Another gardening thread!

What an amazing urban container gardening idea!

I used to do that, much to the consternation of some of my neighbours in the rental unit where we lived. I guess I should have painted the Nabob cans...and not used them year after year until they rusted off the fence.

I have my veggie garden all planted! I have planted carrots, cucumber, tomatoes, onion, broccoli, watermelon, beets, radishes, lettuce, swiss chard, and oriental vegetables. I need to expand the garden, though, because I have a lot of seedlings left over. I never have luck with watermelon here, but I'm trying one last time - it's just never been warm enough, maybe this year it will be different.

We made a little cold frame out of bamboo hoops, clear plastic and bricks and planted our lettuce, spinach, radicchio and mixed "oriental" greens in early March. Now we can't eat em fast enough, tho the hot weather here in TO is slowing em down. The cold frame also led to some good tomato volunteers that are now doing very well.

Only prob is our resident near-downtown groundhog. Man, wot a mowing machine.

In March!!! Good heavens, that would be unthinkable here.

I planted with snow spitting past. The cold frame advanced the whole thing by a month... plus the greens like the cold it seems, and were even fine during a freeze (-5, which I know isn't bad). Other stuff had to wait and is only now coming along. But the cold frame also carrying volunteer tomatos through below freezing temps was amazing to me. And if it were glass it would be even better. Now we're scheming to get our hands on an old skylight or something.

Lettuce, spinach, kale, and chard are all doing well.  Peas and sweet peas are approaching 1'.  Green onions, more than I know what to do with.  Herbs - tarragon, rosemary, thyme, oregano,i mint - mostly doing well, but not the parsley.  How do you screw up parsley?

Thinking about moving my tomatoes and basil outside this weekend, though it seems unseasonably wet and cool here (Vancouver).  Any suggestions?

This is mostly container gardening, but I have a small plot 6' x 2' for the onions and chard (something ate my radishes), and 6' x 1' for the peas.

I'll have to look into that 'cold frame' idea. I have a small greenhouse, but, really, the ground here was still frozen as of May 15th.

I put in most of the backyard garden two weekends ago.  It's rained ever since and was quite cold for the first week after sowing..  Today I saw that some lettuce has sprouted. My guess is that a lot of the rest of the seed just rotted in the ground.

I still have to seed the allotment and finish the backyard, but the forecast is calling for rain every day for a week.  Sometimes I'm glad I'm not farming.

About 6 wks ago, a homeless guy on the main street around here asked me if I was a gardener.  I asked him what was up, and he handed me a bag of zucchini seedlings, saying a woman gave them to him, and he had no place to plant them.  So I took them home and slung them in the ground, and they're coming along like gangbusters - I may have a problem in the fall, as my kids aren't too crazy about zukes, though I'll be bringing a bunch to the guy who gave me the plants.

So every time I go down that street, the guy asks me how the zucchinis are coming along, and I give him an update, while passers-by look askance.

And I've got my usual herb garden: oregano, mint, chives, coriander, lots of parsley this year, thyme, sage, rosemary.

Edited to add: oh yeah, and Italian basil and Thai basil.  I'm going to try making pesto this year.  Tip: DON'T use Thai basil for pesto.  Take my word for it.  It's just wrong.

Use thai basil for pad gapow...I thought anthing but thai curries was a waste of time till I remembered that I'm in love with basil of all types.

I'm in the process of moving and after this weekend I'll have four nice-sized plots to grow veggies in. It's a bit late in the season, obv, but I'm pretty excited to get a full vegetable garden going. I'm in BC too, so I'll benefit from a long growing season. Summer salads here I come.

We're big on curries at my house - that's why I plant the Thai basil.  The Italian basil doesn't compare in curries.

I'll have to try that pad gapow.

I remember parking my car in Ottawa's Byward Market and coming back to find it full of unwanted zukes.

One well-traveled zucchini joke is about the woman who grew the world's largest zucchini. She wanted to take it to a friend to show it off. The zucchini was so huge, it stuck out the car window and she couldn't lock the car. Stopping at the grocer's for a few things on the way, she returned to her car to find something awful happened while she was in the store... someone had left her the world's second largest zucchini too!

The Best Zucchini Recipe:
1 bushel zucchini
1 raincoat
1 pair of sunglasses
A moderately fast car
Directions:
Go to a busy parking lot. Drive around until you find an unlocked car. Put the zucchini in the back seat and drive away FAST before you are discovered!

Boom Boom, you have no idea how many times I have told that joke over the past week. It kills every time!

Here's one a just made up:

Q: What kind of car does a zucchini drive?
A: A Courgette.

