I Will Grow Eggplants: Oy Vey - The Month That Was May

I am late getting to an update for May. What a busy and unusual month.

Here goes.

HEAT

May, especially for the first 2-3 weeks, was unusually hot this year. Several days brought us temperatures in the high 20s/low 30s and we had only two days of light rain (more about that below). On the upside, the heat allowed us to get an early start on the garden. The tomato and eggplants were transplanted into the garden May16th and 17th. The garlic was sprouting through the patch's mulch layer by April 30th. Snow peas, carrots (planted May 7th), potatoes (planted May 9th), and some of the beans (planted May 13th and 17th) were sprouting around the Victoria Day weekend. Most years, that is when we are just beginning to plant those things.

FIRE

The wildfire season started early this year and with a vengeance. Northern Alberta and northern BC had several large, out-of-control fires that necessitated the evacuation of a number of rural and remote communities. Our community served as a destination for evacuees and was a base for ESS services. (And this continues, as wildfires threaten more communities, like Tumbler Ridge, this month.) We functioned in a blanket of haze from those fires during most of May. Some days, fine ash covered the transplants that were hardening out on our front step. The smell of smoke was pervasive, almost constant, and at times, very intense. Most days, we could still work outside for short stretches, but some days, we had to remain indoors with the windows and doors shut. May 19th - the day we planted the pea patch - was the worst. Here is an excerpt from an email I wrote that day:

"I planted some kale this morning, and we just came in from planting the pea patch around 2:30pm. Holy cow, is the air ever thick with smoke. The worst we've experienced in the last 2 weeks. Even inside the house smells like a campfire. Our visibility markers keep changing ("I can see xyz down the street from the house"..."Okay, not anymore, but I can still see so-and-so's garage"..."opps, not now"...). The sky is grey and the light is a weird, dark orange/grey. If there weren't fires happening, you'd be convinced that a tornado or major hailstorm was heading this way, from the colour of the light/sky.

You know when you open a wood stove or go to poke around the fireplace, but the draft isn't quite open? That wave of smoke that comes at you and the intense smell? That's what we're going about our business in today, except you can't just wave the smoke out of your face; it's everywhere.

Quite a number of evacuees are in town now. The main arena/events hall has opened as an evacuee centre and I expect many of the hotels are full."

Entire communities in both provinces were ordered to evacuate. That included indigenous communities, some remote, and many farmers. The farmers didn’t just have to worry about evacuating their families, but their livestock as well. Imagine the stress. It was heartening to see people in the region flood social media with offers of help for the evacuees. Offers of pastureland and barns to house livestock, garages and warehouses to store large equipment that was moved, people offering to foster pets short-term, hot meals, childcare, beds in spare rooms, etc.

The view looking down the street near our house (May 19th)...

The lilac bush in bloom. (Also May 19th. This picture was taken mid-afternoon. That is the sun, not the moon.)

Mercifully, we had a day and a half of rain during the holiday weekend (May 20-22). It cleaned the air - check out the colour of the water in this rain barrel - and helped quell the fires. They were certainly not extinguished, but at least they became smaller in some areas and the firefighters had a better chance of getting them under control.

On a lighter note...

SILLY BIRDS

On May 9th, I planted a row of Green Beauty snow peas in the south garden. I grew them for the first time last year, and they were delicious. By late May, they were a few inches tall and looking great.

One afternoon, I took a break from weeding the raspberry patch and headed to the house for a cold drink. Standing by the south garden, with a serious look on his face, was R. He wasn’t saying a word and his body language conveyed that something bad had happened. I was expecting the worst.

When I inquired, a shocked and aggravated, “The little buggers chewed down the peas!” was his reply. Not what I had expected him to say, though I was relieved things weren’t as grave as I’d imagined. He explained that when looking out the living room window moments before, he spotted a sparrow pulling on the leaves of the peas. He came outside and watched another one do the same thing. Upon closer examination, it was clear that the sparrows had made quite a buffet of the snow peas. The entire row was chomped down to about 2 inches in height and most of the leaves were gone. We were baffled and frustrated. I’ve been gardening for almost 20 years, and he grew up gardening on his family’s farm. Neither of us had ever seen or heard of sparrows going after pea plants. A few colourful expressions of exasperation were uttered that afternoon, let me tell you.

An online search about the problem (“Sparrows eating garden peas”) turned up dozens and dozens of results. Apparently, this is a thing. A common thing, in some places. Upon seeing the most commonly recommended solution, I thought, “Nope. Not doing it.”. Large sections of floating row cover or mesh netting strung over trellis and rows of peas seems like a lot of work and trouble, and we already put a lot of time into staking and trellising peas. R. found a long section of mesh we used years ago to support a section of Tiger Eye beans and wrapped that around the row of peas, securing it to the twine trellis with small file clips. They seem to be leaving the row of snow peas alone now, though they’ve since taken a few chomps out of snap peas in the main pea patch. Not to mention taking single chomps out of small cucumber, squash, and sunflower plants. Twerps!

