State of the garden - Canada Day weekend

The garden has erupted.  Snow peas have overshot their support systems.  Potatoes have obscured their serpentine bed.  Scarlet runner beans are starting to bine.  Garlic scapes are on their second revolution.   Bok choy, garden cress, and the first radishes have already bolted and gone into seed production. Both honeyberry bushes have peaked.  A few strawberries have ripened.  Spinach and Swiss chard are raising the roof on the raised bed.  Asparagus ferns are taller than me.  Squash vines are on the move.  Summer is short.    Everyone is in a big hurry.

Straw mulch 

Straw path

Two weeks ago Barry bought two straw bales at a farm east of Granum.  It was shortly after the permaculture consultant had kindly offered some of her extra straw, but she had run off to Vancouver Island to build an earthship, so it was good that Barry happened to pass this farm.  We left the bales on the front lawn that night, giving the mice (if any) a chance to escape into the street instead of into the garage.  Over the next two or three days I removed all the paving stones and boards and slimy leaves that had comprised the garden paths previously and threw down armloads of straw, some clean and yellow, some brown and musty.  The entire two bales could easily have gone into the pathways, but I thought the marginal utility would be greater if I reserved some for mulching.  Potatoes, strawberries, squashes, cauliflowers, garlic and onions were the lucky beneficiaries.  It's likely that the straw is reducing (though not eliminating) weed growth and it should be retarding soil surface evaporation (it's impossible to say whether it cuts down on how much watering I have to do).  After a week of dry heat, I like the aesthetics of it.  All the bare soil is pale and cracked.  At least I can imagine it being otherwise in the bed mulched with straw.

Good things in the vegetable garden:


1. Schweiserreisen snow peas are ready to eat and it looks like they will be in production for a good long time.  Seeds were sown over several weeks in April and May.  The second batch are just starting to blossom and the third lot are still preoccupied with climbing their cages.

Costata Romanesca

Papaya Pear

2. Summer squash are fruitful.  I haven't lifted a finger to ensure pollination of the Papaya Pear or Costata Romanesca squashes, and yet it happened.  The perfect yellow PP's are growing slowly, but I have a feeling the CR is going to be ready to eat within a week.  Just a feeling.

Tiny Tim tomato

3.  Tomato blossoms are open and willing, even the Tiny Tim, which is no more than 8 inches tall yet.  This might be a normal time for blossoms, or even late, but I'm relieved to see them after a late start, especially knowing that I can count on only another 70 frost free days.  The plants finally have stakes and cages in place for support when they require it and have undergone a thorough de-suckering in the last week.  Curious to see what the results of that will be.The potatoes also have blossoms, not yet opened, but I don't know what their purpose is.

4.  Scarlet runner beans have begun climbing their sunflower stalk poles.  The Vegetable Gardener's Bible told me that pole beans and sunflowers are bad companions, after I had planted all of the beans and given them what I thought would be a great climbing structure.  Vines certainly seem to prefer winding themselves around things that are approximately circles in cross-section.  Sometimes vines wave around for days, and resist all coaxing on my part, before they commit to a climbing pole.  Then they can't seem to move fast enough.  We hope the red blossoms will draw hummingbirds this year.



5.  We remembered that we have shade cloth, a green mesh that is supposed to block just the right amount of sunlight (So much and no more, as Mr. Carp might say) to allow growth of the more heat sensitive species, like lettuce and radishes.  Actually, I forgot to plant radishes last weekend, but we already have garden cress, lettuce, beets and pak choi sprouting away.  It looks like they're camping.  The ubiquitous quack grass is doing okay inside the shade cloth tent, too.

6.  Asparagus ferns are huge, some taller than me (the photo is a bit out of date.) We enjoyed all of four, or six, or eight spears of asparagus this spring, which is quite disappointing, since we were supposed to begin last year to reap the rewards of waiting through two years of root development.  There were tense days after I had snapped off all visible spears and no more were apparently forthcoming.  How would the roots be replenished?  But the spears did finally emerge and unfold into substantial ferns.  A couple of bees were busy in the flowers this evening.  It bodes well for a better harvest next year.

7.  Sun chokes (Jerusalem artichokes) appear to be thriving in all their locations.  Shade from the boulevard trees does not seem to be a problem, nor does being planted in a box of earth and compost set atop a sheet of cardboard.  Whether they can survive encroachment by everlasting sweet peas remains to be seen, but we are willing to intervene to a reasonable extent should they appear threatened.

8.  Honey berries.  I may have picked that last of this year's crop.  We took in more than a kilogram altogether, from both bushes, by my extremely rough estimate.  That may not sound like much, but after feeling fortunate to get a dozen berries from our now deceased Saskatoon bushes, I consider this to be a wildly successful endeavour.  A new variety, Borealis, is now planted in the front yard, where I hope its minimum sun requirements will be met.  It will be great to have a bush I can walk all the way around to get at all the berries.  Planting the first two near the neighbour's fence was not such a good idea.




These are the good things that come to mind, and this post has gone on long enough.  Next time: the bad, possibly the ugly, perhaps the rather interesting.