I've got most of the backyard garden in my new place all put in. I dug up two plots, a hedgrerow for raspberries, and planted a couple of blueberry bushes along the fence. I've got tomatoes, zucchini, celery, peppers, eggplant, cucumber, kale, chard, broccoli and leeks all planted, and have sown some lettuces and basil, along with some bush beans. It's a bit late for those, but I didn't have a choice. Some arugula has already sprouted so hopefully I'll get an alright crop--luckily it's bee rather cool here in Vancouver so it should be okay.

I've got to figure out where and how to do the herb garden, but we've got some nice herbs going, including a bay leaf tree. I've never tried fresh bay leaf before so I'm pretty excited.

Some of what I put in on Victoria Day is up - courgettes, lettuce, broad beans and green beans.  I transplanted the rest of the backyard tomatoes yesterday.

I also went out by the airport to check on the allotment yesterday.  It was too wet to do anything, but not as bad as some plots.  Three or four, which are in the lowest spots, are completely under water. I just had a little bit of standing water along one side, but it should be gone by tomorrow, which is when I intend to plant spuds, onions, corn, soybeans and lima beans, and put in some more tomato transplants.

In my greenhouse I have cucumbers, tomatoes, green onions, and broccoli starting up. In my main veggie garden, no sign of anything yet - but it's only been just under two weeks since I planted everything.

Lots of sun in our forecast this week, so I'm expecting good things to happen. My main flower bed is bursting at the seams with stems that will sprout very soon... hopefully. I have a couple of fiddlehead ferns making an appearance, and a few tulips actually burst into bloom June 1st.

If we have a summer of decent weather and lots of sun, I'm going to have a really nice set of gardens all over.

Wow, Boom Boom, you are a month to six weeks behind us here in the balmy south.

Last sunday, after some deliberations between Rebecca West and myself, I dug up the feral herb garden and put mats down to kill everything dead.   We'll start afresh next spring.

I did salvage the wildish garlic in the process, and dryed it in the oven and put them in a jar in the fridge.  That turned out to be more labour intensive than I imagined it would be.    And the whole house smelled like garlic for a couple of days.

When we re-start it, the herbs will be more confined with landscaping fabric and planting them in semi burried pots.  We'll grow termaters, too.

Left the sage bush: it's bright purple/blue right now and the bumble bees are too appreciative of it for me to cut down or back yet.

Our roses are doing well.  The white wild rose bush that climbs on the east facing back of the house, under the kitchen window has bloomed and gone.  The fragrance would waft into the kitchen from time to time.   The more conventional roses, big blood red blooms are out in full force, and they are mixed in with the climbing roses that have smaller, lighter red to pink blooms that last a long time.  These bushes climb along a fence that wraps around a patio on the east side of the house.  I built an arbour twenty years ago, and it climbs over it too.   I should take a picture, this year promises to be spectacular-- thanks to Rebecca West convincing me that fertilizing isn't cheating.  Funny what roses will do with a bit of fertilizer.

The octagonal garden to the left of this riot has seen the bluebells come and go, along with the light blue irises.  Now, it's Maltese Cross with thier orangey red flowers dominating, punctuated by a couple of white oriental lillies.   The seedum is past it's prime colour but still looks nice.  

The wild geraniums I planted from seeds taken on a walk up north have really established themselves in this, their third year.  Spectacular at the back; but I plan to try to grow some indoors this winter, too. 

I have to do some radical cutting of the wild grape vine that runs along the phone and cable lines at the back of the property. I've left it because it's a nice green backdrop, and it provides privacy.  But, the maple and oak trees I planted underneath have grown to a height that they will start providing the same privacy and the grape vine is competing with them for light.  

Sadly, this year is the year I will cut down a Walnut that has grown between my house and my nieghbours.   It's just too close to the houses for a tree that will grow so big, and I guess I have to take it, and a couple other trees in the same area down this year.   Unfortunately, I could not get anyone interested in taking them and trying to transplant them.

But, of the two walnuts, I should be able to salvage a walking stick out of the larger.

Mmm, garlicky house!  Sounds delicious. :)

I planted everything in the first week of May. (East Hamilton). Some years thats pushing it but the weather was cooperative. I cut down to three zukes this year but wanted to try acorn squash this year... I'm told I may have overdone that one.

We had the sheep shearer over this week and now we have a big pile of raw sheep fleece. I was wondering if I could use it as a mulch in the garden. The rain will hopefully wash out the tags and provide a bit of manure for the plants and the sun and rain will probably felt the wool in due time, so that we can use it next year again. Anyway that is what I hope will happen. Any experience out there with fleece as a mulch?

Sheeps wool as mulch.

Interesting idea.  You could try it and report back. I tried using cotton batting from a matress years ago under the ground so it would rot but it took ages (as in several years). I think the wool will take a long time too. 

Maybe you have transition towns there and people might like to try spinning, weaving or felting it?

(Felt it to make fibre pots).Then you get the advantages of soil blocks without making a special mix of soil.

