gardening

Last Harvest

/ Christine Pennylegion / 3 Comments

We had frost on the ground this morning, and there’s rain scheduled for the next day or two, so I decided to harvest the last of our garden produce for this year. There’s not much going anymore, but I still brought in a good bowl full of brussels spouts (of various sizes), a nearly overflowing bowl of tomatoes (of various ripenessess), and the last seven unripe figs.

We did have a few figs ripen this season, which was more than I expected. The first was half-eaten by squirrels, drat them, but I brought two others in before they were quite ripe and they finished up in our fruit basket. Those were delightfully soft and jammy, with a berryish taste. There is one more undergoing the same indoor ripening treatment now.

As for the unripe figs, the thing to do seems to be to first boil them to death, and then poach them in simple syrup with some clove and vanilla. So that will be a fun experiment! If they turn out well, it looks like they’re fairly easy to preserve this way, which will be handy in future years when we can expect a larger crop.

All in all, I consider our first year of gardening to have been a success. There are definitely some adjustments we’ll make next spring — more strawberries, for one thing! — but with the 2-3 more raised beds we’re planning there will be plenty of room for all sorts of experiments. I do want to have one bed just for strawberries. The cucumbers and tomatoes both did very well, and I’d like to grow more of those next year with an eye toward learning how to can and pickle. And I think it would be great fun to try a three-sisters planting in one of the beds: sweet corn, some sort of squash (pie pumpkins?), and beans (pole? runner?) growing in harmony.

For my winter homework, I’ve got a handful of gardening books from the library to absorb. It’s been tremendously satisfying to be able to eat food that we’ve grown ourselves, and I can’t wait to see where our next season will take us.

Mid-season garden notes

/ Christine Pennylegion / 2 Comments

Veggies:

  • Tomatoes: doing excellently. We planted two varieties of cherry tomato — one red and one golden — and they’ve been producing beautifully.
  • Cucumbers: two plants, ditto. We’re getting some big boys off of these vines; these make about ten full-size cukes so far, and there are more to come. Next year we will need to stake them properly.
  • Radishes: the radishes also did very well and it was fun to grow them from seed. However, I am the only one in the house who really eats them, and I can’t eat that many radishes. We’ll skip these next year.
  • Spinach: these seeds didn’t take; we only got the one plant and its leaves stayed quite small, so we didn’t get to harvest before it bolted. I’m not sure if we’ll try again next year or not.
  • Broccoli: we have two plants and I kept waiting for them to get bigger before harvesting, but like the spinach they just bolted. I’ve left these in the garden anyway, for the pollinators.
  • Brussels sprouts: what a big plant! We’ve got lots of little nubbins on the stem that will eventually become sprouts; so far, so good on this one. Something has been eating the leaves but it doesn’t seem fussed.
  • Garlic: I planted three bulbs in a large pot rather later in the spring than I should have. For a long time all the pot sprouted was various tiny mushrooms (it has been a very wet summer) but last week some definite garlic leaves surfaced. I’m curious to see what kind of a bulb we’ll get.

Fruit:

  • Strawberries: we have just one strawberry plant, but it is now starting to produce a second crop. We lost most of the first one to the birds before putting up netting, but there are lots of little green strawberries developing now and I’m looking forward to eating them! Next year I want to have an entire raised bed just for strawberry plants.
  • Blueberries: we’ve got a small blueberry bush in a large pot, and it’s doing pretty well. Earlier in the spring its leaves started turning red on the edges, but I added some coffee grounds to the soil and that perked it right back up. The blueberries have been ripening for what feels like six hundred years and they’re still green. Evidently we picked a late-ripening variety. I’ll be sure to make a note of when they’re actually ready to eat so that less of next summer will be spent on tenterhooks.
  • Figs: Figs! FIGS! We planted the Chicago Hardy variety, which should survive our winters with minimal insulating, and it’s been growing like gangbusters. I’ve been fertilizing it about every 2-3 weeks with an 18-18-18 mix (the Miracle-Gro tub with the tomatoes on the front) and it’s put on a lot of height and foliage. And now the first little wee figlets are starting to grow — just a few millimeters in diameter but definitely there. Note to self: purchase organza bags to avoid sharing these with the birds as well.

Ornamentals:

  • Back: our back flower beds are still very overgrown on the whole, but we’ve made good progress as far as the random tulips and daffodils growing out of the lawn. One more season, maybe two, and I think we’ll have gotten them all. My husband took out a number of bushes on the one side that were not doing well, and we replaced them with two flowering bushes native to our area. I seeded microclover throughout the lawn last fall and we have a few good-sizwd patches. Other than that, we’re just continuing to thin things out, which is easier now that we know where all the perennials are.
  • Front: there are two small circular beds in the front lawn that had pretty annuals in them when we bought the house, and nothing last year. This year we put in some native perennials, like foxglove, which have taken well (except for one tall plant that leans badly after having had a branch dropped on it during tree trimming). In the beds immediately in front of the house, I replaced/repaired some hardscaping and we discovered that plants grow better if you water them (surprise). There are a few patches still with not much going on; the dahlias I planted were enthusiastically ripped out by a nameless party who thought they were weeds. I am considering wild roses for next year.

