My prize cabbage

This was our first attempt to grow cabbage.  We have grown broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, pak choi, and turnips, with less than laudable results.  I like to blame the cabbage moths that allow their ravenous offspring to destroy the leaves.  Radishes have always seemed to escape the pestilence, which is a faint blessing because they usually bolt and make their roots unpalatable before the eggs even hatch.

This year's quest for failure was Red Express cabbage.  Sown March 30, planted out May 6, narrowly escaping an avian abduction May 18, one of the plants became the jewel of the garden.  I soon began referring to it as "my prize cabbage" and wondered if there was indeed a contest it could enter, a beauty pageant for vegetables.

The Hope Seeds catalogue declared that the cabbage should be ready for harvest 65 days after transplant.  The above photo was taken several days past that point.  I still thought it might want to grow a little more.  Plus, I was deriving so much pleasure from the sight of it, it was hard to imagine that eating it could be any better.  Ironically, the only way we could ensure those fabulous unblemished leaves was to keep the cabbages under row cover fabric.....opaque white row cover fabric.  But then I did not become habituated to its beauty, and I gasped with delight each time the cover was removed for watering or weeding.  

Weeks passed.  Cabbage moths had gained entry.  The row cover fabric that had sustained minor hail damage in June was now strained by the upward mobility of several stout broccoli stems.  Who knew they would grow so tall?  Holes were enlarged enough for a determined butterfly to pass through and the fabric was just barely wide enough to reach down to both sides of the bed.  Fat green cabbage worms were having a feast on the smaller cabbages.  There were a few holes in the outer leaves of the prize cabbage, but the head seemed too solid to penetrate.  Nevertheless, even if it was safe from chewing, it might not be wise to leave the cabbage in the garden much longer.  

The summer has been hot and dry. Not exactly cabbage weather.  I have read of cabbage heads splitting and bolting, which sounds very dramatic and I would like to witness it, but not occurring in this particular individual.  Even if it didn't bolt, what might be going on chemically?  I much prefer my cabbage cool, and did not want to be confronted with the burning sensation that has put me off cabbage before.  My fear that it might go to waste helped me to do what had to be done.  On August 24, with the head in my left hand and the secateurs in my right, I slaughtered my prize cabbage.  The experience suggested to me that maybe I should not raise animals for meat.

Fortunately, once all the outer leaves were removed and the plain bald purple head was left bare, it was less familiar to me.  There was no hesitation when it came to cleaving the head in half with a kitchen knife.  

The inside was as perfect as the exterior.  Tight folds of white and purple, crammed together by forces I could not fathom.  How do the leaves get packed so tightly by only the force of other leaves?

The entire head was shredded for coleslaw, on quarter at a time.  Delicious. None of the heat I was worried about; just sweet and tender, for days and days.  This cabbage gave me a lot of joy this summer.  It will be remembered fondly.  

Grape expectations

grape grotto september six

Maybe I should learn to make wine.  Maybe I could!

Growers' guide to good beets

Beets should look like this.....

or this.....

but not like this.  Don't eat these.

I have searched online for beet diseases but yet found nothing to explain this affliction.  They are all from the southeast quarter of the beet bed, the same area where all the sunchokes were covered in fungus when unearthed in the spring, and, interestingly enough, close to one of our many ant hills.  I can't help wondering about that.  Another group of ants appears to have done in this cabbage in an otherwise healthy population.

This colony held its mating event yesterday.   Ants flying through the air are even more off-putting than ants crawling on the ground.  It was of some comfort that the sex-crazed drones were contained within the row cover.  I wonder if mating can happen when the queen's flight is limited to less than two feet.  Later in the afternoon, all was quiet, which is nice in a way but also probably means the queen is back in her chamber manufacturing a fresh batch of workers.

Near miss

Pulled back the brassica row cover this evening and discovered....

A BROCCOLI!

A broccoli getting past its prime.  This is for supper tomorrow.