Or could you put it over a new seedbed and  put the wool over it and have the plants come up through it?  (Probably not)

    My pet idea this year is to make fiber pots from weed fiber. It has not worked yet. 

Ground up weeds instead of peat in the mix for soil blocks has been moderately successful. 

My first beans and lettuce that were planted with that method are bigger than the rest now  but soilblocks are trickier to keep watered, etc.

Other than that, nothing much to report on the gardening front.

Brian

Yup - because we always have frost in the evenings right up to the first or second week of June, and the ground is usually frozen right to at least mid-May.

I need some advice about transplanting spring bulbs. I have some tulips that are definitely not going to be allowed to stay where they came up this spring. Do I dig them up now and move them, or should I wait until normal bulb-planting time in the fall? The problem with waiting is that by October I won't be able to tell exactly where they were, whereas their dead foliage has them clearly marked at the moment. If I dig them up now, would it be better to store them till the fall, or can I transplant right away?

I have moved tulips at this time and they did ok.  It is not the best time to move them but it is not likely to kill them either.  Most bulbs are robust. They are designed to survive in severe conditions.

Many bulbs are propigated by pealing off the layers or bulb petals, and laying them in moist cool peat.  Several tiny new bulblets form at the base of each petal!

That sounds a lot rougher than just digging the things up!

Thanks, Brian. I guess I'll just plunge in and dig then. With one lot, I really have little choice because the plot is quite small and is otherwise overgrown with either weeds or boring things -- the whole plot needs clearing out and new soil, but I would like to save the tulips.

My backyard garden is doing OK, but the allottment is a disaster.  I went out there today and found that two of the tomatoes I transplanted last week are under water.  One corner of my plot is better suited to rice paddies than spuds.  Yeah, spuds; my store-bought Norlands are up but most of my French potatoes haven't germinated yet.

I put in a few rows of soybeans and lima beans, and only three plants are up.  I dunno, but I think the seeds eroded in the floods.  Quite a few plots out there are under water or are so wet that nothing's growing.

The soil there is heavy clay (I had to keep cleaning off my hoe when I was planting because the "dirt" was sticking to it - what a mess!) so water doesn''t drain very well.  Every year I tell myself I should add peat moss, but since I'm renting I don't feel such a strong tie to the land.

We don't have the rain SK has had this "summer" but today has been pretty much the first day of anything approaching "heat" so far this year. My tomato plants are dwarfs with very few blossoms yet, and although I still have lettuce and spinach doing well due to the cool weather, everything else seems to be biding its time. Although I did get a small crop of blueberries which was a surprise. Enough for a few bowls of granola, though--not much.

I also am engaged in a protracted struggle with aphids on a couple of plum trees in my backyard. I started by blasting them off with water and then followed up with targeted strikes of insecticidal soap. Yesterday I introduced paramilitary ladybugs in the hopes of staving them off indefinitely, but they've done some serious damage. The weird thing is, both trees straddle the fence with my neighbour. Yet their trees are overladen with green plums and I have a grand total of two. If they had an aphid treatment, how did they apply it to only one side of the tree and if they didn't, why do the aphids indiscriminately prefer my side of the fence?

@ al-Qa'bong

Yeah, given how the year has turned out I am happy I over-planted potatoes. I don't have anything that is actually suffering. The tomatoes are a bit behind, is all. One thing I am surprised about is that I have seen no slugs yet.

Fortunately we are sandy here and everything drains well.

"Paramilitary ladybugs."

babble needs a new category of...something.

I have  been thinking about the bees a bit this year.  My effort to save some of them is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1CwnYY64NU

If you see holes in the tops of oldish raspberry canes or grape vines, it may well be that bees have hollowed out the soft pith so that they can have tunnels to lay their eggs in. (Or maybe it is just a place to hide for the night?)  I have seen 2 types of bee take a major interest in raspberry canes.   This might mean that rather than compost your raspberry canes, you could bundle them up in 1 ft lengths or so and tuck them away in a lighted corner somewhere to provide bee habitat.  Anyway, today something has blocked off one of the holes in the cob bricks.  Brian

You do know most of them are aliens, or settlers, or however we want to call them, eh? There are ladybug counts I have heard of where people are supposed to look for the native ones, as opposed to the more numerous introduced ones, which I think are some californian strain.

I actually saw one two days ago which was black with red spots.

I used that search tip (site:archive.rabble.ca/babble) to find this old gardening thread from 2002.

In my previous babble incarnation, Arch Stanton, I mention the wild roses I rescued from the side of the road, and how they had never bloomed.  I moved from that place two years later, and transplanted a bunch of the roses to my current place.  The roses bloom nicely now, and are spreading a little bit all over my front lawn every year.

