Uhhmmm...

We have a situation.  

The no-show melon seeds I planted and then replaced some time later with pumpkin seeds suddenly appeared yesterday.  I thought they'd rotted with all the rain we've received.  In three containers, there will be a mix of two kinds of melons (Sweet Siberian and Cream of Saskatchewan) and Winter Luxury pumpkin.  I have no idea, at this point, which melon is which or whether everything will grow properly, bunched together in those containers. We'll see how things pan out.  It would be wonderful if they all thrived and we ended up with melons for the summer and pumpkins in the fall.

For that to happen, though, we'll need a stretch of sunshine and heat, which we haven't seen since May.  Rain, rain rain.  My beans are about to sprout life jackets, flip us the bird, and row for higher ground if we keep getting downpours like this.  


 

The potatoes, peas, lettuce, and beets (pictured) seem to be doing well and the weeds, naturally, are flourishing.

We pruned the lilac bush, so it didn't produce many flowers this year.  What did appear are pretty, and smell divine!

The bed of leeks!  Can you see them?

Rogue chives, growing near the fence.

After a good pruning this Spring, the current bush has bounced back well. 

Our senior supervisor, Saj, opted to stay inside today and catch up on her beauty sleep.

A Few More Sprouts...

After much more rain (this is getting to be way too much of a good thing), I discovered a few new plantings have finally sprouted:  Rainbow chard (planted along the back of the container of chocolate mint), green onions (south garden), and FINALLY, a few of the Hollow Crown parsnips (container along driveway).  It took over three weeks for those suckers to germinate!

Almost all of the potatoes have sprouted at this point.  It's nice to see that large square of bare dirt finally start to look like a garden.  :-)

Pumpkin Planting, Take II

It has been a beautiful, sunny, breezy day.  I started to tackle weeding the raspberry patch and discovered a new cucumber sprouted, as well another sunflower and several nasturtiums.  The Sugar Pie pumpkin seeds I planted in May haven't shown any signs of germinating, so I planted Winter Luxury pumpkin seeds today in their place.  
 

Winter Luxury Pumpkin

After The Rain

I have typed the title of this post hesitantly.  After a clear day yesterday and a sunny, warm morning today, thick, grey clouds are rolling in and I just spotted lightning over the downtown area.  More rain?  I hope not!

A few pictures of the garden, taken this afternoon...

Beans!  My beans have sprouted!  I have no idea why this fills me with such glee, but it does.  These are "Tene's Beans", a dry bush bean.  My Speckled Algonquin, Anasazi, and Beurre de Rocquencourt beans have all started to sprout as well.  Oh, happy day!

Green Arrow peas are coming along nicely.

Determinate tomatoes (Yellow Cherry and Cole) in one of the raised beds.

This is Butters, another neighbour's cat.  She loves head-pettings and being talked to, but loathes being picked up and won't be held.  Super affectionate and likes people...but not other cats.  This proves to be a problem when she wanders into our house for a visit.  Visits outside work out much better for everyone.

Chocolate mint in the foreground, a flower bed in the making (stone bed), buckets of tomatoes lining the fence, a bed of kohlrabi (wood), and the potato patch ("North" garden) right in front of the house.  Swiss Giant Pansies and dahlias in containers on the step.  Dandelions everywhere.

A Russet potato plant in the freshly-hoed patch!

The "South" garden, also right in front of the house, with Anasazi & Beurre de Rocquencourt beans, sage, nasturtiums, cucumbers, green onions, red cabbage (transplants), broccoli (transplants), and cauliflower (transplant) planted.  The tree furthest to the right is a crab apple in bloom.  In the foreground, containers of Sunspot sunflowers.  Wooden containers to the right have Watermelon radish and various greens planted in them.

Indeterminate tomatoes, peppers, and rain barrels along the side of the house.  (Better Homes & Gardens material, this is not...)

At the back of the house: tomatoes, corn, a young apple tree, Sweet Siberian melons (maybe...I have lost track of what kind of melons I've grown...could be Cream of Saskatchewan instad!), and Sugar Pie pumpkin planted.  The flowering tree in the back alley is a crab apple, a different kind than the one on our front lawn.

Assorted greens:  Pac Choi, Red Oak Leaf lettuce, Perpetual Spinach, Black Seeded Simpson lettuce, Mesclun mix, etc.  Also weeds in there, but I'll have to let things grow a bit more before pulling anything out.  I don't want to yank out lettuce and leave the dreaded pigweed.

