"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?

A change in the weather

It's the final day of August, a day which happens to be cool, wet and dark, as if summer disappeared literally overnight.  It didn't - warmth and sunshine will be back in a couple of days - but it feels that way.  It would be a good reminder, if I hadn't started thinking along these lines a week ago, that wrap-up time is approaching for much of the annual vegetable garden.  Don't want to leave it all to be done on a couple of blustery October weekends.

The pea vines are mostly brown, yet they still carry living green branches that bear pods and peas.  They aren't as sweet and tender and perfectly shaped as they were in July, but quite edible.  The same goes for beans, especially the rattlesnake pole beans.  After two or three good weeks they seem to go from immature to overdone without passing through an appropriate stage for picking.  So we put up with beans that are a little bulgier than we prefer.  I picked off a couple of shriveled pods from these sad Schweiserreisen plants.  If the seeds germinate, I can pick the rest and put this mess to rest.

Summer squash - zucchini and papaya pear - continue to bear perfect fruit even as their leaves are going yellow (and being perforated by slugs).  It's time to tie a "do not pick" ribbon around a few specimens to ensure we have some seeds for next year.  We grow less enthusiastic about giving away our surplus.  The stem on at least one winter squash has changed colour, which probably indicates that it's done. I could put it away and get the vine chopped up now rather than later.

Onion tops fell over long ago, but as long as they are green I keep hoping the bulbs will continue to grow.  Our onions never get as big as the set package promises.  Leaving them in the ground doesn't seem to hurt them, provided they aren't been set upon by pests.  We have found edible-looking onion bulbs while turning over the garden in the spring.  Garlic tops, conversely, are standing erect and are totally devoid of green.  The whole bed will be dug up when ground dries up a bit.  Some will be replanted, but in a different location.

Great seed-bearing versions of otherwise short plants have arisen and been felled.  Garden cress, pak choy, parsnip and lettuce seeds were collected last weekend.  Radishes are still in the works, if they survive the late summer onslaught of flea beetles.  Some of the Simpson lettuce seeds have been sown with hope that there is still time to grow leaves of a useful size.


Tomatoes are finally ripening - Tigerella, quickly followed by Tribe's Tobique, with San Marzano just starting and Longkeeper stubbornly staying green.  It's no wonder it keeps the longest if it's the last to ripen.  Not a hint of blossom end rot this year.  Is it the frequent watering, the straw mulch, the compost tea, the varieties? Controlled experiments take too long.  We just have to keep doing all of the above.

Potato plants are a bit yellow, a bit holey (slugs again) and very much in the way, having overgrown all pathways adjacent to their bed.  Barry dug up one end of the bed on Sunday, so we can more easily get from one side of the large garden to the other and we now have a large bag of potatoes for eating in the near future.  The tubers seem to keep better in the ground than in the basement, so we'll hold off further excavation for a while yet.  Besides, they might still be growing.

Carrots still have lush green tops and if we're really lucky, chunky little 3-inch roots.  The entire harvest is apt to fit in a bread bag.  We have eaten a few and found they have genuine carrot flavour.  If only they would be a bit more tender (and longer!).  They can be harvested and stored in the fridge as soon as the zucchini and beans clear out of there.  Or, they can stay in the ground until I lose my patience with them for growing so slowly.  (I like the idea of the Slow Food movement, but can't claim to be a disciple.)  Carrots sown under the rattlesnake beans have no doubt died of darkness; those among the white beans live, even if their roots are not substantial.  Since they are near the edge of the garden, they are probably the best candidates to be next year's seed carrots.

The largest of the beets have been picked, a few of them pickled.  It would be nice if the little ones left behind take advantage of the space they have to grow now.  Not entirely counting on it, but it would be nice. So many of the tops have been ravaged by leaf miners, I no longer even bother trying to save the good leaves for eating.  Swiss chard is marginally better in that respect; otherwise I would pull it all now.  Hoping that leaf miners die in the fall while beets and Swiss chard keep going.  Full of wishful thinking.

(Almost) everything else, in brief:
Pears are few and small, but acceptable quality
Raspberries are picking up speed
Red bee balm looks tired but could still attract a hummingbird this week
Grapes are hanging on and ripening, despite massive defoliation by leaf hoppers
Peppers, both sweet and hot, are growing green and shiny
Watermelons haven't grown in weeks (the softball-sized one we ate was very nice, though)
Two parsnip plantings are thriving, two not so good
The dominant hue of the red clover flowers is now brown
Basil has been regrowing nicely following severe cutbacks
We have some ugly little cauliflowers.  I might have to double-dog-dare Barry to eat one.

Summer has three weeks to go, officially.  However, September 1 is like New Year's Day for me.  Back to running, back to Toastmasters and clogging, on to music lessons and longer hours at the office.  Gardening season has to wind down, regardless of the weather.