Your daily squirm

About once each year we find a large and revolting larval form on the property.  This year's catch is a tomato hornworm, found by Barry this morning on the concrete patio, nowhere near the tomatoes.  It is 7 cm long, firm and leathery to the touch, and enjoys doing laps of whatever it is trapped in or sticking its head in the ground when permitted to roam about the lawn.  Unfortunately, the grotesque undulations of its locomotion can't be conveyed by the still camera.  If some lucky bird hasn't snapped up our hornworm by morning, maybe I will get a video.

New arrivals

This week's babies:

scarlet runner

We have a Scarlet Runner bean.  Yay!  The wait was not as long as I had thought it would be.

san marzano tomato

It is literally a pain in the neck to search for emerging tomatoes.  However, I doubt if it is much more than a week since fruits began forming on any of our tomato plants.  Every variety planted has some now, which is a wonder since some are supposed to be earlier than others.  Not all individual plants are bearing fruit yet.  The greenhouse San Marzano just grows more luminous green foliage.  It might need a little more stress.

early ear of corn - dazzling in the morning sun

We turned our backs on the garden for two days and returned to find several tufts of silk erupting from the corn stalks.  This is exciting, given my poor track record with corn.  The plants are also the largest I have ever grown, with the tips of the flowers already up to (don't laugh) my shoulder.

strawberry offspring

This was a little more than a week ago.  The strawberries seem to have shut down fruit production in favour of sending out runners, a great confusing tangle of them, in fact.  Where feasible, I cleared away the mulch to help the plant find a place to root.  Still, I pressed 26 of them into small containers with potting mix, and might yet do some more.  Many of these young plants are destined to live in other beds; using pots will cause less root disturbance for them when it's time to move.







On the menu:

We have recently added Maxibel fillet beans and Orca beans to our 50 foot diet.  Last night Barry made a delicious pesto using our basil, garlic, and beets greens (plus imported ingredients).  The beet roots are waiting for a suitable time to be steamed to the succulent tenderness we achieved with the last batch.  The garlic was not a clove but a small spherical bulb that had grown from a bulbil planted last fall.  We will harvest these sparingly until the regular bulbs are ready.

Every day we shell a pile of pea pods.  Can hardly keep up with eating them.  The snow peas aren't doing so well in the heat, but we keep them alive so they can produce again when the days cool down.

Though the strawberries are almost fruitless right now, we have had three from the new yellow alpine strawberry.  It's difficult to tell when they are ripe.  Raspberries have taken over the fruit supply nicely.  One variety is waning, while another plumper variety is coming on stream.

We cooked up a mess of parsnips last weekend.  It's not traditional parsnip harvesting time, but these were getting to be a bit of trouble.  A couple of them appeared to be inhibiting a Tigerella tomato plant.  Others were too big to live in the pathways and some were giving aid and comfort to the enemy - sow thistle.

Recent discovery - radish pods are edible.  We find they are better raw than cooked, better young than old.  This is excellent news, since we have never been able to grow radish roots in the summer.  Now we can relax while they bolt and enjoy the pods instead.

Still eating zucchini.

Three's a crowd

Interesting feature of Hope Seeds seed packages: the are printed with a description of the intended outcome ("nutty flavour", "green ribbed skin"), especially in regards to the edible parts, but no instruction regarding what to do with the contents of the package in pursuit of achieving that outcome.  Most seed companies will tell you at least when to sow, how deeply, how far apart.  Hope Seeds assumes its customers are experienced gardeners, or at least interested enough to have read up on the basic requirements of infant vegetables.  Here are some quality seeds; go for it, they effectively say.  With a few years of gardening experience and a working knowledge of The Vegetable Gardener's Bible, I can cope with this, generally.  I could have used more guidance with the zucchini seeds.  Or I might have kept better records last year, the first time I raised Costata romanesca.

Costata romanesca zucchini - a nice little summer squash

zucchini encroaching on ground cherry

Barry made this raised bed out of 18-inch square paving stones, two wide and five long, so about 7.5 x 3 ft. I thought I would put five zucchini plants in it.  Remember how good those Costatas were last year?, we said.  The VGB gives 18 inches as the spacing for summer squash plants; theoretically, we could have had ten here.  As I mentioned a few weeks ago, only three survived to be transplanted.  This was fortunate.  It took a bit of work on Google's part, but this morning I finally found a site that advised 4 feet between plants of this variety.  So the capacity of this bed is more like.....two, and that allows for a fair bit of touching.  This ground cherry was planted more than 3 feet away from the zucchini that is now muscling in on its territory.  When I thought the zucchini must be as big as it was going to get, I poked a few onions sets into the soil and scattered some carrot seeds in the gap that remained at the end of the bed.  I hope onions like shade.