Many of the households here have wild roses transplanted from the mainland. I have a wild rose bush beside the garage, and have transplanted some of it to the back yard, it's all doing well. On the other hand, roses I ordered from Veseys are not doing well at all.

I have a question for Manitoba gardeners.  Can you find Diazinon (onion maggot powder) in stores there?  I was talking to someone out at the allotments who told me it's still available in Manitoba, while it's been taken off the market in Saskatchewan for five or more years now.  We have a real problem with onion maggots here.

The gardener with whom I spoke told me he puts Tide in the furrows just before planting onions.  He always has a nice crop, so it must work.  Then again, he still has a store of Diazionon, which he sprays around the plants.

I have that clay too, yuck.  The first year I added three truck loads of peat moss, the next year I had rock hard peat moss.  The next year I went with leaves and grass and compost and cow poop, the following year did the same.  Now I can actually grow things, but I think I still have two years left of amending before I can truly garden in that spot.  And when I go work in the garden, I have to remember to put on my garden sneakers, because the gumbo just never really rinses off.

Have you tried ashes, or diatomaceous earth?

And the diazanon ban is federal.

I started my veggie garden over because there were so many weeds - I had to pull every one out by hand, so as to get the roots out, too. The carrots, radishes, and oriental veggies were all doing well, but the lettuce, chard, and beets were all kaput.

The blackflies are really bad this year, probably because it's been so damp.

I only ever knew gumbo in Medicine Hat, but it is unforgettable, and there it is often red. When I was eleven, we moved to Calgary; the first day we were in the new place it rained a bit, and we all went out to stare at the ground in the back yard. The soil was black -- I still remember being amazed by that -- the dirt here is black.

Mind you, Medicine Hat became famous for its pottery works, notably Medalta and MH Potteries. I love their stuff, easy to find on eBay. If you can't garden in the Palliser Triangle, become a potter.

Boo, clay. I don't know if I'd be willing to put as much work as it looks like it needs to convert that kind of soil to a reasonable mush if I had it in my renter either. And that sounds like terrible bad luck, Boom Boom. Beeter luck this time around.

I just pulled up the last of my arugula, most of which was threatening to seed (or had done already), and we made arugula and mint pesto with it. It tastes pretty good, but I'd probably throw in more mint next time. I still have some nice looking lettuce that is holding out against this now three week+ heat wave (I water it twice a day when I am able), but I started planting out some brussel sprouts and purple broccoli I started at the end of June. I want to start some peas for the late fall, but I don't have the space. Plus, I don't think I can eat all these vegetables--my landlord is on vacation and they have donated their weekly vegetable box to us. How I am supposed to eat that bounty as well as the glut of produce lining up right now is beyond me. Hopefully I can find some hungry friends who really, really, realy like courgettes.

We also split our first raspberry of the season this morning. Delicious!

It has been a perfect year for the lazy gardener here in SW Ontario.  Rain always just on time like the perfect assembly operation of a nearby Toyota plant, and the potato plants have shaded out the weeds. The carrots are going to be longer than 8 inches for the first time ever, but they, and the small spanish onions, needed very careful hands and knees work to remove weeds in the early stages.   

@ Catchfire

Canning, freezing, drying, pickling, fermenting (speaking of medaltas and redwings).

The jars in my basement are rattling with anticipation already.

Of course, it helps if you DO have a basement, or some suiltable larder.

You can do that?  (I'm pretty new to gardening.)  Anything else can I plant now for a late fall harvest?

I had considered planting peas where nothing was growing in my clay-field about a month ago , but it was too wet at the time to get out on the garden. I'd take a shot at planting buckwheat as green manure, but the ground is so hard I'd bust my hoe trying to seed anything now.

Not knowing where you are or in what zone (we are in 2-3), but if you planted tomorrow you might still be able to get pea greens (the whole plant is edible, not just the pods). Certainly lettuce or arugula (romaine takes longer, but is frost-hardy). You might even be able to get some of the faster-growing brassicas; gai lan is probably the quickest, then broccoli or kohlrabi greens. I never plant spinach, but I know if you plant it in the fall it will be the first thing up in the spring.

(edit) but if you are starting out I'd put more energy into preparing a space for next spring, and maybe putting in some onions and garlic and stuff that can overwinter (again, depending on where you live).

I'm in Vancouver.  I lost most of my peas when I went away mid/late July.  A neighbour watered, but had limited time so I had to prioritize the tomatoes, herbs and window boxes (can't eat 'em, but they're cheery).  Lettuce has started tasting bitter, lost the spinach, chard still doing ok.

We rent, so I hesitate to put too much work into my little plot.  The tomatoes and herbs are in containers.  The thyme has flowered.  But will do onions and garlic - even if we're not here, someone else can appreciate them.  I imagine I plant those in a month or six weeks?

