wants.

first flowers, and some seedlings planted

Hello spring. I think we've met before. You with your fickle sunshine and changeable temperatures, me with my seeds, gloves, and muddy boots, waiting, waiting, waiting for the right moment...

I am pleased to report the crocuses are blooming, and have been at it for almost a week now. The tulips right next to the house are up actually quite well along, although no buds yet. The white daffodils I planted last fall are consistently showing their little green heads now, and I'm curious to see what they have in store for me. They were mixed bulbs; my hope is that none of the close, very visible ones are astonishingly garish.

My Dutch iris, unfortunately, have come under severe attack by squirrels. I was hoping the squirrels would be too full of my birdseed to eat my bulbs this spring, but fat chance. They've eaten some of the bulbs in their entirety. The rest they're waiting for the iris to poke their poor little heads up, and then they're chewing them back to the ground. I am most displeased. Squirrels may be cute, but I could really do with less of them. I have fed them all winter, not necessarily by choice, but I would have thought they would have better manners. Little bastards.

I've started a number of seedlings now -- the peppers, the tomatoes, the tomatillos, and the Rudbeckia hirta 'Chim Chiminee' are all in little flats. The shallots still haven't come up and they're well past their 21 day germination period, so I'm losing hope. Dunno what I did wrong there. I need more seedling mix now, as I'm pretty much out and still have lots to start.

I also need to get my veggie bed finished. The frame is built, but I need to dig it in and then fill it with soil and compost. Lots of work and not terribly appealing given the rain, cold, and cloud. (The weather forecast says it's sunny right now -- someone failed to look out the window, I think.)

Lima, Patrick. The Organic Home Garden. Key Porter: 2003.

Since I've started up the book blog, I've decided to post all my reviews there, instead of posting any reviews of gardening books and cookbooks here. I've got one posted now, of Patrick Lima's superlative guide to organic vegetable gardening The Organic Home Garden, and I'll have one for Liz Primeau's gardening memoir My Natural History coming up. I need to read gardening books right about now because it is sunny out there, but the ground is still frozen and I am starting to get antsy enough to try digging in the frozen ground anyways.

Yes, I know it's not good for the soil. I'm not actually going to do it. But I really really want to. So gardening books are protecting me and my garden from myself.

square foot gardening: in the planning stages

Garden season, as declared before, is open! And I am taking that to heart. This means that today, my efforts at avoiding work and cleaning have included figuring out the materials for my new square-foot vegetable bed, and realizing that I should probably start working on that soon-ish so that it's ready to plant in April with the early-season crops.

My dilemma right now is that if I want to go the whole way, I should probably follow Mr. Bartholomew's recipe for his soil mix ("Mel's Mix"), which is three parts peat, three parts vermiculite, and three parts compost.

To fill a space that is going to be roughly 1812 L, that is not going to be cheap. I mean, I have some compost here. And I can get it free from the landfill (although not until after April, either, which throws a wrench in my early-planting plans). But I don't have peat or vermiculite, and that stuff gets expensive when you start looking at buying roughly 12-14 30L bags of the stuff. I do have some soil that is composted sod, from when I started digging the veggie beds. What I am thinking is that I will use that first, then make the rest of the bed peat and vermiculite and our compost, as much as possible. It won't be Mr. Bartholomew's perfect mix, but it will be pretty darn nice soil.

In other news, I did plant shallots today. 24 of them. For transplant into that new bed, once the soil "can be worked in the spring."

progress update: weeds and seeds

Okay. Just a quick update. It's fall, things happen around here in the fall. Some good things, some not so awesome.

The garden is wildly overgrown. I did some mildly drunken weeding a couple of nights ago while fishy and I and some friends hung out on the porch. Despite the rum and coke, the weeding actually made a positive difference. Or perhaps because of it...

The carrots, which seemed like they were going to disappoint at the beginning of the summer, have turned out fantastic. I am probably going to plant another two rows next year. I don't even really like carrots, but aside from the butterfly factor there's also the fact that I really do like growing things that make me feel like I know what I'm doing. Hence, garlic and carrots and herbs.

We pulled off the cilantro seeds, or a large portion of them, so now we have our own home-grown coriander seeds. I am quite pleased. I was a little concerned that there didn't seem to be a lot, but then I realized how often we used coriander seeds -- which is not often at all. So for our needs, there is really quite enough.

I'm going to try to save some of the beefsteak tomato seeds, since they're a heritage plant. The way they grew in the garden this year suggests to me that they'll be an ideal container tomato, which is really all I need. I'm the only one in the house who eats tomatoes, and while sauce remains an option, I suspect that one container of tomatoes will likely be just enough.

fall planning and canning

So, nothing big for 50, I decided. Too much pressure.

Speaking of pressure, tonight fishy and I are going to try some canning. We have made jellies successfully, both sweet and hot, and now we're going to attempt a tomato sauce, with any of the good roma tomatoes that are left in the garden. According to the recipe I have I need 6kg of romas. I am thinking I might halve everything. I know you're not supposed to fiddle with the ingredients of preserved foods, but the ratios will all stay the same...

That is our task for tonight. This coming weekend is going to be a major garden cleaning blitz. I am going to order some garlic from Veseys again, because I was thrilled with the way the garlic grew this summer and I'd love to have more next summer -- I ordered 1lb of bulbs last year and I think I'm going to go for 3lbs this year. Yes, that will be a lot of garlic. But the amount we have in storage now is not going to last us the winter, and if I can avoid buying garlic from China I will. Nothing against China, but it seriously chafes me to buy a little bulb of garlic flown all the freaking way from the opposite side of the world (you can't get much further away) when it is something that grows in Canada perfectly well.

