Finally got some things done today. I cleaned the flowers all off the deck and planted whatever was left in a small 4' x 4' bed. There was a bit of garlic in the bed but it was mostly free so I added the remaining dahlias, the asters and also 2 Echinacea and 4 lavender (1 Hidicote Blue, 1 Munstead, 2 Pink Perfume).My son came over and helped me move 8 beds into place and also dug the hole for the Montmorency cherry tree. I removed a ton of horsetail from the kale bed, the kale doesn't seem too phased.June 20, 2017
Dreary day, but rain held off in the morning. I was able to get a couple of large blueberry bushes that our friends gave us and mulched the blueberry bed with compost. I also planted the new cherry tree and watered it well. Now we have two cherry varieties, Montmorency and Mazza.
June 21, 2017
Lots and lots done today. I filled two beds with compost and coco coir. It's a LOT of extra work mixing them, compared to having the pre-mixed soil, but will pay off in the long run not using the peat. One thing about the compost I bought this year, compared to the garden soil I usually purchase, it is so much heavier. I would say at least three times heavier. With two blocks of coco coir in each bed though, the medium seems to be a decent texture.
I really wanted to get the peppers in the ground and off the deck so I filled the first bed with 16 Jalapeno and 16 Ancho pepper plants. I went crazy with the peppers this year, admittedly, however we had such a great harvest last year it got me really excited about the prospect of harvesting even more this year. Once that bed was complete I started on the next and planted 8 Big Red, 12 Sunbright (yellow) and 12 Golden Marconi.
June 22, 2017
Went to Home Hardware after my chiropractor appointment this morning and picked up two more blocks of coco coir. That was all they had, but I ordered 15 more that should be here in a week. Filled that bed and mixed in a third of the reconstituted coir into the compost. I planted 12 Anaheim, 8 Lipstick, 4 Jimmy Nardello and 8 Sweet Sunrise (orange). I'm really happy with the look of the pepper plants this year. Even though I started them later than I would have liked, they were tall and sturdy and fairly bushy already and I managed to fertilize them frequently enough that they stayed very green. I filled one more bed before calling it quits.
June 23, 2017
Things are feeling more manageable now that all those peppers are off the deck and in the ground. I filled the next bed with compost and coir and planted Carlton potatoes in it. I took advantage of the warm sunny day to wash out more pots and trays. I was terrible at doing so last year and ended up chucking all the Solo cups and buying a lot more trays than I needed to this year because the rest were dirty and buried under the snow. It was all terribly wasteful so I'm working to improve that this year by washing a bunch here and there, drying in the hot sun on the deck, stacking and bringing inside to be stored until next spring.
It was such a beautiful day today that I just sat in a patio chair and napped for about 20 minutes. The breeze is heavenly and you can smell the lilacs and Japanese maples that are in bloom right now. Soon the wild roses that surround our yard on the very edges will fill the air with their scent as well. It's all quite heavenly. We really did find our perfect spot here.
June 26, 2017
The weather was gorgeous, so I got into the garden early today. Erin had weeded the final bed of the in-ground garden on Friday night, so it was all ready for me to start prepping. I raked in a few buckets of compost and smoothed the surface. First, I planted a couple dozen fennel, then 4 ground cherry and 4 tomatillo plants. This was exciting as it cleared yet even more room off the deck, which I desperately need to do so I can finish building the last 6 beds. After a lunch break, I planted 2 Noir de Carmes melons, 4 Luffa gourds, a couple scallop summer squash, 2 spaghetti squash and 4 Yellow Petite Watermelons. I'm really interested to see how the luffas grow. The fruit of this gourd is the common "luffa sponge" that you purchase in the bath & beauty department. The fruit is picked when overripe and is allowed to ripen further until the flesh easily comes off of it. At that point the inner structure that makes up the sponge is apparent and can be used once it is well washed and dried in the sun.
Started out as a beautiful day, so I headed out early to Kent to pick up the last of the lumber I needed for the raised beds. My debit card wasn't working at the cash so I had a big run-around to go to the bank for a new card, wait for them to open, back to Kent, pay, out to the lumber yard, drive up and down the aisles looking for the right lumber, load and stack eighteen 2" x 10"s. The racket completed, I grabbed a coffee and headed home to unload the lumber so I could pick up the coconut coir I had ordered.
Took a short break for breakfast and my coffee and then headed downtown to pick up my son/hole digger. We zipped over to Home Hardware from there to grab the 15 blocks of coconut coir, grabbed another coffee on the way home and got to it. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't all that cooperative for the rest of the afternoon, but we did get another tree (plum) planted, I planted a few herbs and got a bit of the lumber cut to size. Tomorrow's another day. We're getting there.
