Zinnias, Pole Beans

This is the most vibrant zinnia I've ever had.  It is from Baker Creek Heirloom seeds in their Candy Stripe mix.  I wish they sold it as a single colour.  In the mix, most of the flowers are pink and white with just a few orange/yellow and red/white.

The pink/white is also pretty.  Because they are an heirloom variety, there is some variation in flower form with some being not as nice or regular as others.  The plants themselves grow well and mine stayed healthy.

Here is a bumblebee having a snooze on a small zinnia.  It's chilly this morning and what better place to have a sleep.

Zinnias are funny flowers as they have quite a few different forms.  These small orange ones and the red one below have a very prominent centre.  I really like the intense colours of these zinnias.

This peachy zinnia came in the same mix as the ones above.  A much more subtle colour and the centre stays flat and frilly. It's also small - about 2" across.

The purple pole beans are coming along nicely.  Not sure why the daddy-long-legs are interested in them.  I like to grow some kind of pole bean as they produce later in the summer after my bush beans are pretty much finished.  Usually I grow scarlet runner beans but I happened to have some left over purple beans so I went with them this year.  They are climbing up the lilac bush.

It's always rewarding at this time of year to be harvesting vegetables and enjoying the bright flowers.
 

4 Hours of Sun - Veggies

 I am so pleased with the results of my 4-hours-of-sun vegetable plantings.  As you can see, I have some lovely big tomatoes, ripe peppers, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, potatoes, purple beans and zucchini.  The location of this patch gets full sun from 10:00am to 2:00pm so it gets strong sun when it gets it.  The shade is from deciduous trees so it is not as deep shade as you would have on the north side of a building or fence,  or even in the shade of cedars or conifers.  The tomatoes are producing less than in a full sun location but the peppers in the shade are producing as well as the ones in full sun.  Both  tomatoes and peppers are taking a bit longer to ripen.  I have tons of zucchini and the potatoes are producing well.  The beans also doing as well as in a sunnier location.

Of course, I could easily grow lettuce, celery, spinach, Swiss chard in the shadier spot.  Next year, I will plant some brassicas there and see how they fare.

Happy gardening.

Creating a Pollinator Garden

 Enjoy this video created by Christine.

Prize-winning Celery

Our local agricultural fair was able to run as normal this year.  Fun to be participating again.  This year, I got a Best of Show in the vegetable class for two of my celery plants. I was surprised as I hadn't really paid much attention to them all summer.

This one is growing in the same bag as the ones that went to the fair so it's similar but it has a stem in the back that got chewed, probably by a slug.

So with celery brought to my attention, I thought I would give my hints for growing celery.  I like to grow celery in a part shade area.  Morning sun with afternoon shade is my favourite location, but any spot with no more than 3 or 4 hours of sun is what I choose.  Celery does not like to bake in the hot summer sun.  It will grow quite nicely in a container or bag or in the ground.  The soil should be nutritious with plenty of compost to give it good texture.  Regular watering is essential, at least every couple of days in the hot days of summer.  It will keep growing if it gets too dry but the stalks will be pithy, not crunchy.  I give it a boost with some high nitrogen fertilizer a couple of times through the season, either slow release or liquid.

Years ago, people would blanche celery by hilling soil up around the stalks to produce a milder tasting plant.  Modern varieties taste just fine without blanching.

I start my celery from seed in February.  It germinates very easily and grows happily even with the weak winter sun.  I give it a feed of liquid fertilizer when it is about 3" tall.  By the time I put the plants outside in May, they are about 5" tall.  I usually plant 6 plants so that I have enough to pick from when the plants are still young.  By the end of the summer, I have more celery than I need but I  use it up in celery soup or freeze some to use throughout the winter.

I have sometimes overwintered a plant or two by potting them up and putting them in a bright window.  It doesn't grow much but it keeps the plant fresh while I gradually use it up.

If you want to collect your own seeds, overwinter a plant and the next summer it will flower and set seed. One plant will give you way more seed than you need.

I hope you will try to grow some celery next year.  It is easy to grow and fresh celery is much tastier than tired celery that's been languishing in your fridge.

 

Living Trellis, Luna Moth, Sprouting Strawberry

I planted some Jackmanii clematis at the base of a lilac bush and this summer it is happily clambering up the lilac.  I also planted some purple pole beans to climb up the lilac.  They won't be blooming for a few weeks yet but will also provide a little colour in an otherwise green area.

I was so happy to see another Luna moth.  I think this is 4 years in a row now.  This one is a male as it has rather short feathery antenna.  Such a beautiful moth - about 3 -4 " across.

This strawberry sprouted! I'd never seen that happen before but the internet has lots of pictures of sprouted strawberries.  What surprised me the most is that the berry was not over ripe or damp.  You can plant the little plantlets if you have the patience to wait until they grow into a full size plant.

Getting lots of produce from the vegetable garden: lettuce, cucumbers, beans, zucchini, broccoli, celery, potatoes, green peppers, Swiss chard, cabbage, carrots and beets.  Very pleased with my experiment of planting in an area with only 4 hours of midday sun.  Lots of tomatoes are setting fruit, although the plants are getting pretty tall, as well as sweet peppers and zucchini.  I likely won't get nearly as many tomatoes as I would in a sunnier location but I am short on sunny spots so this is very encouraging, and I will still get plenty of tomatoes.  I planted several potato plants in the same area so I will see how that works.

Happy gardening.