ground cherry benefits
 from outside assistance

At the other end of the bed is another ground cherry, which is not visible in the top photo due to the massive zucchini leaves that cover it from all directions.  I admit to not leaving enough room between it and the nearest zucchinis, only 1.5 or 2 feet.  The ground cherry should grow to be about 3 feet high.  I pictured it towering above the lowly zucchini leaves that would settle down on either side of it, completely forgetting that these leaves fan out from the ends of tall stalks and would have no trouble getting between a ground cherry plant and the sun.  The fencing worked for a while.  I even beefed it up a bit yesterday with some slightly larger fencing.  Look at all that sunlight on its leaves.  But see also how very small it is next to its rival.  This was poor planning.  I feel the aggression, too.  The stalks are stubborn when I try to push them out of the way, and are covered with sharp spikes.  Any day now those east side leaves are going to tear right through the row cover on the adjacent bed.  The seed package should mention that Costata romanesca does not play well with others.

fruitful vegetable

We harvested three fruits today, almost 3 kg in total, and consumed less than half of one for supper.  More are on the way.  Friends, neighbours, colleagues, have I got a tasty treat for you.  No, really, it's better than the usual zucchini that everyone else tries to unload on you.  Why do we have even three plants?  Next year, two maximum.  In the meantime, we have discussed donning falconer's  gloves and removing the odd leaf that is causing a problem.  We do understand that it will take out a good 200-300 square inches of photosynthetic surface per leaf.  We're just not all that worried about maintaining current productivity levels.

Not full of beans

scarlet runner blossom failure

See those vertical green bits sticking up from the flower stem?  See the lovely bean pods developing at the tips?  No?  Neither do I!  This happens every time we plant Scarlet Runners.  Weeks, months (I don't know how long; I'll pay more attention this year) of red blossoms shriveling and falling off the plant, leaving nothing but a blunt useless stub behind.  Why? I ask.  Answers from the interweb brain trust: 
No pollination.  But there are bees and other insects around, and the other beans are making pods.
Too hot.  That would be a great explanation for this instance, but it's not always hot at the start of the blossom run.
That's just how these beans operate.  Now there is an answer I can cope with.  Not my fault.  Nothing to do but wait, which will be easier once I have scientifically determined when I can expect the first pods to form.  (It's easy to stop looking for beans and suddenly one find a 10-inch bod dangling inside the pyramid of vines.)  I would like to know why they operate this way, though.  Doesn't seem proper.

orca bush beans

The Orca bean plants appear to be struggling with the heat (limp, yellowing leaves), yet still manage to produce velvety little pods by the time the blossom falls off.  Same goes for the Maxibel French Filet beans over the pea fence and the Ina's White beans across the path.  Full of beans they are.  The Rattlesnake beans haven't even opened any of their purple blossoms yet.  Spending too much energy fending off slugs, maybe.  I have been trying to alleviate the slug nuisance, hand picking them in the dewy early morning and sending them to slug heaven (a plastic yogurt tub with a hole cut in the lid and a cm of kosher salt in the bottom).






Pole beans are generally good about winding around whatever they were planted next to.  They sometimes need a little persuasion to stick with the pole instead of going for that nearby stalk of dill.  One might insist on climbing the pole two over from where it was planted.  Their reasons are unfathomable to a human, but I'm sure they are valid in their own way.  Climb which ever pole you like, as long as it is in the same bed as your roots.  It does get crowded at the top where the poles come together, which may explain why a bine would reach out for new territory.  Of course, this one may just be grape-curious.

single bean bine seeks grape vine for mutually supportive relationship

Crispy critter

Since when is 30C considered hot?  I thought it was a normal summer temperature.  We have been watering the vegetables during this warm, dry spell, but I expect the perennials to last a few days longer with their deep roots and whatever climatic adaptations they should have if they are sold to southern Albertans.  First year transplants are an exception; I have been fussing over this year's newcomers.

july 2

This dwarf astilbe was introduced last year.  It shriveled up early, well before the end of summer, and I was surprised to see it return in the spring.  It remained small and low, no flowers expected this year, but looked healthy, until Tuesday.

july 12

As is turns out, astilbe is a shade plant.  I guess I placed it thinking the spot qualified as partial shade; it's time to re-examine that.  This spring's caterpillar activity has made the front yard a little sunnier.  Had I remembered the shade preferences of my plants, though, I might have taking more care to see to their water needs through these extra warm days.  My bad.  The garden needs a little more idiot proofing.

Thanks, Mom!

