Refreshing The Strawberry Bed

   Last summer's heat wave took a toll on the strawberry bed.  Only two plants were left standing come this Spring.  The soil in the bed was compacted with roots and some suckers from nearby trees, so R. decided to dig up the entire bed, add compost and green material, and replant it with new strawberry plants.  We picked up three varieties at the nursery yesterday afternoon: Milan, Berri Basket Pink, and Everlasting.  Berri Basket Pink has pink flowers rather than white. 

 The plants all had suckers with new plants forming on them, so we clipped those from the main plants and popped them into little pots to see which ones will thrive.  If even half of them make it, then R. got his money's worth from these plants! 

   We also picked up Indian mint, banana mint, and lime mint.  The banana mint transplant had loads of spiraling roots at the bottom of the pot.  I removed some of the roots and repotted them.  (They're in the bottom left quadrant of the picture below.)  Hopefully, this will give us extra mint plants in a few weeks' time.

 

 

   I'd hoped to get a begonia at the nursery, but they were very picked over.  The ones remaining were leggy and less than robust.  On the way out, I spotted a table filled with sunny gazanias and chose one of those, instead.  So cheerful looking!

 

 

   The lilacs are late to open this year.  They just started to bloom yesterday.  Between the apple/crabapple blossoms and the lilacs, the scent in the air is heavenly.

 

 

Lou snoozing indoors on a cloudy, drizzly day.  Curled up like a mushroom top.  :)

 

 

 

Hot Wheels, Crows, and Lots of Tomatoes

   Temperatures are finally feeling appropriate for the season and garden planting is well underway.  Edging the north and south gardens before tilling them was a lot of work (the heavy lifting thanks mostly to R.).  Even after removing sod around the perimeter and raking out weeds and grass rhizomes after tilling, we're still finding dandelion root chunks in the soil.  Persistant things, dandelions.  On the positive side, some unexpected treasures continue to be unearthed, even after all these years working in the garden plots.  R. found a green Hot Wheels race car and a 1964 penny, and I found a 1941 American penny.

 

   In the south garden, there is a row of Green Beauty snow peas and several rows of Green Arrow peas.  The peas were planted May 26th.  A third of the garden is in partial shade, so I planted lettuce, kale, chard, mizuna, parsley, alyssum, and some marigolds this past week.
 

   In the north garden, there are a few tomato (Early Annie, Clear Pink, Black Sea Man, Japanese Black Trifele, and Petitbec) and pepper (Shepherd) plants, Gold Harvest dry peas, State Fair zinnias, garlic bulbils, Orca beans (a few older ones, to try to grow them out), Bonbon calendula (dwarf), some Chantenay carrots sprinkled here and there, White Scallop pattypan squash, and Fordhook zucchini.  The ground is very wet, so planting the summer squash seeds was a bit of a gamble.  Hopefully, they will germinate and not rot.  Because the ground is so wet, I have held off on planting beans.  Usually, they're in the ground by late May.

   At the side of the house, tomatoes, kale, and dry beans are planted.  Most of the tomatoes were planted between May 25th and June 1st.  Though they were hardened off for more than two weeks, the weather had been overcast and mild, not hot.  As a consequence, some of the plants ended up sun scorched and looking rough once they were out in the garden.  I ended up pulling out and replacing a few of them.  It always pays to have more transplants on hand than you think you'll need!   There are 48 tomato plants in the garden and in pots this year.  I think that's a record for our garden.  There's one more I'm toying with planting (Indigo Pear Drops), but me being me, if there are 49 plants, I'll have to plant another to make a nice, even 50!

Update June 7th - I couldn't resist, and planted two more to make 50.  I didn't have room for Indigo Pear Drops (an indeterminate), so planted EM-Champion and Clear Pink Early.

Update June 12th - Two of the jalapeno peppers I planted out in late May were looking sickly and hadn't grow since transplanted.  I replaced them with tomatoes: Clear Pink and Indigo Pear Drops.  Late last week, I popped a Petitbec into a small spot in a container with marigolds.  That brings the total of tomato plants up to 53.

 

More tomatoes and peppers, kale, and 4 aspararus spears going to seed.  

 

 

   The garlic and potato patch (potatoes were planted May 22) with a very sparse raspberry patch in the background.  Between last year's heat wave and the patch being very overgrown with grass, new growth is minimal this year.  Most of the new canes are a foot tall or smaller.

 

   Dry beans are planted in this bed. Kitty is being very helpful, holding down the plastic mesh that will protect the seedlings.

 

 

Her sister sticks close while I water the cabbage bed.

 

The beginnings of Burpee's Butterbush squash plants.

 

 

The cabbage bed, and beyond...!

 

 

Kitty exploring the roof of the shed.

 

Siberian dwarf kale (and Swiss Chard on the right).

 

   While pulling grass rhizomes out of the north garden, R. spotted a whole bunch of volunteer garlic bulbils that had begun to sprout.  One of us must have tossed bulbil heads we thought were immature into the garden during the garlic harvest last year.  I couldn't bring myself to toss them back into the garden or compost.  Instead, I planted most of them.  We'll see how they've fared come Fall.

 

The apple tree is just starting to blossom.  A bit late this year.

 

Kitties are longing for the rows of peas to be tall so they can hide and ambush each other!

   We have noticed the absence of magpies and ravens this year.  I can't remember a year when there weren't magpies clacking and chattering while I planted the garden.  There have, however, been quite a number of crows.   They seem to enjoy the bird bath on the rock wall; every now and then, we see one stopping by to have a drink.