Vancouver?

Last time I had a garden space there we grew potatoes right through the winter, though we were close to the water. You can plant the onions anytime you want. I'd lean more toward cool stuff (brassicas, particularly if you can find seedlings) than tomatoes and peppers. But really, you should find some gardeners there (I know of the big community garden in Strathcona) who can probably give you better advice than me.

I had volunteer spinach pop up last fall, which I left uncultivated (I usually dig up everything with a fork) and they came up again this spring.  I also had volunteer fava beans, which I'm going to allow to ripen for seed.  I plan on sowing them this fall, as they don't seem to mind the cool spring weather.

I 've had decent results with fall sowing of garlic in the past, although I didn't get to it last fall.

My greenhouse leaf broccoli is growing well, tomatoes a bit slow. My main veggie garden looks good with most of the weeds pulled, now I wish the newly-planted seeds would hurry up before the summer ends!

I think I will try the veggie garden one last time next summer - I have many packets of seeds here, and would like to use them all up. But if the weeds take over - again - then the heck with it, I'll turn the veggie garden into a flower/rock garden, although my nieghbours suggest growing potatoes, as weeds have no effect on potato crops.

My flower gardens are doing very well, although they're very limited as to variety - mostly gorgeous lillies, daisies, sunflowers, and a couple varieties I can't recall the names of.

Like 6079_Smith says, if you plant them this week, with some luck (and some row covers) you can probably get some peas. They're cool weather plants, but you need to keep them protected from early fall rains. You also need a vigorous variety. I use West Coast Seeds English Pea (I'm also in Vancouver).

But 6079_Smith is right: easier would be fast-cropping cold-weather plants like certain brassicas: kale and cabbage will crop this fall, with broccoli and brussel sprouts cropping in the early winter. Lettuce, chard and spinach is also a good bet, but I'd hold out for a bit because I think it's still too hot in Vancouver. I'm a reasonably new gardener too, though--but I've had success with this in the past. I'm going on instinct rather than experience. That and copying what my vastly superior gardening neighbours are up to.

@ Ripple

Yes, your limiting factor won't be temperature as much as hours of sunlight (since we are not talking about hot, long season stuff like corn, tomatoes or peppers, anyway). You will need full sun, which might be a challenge depending on what part of town you are in and which way the land slopes. Also, there is a big difference in how much frost you get at Hastings and Commercial and how much you get at Mount Pleasant Park.

The days have been getting shorter for a month already, and August is when things start slowing down. But things like kale and brussel sprouts don't taste as good until they have taken a good (-5) frost, and I have pulled them out of snowbanks a few times. But I would definitely try gai lan. It should be easy to find there, and it is faster than broccoli. On the upside, you should be planting next year's garden outside in February. As for whether it is worth planting things like carrots now for next year (my worry would be that they would just go to seed) best to talk to a gardener there who knows.

I pulled up the tomato plants in the back yard this aft. and salvaged what fruit I could.  Blight ravaged the plants this year.  I've never seen tomato blight before - it's an ugly disease.  Ironically, the backyard garden is drying out and some plants are wilting, after months of rain.

I went out to the clay-based allotment last week and picked four cucumbers.  That's been my total harvest this year.  It's bad, but some of the plots grew nothing but weeds, so the city mowed them.  I heard the gardeners were reimbursed their rental money.  I should probably qualify for something, seeing as I dug in 80 % of my plot since nothing grew.

The bright side is I'm not a farmer this year.

@ a-Q

Wow. My condolences. Sounds like you are at the five-corners garden.

It has actually been a good year for carrots and for beans, and I suspect potatoes as well, though I have pulled all the blighted tops and will wait a few weeks until I dig. Got a nice big potato that was sitting half out of the ground already, though. If everything goes well I should have 40 pounds or so/

I wasn't able to can any tomatoes this year (usually I get 12 or 15 quarts), though I have been eating a few. Bad year, as you say.

My brassicas, chard, and squash are doing well. I have never managed to grown good cucumbers in my yard for some reason.

All in all, a very odd year - the oddest thing being all the new weeds I have never had trouble with before, and no wasps to speak of (though we had bees, fortunately and a few hornets). Plus, after all that rain we got, I just emptied one of my 50-gallon rainbarrels into a crack in one of the garden beds. It sucked the whole thing up, and the surface never even got damp; I didn't even see a drop of it. The upside is I never watered once this summer. I am waiting for the rain this week to start bulking up what is left before I start harvesting it.

As far as putting stuff by, I have some cans of chard, plus roots, squash,  coriander and dill seed and herbs. The brightest spot - I think my apple grafts took, so I need to start about pruning the other trees I have in the yard to make room for something that actually produces food.

Well, they don't call this next year country for nothing. At least we got more water in the ground that we had coming into it. It could have been a lot worse.