Oh, my.....it just started to POUR.   :/   We already have 23 garbage cans of varying sizes that we use as rain barrels, one actual rain barrel, and a number of buckets  - all are full of water and could have been filled once over again.  And now more rain?? 

At least I won't have to water anything for a while.

When It Rains...

For the record, I was running around the house last night in a floor-length flannel nightie with the thermostat turned up.  At the end of May.  BRRR!  

It started sprinkling the afternoon of the Great Tomato Transplant, and has been raining - often times, pouring - since.  Every available rain barrel, bucket, and large container we have is filled at this point, and it's still raining.  My bucket-tomatoes are drenched, but still alive. Now we need some sunshine, heat, and a light breeze so things can start growing in earnest.

When it does dry out, I have hours of weeding ahead of me...

The Great Tomato Transplant

Yesterday, I planted my tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and tomatoes in pots and raised beds outdoors.  As carefully as one tries to plan, unexpected things happen and when it comes to what actually gets put in the garden, there are always a few surprises at the last minute.  I planted...

- Doe Hill peppers (2 or 3) and jalapeno peppers (2 or 3).  Possibly 1 King of the North Pepper.  Time will tell.
- Casper, Ping Tung, and Vittoria Eggplants (4 total).  This blog might be called, I Will Grow Eggplants but judging by the looks of the poor little ones I have, maybe I should change the title to the less-ambitious-yet-still-optimistic, I Will Plant Eggplants.
- Marigolds
- Tomatoes.  LOTS of tomatoes.  

The King of the North pepper seeds I received in a trade earlier this year and started in April turned out to be tomatoes instead.  I was extremely careful about labeling my seedlings, so whoever I did the trade with either got things mixed up, or has a sick sense of humor. *L*  As a result, I have far fewer peppers than I wanted, and ended up with 33 tomato plants!   

Realizing we didn't have enough space for all of them, I prioritized by the varieties I most wanted to grow and the health of the plants, and went to work planting those.  I was left with 13 plants, which I decided I'd try to give away.  Instead, R pulled out a bunch of the buckets we use for rainwater, placed them along the fence by the potato patch, bought several large bags of soil, and I planted the extras in those yesterday afternoon.

If they all do well, we are going to have plenty to eat fresh, dice and freeze, and share with friends and family.  

The timing was good, as it started to sprinkle late yesterday afternoon.  Today, we have had heavy showers with hail, thunder, and lightning.  The rain barrels are almost full now, and there are puddles in the driveway and south garden.  The bucket-tomatoes, which have no drainage, are soaked but don't appear to be waterlogged.  I'd be mighty ticked if they croaked within 24 hours of my backbreaking (not sure I mean that figuritively...) work planting them yesterday!

You Can't Hide the 'Nip

After several days of clouds, drizzle (no real rainfall, darn it), and very cool temps, I awoke this morning to bright sunshine and warm weather.  Last night was the first all-night sleepover on the front step for my plants.  The tomatoes seemed to fare well, as did the peppers.  R. made a shade tent for them this morning, as it is shaping up to be a hot day.


I think my melon plants got zapped.  :(  


To replace them, this morning I planted Cream of Saskatchewan melon seeds and Sugar Pie Pumpkin seeds in the containers where the Sweet Siberian melons were intended to grow.  Fingers crossed they do well.  If the Sweet Siberians snap back to life, I will do my best to find a place for them in the South garden.

After planting the melon and pumpkin seeds, I rounded the corner of the house to find Karl indulging in the catnip.  The catnip we had deliberately placed off the round, on a plank of wood across layed the top of a rain barrel so the poor thing's roots would have a chance to establish themselves.  Karl has the transplant gnawed pretty much down to the soil.  I think we're going to have to buy another transplant.    

R's brother just dropped by for a quick visit and gave us two Butternut squash plants!  Love Butternut squash.  Have no idea where we are going to put them, but I will find a place!

Update - We took a trip to the nursery late this morning to get some transplants (including catnip!).  I prefer being able to grow and then harvest my vegetables from seeds.  Strangely, I don't feel like I've grown them/that they're really mine if I use transplants.   I also am not thrilled about growing hybrids.  Sometimes things don't go according to plan and my seedlings croak, so Plan B is the nursery!  

We bought broccoli, cauliflower, red cabbage, green cabbage, and more corn and strawberries (half of the last batches of corn and strawberries we recently bought and planted got wiped out by a wind storm).  We planted those this afternoon, mostly in the South garden, and I filled in any extra space with green onion seeds and nasturtiums.

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