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.

Our baby is growing up

Barry planted the crabapple tree in 2008.  It made its first blossoms this week.

All rise

A week in the life of asparagus spears:

May 4

May 6

May 8

May 11

Left out the gory bit, with the skillet and hot olive oil.  Nobody needs to see that.

Fruits of the future

Haskap berries will be edible before the end of the month.  They could pass for sea squirts at this stage.

A week ago the Nanking cherry bushes were covered in blossoms and humming with bees.  The green cherries seem to have appeared out of nowhere.

Since Wendy and Carl (across the alley and two doors down) planted a pear tree (different variety form ours) last year, I have reason (I hope) to hope that this bulge, like many others on the tree, is a sign of successful pollination.  A fresh blossom is offered below for comparison.

The haskaps have always come through for us.  The other two were running out of chances to disappoint us. There may be a reprieve in sight.

True grit

Is there an expression "tenacious as a tulip"?

It impresses me that any plant can push its way through several centimetres of our hard-packed clay soil.  Why should a cinder block's depth of gravel be any more of a deterrent?  Maybe we should add another block this summer, to test the tulips' limits.  Makes me wonder about those very specific planting depths prescribed on bulb packages.

Earthlings

"THEY LOOK LIKE THEY'RE FROM OUTER SPACE," Owen said.  "NO ONE KNOWS WHAT THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO BE...........THEY'RE ACTUALLY KIND OF FRIGHTENING."
~ John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

unorthodox umbellifers

They are not from outer space, or from the Marianas trench. Nor are they 3D renderings of vital organs depicted in The Far Side.  To the best of my knowledge, they are parsnips, though somewhat different from the parsnips depicted on the seed package.  I had forgotten these specimens, unearthed last October, until yesterday.  It was past time to dig up any parsnips remaining in the ground, since many had sprouted a couple of inches of new green top.  Most of them were of the more conventional parsnip configuration, but there was one more with this strange configuration of multiple roots growing out of one top.  With so much surface area, these creatures are able to keep a solid grip on the ground they live in and I was lucky to have the benefit of soft spring earth on my side yesterday.  It took a little extra digging and a careful two-handed yank before I was able to view the freakish vegetable.  All of these oddities came from the same bed, where they had come of age alongside peas last summer.  Interesting.  While the difficulties of digging and cleaning multi-pronged roots are definitely drawbacks, the food is just as good and they look pretty cool.  Makes me wish there was a pageant they could be entered in. Yesterday's parsnip harvest was the second of this spring and yielded 3.8 edible kg.

surreal sunchokes

Sunchoke tubers sometimes resemble flower bulbs, sometimes a hybrid of the Pillsbury Doughboy and Pig Pen, often a sketch of multiplying yeast cells with random bloops all over the surface.  They readily detach themselves from the plants which bore them and are fairly agreeable about being removed from the soil.  No Easter egg hunt for me, thanks; I'd rather just grope about in the dirt here for tubers.  That's the fun part.  Figuring out what to do with them in the kitchen is the tough bit.  I think they could be excellent deep fried, like potato chips.  But we don't do that.                                                                                                                                                                    






Not far into the sunchoke bed, they started coming up with a generous coating of white fungus.  I haven't been able to find out what it is or whether is is safe to eat the tuber after peeling.  Ce n'est pa grave, though.  We have over 3 kg of good-looking sunchokes, and, given the culinary mystery of them, that amount should last us a while.





(This was two weeks ago.)