Sometime in the last decade, my mother began writing a cheque on my birthday equal to the number of years that I had managed to survive outside the womb.  The cheque arrived this week, but I knew it was coming and did my shopping on the weekend. Here is what a woman of my age can buy with her birthday money:

Creeping lamium (L. maculatum 'Pink Pewter')  A spreading patch of small silver leaves with a narrow green edge.  salmon-pink flowers appear in spring, then continue off and on until fall. Fairly tolerant of dry shade.  ~jeeperscreepers.info

Single painted daisy (Tanacetum coccineum Robinson's mix) Foliage is bright green and ferny with upright stems bearing loads of single yellow-eyed daisies, in shades of white, pink or crimson red.  ~ Heritage Perennials

Alpine strawberry (Fragaria vesca 'Yellow Wonder)  A unique and rarely offered yellow-fruited form of the European Wild Strawberry. Tiny white flowers appear all season, followed by small cone-shaped creamy-yellow fruit, the tastiest of all strawberries.  ~ perennials.com

Rock soapwort (Saponaria ocymoides) Smothered in stunning pink flowers at the ends of the stems from mid to late spring.  Its round leaves remain emerald green in colour throughout the year.  ~Northern Classics

Variegated periwinkle (Vinca minor 'Ralph Shugert') Forms a dense mat of glossy dark green leaves edged with white, and a display of bright blue flowers in spring.  Tolerates dry shade.  ~ Heritage Perennials

Fern-leaf bleedingheart (Dicentra 'Candy Hearts')  Forms a vigorous clump of powdery blue-green leaves topped by clusters of delicate dangling heart chaped flowers in a dusky rose-purple shade.  ~ Heritage Perennials

Creeping Jenny (Lysimachia nummularia) A vigorous spreading groundcover, useful in difficult shady situations.  Forms a mat of bright green leaves studded by yellow flowers in late spring.  Best as a lawn substitute.  ~jeeperscreepers.info 

Daylily (Hemerocallis 'Stella de Oro) By far the most popular Daylily selection of all time.  Forms a dense clump of grassy green foliage, with upright stems of fragrant, golden-yellow trumpet flowers.  ~ Heritage Perennials.

Moss phlox (Phlox douglasii 'Crackerjack')  A low mound or cushion of dark green needle-like leaves, smothered by tiny flowers in late spring. Very compact variety, with a grand display of bright starry magenta-red flowers.  ~ rockstarplants.com

perennial birthday gifts

A few specimens didn't look great, hence the group photo instead of individual head shots.  They may not look like much, but give them time.  See below what happened to my little bloody dock from one year to the next.  Perennial plants are a good investment.  Thanks, Mom.  

bloody dock 21-07-11

bloody dock 24-06-12

Last year I spent the birthday money on plants, but not at a typical garden retail outlet where customers generally leave with labelled pots.  Through no fault of my own, I was late getting to a sale of native plants at the museum; they were starting to pack up.  So I quickly yet thoughtfully chose ten plugs and brought them home.  Hours later, I thought I still knew what five of them were, and was fairly certain I knew which five others I had chosen, but did not know what was what.  Still don't.  One flowered this year and evidently it is fleabane.  I would not have chosen fleabane.  Only the Jacob's ladder and blue-eyed grass are for sure now; the rest - I forget what I even thought they were at one time.  It's okay to have a few mysteries.

As a gardener, my gratitude to Mom extends beyond her support for my plant shopping sprees.  From as early as I can remember, we had a vegetable garden on the hill that sloped down from our house toward the Northwest Arm in Halifax.  There was a large rectangle here, a smaller one over there, a couple of more squarish patches.  We (I'm sure I helped sometimes) dug through the soil with a fork each spring, tossing out the numerous rocks hat had floated to the surface since the previous spring.  We planted in straight rows across the beds, leaving the prescribed space between rows and mounting the seed package on a stick  to announce the coming vegetables.  Beans, peas, beets, carrots, tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, corn, radishes - I believe we grew all that, and more, but I can't remember.  Marigold transplants were placed at the periphery to foil insect pests.  Rhubarb sat at the top of the large bed.  Raspberries were eventually installed on the other side of the yard.  I think we had asparagus at one point.  We had a compost pile; Mom even made compost tea back in the seventies.  I don't recall weeding or watering the garden. or even harvesting.  Maybe I didn't help out after all.  Maybe I learned nothing about gardening from the family garden.  Today I dig as little as I can, arrange plantings more in blobs than in rows, and leave "weeds" in the ground until I'm sure they don't have a role to play there.  My present garden is chaos compared to what I grew up with.  Regardless of the variation of style, though, I think the most important bit was being socialized toward growing food.  What my parents gave me was the notion that having a vegetable garden is something you do, like going to church and reading at bed time.  It's normal.  It's expected.  It's simple.  Thanks, Mom and Dad, for giving me that.