Cucumber down

Two Topsy Turvy planters were put to use this year - one for Bushy cucumbers and one for Tante Alice cucumbers.  As before, I  would gently tug downward on the small transplants, thwarting their attempts to grow skyward because I was trying to get them out of the shade of their planters and into the sunlight.  While they did relax somewhat as they grew heavier, they still managed to extend horizontally more than downward, and this may have been the downfall of one of them.








In the photo above, the plant on the right looks a bit limp.  This is why.  It was hanging by a thread.  The wind blows here, by times.  A linear vine reaching toward the ground might sway in the wind, but a vine maintaining a constant elevation is subject to twisting on its stem.  Too much stress, especially on top of the already bizarre orientation in which I tried to make it grow.  Minutes after this picture was taken, Tante Alice was on the ground.  This is not surprising.  We have a third planter hanging from the clothesline support, left there from last year, with the stub of a broken tomato stem poking out of it.

Topsy Turvy planters are watered from the top and a good soaking should result in some seepage out the bottom.  This particular planter hangs directly over the entrance to an ant metropolis.  Seeing an ant crawling down the side of the planter last week, I surmised she may be an engineer looking to rectify the problem of water intrusion.  Keeping an open mind, since I did not witness the cucumber stem breaking in response to wind-induced torsion, I will allow that ant mandible activity could conceivably have been the cause of breakage.  If so, did the team foresee that the entire mass would end up on their entrance plaza?  I have left it in place to see how they deal with it.










The sole greenhouse cucumber, meanwhile, enjoys the freedom to grow directly away from the ground, as long as it receives some assistance in not keeling over.  I placed a second tier tomato cage on top of the first one after seeing the cucumber almost strangle itself trying to get a grip.

Birthday perennials

Mom came through again with the $1 per year survival award and once again I pedalled out to Greenhaven Garden Centre to make the most of it.  This year's picks are, clockwise from the left:

Carpet Bugle (Ajuga reptans 'Burgundy Glow') - forms a spreading carpet of leaves dappled in green, cream and smoky pink.  Taller spikes of blue flowers appear in spring.  ~jeeperscreepers.info

Peachleaf Bellflower (Campanula persicifolia blue form) - a low mound of leaves, bearing tall stems of large, bright-blue bells during summer.  ~perennials.com

Kinnikinnik (Arctostahpylos uva-ursi) - low growing, native, evergreen perennial with a spreading habit.  Glossy dark green foliage is highlighted by small pinkish flowers in late spring.  ~Northern Classics

Purple Labrador Violet (Viola labradorica) - a charming violet for shady places.  Forms a low tuft of purple-tinged leaves, with small mauve-purple violets in spring and fall.  ~jeeperscreepers.info

Evening Primrose (Oenothera missouriensis) - a profuse blooming plant.  The red-spotted flower buds open on summer afternoons to yellow cup-shaped flowers.  ~Northern Classics

Purple Rockcress (Aubrieta deltoidea 'Purple Gem') - a compact plant with grey-green spoon shaped leaves.  Deep purple blooms appear in spring and again in late summer.  ~Northern Classics

Red Wonder Pussy-Toes (Antennaria dioica 'Rotes Wunder') - forms a flat carpet of tiny silver-grey leaves, with taller stems of fuzzy cherry-red flowers in late spring,  ~rockstarplants.com

Alpine Wall Cress (Arabis ferdinandi-coburgi 'Old Gold') - forms a very low carpet of rounded waxy-looking green-and-gold streaked leaves.  Small white flowers in spring are a bonus.  ~rockstarplants.com

Left to right from Carpet Bugle:

Wineleaf Cinquefoil (Potentilla tridentata ' Nuuk') - Selected in Greenland, this is a tough little evergreen creeper.  Small white buttercup-shaped flowers appear in late spring and early summer.  Foliage turns wine-red in the colder months.  ~jeeperscreepers.com

Woolly Speedwell (Veronica pectinata) - a low dense carpet of grey-green foliage studded with deep blue, or occasionally lavendar, saucer shaped flowers.  ~jeeperscreepers.com

All ten have found new homes in the front yard.  The most notable development has been this stunning blossom on the evening primrose.



































