"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?

Unsatisfactory, or Tries With Some Success

Counting the garden's blessings last weekend was a good thing to do.  Sometimes the agony of defeat drowns out the the thrill of victory and it gets all my attention.  Nevertheless, there are shortcomings, mistakes, and abject failures that must be acknowledged, not only to give the impression of fair and balanced reporting, but to encourage reflection, atonement, and maybe, just maybe, learning a lesson or two for the sake of future wisdom.

What I'm not so thrilled about in the garden these days:

1.  This scabby excuse for a beet green is the victim of spinach leaf miners.  I knew they were almost inevitable and did mention them just after planting all the susceptible varieties in the same bed where they were attacked last year.  The bed was covered with a white row cover with only a few bird-pecked holes in it.  But I don't know if the miners came in through the holes or had been lying in wait in the soil.  Beets and Swiss chard planted elsewhere in the garden, not under cover, have also fallen victim to this pest.  Still, the plants are vigorous and we have enjoyed an abundance of blemish-free spinach leaves.  So we continue to hope for well-nourished beetroots.

2.  White beans have gone missing.  There were 28 Ina's White Bean seeds in the package.  Three were planted around each of eight poles in one bed and the remaining four at the posts for the shell pea fences.  The latter may have been overwhelmed by cauliflowers and weeds, but the former had no obvious hindrances and no places to hide.  One pole at the top of this picture has no beans, another has one.  What happened?  It seems that most of the others germinated and made it to the surface.  It's unlikely that there were a few duds and they all happened to be planted right next to each other.  A quick web search has just revealed that this could be the work of cutworms.  No direct evidence has been presented, but I'm willing to say "Death to cutworms!" again regardless.  Okay, beans are now to be planted within cutworm collars.  Isn't learning fun?

3.  The biggest parsnip flower is home to an intensive feedlot operation - aphids being the herd, ants being the ranchers.  Having aphids on this flower is not really a problem.  This item could be moved to the "Oh, Gross!" list if I had one.  Last year I had to cut down the big seed parsnip because I couldn't avoid brushing past its umbels and being showered with black ants.  This one is located so as to be easy to avoid touching.  If the ants want to concentrate on the stalks of this plant, which is robust enough to continue producing seeds despite the feasting on its sap, this is fine.  It's a sacrificial plant that isn't making much of a sacrifice.  My main objection to this activity, besides the revolting appearance of it, is its contribution to the health of the ant colony.  Like we need more ants.







4.  Overly heat-sensitive greens get on my nerves.  Very much like that one isolated incidence of frost that needlessly ruins everything, it seems to take only one warmish day to send garden cress or pak choy bolting into a seed-generating frenzy.  Lettuce isn't much better.  Mind you, it has been very warm for about two weeks now, so I could understand if they want to bolt, but this happened some time ago.  We are trying shade cloth on a small patch right now.  Results are inconclusive thus far, though germination and growth are definitely good.  This pak choy is all over the place, growing long seed-bearing branches and dangling them over the adjacent beets and beans.  I trimmed those ones today, thinking that half a million seeds will likely be enough for us.

5.  It's starting to feel like Dry Gulch around here.  Ennio Morricone music plays through my head and I expect to see tumbleweeds bouncing up the alley toward me.  Yesterday's wind left me coated in grit.  And cracks are opening up in exposed soil. This morning I noticed this fissure along a row of young beets.  They weren't doing well to begin with and now their roots have been exposed.  I did my best to fill the crevices with handfuls of purchased topsoil.  It was a tricky operation with the beets clinging tenuously to the side of the the crevasse.  We may have lost a few.  Did this happen because I water them everyday?  But I don't see how they could survive a hot day in the dry hard soil without a little surface moisture added.  Could be the location is just too sunny.  The beets in the big garden get more shade and they look much better.


Only five complaints this evening.  Not bad.