The birdbath R. brought home a few years ago sits on a rock wall at the edge of the front lawn. Sometimes, I’ll spot a mellow, fuzzy bumblebee sunbathing on the rock in the middle of it, or maybe having a little drink. Sometimes, the surface of the water is covered with pollen (in addition to a month of haze, the air has been filled with tree fluff and pollen) or ash. If it’s set up early enough in the Spring, sometimes we’ll catch a robin or two having an exuberant bath in it, especially if the puddles in the driveway have dried up.

A few weeks ago, we noticed that the crows who visit the birdbath sometimes arrive with things in their beaks that are destined to be dunked. They deposit their finds in the water for a minute or two, pick them out again, and then either eat their snacks or, if the objects turn out to be inedible, drop them on the lawn before they fly away. It’s neat to watch them perform this little ritual.

Recently, R. looked out the window just in time to see a crow fly to the birdbath with a large, white object in its beak. It landed on the edge of the birdbath, dropped it in, and flew away. Out we went and peered down at the water. There on the bottom sat a great big chicken bone! Drumstick, I’d say. Amusing, to say the least. Was he making a soup? I guess we’ll never know.

GARDEN NOTES

The last two summers of intense heat and drought left the strawberry bed with only 4 plants alive. We bought and planted new strawberry plants near the end of May and heavily mulched the bed with grass clippings. I also planted nasturtium seeds throughout the bed to help provide some groundcover while the new plants get established this summer.

Here's what's growing in the garden this year:

Tomatoes

Determinate: EM-Champion, Principe Borghese, Fisher’s Earliest Paste, Petrusha Ogorodnik, Mongolian Dwarf, Black Sea Man, Favorie de Bretagne, Uluru Ochre, Fred’s Tie-Dye Dwarf, Clear Pink Early

Indeterminate: Reinhard’s Chocolate Heart, Hungarian Heart, Rose de Berne, Sylvan Gaume, Franchi Red Pear, Moonglow

Peas

Green Beauty snow peas in the south garden, and Green Arrow, Laxton's Progress, and Lillian's Caseload shelling peas in the East garden.

Bush Dry Beans

Weiner Trieb

Early Warwick

Arikara (older seed – last grown in 2015)

Heritage Early Mix (d/b with runners. Last grown in 2017. Listed from earliest to latest to dry:

1) Swedish Brown (prolific, early)

2) Mitla Black (prolific, early)

3) Small White Navy

4) Purple Gnuttle Amish (pretty)

5) Green Hutterite (quite late – most of the pods still firm/damp when I picked them in mid-September before the first hard frost. The least productive of the 5 varieties in the mix.).

I planted 5-10 seeds of each of these varieties to grow them out. Some, like Yer Fasal and Orca, I had in very limited amounts.

Yer Fasal (seeds from 2017. Obtained in a trade. Turkish heirloom.)

Coco Jaune de Chine (seeds from 2018)

Orca (seeds from 2022? Obtained in a trade)

Fiesta (seeds from 2022? Obtained in a trade)

Tene’s Beans (seeds from 2020)

Ruckle (seeds from 2022)

Beka Brown (seeds from 2020)

Mrocumiere (seeds from 2018)

Bush Snap Beans

My stock of snap beans is older, so I planted a mishmash of varieties; we'll see what comes up. Provider, Calima, Cantare, Tendergreen, and Roma II.

Potatoes

Yukon Gold, Norland Red, AmaRosa fingerling, and Bellanita fingerling.

Squash

Galeux D'Eysines (C. maxima), Burpee's Butterbush (C. moschata), Bush Delicata (C. pepo), Yellow Early Prolific summer squash, and Fordhook zucchini.

Flowers

Calendula (Pacific Beauty Mix), Marigolds (Queen Sophia and Janie Bright), Dahlias (Dinnerplate tubers and Unwin's Mix from seed), Cosmos (Dwarf Sensation, Double-Dutch Rose, Rubenza), Bachelor Buttons (Blue Boy and Chocolate), Nasturtium (Little Firebirds and Alaska Red Shades), Strawflower (Pastel Mix), and assorted sunflowers (mostly Sunspot).

Greens

Cabbage (Brunswick, Early Golden Acre), Lettuce (assorted), Kale (Lacinato, Rainbow Lacinato, Scarlet, Red Russian, Curly Blue), and Swiss Chard (5 Colour Silverbeet).

Herbs

Parsley (Italian Flat-Leaf), Mint (Mojito, Indian Tea, Chocolate, and Corsican, Chives, Basil (Cinnamon), and Dill (Fernleaf).

Other

Eggplant (Diamond), Corn (Gaspé Flint), Celery (Amsterdam/"Soup" celery), Cucumber (Dragon's Egg), Leeks (Giant Musselburgh), Carrots (Scarlet Nantes, Cosmic Purple, Jaune Obtus du Doubs), and garlic.