 

 

Garlic's Coming Up

 

The Year of the Moose

   Here is this morning's visitor. He showed up around 8:00AM.  This certainly has been the year of the moose!  I was worried he might start eating the tomato transplants I have hardening on the front step, but fortunately, he walked by those.  He did stop at the flower bed and chew on my wild tulips, though.  I had to shoo this little guy away!  What a cutie.

 

 

 

 

Prepping the Garden

    The snow is gone (touch wood...!) and we're starting to have some sunny weather.  Time to begin getting the garden ready for the season. 

   Our two flower beds were full of grass and one was overrun by Creeping thyme.  I love Creeping Thyme - I started it from a few tiny seeds years ago - and the bees love it, too.  It self-seeds and spreads very easily.  Between it spreading through the other plants in the bed and having quack grass grow up through it from below, it has become too much for me to manage.  Last week, I pulled out the Creeping Thyme, weeded that flower bed and transferred irises, Woolly thyme, and other bulbs (don't know what they are!) from the second flower bed into the first.  In the front of the first flower bed, I sowed Frosted Salmon poppy and Candytuft seeds.  The frame of the second flower bed has come apart from the weather and general wear and tear.  That one will have to be completely dug out, the grass and weeds removed from the dirt, more Woolly thyme de-quack-grassed, the bed repaired, and the dirt put back in.  It will be used as a vegetable bed with herbs and annual flowers once it's fixed.

   The north and south gardens have grown in by several feet over the years, and those need to be expanded again.  We started with the south garden, the lesser of two evils (the ground is dryer than the north garden and it hasn't grown in as much).   I edged both gardens a week ago, when the ground was very wet.  May 13th, R. removed the sod on two sides of the south garden and I went behind him, pulling out stubborn dandelion roots and grass.  It was a sunny, warm day, so I also dug up/weeded the patch below the plant room window, which had grown in.   Carrots (Koral, Scarlet Nantes, Cosmic Purple, Jaune Obtuse du Doubs, and Pusa Asita Black), onion sets, and beets (Detroit Red, Chioggia, and Touchstone Gold) were planted as well.  

   Most of the strawberry plants were killed in last year's heat wave, so R. picked up a package of strawberry (roots? crowns?) at Canadian Tire and I planted those.  They were fragile looking and dry, and I later read awful reviews for them on the website.  If they don't come up, we might need to take a trip to the local nursery to buy strawberry plants.

The south garden, ready to be tilled once the soil dries out a bit.

 

 

   The north garden, edged but too wet to work with yet.  We'll remove the sod, weed, and till once it dries out.  This plot is going to be a hard slog to clean up, as it has grown in around the edges for years.

 

 

The Great Hardening of the Transplants began on May 12th.  This morning, one of our supervisors oversaw things.

 

   The plants on the orange tray (in the red cups) and the large plant in the background are both Pineapple sage.  I've brought some inside at the end of the summer to overwinter it for several years, as it's expensive to buy as transplants.  From now on, I'll stick to putting cuttings in beer cups.  Digging it up by the roots makes for a hardier overwintered plant, but uhg, did it take up a lot of room indoors...

 

 

Tomatoes and peppers

 

 

   The milk jug greenhouses are coming along.  You never know what's going to do well and what is going to be a dud in any given year.  Kale and chard are pretty reliable, but other things can be hit or miss.  This year, for example, only two cosmo seeds germinated out of three entire jugs I planted!  Some of the cabbage germinated, some didn't.  The mizuna (something new to me) is growing like gangbusters.  The parsley has germinated, but no sign of the summer savoury (it needs more heat).

   The first blooms of the season!  I don't know what these flowers are called, but they are bright and cheerful. They bloom early in the day and by late afternoon, close up again.

 

   There's a full moon tonight called the Flower Moon.  It is also a "Blood Moon" total lunar eclipse.  Happening during Mercury Retrograde.  And here I was hoping for a calm, healing week ahead...

A Brief Morning Visit

   What a Spring for wildlife visitors!  This morning around 9:30am, R. spotted a deer in front of the house.  The first two pictures were taken through the window, so aren't very clear.  (Click to enlarge).

 

 

    It was a short visit.  There isn't much left for them to eat in our yard.  The Bohemian waxwings polished off all the shriveled up crabapples that had remained on the trees through the winter.

 

    When she began to head up the driveway toward the street, another - larger - deer we didn't realize was there popped out from behind the car!  (No picture of the second one.)   A few days ago, I pulled a bunch of Creeping Thyme plants out of the flower bed and set them aside in a container on the other side of the car, near the fence.  Maybe he had been munching on that, out of sight.

 

 

 

A Soggy Start to May

  We're starting off May with some very soggy weather.  It's cloudy, raining, and a chilly 4 degrees as I type.  The ground has been saturated by the rain, and the driveway and garden plots are covered in puddles.  The transplants, like me, have had enough of cool overcast weather, but they're holding on.  Most of them are in the plantroom, the room that gets the most light.

 

   

   For some reason, a number of the transplants seemed to stop growing at 2-3" tall and stopped branching.  I composted about 15 of them.  April 20th, I started a fresh batch of Monomakh's Hat, Indigo Pear Drop, and EM-Champion tomato seeds, and started a fresh batch of Early Annie tomato seeds on April 21st.

  

   A week ago, I started some marigolds (Brocade Mix and Queen Sophia) and Calendula (Bon Bon - I believe this is a dwarf variety).  They are under a grow-light in the kitchen, but the marigolds have been slow to germinate.  Too cool for them, I think.

   Off to have a cup of Murchie's hot chocolate, thanks to a surprise package from Mom.  (Their almond anise biscotti is divine, and I'm looking forward to trying the lemon curd!)