"What's Goin' On" and on

carrots with onion buffer, plus rogue dill and parsnip

Don't plant carrots and parsnips together, says The Vegetable Gardener's Bible.  These warnings don't tend to define "together" very well.  I try to put the bad companions in separate beds, but sometimes it isn't practical, so maybe I sow a row of lettuce (that great peacekeeper that is everyone's good companion) between the enemies and hope that's enough.  Both carrots and parsnips are comfortable with onions, ergo a double line of yellow onions between should stifle animosities.  This bed of carrots was sown sometime in April and has attained lush ferny tops.  In June I realized this was all I had planted for carrots (I wait to see what spaces are left after transplants and then forget) and started hunting around for small patches to sprinkle a few seeds - between tomatoes on the south edge of one of their beds and in the pea/bean/shallot bed, again placing a buffer (the carrots themselves this time) between two bad companions.  Just a few days ago I opened several packages of seeds of various varieties and ages and scattered them around the onions in the zucchini bed.  Besides these, there are a few volunteers around.  Like the parsnips, some might be in their second year.

corn and carrot flowers

Last fall I did leave one patch of tiny carrots to become this year's seed carrots.  They are huge and already flowering, dwarfing the adjacent corn stalks.  We have grown corn three times in the past and have had one or two good ears in all.  It's not the region - Taber, 50 km away, is famous for it's corn.  It has a Corn Fest in August.  I have gap-toothed corn and earwigs.  Too stingy with the fertilizer, perhaps?  Apparently unable to learn from past experience, I am again growing corn, with the seed variety that didn't work out before.  A vacant garden space with no plan for it, a box of leftover seeds (I can't just throw out perfectly good hybrid seeds) - what could be the harm?  It looks good so far, though already leaning from the high winds.

sunchokes

Sunchokes are already at shoulder height and leaning out into the pathway from one of their beds.  That group is so thick I have given up searching for weeds.  It might be just a solid block of tubers below the surface when we start digging them up.  I look forward to seeing how tall the stalks get this year.  The plants in the other bed, the former everlasting sweet pea bed, are the same height, not quite as dense.  Sweet peas keep trying to regain their place and I keep pulling off whatever growth I see.  Now that the sunchokes are getting bigger, though, the sweet peas will find they can get a lot further undetected.

raspberry thicket

As for fruits:
Haskap berries were tart and delicious and are now done for the season.  I prefer the larger berries of the short Cinderella variety and wish it would grow into a bigger bush.  It does have a rooting pot on it, so I hope to have a successful clone plant by the end of the summer.  There are also two rooting pots on the Berry Blue and one on the new Borealis.  The latter should be removed because the branch has clearly perished.
The first ripe strawberry was spotted June 15 and the first raspberry June 28.  There is a big feed of raspberries to come, if we dare enter the thorny mess that has developed.  The task becomes more intrepid when bees are pollinating flowers of the later variety of berry.  No Nanking cherries, no apples, no pears.  We don't know why.  Very sad.  The forecast for grapes is still good, as long as Barry can hold off the hordes of hoppers.

thyme and sage, and chamomile

A few small sage and thyme plants started in 2011 were uprooted from their original location and placed between the chives and walking onions last fall.  All survived the winter and are flowering now.  Some chamomile seeds have landed in the same area and will be allowed to grow as long as the flowers are not in the way; we don't want to risk stepping on bees in the pathways.  Dill is again everywhere.  I went on umbel patrol three days ago and will have to make another round today, even removing entire plants.  Cilantro self seeded itself generously last year.  It's a fragrant stroll past that bed as the leaves release an aroma from the lightest touch.  Somewhere on the interweb was a suggestion to freeze herbs in olive oil in ice cube trays.  Worth a shot.  A new herb for us this year is rosemary.  One year I started rosemary from seed and always had difficulty finding it after transplant  because it stayed so small.  This year I again started with seeds, but cleverly placed them in a large pot instead of the ground.  The two are still less than an inch tall, but they won't be accidentally weeded.  Nevertheless, we picked up a larger plant, maybe eight inches tall, at Greenhaven, to fill a container vacancy (the store was out of tomatoes and cucumbers at that point).  It's a "tender perennial".  Guess we'll find out how tender next spring.

garden cress going to seed

Miscellaneous:
Rhubarb is viable on the boulevard, though not nearly as large as it was when it lived by the water tank overflow in one of the sunniest parts of the back garden.  The two uprootings may not have helped.
Lettuce has been great, but is reaching for the sky.  More has been sown, in faint hope of tender summer leaves.  Cress bolted ages ago, yet it looks lovely leaning against the squash ladder with its tiny white flowers.  I just can't remove it yet.

giant self-seeded radishes

Radishes planted early in the front yard went straight to seed.  Those few planted among the peas in back have been fine.  A couple of volunteers dug up in the tomato bed are outstanding.





Have I covered all the edibles now?