You've reminded me that I need to ask a question. I have some quite nice dwarf lilies in a pot -- lovely spicey perfume to the flowers that you could smell at a distance, just walking by them -- but I'm not sure what to do with them right now. Do I risk leaving the pot (large, clay) outside in a corner of the covered deck through the winter? Should I bring it inside? Do I have to pull the bulbs out and replant next year (please say no)?

Nope. City plots out by the airport. My cucumbers and carrots are doing well. I've made quite a few jars of dill pickles so far. The basil crop was the best I've ever had, and I froze a bunch of that. The peas didn't start producing until recently, but the yield isn't bad. Some bugs have been devouring my Swiss Chard though - it's like lace.

Missed the comments about clay that started in July - much too late for this season, but if you end up with the same allotment next year, consider putting in some sunflowers and bergamot - the latter will have the benefit of attracting pollinators and can be harvested for tea. The sunflowers will not "thrive" but they should still produce reasonably well... I have used them in a couple of places to break up the clay and left cut them off at the ground leaving the root system intact... a season or two of doing this and the ground is much more workable.

I just came in from turning over about half of my veggie beds.  What a dismal year!  My spinach, which has been amazingly cooperative every other year, bolted in early summer and went to seed.  My snow peas failed to thrive, and we got handfuls instead of buckets this year.  My strawberries were pretty much small and hard, after five years of growing like...........well, strawberries.  I had lovely cabbages, the slugs ate most of them.  Even my lilacs were sad this year.

I have tons of spuds, beets and carrots -  I just have to pull them out very carefully as they are stuck in the clay.  My carrots look like corkscrews, most of 'em.  My chard and my lettuces are excellent, except my second seeding is only a few inches high and has stopped growing.    My tomatoes are still green, and I am thinking that I need to find something to make with green tomatoes or watch them freeze.

The weeds though, oh the weeds had a brilliant showing this year.  Next year I think I will PLANT weeds, cuz then surely the grass and the veggies will thrive?

Potatoes are a wonderful weed suppressant though, aren't they?  My favourite plant, it shades out the little buggers. I'm lazy, and had an Irish grandmother, so planted many...two varieties. 

Trick now will be to store potatoes in a heated basement.  Will experimentally feed cold air down a flex-hose from an unused hole in the header to shallow cardboard boxes on the floor, the whole covered with a drop sheet.  A thermometer will nestle in the spuds. That cooler corner kept dahlia coms/bulbs very well last winter in a plastic bag left unsealed until a bit drier in January.

Right after I wrote that bugs were eating my chard, I was looking out the kitchen window and saw a squadron of little birds (sparrows I guess) descend on the garden and chomp the Swiss.  These guys were doing this in the spring, too, which held the sprouting plants back quite a bit.

Nobody's helping me with my dwarf lilies in container yet ...

Depends on where in the country you live. My best advice is to dig them and pack them in sand in a cool dry place for the winter and replant in the spring. Leaving them in a clay pot outside will leave them suceptible to frost. Bringing the pot indoors won't work either. Why worry about it. Preparing for next year is part of the fun.

@ skdadl

Sorry. bulbs are not my forte. I'd make sure they are okay to overwinter for your zone.

Also, I do have some perennials that aren't made to survive here which do just fine down the basement in a south-facing window. You could probably do the same in a garage.I have also dug pots into the ground for the winter for protection, though I'd be concerned that a clay one might crack. YOu could transfer them into a plastic one and dig them in, perhaps.

Frost last night, with "killing frost" (cue Skip James) forecast for tonight.

Yes, usually we're usually a good three to five degrees higher than they are over at the airport weather station, but my vines got toasted last night. We're having tempura squash blossoms for supper tonight. I did take the precaution of bringing all the pots in, fortunately.

The last bean plant is still alive, so I think it was just a degree below, but I guess it's down to roots, brassicas and chard.

I heard La Ronge got a proper snowstorm last night.

 Just for the fun of it I entered a few things in the local country fair. 

 I won first prize in the biggest squash category.   LOL 

Congratulations!

(edit)

a-Q, I just noticed your sparrow post. The first two years I planted here I got no chard at all because of them. Now I start it all indoors and transplant.

Apologies.  Turns out it's holy basil that's used in pad gaprow.

So, I didn't get around to putting floating row covers on my cabbages, and they were pretty young today when the frost/snow hit. I think they're done for. My purple sprouting broccoli and brussel sprouts look pretty good though. Do I have to do anything to them to ensure their health throughout Vancouver's "winter"? Oh--and my kale looks alright but it's stopped growing. Boo.

Most brassicas can take quite a bit of frost.

