Erin headed off to work this morning, so I figured I would start pummeling through prepping/planting the in-ground garden. I've worked to raise these beds for a couple years now by just adding more soil and shaping them. It's become time consuming to do every year though, so I'm planning on boxing them in one by one this year. They are 3' x 20' so that won't be the easiest task, but will be worth it and so much easier to maintain once completed.
For now, it was time to clean the first bed out for the peas and beans. The outer edges were very weedy and it took a couple hours to complete, but looked pretty good by the time I was done. I put up my usual pea trellis and a couple of T-posts on the other side. I planted two varieties, Sugar Snap and Cassilis Snap peas. I'm really looking forward to a pile of fresh, young snap peas with some dairy-free ranch dip.
Next, I planted a whack of green beans. Most people around our area seem to prefer the yellow wax beans, which we enjoy as well, but we eat a lot of green beans in soups, casseroles, stir fries and so on throughout the winter. I'd like to freeze a decent amount for that, hence the 30' sq. of green bush beans on our garden plan this year. The last few square feet were rough as it was close to dark and the temperature dropped suddenly as the wind picked up. We're supposed to start getting warmer weather next week. Really hoping that pans out.
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| Snap pea, green bush bean and herb bed |
May 29, 2017
Another gray, cold day. Sprinkled off and on, but I was just too darn cold to go out for the majority of the day. Instead I spent the day finishing up last week's blog entry and reworking some of the garden plan.
May 30, 2017
A little sunnier, a little warmer. Still not lovely, but at least bearable. I ran some errands in the morning and paid bills. Called about my compost as it most certainly did not show up "before the weekend". Still haven't gotten a call back.
I finally got into the garden at around noon. I prepped another raised bed for bok choy and various greens. It was quick work as I only had to remove a handful of weeds and smooth the soil. I planted Edox lettuce (red/green butterhead), Parris Island (romaine), Tennis Ball (green butterhead), Wrinkled Cress, Vit Mache and both purple and green bok choy.
Spent the rest of my time watering and weeding the garlic.
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| Green and red cabbages |
May 31, 2017
More rain, more cold. Kicking myself now for watering last night. Chilly this morning so dogs and I loafed around until afternoon. Made a quick run to Mr. Tomato for some cabbage seedlings. I noticed yesterday that I don't seem to have very many cabbages planted, especially green ones so I bought 3 flats with 4 plants each and an extra flat of red cabbages as well. Also grabbed some very dark purple violas to go in a pot with the orange ones we purchased previously.
June 1, 2017
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| Sangre potato seed |
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| Truckload of compost arriving |
DON'T PANIC! Where's my towel? I need a towel.
June 2, 2017
Woke up to pouring rain yet once again. It really is getting to be defeating. On a good note, two of the five 5kg bricks of coconut coir I ordered came, so I should be able to start filling a few beds this weekend. I'm oddly looking forward to moving the enormous pile of compost that came yesterday, and rather enjoy the fact that I've moved two complete truckloads of it in the last two years.
This is the compressed coconut coir, or at least two of the five 5kg packages I ordered. When I add water, each one will expand to 60 L of material. It will fluff my soil up the same way peat moss does, but will do so without affecting the pH of the soil, like peat moss. The other three packages I ordered should be coming next week. Not quite sure why the seller had to ship them separately.
June 3 - 4, 2017
Still more rain, very little garden work. I did have the chance to quickly harvest some oregano that was growing like crazy, as well as a little bit of sage I trimmed off of several plants.
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| Oregano drying |
I used my food dehydrator trays to lay the oregano out to dry. Herbs are a bit too light to dry with the dehydrator itself as the fan will blow them all over once they are dry. They'll dry in 2-3 days just left out on trays. Once it's dry, we'll transfer to a large mason jar and add to it every time we harvest.
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| Sage drying |
Growing our own herbs doesn't save us a ton of money, but fresh herbs are amazing to cook with and we enjoy that a great deal. Plus, dried ones aren't getting any cheaper and they are SO easy to grow, take up little space and provide you with repeated harvests all through the season. Many herbs, including chives, parsley, thyme, tarragon, sage and oregano are perennial and will come back year after year, making your initial investment in the plants well worthwhile.
I started hardening off my peppers this week. I was excited when buying pepper seeds as we had an impressive crop last year and they grew very well using the pruning method I tried. I was a bit startled at how many seedlings there were. Total of 7 trays holding 15 peppers each. 105 pepper plants of various types including Golden Marconi, Early Jalepeno, Ancho, Anaheim, Super Thai, Lipstick, Big Red, Chocolate Beauty, Sunbright and Jimmy Nardello.
I used the same pruning method as last year, as my plants were hardier than ever and had a ton of fruit. Peppers aren't exactly usually a bumper crop in our northern zone, so anything you can do to set yourself up for success is well worthwhile.
One thing I've been really excited about adding to the garden is fruit. I eat a lot of fruit and the prospect of being able to just harvest it out of the backyard is beyond enticing to me. So far, we have raspberries, honeyberries (haskap), high-bush blueberries, and three kinds of strawberries and rhubarb planted. The honeyberry bushes are about 4 years old, and the taller variety is about 4' tall. We harvested a lot of fruit off of it last year and by the looks of the flowers earlier and buds on it now, we should get an even better crop this year. Honeyberries, if you've never had them, look like an ugly, misshapen blueberry when ripe and taste somewhat like a cross between a blueberry and raspberry.
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| Kent and Alpine strawberry patch |
The Kent strawberries are in their third year and are very vigorous. I'm expecting a fantastic harvest after seeing all the flowers that popped up this week. The flowers on the Alpine strawberries are large too, so we should see a good crop there as well. They are much, much smaller strawberries, but very sweet and a great treat to eat fresh out of the garden.
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| Strawberry blossoms |
You can see from the picture to the left, the large clusters of blossoms. Each of those blossoms will turn into a juicy, red, sun-ripened strawberry. I have to admit, last year being our first real harvest, very few of these made it out of the garden, as most were deposited directly into our tummies as we harvested. They were quite amazing. We did manage to keep enough for one small batch of jam that tasted as if sunshine itself was an ingredient. Looking forward to more jam this year!
Our fruit trees are still a few years away from producing much, but so far we have 2 heartnut, 2 elderberry, 3 cherry, 1 chum, 2 pear, 2 plum, and 1 mulberry. I still want at least two apple, one more pear, another mulberry and three Asian pear trees. I would also like more small fruit including more blueberries and raspberries, as well as blackberries, kiwi, grapes, goji and gooseberry bushes. Imagine what a paradise it would be with all those things blooming and fruiting. I do, quite regularly.
I did check the orchard tonight and found something exciting. The heartnut buds have leafed out finally (right image) and found this interesting thing on the tree (left image). I suspected it was a flower, but since I haven't seen it flower before I came in to google "heartnut flower" and I was correct, it's a heartnut flower. So maybe if we're lucky we'll see a couple nuts this year.
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