Another gorgeous, sunny, but cool day, but I'm having a slow start as I didn't sleep well last night. Just one of those nights where you toss and turn and just can't seem to stay asleep for any length of time. I went out around and replanted some melons that hadn't come up. Next, I worked on filling two more raised beds with soil and coir. Once they were full, mixed and smoothed over I planted 3 varieties of sweet potatoes in the two beds; Carver, Georgia Jet and Japanese Yam. Finished planting just as an enormous thunderstorm rolled up.
June 29, 2017
At it early today. Picked our son up to dig the last 3 holes for the trees. We didn't work the hardest today but had a nice day together with lots of breaks and chats. He only ended up getting one hole done and I made half a bed this afternoon. I did plant a few odds and ends here and there. I had a few peppers I needed a spot for so I filled out the empty spaces in the blueberry bed for those. I tossed a broad leaf sage and summer savory in there as well.
I did get a ton done this evening right before dusk. There was a nice breeze and it made working quick business. I flattened the area for the new row of raised beds as best I could and laid the weed mat down. We carried the beds over and lined three of them up in that row, with room for two more. I'll be trying to build those, plus another three to go over by the raspberry bed. Thrilled to get these in place, almost done with installation for the year.
June 30, 2017
Beautiful day today. I headed out in the morning to pick the haskap berries as they were quite ripe. I harvested about 4 lbs, but only picked about 1/3 to 1/2 of them. Haskap berries, also known as honeyberries, are a bit on the sour side when eaten fresh. They have a flavor similar to a cross between a sour raspberry and blueberry. They are delicious in cooking and make a fabulous jam, which is what I'll be doing with most of these, though I think I will try to dehydrate a few and see how they turn out. Might be a tasty snack, dried haskap, who knows! I also picked about 1.5 lbs of Kent strawberries, a few to eat early in the morning and the other half I took to my wife at work for her breakfast.
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| Haskap berries |
Next, I checked one of the first beds I planted
again, still no sign of life in it. I expect the seedlings popped up when planted and were quickly fried in the hot sun as I didn't have a hose and wasn't watering regularly. I decided to top the bed off with some compost and a bit of coir since the soil level was low and then planted the last variety of potatoes, Eramosa, in that bed. I have about 1/4 to 1/3 of each variety of potatoes left, I'll probably throw those all in another bed mixed up. Can't have too many potatoes, especially when you're married to an Irish girl.
July 1, 2017
Canada Day and I woke up sick as a dog. Not sure if it was a stomach bug or just something I ate didn't sit right, but I was laid up inside most of the day. I did start feeling better in the evening so we went out to walk around the garden. We ended up at the Kent strawberry patch again and ended up harvesting 3.1 lbs of them. They keep coming out of nowhere! I love it. I highly recommend a strawberry bed or patch in your garden, if you don't have one. Perennial, low maintenance, prolific and delicious; what's not to like? I'll be making a large batch of jam with these.
July 2, 2017
Discovered this little guy in the garden today. I have so many flowers on my pepper plants, despite just planting them last week. I know that you're supposed to pinch the flowers until they're in the ground and established, but these guys are just too hearty and are raring to go. I'm not going to argue, I like peppers. Good thing since I planted over 100 of them.
It was very muggy out today, so I didn't do too much until after 5 pm when the breeze picked up and the sun wasn't so hot. Then I filled two beds with compost and topped with 6 bricks of coir (there are 4 per package). I mixed that into the top few inches very well, smoothed the bed over with the rake and planted 32 cucumber plants in one bed.
I went to Canadian Tire today for a couple dozen jam jars, they didn't have the regular 250 ml ones, so I ended up with the wide mouth ones that are nice, but $4 more than the others, so I wasn't thrilled. Still, jam needs to be made so I bit the bullet and bought them along with 4 kg of sugar.
Walked around tonight after I was finished with the shoveling. Radishes are just about ready to start pulling, beans, peas and lettuce should be along soon. Carrots and beets are coming. Herb beds are booming; the oregano is ready for another enormous harvest and I gathered a large amount of sage tonight. Garlic scapes are growing, probably another week or so and we'll harvest those for some scape pesto and possibly pickle some of them. The garlic looks good, I think we'll have a decent harvest this year, still not enough to replant some of our own though, but I'll get there. I'll be putting straw on the garlic beds this year before the snowfall so there's less chance of them getting killed if we have late frosts in the spring. Potatoes look nice, broccoli and cabbage are taking off. So far, so good. I'll try to start next week's post with a pictorial update.
Looks great.
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