(that's why they plant the ornamental kind as flowers here on the prairies)

I don't know how far down, but minus 5 for sure. I have had leaves frozen so solid by a frost that you could crack them off that were just fine once the sun hit them. I have only grown potatoes through the winter in Vancouver, but I wouldn't think brassicas would need any special treatment to survive there.

We've recently moved and now have a small (~20' x 15'), south-facing, shady backyard.  It's bordered by a 5' cedar fence, then 10' of pines and cedars, then a major transit route.  It gets some dappled sunlight, but we will likely lose that to a large maple.  We also have a 4' x 6' planter in our very social, also very shady front entrance.

It's all bare sand right now - the previous residents were preparing to lay patio slabs.  We'll probably do some of that, but will plant along the fence.  Maybe bamboo, because it grows quickly and some species do well in the shade.  Hydrangea might do ok in one spot.

Not likely herbs will grow; definitely no tomatoes.

Always happy to read suggestions (I'm looking at you 6079_Smith_W.)

Not being a gardening expert, and not being on the west coast (I assume that is where you are) I am doubly-disadvantaged. You should probably find someone out there, and also, it all depends on what you want for the space  - ground cover, bushes - flowers, eatables.

If this is your first year and you are wonderig what to do you might want to keep stuff in pots and flats or just plant annuals for a season until you see how the light and water move around the yard - certainly before you start changing the soil. The best gardeners I know out there actually have everything in pots. Of course, their thing is bonsai.

I know if I were out there I'd plant foxglove, wisteria and rosemary.  Mimosa if the conditions were right, and there is a beautiful clematis with large white flowers I have seen out there, but it would probably be at least medium and probably high light (with shade for the roots, of course).

Really, I would recommend walking around and snooping at other peoples' yards to see what you like.

I'd put it all into potatoes, just to see how things go.

I've heard that this year is supposed to be just as bad as last year for tomato blight, so I'm not going to put any in.  I'll put a few in plant pots, though, as the potted tomatoes did OK last year.

Have you tried digging all over with a spade or fork?   What did  it reveal in the way of "large maple roots?"

Are you in an area where "hardiness zones" might be important? 

We're expecting very heavy rain tonight and tomorrow, and it may be the end of all our snow - in which case I'm hoping for an early start to till the existing veggie garden, and start a new one, maybe a combination rock/flower/tree garden.

We have significant shoreline erosion, and I'm on a cliff overlooking the Gulf of St. Lawrence, so I'm trying to find the best trees with significant roots to anchor my shoreline. I have some small trees on my Vesey's order for June, but I'm always interested in hearing from folks here what plants are good for anchoring the shoreline from erosion.

ps: I'm in Zone 3A

Willow.

Thanks, I'll look into that, GV.

@ al-Q

That is good/bad news to get. Thanks.  Also, the only tomaotoes I saw that did not get blighted were cherry ones. 

Off to seedy saturday tomorrow.

My cherry tomatoes were blighty along with the others. 

Where's Seedy Saturday this year?  I could look it up, I suppose.   Pete G. alsways keeps me informed of these thing.

Just looked it up myself....

E.D. Feehan Catholic High School

411 Avenue M North
Saskatoon, SK

According to this, Nettie Wiebe's going to be there.

We had supper at EE Burrritos tonight.  There was a Nettie/NDP pamphlet at the till.  Ernesto, the guy who runs EE Burritos, does a lot of good work for the community.  I've heard he was a guerrilla fighting for the Salvadoran leftists [82] before he came to Canada.

Planted some bare-root roses last week in my front garden.

Got the pump for my water cascade going in the back pond, so if the weather turns nice I can sit outside to take photos of little migratory warblers stopping by for a drink.

Contemplating hauling a couple of big bags of soil up to my flat roof and punching holes in them. One of the newest lazy ways to plant veggies without having a garden (I get more sun on my roof than in my yard).

If the rain stops...

For Vancouver gardeners, Vancouver residents can pick up free compost at the Vancouver landfill until the end of May.

I was out at the allottment today, and got everything sowed.  I didn't bother with tomatoes or corn this year, as last year I had no yield of either.  I put in buttercup squash in the spot that was under water last year.  I believe squash likes a lot of water, so...bring it on, rain gods.

Half the garden is spuds, even though potatoes haven't done so well out there over the past couple of years.  I'm rolling the dice, hoping this will be a good year.

Upthread I mentioned how my soy and lima beans produced zilch last year.  I planted each again today.  I'm stubborn that way.

On the bright side, I wasn't slogging through mud while seeding this time.  Last year was a wet nightmare.

I am playing with the idea of a recirculating compost tea garden this year. Basically I have a solar panel, battery, inverter and bubble pump for an aquarium. So the plan is to use the bubble pump to power a "nano" airlift pump to pump the compost tea from a sump to the plants in a container where it leaks back into the sump. It might even get attached to a composter too, so the compost tea waters the plants and waters the compost too.  Anyway it is a totally experimental low tech system and only a few people are working on it. Virlusun has http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGDV8xBHaOY [87] and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0Uuc30M3K0 [88] for those who want to know how these little air pumps work and I have http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKtB1YKoMxk  [89] showing that the tiny super low tech airlift pumps can go really high.