Adding these new specimens to the garden, I could not deny that the colour tendency leans heavily toward the pink-purple-blue range.  This week I wandered the aisles of a garden centre, on the lookout for more yellow-orange hues and discovered they are in short supply for this climate zone.  Blanketflower, yellow coneflower, stonecrop, and now evening primrose (though that is the coldest yellow I have ever seen) make their contribution, but they are greatly outnumbered.  Warm colours should be the priority next time.

As for the 2012 group, results have varied.

creeping lamium, aka dead nettle, is spreading to fill its nook and generated a few pink blossoms in the spring

single painted daisy - the victim of a weeding accident (I thought the thing next to it was the single-painted daisy),
I have been coddling this one with daily watering.  It will be cool if it comes back bigger and better next year.

alpine strawberry - looks great; too bad about the berries (it's hard to tell when a white strawberry is ripe,
and I found too many that were inhabited by creatures)

rock soapwort - quite showy at its peak in spring; not so enthusiastic about summer

variegated periwinkle - had a rough summer 2012 and finally found a shady place around the cotoneaster hedge

fern-leaf bleedingheart - I'm sure this is where I left it last fall

creeping jenny - doing a great cover-up job around hops-on-a-bike;
 too bad it has to live with wilted daffodil leaves

stella d'oro daylily - two blooms so far this summer, but a little lost in its surroundings

moss phlox - holding its own in the rock garden, with pink blossoms this spring

Unintention

I call it wrath-of-God hail, because the force of it hitting the roof is too much, I think, at the time, to be explained by gravity alone.  The ice pellets seem to be shot from a gun, or hurled by an almighty arm with a wicked overhand pitch.  I don't quite pray for it to stop, but occasionally notice myself pleading to a hail storm to leave us be.  Wind makes me testy.  "Enough already," I think at it. "If you have so much energy, go find some turbines to spin."  (Though never when it's giving me a push up the eastern slope of the valley.)  With hail I am utterly submissive.  Why?

It's not unusual in the summer here to feel the wind pick up suddenly around supper time.  The environment changes rapidly:  a rumble of thunder, a noticeable chill, a huge charcoal grey cloud,seemingly out of nowhere, looms over the elm and green ash trees that line our street.  These are hit or miss situations.  There might be a sudden downpour.  Could be a tornado brewing.  Maybe it will keep calm and carry on to give a good thrashing to Coaldale.  Possibly it will fire hail at us.

The evening of June 19 it was a hit.  P had warned me in the morning that "golf-ball hail" was in forecast.  That was good of her, because it prompted me to throw many of the old bed sheets (frost inhibitors) from the greenhouse over the most prized and/or tender vegetable plants - tomatoes, peppers, zucchinis.   The golf-ball hail did not materialize.  That's fine.  Cultivated-blueberry hail is devastating enough for us.  Barry was outdoors, managing his rainwater retention system, when the first hailstones hit.  Nasty pointy chunks of ice, unlike the smooth spherical hail we were taught in Grade 3.  Even the World's Greatest Rain Poncho couldn't protect him and he soon sought shelter in the house.  We listened to the drilling on the roof and watched in awe as a great mass of projectiles streaked earthward.

After a few very long minutes, the precipitation changed to a less alarming liquid state.  We went back out to assess the damage.

We had just begun to harvest lettuce for salads, so this was disappointing.  I hadn't even been worried about the lettuce, probably thinking it would enjoy the cool, wet conditions.






I did worry about tomatoes.  They were covered with sheets, but the sheets were just draped over the stakes and cages in place to support the plants and were not secured in any way.  They had begun to blow around and exposed some of the plants by the time hail hit.  This was the worst of them; most sustained very few injuries.

Costata romanesca zucchinis were still small at the time, so some spare border fencing was enough to keep their protective sheet from weighing to heavily on them.  They were barely aware of the violence that surrounded them.


The most surprising devastation was the Swiss-cheese style adopted by Rhubarb.  I had expected it to be tougher.  Even the stalks were badly wounded where they were hit.  Had to put a hold on those great breakfast smoothies.




