Experiments in propagation

 I hacked of two branches of the Berry Blue honeyberry bush today, and didn't do a great job of it.  Ouch.  On April 25 I wrote that two rooting pots had been attached to the bush, after scraping the bark and stabbing the twig to allow roots to form more easily.  A check of the pots after nine weeks did not reveal the  dense root balls I had hoped for.  Discouraged, I closed them up and just about forgot about them, which wasn't difficult given how well they were hidden in the now dense foliage.  Today I decided to face them again.  After the warm spell we've had, it was now or never.  Never was probably a viable option.  The branches didn't seem to be suffering any adverse effects from the attachments.

 At the same time, the bush has become far too dense and it was probably to its benefit to remove the branches, an option that included the possibility of two new bushes and many more berries next summer.  Getting the pruning shears under the rooting pot to make the cut was awkward and I couldn't see what I was doing.  Hence the botched attempt above.  The second cut was very clean.  Two bad that ugly gash was further down.  My attempt to clean it up was far from successful.  What's that they say about an ounce of prevention?

 Fortunately, there is pruning sealer, a substance much like extra-firm Vaseline that is smeared all over the wound, preferably at least 1/8 inch thick.  This wound got extra.  I hope it will be okay.

That was the good branch, the one I started correctly after failing to remove the bark on my first attempt. Somehow, that first branch put out a few roots as well.  In fact, it had more roots than seen here, but they mostly dried out and broke off due to neglect.  What's left doesn't look like enough to keep the branch going, but at this point we have nothing to lose by planting it.  The stems below the new roots were scraped up a bit and coated with rooting hormone, then each plunged into a small container of very wet potting soil.  They look pretty smart so far (after a few hours).  If they look this good in three weeks, I'm declaring the mission accomplished.  In the meantime, they will sit in the partial shade of the struggling apple tree and receive my guilt-fueled coddling.

We are looking forward to the buckets of honeyberries we will be consuming in the future, but what happens when the season is over at the end of June?  Obviously, we will need to boost the strawberry crop in order to meet our growing expectations of delicious berries.  I worked on that today, too.

The back yard strawberries occupy four apparently random positions in the lawn and are now mostly surrounded by tall red clover.  We have to clip out a border now and then so we don't lose sight of them.  The plants have been thriving in this area.  Maybe it's the clover, maybe it's the relative calm - the original strawberry bed is a breezy location.  For weeks now the plants have been sending out runners into the grass and the clover.  They are unlikely to find a good place to root that way.  I really must build them a proper place to live, but for now I'm providing soil-filled potted for the offspring to stick roots into.  By the time the new bed is built, there should be at least a dozen new plants to put into it, if this scheme works.

Today's harvest included:

Schweiserreisen snow peas - many gleaned in a culling of the mess left by high winds a couple of weeks ago. The oldest pea vines had grown well beyond their extended pea cages and had been holding onto each other for support.  It wasn't enough to stand up to the wind and they all bent at their highest contact with the cages.  Most of them survived and continued to grow and blossom, but they also continued to grab on to each other, forming a dense mass and making it hard to locate the pea pods.  I got rid of a few but just couldn't snip the ones that were most healthy and productive.

Green Arrow shell peas - we can't keep up, but I believe they have good longevity in the refrigerator.  One wants the pods to be full, but not mature.  Mature peas tell the vine its work is done; we aren't in favour of that.  I've been squeezing the pods gently before picking, choosing those that can't be easily compressed.  If I do pick one that has a little extra space in it, I justify it as avoiding the risk that the peas will mature if I don't happen to pick again for two or three days.  The peas have been incredibly sweet.  I'm starting to think they are second only to tomatoes as a good reason to grow your own.

Raspberries - they are not exactly dense in the thick tangle of thorny canes I have to reach into, but it looks like that should improve.  Picking in our raspberry patch turns around the idea of "the low hanging fruit".  The low hanging fruit is the hardest to get at.  I'm quite relieved when that is all picked.  At the end of the season I'll cut down all the fruit bearing canes and maybe the growth won't be so thick next year.  Maybe.