This type of thing might work for recirculating nutrients to a living wall too. 

Anyway, my garden is growing slowly and now that it finally warms up, I have tonnes of work (masonry) to do so little time or energy for the stuff at home.

Brian

Compost tea, eh?

Back on the farm I kept a jar of chicken manure and water that I'd use to water my seedlings in the house before setting them outside.  Those were some healthy and vigorous plants.

I put in my backyard garden today.  Woo hoo!  One takes it for granted not having to slog through mud to plant seeds, which is what happened last year.  Everything's in two or three weeks ahead of where I was a year ago.

I am toying with the idea of gardening now that my son is much more self sufficient and should be able to play while I garden. Problem is I have to wait at least a month until he has his walking out ceremony before I can start. Any suggestions on gardeners who start in mid to late June? I didn't do so well on my last attempt at gardening and prefer vegetables or fruits and have to stick to mainly container gardening because of limited space for gardens here.

I'm sore all over from tilling the big veggie garden with a shovel. A friend used to bring his gas-powered tiller over, but it churned up the weeds and they eventually took root, so by doing it with a shovel, I can see the weeds and pull them out. Takes longer, and it's hard work, but it should pay off.

And I've been doing some landscaping as well, getting ready for new plants I have coming in the mail. This will be a nice place if I ever get it finished.

@ Refuge

You should be able to do peas (you'll at least get pea greens, which are edible) , beans, some lettuce, Also dill, cilentro.  I think you might even be able to get a feed of gai lan, though really, any cabbage green - kohlrabi, broccoli, kale - you can snip and eat at any stage, so I would fill a row and just harvest it like lettuce.

If you can start some stuff out in flats right now you could get a  lot more - summer squash. for one.

My son loves squash! I have never started something from flats before. Can I tend to it in the house until ready to plant outside?

Yes, although at this point you might want to go buy a seedling from a greenhouse, and re-pot it.  THey are also heavy feeders, so prepare the ground well.

I dug up two wheelbarrow loads of the leaf mold, gravel, etc that has built up in the gutters in front of my place and brought it into the yard to use in plant pots.  It has composted nicely, and is full of big fat earthworms.  I've always thought about doing this but have never tried it before.  I'll keep you posted on the plants' progress.

Enjoyed a pot of cream of herb soup today, made with lovage, sorrel and chives from the garden. Turned out very nicely.

I packed the pot with loosely chopped herbs (roughly 5 parts lovage to 1 part each of sorrel and chive), just covered them with chicken broth (about 6 cups) and boiled them for a few minutes to soften. Then I pureed it with the hand-blender and added 2 cups of cream and salt and white pepper to taste.

It was somewhat thinner than I remember my last attempt, but tasty and likely much more nutritious. Last time I didn't use sorrel (which is vitamin packed) and chive, just lovage and a store-bought onion.

I've been using a garden composter for five years now, but it never gets warm enough outside for it to do its magic. I get a couple of spadefuls of compost every year from the bottom of the pile, but that's it. I thought global warming would have taken care of that problem by now.

I'm conceding defeat in the war against the weeds - this is my last year with the big veggie garden. Next year, I'm going to fill it in with shrubs, trees, and wildflowers, and just enjoy the view. I'll keep the small greenhouse for a few essential veggies. I'm fed up with dealing with the weeds every year.

Just finished planting the big veggie garden - in a very cold wind. I'm exhausted. The weeds were a killer.

Tomorrow - will plant a small greenhouse full of lettuce.

If you want to avoid most of the weeding, you could try using black plastic mulch.

I can get here at the local building supply store those plastic sheets that they remove from their shipped in lumber for nothing.It is usually white on one side and black on the other side. If you use two layers of that to cover the ground it will kill the weeds.And all you have to do is cut some round holes where you want to plant your veggies.  It has several advantages.For one it keeps the ground from drying out. It warms up the soil a bit quicker and prevents the weeds from getting sunlight.It does not kill the weed seeds that are already in the soil. You have to weigh the plastic down to prevent it from blowing away on a windy day and wrecking some plants in the process.

 If you have some old lumber laying around you could make  some rectangular frames and staple the plastic sheeting onthe bottom , black side up. And if you realy want to get fancy you can nail some A-frames on your wood frame and use themto support your taller plants and have the option of covering the plants if you can see a light frosty night coming.

Yes, black plastic was suggested to me - yesterday - too late for this year! I'll look into it next year, but I already think I'm going to just plant trees and shrubs and enjoy the view.