Bean leaves were ripped and bines knocked free of their poles.  Corn stalks were rather festive with leaves all shredded lengthwise like fancy party streamers.  Squash plants were flattened and baby bunches of grapes lay limp on the concrete floor of the grape grotto.  A pane of glass was smashed out of the greenhouse roof.  Hosta leaves were irreparably fractured.

We were the fortunate ones.  Within a day, to the north of us, the same storm system had washed out highways and bridges and destroyed houses.  It was the type of disaster that could be a season highlight on "Nature's Savage Fury" (or some such show) on TLC.  Of course, there was no fury on Nature's part, any more than a wrath-stricken God was shooting ice pellets at us.  It's just physics; one event leads to another.

Roads and houses don't rebuild themselves, but plants do.  Less than three weeks later, most of the garden had grown up out of the wreckage, making perfect new leaves that hid the mangled ones.  Then it hailed again, and again, somewhat less forcefully.  The plants are wounded, but they just keep growing.  Why wouldn't they?  There is a metaphor there about the human spirit, but that's for someone else to find because I think comparing people to plants is fairly stupid.

Lesson learned - covering our most treasured plants before hail arrived was worth the effort.  Weather is without intention.  I have the capacity for intention and might as well exercise it when it can make a difference.


.

Pole dancing

The winner of this year's Reach For The Top competition is.........

..........Mennonite Purple Stripe.

And now it doesn't know what to do.





Elsewhere in pole beans......

...........what are those red blossoms doing in a bed of Ina's White Beans?  Looks like somebody has been cross-pollinating.

Stand back - I'm going to try science

You don't really have to stand back.  Just don't touch the yellow sticky card unless you want to become part of the data.

Furthermore, I'm not really trying science.  I did not formulate a hypothesis or design an experiment, nor will I analyze the results and draw conclusions.  My role is to dangle yellow sticky cards in my tomato beds in hopes of trapping critters who like to visit tomatoes.  The creature of interest is the potato psyllid, a major pest of solanaceous crops in North America.  An environmental science researcher sent me the traps.  I can't quite follow the instructions, which direct me to set the cards at least 10-20 metres into the crop; you probably can't get even half of a metre into any of my tomato beds without being closer to the other side.  Alors, I doubt that data from my garden will make it into a scientific journal, but that doesn't mean it is not of any use.  

Already caught my first specimen.  Don't know what it is.  Psyllids are of the order Hemiptera - true bugs.  The picture I saw looked more like a waspish fly than a bug.  Good thing someone else is conducting the actual science in this project.

Smooth move, Rhubarb

Planting the haskap so close to the rhubarb was a bad move.  In my defence, Rhubarb did not look long for the world at the time of haskap planting.  Either it would quietly expire or it would be given to a more appreciative guardian.  As it happened, I failed to put the requisite effort toward finding new quarters for the creature.  It rose again on the boulevard this spring and began steadily advancing on the haskap.  What to do?



Some thought had been given to a sign to be posted behind Rhubarb.  Free rhubarb.  Help yourself; we don't eat it.  Enjoy a delicious, healthy snack on us (with down arrow).  Go ahead, stimulate your salivary glands while making a funny face.  Please don't pick the rhubarb - we love its deliciousness.  It was hard to know what might work best to get it picked.  Now I would have to add something to encourage people to take it from the haskap side.  Before I had made a move toward constructing any of these signs, a woman passing by stopped to admire Rhubarb as I was working, ie weeding, on the boulevard.  She told me she enjoys rhubarb in her smoothies.  Really?  A mouth puckering breakfast beverage with stringy bits, I thought, unconvinced.  A few days later it was clear that a stalk or two would have to be removed promptly lest the haskap be crushed or die a slow death of starvation in the shade of Rhubarb's enormous leaves.  I decided to risk my smoothie ingredients.                                                                                                            

Rhubarb smoothie woman had advised me to cook the rhubarb first, which did make sense, but the whole concept was so alien to me that tossing raw stems into the blender would not have seemed a whole lot farther out.  It took a couple of minutes in the microwave oven to get all the bits mushy; did not want a chunky smoothie.  Instead of soaking the chia seeds in water, as usual, I mixed them into the rhubarb mush, which was not becoming any more appetizing.    

