Another gardening thread!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sineed wrote:

  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

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!

Someone squash these zucchini jokes before they get out of control!

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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?

"Paramilitary ladybugs."

babble needs a new category of...something.

al-Qa'bong wrote:

"Paramilitary ladybugs."

babble needs a new category of...something.

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.

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.

al-Qa'bong wrote:

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.

 

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.

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.

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!

@ 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.

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.

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?

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.

Ripple wrote:

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

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.