Swiss chard - it's doing very well in the raised bed, getting the odd bit of leaf miner blight but mostly keeping ahead of it.  The other patch, under the scarlet runner bean tipi is not so good, hardly worth harvesting.  You just never know how things will turn out.

Yesterday, Barry picked a plethora of basil leaves and uprooted a bulb of garlic to make pesto.  I've worked insanely hard on this garden, and yet I sometimes feel pampered by it.

Breaking ground

Last weekend we were scowling at an overly persistent winter.  Yesterday I worked outdoors with bare arms and bare feet.  When I read "cool season" in a plant's description, I wonder if it has a chance in this climate of rapid and extreme temperature fluctuations.  Not that 15C is extremely warm, but already it is necessary to watch that the greenhouse doesn't overheat.  The delicate cauliflowers that were transplanted yesterday are looking limper than ever after a sun-intensive day followed by a near-freezing night.
All the planted seeds, on the other hand, should be fine.  The past few days have seen the addition of three raised garden beds (just mounded, not walled), transplantation of cauliflower and borage, a few rows of seeds sown (carrots, parsnips, pak choy, radishes, garden cress, lettuce, and peas), and installation of structures to support the peas.

pea fences

pea cages

This is our seventh year of growing peas and we still have not taken the trouble to build good fences for them to climb.  This year, again, they will cling to various improvised structures that limit their soaring ambitions - a short sturdy fence, a taller floppy fence, and few tomato cages embellished with twine.  The latter are a bit of work to create, and lacking in stature, but  once made are easy to place.  All you need is a square foot of ground.

Every time I insert the shovel into soil, I hear admonitions against disturbing the soil structure.  It echoes again when the shovel-full of earth is squirming with earthworms, who are apt to now consider this a bad neighbourhood.  A better gardener would use other methods (black plastic and patience, maybe) to rid the garden of last year's encroaching grass, dandelions, yarrow, and chives.  Perhaps someday I will be that better gardener.  If it meant the first heat wave following the June rainy season would not turn our soil to quasi-concrete, it would be a worthwhile effort.

Besides following the seed-germination route to new plants, other propagation methods are in the works.  The two bee balm plants are now eight (we hope).  This was achieved by brutally forcing a shovel, east-west and then north-south, downward through the base of each plant.  Although there was far too much of that root-ripping noise as sections were removed from the ground, they all appear to be alive two days later.  I wonder if they will grow in quarter-round shapes this year.  The purple flowers on one are a big favourite with the local bees, and the red flowers of the other drew the attention last summer of the first hummingbird that I've seen in Lethbridge since 2007.

One honeyberry bush now sports two rooting pots in an attempt to create two more bushes.  Honeyberries are tart dark blue berries, attractively shaped to resemble giant mouse droppings.  We have two varieties that both offered a decent quantity of fruit last year, so why not have more.  (I finally gave up on Saskatoon bushes last year.  It was humiliating that a shrub which flourishes in the wild would not even grow, much less produce fruit, while in my care.)  The rooting pots were advertised in the Lee Valley catalogue as a way to clone woody plants much more rapidly than by traditional cutting methods.  No doubt there was a "results may vary" caveat in the fine print.  While trying to slice off a half-inch circumference of bark, I found the bark to be soft and stringy.  Far more than half an inch was stripped away.  Well, what's done is done and I might as well proceed now that the branch has been damaged.  The branch wasn't quite thick enough for the opening, so the pot tended to lose its grip and slide down the branch to where it was not wounded.  Nor was the branch quite vertical enough.  Hence, water is leaking out of the reservoir.  On the second attempt, on another branch, I realized that the stringy outer layer was making way for the real bark, which I was able to cut away in the prescribed size and shape.  But then the same problem with inadequate verticality and girth.  We'll see how it goes.