Into the blender went vanilla soy milk, plain yogurt (6% milk fat!), half of a banana, and the now thick and pasty rhubarb-chia melange.   Gave it a good long whirr on account of the stringy bits.  When it stopped spinning, I found the colour was not quite to my liking; more than a soupcon of green was peeking through the pink.  Ironically, the solution was found on a haskap bush, though not the one Rhubarb had tried to kill.  (Not entirely sure if that is ironic.)  A few berries from the "Cinderella" haskap provided ample blue pigment to drown out the green.

The flavour was intense and tart, yet did not call for any more sweetening than provided by the banana and soy milk.  I don't know whether I could have identified the flavour if I was in the dark re what had replaced the usual berries.  It was also the thickest smoothie I have produced in my year-long history of smoothie blending.  Contrary to expectations, totally enjoyable.  This is the best use of Rhubarb I have yet found.  The neighbouring haskap should be safe this summer.  

Convenience food

When we lived in Vancouver, the weather forecast often promised sunshine that would fail to appear.  They had to give us some hope.  In Lethbridge, the promise is rain.  I decide that I don't have to water the garden because rain is imminent, then arrive home from work in the afternoon to find lettuces prostrate under the sun.  Yesterday we finally got the precipitation we were promised, or some of it: 28 out of 50 mm isn't bad.  That's more than an inch (to make the visualization easier).  It woke us shortly before standard wake up time this morning, pounding on the roof.  My first thought was of the basement and whether seepage (an unwelcome occurrence) would occur.  My second thought was of the tomato seedlings in their 3-inch pots, sitting at their designated planting sites.  Would they be hailed upon?  Unlikely, hail is more of an afternoon thing.  Would they be knocked over by the driving force of huge, heavy, hurtling raindrops?

The tomato transplants were all still vertical when I checked on them late morning.  I rewarded them with a good helping of crushed eggshells in their planting holes.  (It wasn't actually a reward; I give that to all the tomatoes.)  The entire garden looked happy, especially those species that weren't expressly invited to participate in our garden   Spent  about half of an hour deadheading dandelions and the other half uprooting creeping bellflower and quack grass.  Can't help thinking my time could be better spent for the good of humanity.  This morning I watched a video that summed up in 10 minutes Stephen Covey's "7 Habits of Highly Effective People".  In case you are not familiar with the book, weeding is not one of those habits.

....but back to the rainfall.  The ground is soaked and I am off the hook for watering for a bit.  As the garden area expands, it takes longer for us to deliver water everywhere it needs to go in the growing season.  Plants are good about making their own food with what is available in the air and soil.  They just need to add water.  Right now there are recently sown and germinating seeds close to the surface, vulnerable to dessication.  They don't care whether the water comes from a watering can or falls from the sky.  If it falls from the sky, like manna from heaven, that's mighty convenient for me.  Can I have that 28 mm divided among three showers per week, preferably around 2:00 am?   

First fruits

These haskap berries might be a day or two under-ripe, but I could not wait (except long enough to wash off this morning's Btk application).  We have had parsnip roots, sunchoke tubers, asparagus stems, and chive leaves(?) this spring.  It's time for dessert.

Garden ornamentation I

triceratops with echinacaea

Plastic dinosaurs were not my first choice for garden kitsch.  Kitsch was not even my first choice for the garden.  However, there was the newly built perennial bed dug across the entire front edge of our property (actually most of it over the line and into city property), and very little of it filled in with perennials.  I could have spent a fortune on transplants, following a long drawn out decision over what to plant and where, but I chose to go slow and see what would survive.  In the mean time, some extra visual interest could be provided by traditional adornments such as gnomes and cherubs.  They would, of course, have to be inexpensive and pre-enjoyed objects, because we could not justify consumption of raw resources for the sake of the that "visual interest", nor did I wish to part with any substantial quantity of dollars in exchange for something that would sit within an arm's length of the passing public.