And that’s how things are going! It is so lovely to have these green and growing spaces to work and enjoy, amateur as our efforts certainly are. Next year we hope to add at least one more raised bed, and probably two, and my husband also plans to build proper frames over them for netting (this year we wholly improvised with large branches from the bushes we ripped out and netting left in the basement by the previous owner). It’s been a great experience getting our feet wet this year and I’m really looking forward to further garden adventures!

More discoveries in the garden

/ Christine Pennylegion / 5 Comments

(This post is only pictures of flowers. You know, just fyi.) It’s a pleasant, warmish Sunday afternoon and I’ve been catching up on what the garden has been doing over the last week or so. Our daffodils are still going strong and keeping us in bouquets, and the tulips are just starting to open up. Despite the snow (!) we had a few days ago, lots of good things are happening outside.

Grape hyacinths (a longtime favourite):

I think these are bleeding hearts, although I’m not sure. The shape is right but I’ve never seen white ones before:

Purple anemones in full bloom, along with some friends:

No idea what these pretty, droopy, purple ones are. Connie, do you know?

Ok, I lied. There is also a picture of leaves. Ivy along the back fence:

Some pretty ground cover:

Hedges in blossom (and in need of a trim):

And the aforesaid tulips, coming out — red!

I can’t wait to see what the rest of the spring and summer brings.

Soul and soil

/ Christine Pennylegion / 3 Comments

Like everyone else in Ontario, I apparently gave up leaving the house for Lent. Now, it’s not like I leave the house especially often when I have a newborn — ps I had the baby — but it’s strange not to have the option. We’re not quarantined but we’re certainly practicing social distancing, as evidenced by this moody photo Perpetua took a few days ago:


That’s Tertia, by the way. We like her lots.

Things are weird. It’s weird not going to the library or Anselm’s piano class. It’s weird not knowing if/when our awesome homeschool co-op will restart. It’s weird “going” to church via facebook live. Having my husband working from home is lovely — it’s like a super-extended paternity leave — but it also has its own strangeness.

There are solaces, however. Being more or less housebound has turned my attention to the one place outdoors I can easily go: the back yard. We have a lovely big back yard, and since this is our first spring in our new house, there all sorts of discoveries to be made. What’s going to come up in the gardens? We don’t know! But we are starting to find out; the first flowers, these little wee irises, came out last week:


They were followed by what I think might be some type of hyacinth?


I had thought at first glance that they might be grape hyacinths, but the colour is not quite right, not to mention the fact that the buds open up:


And there are these lovely little purple things. No idea what they are, but I like ’em:


Yesterday I started clearing the garden beds of some of their detritus. I let everything overwinter naturally, for the sake of any birdies and beasties who would be using the overgrowth for food or shelter — but winter is over and it’s time to make room for new growth. I’m leaving the dead leaves for the moment, since we’re still quite a few weeks out from our “last frost” date, but I’ve been cleaning out most of the rest.

This kind of work is good for my soul.

Along the way I’ve been able to see at least some of what’s coming up this year. We’re going to have lots of tulips and even more daffodils, as well as what I’m pretty sure are full-size irises. There will be black-eyes susans when the weather is hot. There’s a rose bush that desperately needs to be tied up or given a trellis or something. I found a patch of (invasive?) ivy and the place where the squirrels ditch their chestnut shells.

Most of my adult life I’ve been an apartment-dweller, and so all of this is particularly enchanting to me. A whole yard of our very own, with soil to tend and good work to do — it is a real comfort in these strange days. I’m looking forward to seeing what further secrets the garden beds reveal in the coming weeks.

Transplanting

/ Christine Pennylegion / 1 Comment

The last time we moved, a friend sent me an excerpt of a letter from Mr. Rogers to Amy Hollingsworth, a longtime friend who had moved to a new community (I think her husband was a pastor though I am having trouble tracking that detail down). He wrote,

Just as it takes a tree a long time to begin to grow again once it’s transplanted, so you can give your healthy roots time to find the nourishment of your new soil in your new community. (Quoted in The Simple Faith of Mr.Rogers, Amy Hollingsworth, p. 6)

We too are transplanting. Or being transplanted. Or however that works. Settling into the house, setting into the community… all that jazz. It is often hard to be patient with the process, even though we’ve done several of these big moves before and know (or should!) how it works. As the song from the Daniel Tiger movie about moving goes, It takes time, it takes time to make a new house feel like home.

One of the joys of where we’re living now, for me, is that we have a small back yard, and so I have been able to do some literal transplanting. I am very much brand-new to gardening, but I got eight plants in the ground this past week (2 ea. of foxglove, lupine, black-eyed susan, and English lavender). Here are some of them looking brave & perky:

We’ll see if they take — I am hopeful, though. So far so good. In our front there were already flowers waiting for us: some lovely hyacinths (they are done blooming now but I will dead-head them and see if that forces a second round), some tulips ready to open soon, and something else coming up that I haven’t yet identified. I can’t wait to see what’s there.I also have a new project on the hook:

This is the “Lotus Flower Blanket” from Hooked by Robin, and it is gorgeous. It will be a circular blanket, probably close to a meter in diameter once it’s finished, and uses a whopping kilometer of yarn!

I splurged with some gift money and bought the recommended Scheepjes Whirl yarn, which has an incredibly beautiful slow gradient — you can just see the pink lightening in this shot as it moves toward the edge. This is far and away the most intricate project I have ever done, with the most delicate (and most expensive) yarn I’ve ever used. So far so good.”So far so good” is about the status of our family transplant right now. We’ll get there. We’re getting there.