The Midnight Snacker

   I took an early poke around the garden this morning, while it was still cool and quiet.  When I reached the back of the property, I spotted my dwarf kale, gnawed!

 

 

   I wondered if it might have been a rabbit.  I've only seen a rabbit in the yard twice over the years.  Looking around the garden, everything else - the trees, plots, and raised beds - seemed to be untouched.  It must have been a deer.  How polite that he or she limited their snacking to a single windowbox of kale.

   The next hour was spent puttering and hoeing and observing what had changed since last night (a Burpee's Butterbush squash is poking through, and the most recently planted rows of Calima beans are coming up, too).  I began hoeing weeds in the north garden, but stopped dead in my tracks when I saw this:

 

"He got my pepper plant!!  Bugger!"  

   Only the cat overheard, thankfully.  I couldn't believe my eyes.   We live right in town (albeit a town on the Alaska Highway, so I guess incidents with wildlife should never really come as unexpected).  We have never had problems with animals eating what we grow, unless you count grasshoppers or root maggots, depending on the year.  (Oh, or the summer the magpie family chewed the newly formed cabbage heads down to the ground and pulled out marigold petals to toss around the garden.  That was done for their own amusement, though, not for nourishment.)  Deer have never really come into town in the summertime, either.

   Another tour through the garden, looking more closely this time.  Sure enough, I spotted more kale had been chewed on and there were two deer tracks going through the rows of beans in the south garden.

  Fingers crossed that their taste for garden produce is restricted to kale and peppers, or I might have to start camping overnight in the yard!

 

Update - June 26 

   Camping, it is.  Just joking.  Maybe.  

   New discoveries this morning:  some snow peas, dry bush beans, and cabbage got eaten.  I don't know if The Midnight Snacker got them two nights ago or if he came back last night.

 

 

 

 

 Update - June 27

   This morning, we discovered that the tops of a few potato plants had been nibbled, an onion pulled out and left on the lawn, and a 2 foot stretch of dry soup bean plans chewed off.  Arrhg!

Bean Mix-Up, Tomato Flowers, and A Kindred Spirit

   

   It is a chilly, overcast, drizzly morning.  The kind of day that makes you want to turn up the thermostat but you resist doing so because, well, it's June.  I've donned a sweatshirt, a pair of winter socks, and have a throw around my shoulders.  The kettle is on for a cup of tea.  It feels like a day to focus on coziness.

   Yesterday was another matter: sunny, clear, and warm.  I took pictures early in the day and the sun was so bright, some of the pictures seem washed out.  I'll post them, anyway, as an update.

   The north garden.  The beans, dry peas, and White Scallop squash are mostly up.  Some zinnias just poked through, and wispy evidence of carrot seed germination has appeared.  Only one zucchini has sprouted, and I'm impatiently waiting for the others to catch up.

 

    

   EM-Champion tomatoes.  This variety is determinate and on the early side.  The first flower has opened on one of the plants.

 

   Some more determinate varieties of tomatoes, as well as 3 varieties of beans I'm trying to refresh/grow out.

Dwarf Beauty King tomatoes.  These look like they're going to be compact!

 

   Petitec (also called, "Doucet's Petit Bec") tomato.  A determinate heirloom that originated in Quebec.  I purchased the seeds from the PEI Seed Alliance.  It is early and the first variety to put out flowers (hard to see in the picture - click to enlarge).  I'm beginning to think I should have planted more of these.

   This bed is a bit of a mish-mash: Burpee's Butterbush squash (a small butternut variety), some Bonbon calendula (dwarf), a sunflower (Taiyo), and a volunteer asparagus that R. thought he dug up and moved with the other asparagus two years ago!

   Clear Pink Early tomato (determinate) in the bottom right corner, the cabbage bed in the middle, and Jacob's Cattle beans (dry/bush) in the bed beyond that.

 

   Clear Pink Early tomatoes, Ruckle (dry/bush), garlic, and carrots. This garlic came up as volunteers this Spring in the south garden.  We moved them to a raised bed to make room for pea planting in the garden.

   

   The onion and beet (Detroit Red) bed in the front, and a mix (by mistake) of Coco Jaune de Chine and Ruckle beans (both dry/bush) and Emalia tomatoes (determinate) in the bed beyond that.  Garlic patch to the left.

 

   The beds along the driveway.  Galeux D'Eysines squash (C. maxima) and a few sunflowers growing in the bed at the front.

 

Loulou loves to explore the garlic patch when we're working outside.

The potato patch.

 

   The cucumbers are just now coming up.  Two Early Annie tomatoes (determinate) and Loulou in the middle.  Water barrels to the left.

 

   One of the Monomakh's Hat tomato plants (indeterminate) has a flower.  It looks like these are going to be large tomatoes, indeed.

 

   There are a few spots in the bean beds and garlic patch where things didn't germinate.  Nasturtium seeds to the rescue!

The pea patch (south garden).

   

   One of the containers of VOLUNTEER garlic bulbils that R. found sprouted in the north garden when he was tilling.  They are robust and doing well.  These are in addition to the bulbils I deliberately planted in pots in the garden last autumn.  Abundance!

 

 

 

A spot of morning shade in the peas.

 

Speaking of shade, a spot to rest for us humans, too.

   Tomatoes (Andean and Reinhard's Chocolate Heart - indeterminates), beans (Ireland Creek Annie - dry/bush), chard, calendula, and lime mint on the south side.

   The Pineapple sage I overwintered (and moved/worked/tripped/cleaned around all winter) in the plant room did not enjoy the hardening off process this Spring.  I questioned whether it would bounce back when replanted, but it did - in partial shade, no less.

   

   Orangelo Thyme.  I bought the seeds on impulse, even though it was a splurge in terms of price.  When the packet said 25 seeds inside, it meant 25 seeds.  Tiny black pinpricks of seeds!  LOL!  Don't cough or sneeze while sowing!   I managed to get 6 to germinate and after much babying, they are doing well.  The scent is pleasant.  You can detect the light citrus and the overall scent strikes me as more mellow/softer than your average thyme.  Maybe because the seedlings are still relatively small and tender?  Time will tell.

 

   The sage came back beautifully after spending the winter in place.  Winters here, for better or worse, are not nearly as cold as they used to be.

 

 

   I did a trade last week with a woman I met through a social media gardening group.  I gave her some dry beans and tomato and herb transplants, and she gave me transplants of chives and lovage (lovage pictured below) and eggs from her hens.  She and her family live on a half section (320 acres) out of town.  Needless to say, she has a large garden, along with chickens (heritage varieties, I expect) and cattle.  The eggs were lovely and ranged in colour from light tan to olive green!  We hope to connect later in the season to do another trade and to natter excitedly about the obscure heirloom varieties we're growing.  (I discovered early on that you either "get it" or you don't, where this interest is concerned.  Those who don't just smile politely and hope you'll change the subject soon. Ha!)

   I'll have to ponder whether there is a spot on our property that would work for lovage.  I have wanted to grow it for years, but it is a perennial and gets very large.  Hmm...

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.