My first garage sale tour was disappointing in terms of the availability of gnomes and cherubs, until I came upon farm animals and dinosaurs.  It seemed best not to mix the two.  I'm rather conventional that way.  Livestock went into the backyard vegetable garden and have always seemed most content in the garlic patch.

grazing in the garlic

taking cover in cliff green

Dinosaurs make their habitat in the large perennial bed, often half hidden in the foliage.  They are visible if one looks for them, but not so obvious as to be the defining feature of the garden.  Some have wandered away and not been able to find their way home.  As winter approaches they have to come indoors.  Snow and cold don't harm them, but they look sad on the grey-brown ground when the snow blows away.  They are also at risk in late fall of being raked up with the leaves and put through the shredder, which is bad for both dinosaurs and shredder blades.

king of the onions

New this year is the African collection.  Checking out a garage sale for dinosaurs, to replace last summer's escapees, I found instead: elephant, hippopotamus, gorilla, rhinoceros, crocodile, and an unstable ungulate.  The gorilla doesn't quite belong, but it's not as bad as having Cretaceous and Jurassic reptiles cohabiting in the rock garden.  A zebra would be nice.  The lack of a terrestrial carnivore bothered me until I got home and noticed that we already have a lion in the herb garden.

lone moose

The moose was never a good fit for either the dinosaurs or the livestock areas.  It has always been alone in the largely clear cut asparagus forest. It doesn't stand up well on its own, so having a few adjacent stumps to hold it up has been something of a blessing.


McKillop United Church held its rummage sale yesterday morning and I scored big.  It was sale by donation; I tossed $20 into the basket for this lot and considered half of that to be donation and the other half to be purchase price, based on your typical garage sale offerings.  No way will I spend nearly a dollar per critter.  The bulk of the dinosaurs were packaged in a large plastic zipper storage bag (awkward but responsible avoidance of brand name) that also held a Godzilla, a Shrek, and a few other unsuitable characters that will find better homes via the MCC store.  It's always good to have extra dinosaurs on hand, to make up for attrition, but I'm most pleased about finding forest companions for the moose - bear, bison, snake, skunk, lynx, deer, and wolves.  This might be, finally, enough.

rummage sale riches

Push ups

This was happening all over the garden today.  Cracking and heaving of the earthy crust.  Is it a major geological event?

No.  It's just a few bean sprouts getting pushy.

This one is an Ina's White bean.  The Mennonite Purple Stripe and Scarlet Runner beans also broke the surface today, as did the Red Swan bush beans.  Planted one three different days, all debuted within hours of each other on Victoria Day.  What goes on among them underground?

CSI Cabbage Patch

2 square holes discovered in brassica bed, one  each in the cabbage and broccoli sections.

Shape of holes match  transplanted seedling pots placed there 12 days earlier.

No other transplants disturbed.

Small impressions in the surrounding soil surface, not clear enough to identify fingerprints, footprints, or tool marks.

survivor - Red Express cabbage

The broccoli plant is known to have been dead at the time of disappearance, but the missing cabbage was said to be vibrant and healthy, with its whole life ahead of it.

Who would steal a tiny cabbage and a deceased broccoli, and why?

cucumber seedlings in coir pots

A witness interview revealed that an unidentified bird was recently seen flying from the yard with a large mass of fibrous material in its beak.

The starter pots for both missing plants were made of coir, fibre from coconut husks.  Could the need for nesting materials have motivated a bird, or perhaps birds, to dig up the brassica pots?

found!

Within minutes, both fibre pots were spotted where they had been carelessly discarded in the beet and chard bed.  The perpetrator had obviously worked away at the pot material with little effort to protect the health and safety of its inhabitant.

not dead yet

The traumatized cabbage was replaced in its original spot.  Odds for survival are not good, given the stem damage sustained, but we are doing all we can for it.  It is fortunate that the incident occurred on a cool, rainy weekend.





With all the seedlings that have been set out to harden off in the last few weeks, unprotected in their coir pots, it is remarkable that there have not been more incidents like this.  It was a careless gardener who put her plants in such peril.