So, I will grow my own. And lots of it. The other thing is, the garlic made me feel good about my gardening skills. Such as they are...

i found them!

Quick update for tonight...

There will be carrots. Unless the rabbits get them between now and the time they're ripe, now that the carrots can be found, out from underneath the crab grass as they are now. There are going to be maybe a dozen carrots. Out of three rows. But that is some! Better than none.

Next year will be better, I'm sure. I will either fence or ... stand guard over the new young shoots of various plants with a water gun ...

The tomatoes are looking great, too. The peppers look like they might give life a shot if the warm, sunny weather continues. I am proud of them.

feeling better

Somehow my garden journal has vanished. I have no idea where it has gone. So, in lieu of that, I'll let you know what I've been up to this morning here.

I pulled up about a third of the garlic bulbs this morning, and decided that though they're fine, they do seem to have a little more growing to do. So I left the rest in and cut off the flower stalks. It turns out the flower stalks do make a difference, at least with this species ('Music'). So I might be a bit late to really make a difference to the bulbs, but we'll see. I'm going to leave them for another week, I think.

The ones that came out are flat on the [clothes] drying rack in the shade. I'll bring them in tonight, and then hopefully by Wednesday they will be cured enough for me to braid them. They're hardneck garlic, which apparently doesn't braid particularly well.

I replanted the area that I had pulled the garlic out of with 'Royal Burgundy' beans, and we'll see if anything happens there. Or if the rabbit destroys them. Maybe I will spread bone meal over the area again and see if that actually does anything. If not, I am totally building a fence next spring.

The compost pile actually seems to be doing something, so I am hopeful that I will have compost to mulch with. I might attempt that this afternoon. It's such a nice day out, and I'm trying to salvage what's left of the vegetable garden. I might plant some more beans in the spots that could use a little something. I might even re-try beets. I am feeling optimistic today.

the mid-July rant

Somehow I hoped this year would be different -- that I would be able to get the weeds under control, deadhead the flowers, and generally keep things blooming in a relatively tidy fashion.

I know, I know. What was I thinking?

The weeds are even bigger this year. I think they're going to eat me. Even my poor little vegetable garden is a weed factory. The only thing I'm going to get out of it is garlic, cilantro and tomatoes. Maybe peppers, but they've hated this summer weather. If I am lucky I will be able to plant the brussels sprouts out and they'll just grow like mad. I'm hoping. At the rate they're going right now they will not even make it to a foot high, because the rabbits will eat them and they'll freeze before the first sprout even appears.

The front yard is a sloppy mess and I am feeling particularly discouraged by it, I have to say. Now, the past couple of weeks I haven't been around and when I've been around I've been preparing for this week, which was a really, really heavy week at school. It's not a surprise that the garden is out of control. And then it rained last night (which was really good) very hard (which was not) and everything, even the things that were looking great, has flopped over and given up. The lamb's ears in particular are forming a soggy mat over the rest of the garden.

I have totally had it with those lamb's ears. I am so giving them away when it comes time to dig and divide in the fall. And I'm going to put in some less maintenance-heavy plants. I am discouraged enough that I just want to re-do the entire front but somehow, I don't think that is going to be the right solution to my problem.

Sorry, just had to vent. Now I will concentrate on the good about the garden. Later.

progress update: garlic gone wild

News, news! We finally planted the front window boxes. And I was surprised one day to walk out onto the front porch and find myself endowed with surprise geraniums. I think Grandma and Grandpa were by and didn't realize I was home.

The tomatoes and peppers are loving all this hot weather, but I need to get the radishes out shortly before they kill the carrots. The cilantro seems to be hanging in there. The shallots are resentful, and disappearing quietly. I'd blame the rabbits but I think, for once, they're innocent.

The garlic has thrown up its flower heads; I have been advised that they don't necessarily have to come off, and if I do want to take them off, the stalks can be peeled and sliced and used as a mild garlic clove substitute in salads. I think I'll try that tonight, with romaine and radishes.

I will try to get some photos, but the camera is doing something strange where the light meter doesn't seem to be working. I think more correctly it's that I don't know how to work the light meter, so perhaps it's time for me to learn.

feelin' hot hot hot

30 Celsius three days in a row! It's too much.

And I am beginning to realize that I am starting to use this blog as a forum for small talk... all about the weather, all the time. So I'll cut that out.

Good news! fishy and I picked up some plants to put into the front baskets, so I am going to plant those this evening. And I need to water the butterfly flowers, I just remembered that. Put Mr. Droopy back out into the yard to see the sun, which I think he will enjoy, and all the tomatoes and peppers are now planted.

So I think that means everything to be planted this year is in the ground, except for the basil and the brussels sprouts. The brussels sprouts I'll put in pots today, and the basil might just go straight out into the garden. It's hot enough for it, and it's an herb; I don't think anything will eat it.

Speaking of getting eaten, the lettuce I planted for a second time is looking awesome, so shortly I will have to take it down to one plant per pot, and then plant them in planters. I have lots of planters, so there's lots of place for lettuce. And basil, frankly. The place where I was going to put the basil may be used instead for beans. Or something. Who knows. I'm still fooling around with this stuff. It's all about the learning.