June Transition Plants

I only got three pansy plants to germinate this spring but this one is so pretty it makes up for the small selection.  The subtle pink on the top petals and the buttery yellow contrasting with the bright purple is just perfect.

A few potatoes are blooming.  I think this is Bellanita.  Often my potato plants don't bloom although they always make potatoes.  Somewhere I read to cut off the flowers to encourage the plant to put all its energy into the tubers.  That makes sense but the flowers are so pretty, I'm going to leave them for a while.

I have really cut back on buying annuals in May so June tends to be a very green month in the garden.  I planted some new ornamental onions to try to bridge the gap between the spring and summer perennials.  This little blue drumstick onion is quite small - not much more than an inch across, but it is a real blue which is unusual in most plants.  The flower sits on top of a long, wiry stem.  I hope it will naturalize as a big clump of them would be great.  

This magenta onion - atropurpureum- blooms just ahead of the blue onion with overlap as the flowers last a couple of weeks.  Both these onions bloom about 3 weeks after the Purple Sensation onions.  I have heavy soil and the onions seem to do very well in it.  They do best in a full sun location but some of my purple sensation ones are in shade and still bloom.  Not fussy.

The mock orange is blooming well this year.  I'm not crazy about the fragrance but I do like the look of the flowers and they flower in June - bonus.  The only thing I do to it is give it a prune after flowering.  Like lilacs, they should be pruned as soon as possible after blooming as they bloom on the previous year's wood.

The fleece flower.  The bigger it gets, and every year it gets bigger, the more I like it's frothy white flowers. Excellent for pollinators.  It is a big plant - about 5' tall but it only gradually expands with more stems at the base. The flowers last for about a month.  I don't do anything to it.  No fertilizer, no pruning. The stems fall over after a frost and I just leave them on the ground.

Happy gardening.  Take time to smell the roses, or whatever else you have.

 

Pots as Mulch

I like to use pots as mulch for a variety of reasons.  One is that I have limited space with full sun so I need to maximize my use of it.  Another reason is it cuts down on weeding and watering. Also it can make my vegetable patches look prettier as with this pot of Biden in between some carrots.

Here I'm using a coleus plant between cabbages.  As the summer gets hotter, I will move the coleus into a shadier spot and by then the cabbages will be big enough to fill in the space.

I bought a pretty deep red dahlia this spring. I decided to put a pot of cosmos beside it so that no weeds would grow on that side anyway.  The pot will keep the soil on that side from drying out, hopefully, keeping the dahlia happy.

I am experimenting with growing  a lettuce plant in a margarine container.  There are 3 other lettuce plants surrounding it.  When they get big, I will move the container probably to a shadier spot. I am using some slug pellets that use ferric phosphate to protect some of my plants including this lettuce.  I've been using the pellets for a few years now and they work really well.  They are not toxic like the old slug pellets.

Some marigolds nestled in between a few broccoli plants.  Will they deter cabbage moths?  We'll see.

A geranium between beets and broccoli.  It isn't blooming because I pinched off the flowers and buds when I transplanted it so that it could put all its energy into getting established in the pot.  It should be really pretty in a few weeks.

Finally, a small container with a nasturtium plant placed at the base of a cucumber plant.  Every year I struggle with striped cucumber beetles.  Some people think nasturtiums can be repellent to the beetles.  We shall see.  So far I have only seen one beetle , which I dispatched, but it's early in the season.
 

Potatoes

 Ordering seeds or plants in the dead of winter is always a bit of a risky business.  Odds are I will order more than I need - well, just because.  This year it is potatoes that I over indulged in.  The above picture features 6 different kinds of potatoes:  Top left - Chieftain, Top middle (2) Bellanita, Top right-Bintje, Bottom left- Dakota Pearl, Bottom middle - German butterball, Bottom right- Anna Rosa.

All these varieties are organic seed potatoes from Eagle Creek Potatoes in Red Deer, Alberta.

Last year, I forgot that you shouldn't plant store bought potatoes because they are treated with chemicals that stop them from sprouting.  I did get some potatoes even at that but not nearly as many as I would have expected. 

I was really pleased to find  somewhere to buy potatoes where you don't have to buy 2 Kg. per variety.  Eagle Creek has great sampler collections of four varieties of four potatoes each (16 total).  I bought two collections.  The German butterball and the Bellanita were in both collections but I still ended up with 6 different kinds of potatoes to plant.  I haven't grown any of these varieties before.  Usually I plant Yukon gold and red-skinned Norland.

I planted some of the potatoes in my usual raised planters but I am also trying some in  extra reusable grocery bags I had hanging around the house.  The bags are a black woven fabric which will breathe.

I am a very slow learner when it comes to vegetable gardening.  I knew that people hilled soil up on their potatoes but I always thought it was just to keep any potatoes near the surface from going green from sunlight.  That is part of it.  But, also, the hilling around the stem triggers the plant to make more roots up the stem in the same way that tomatoes grow roots up their stem.  Since potatoes make their tubers along their roots, the more roots the more potatoes.  

Potatoes need good soil and I have sprinkled some slow release organic fertilizer over the planting area, too. They like to be adequately watered but not soggy.  Full sun is always the best but some shade will still allow for a decent crop.

Watch out for Colorado potato beetles which will quickly strip a plant of all its leaves.  The larva are big fat red yucky things that can be plucked by hand and dropped in a bucket of water.  I've never had potato beetles right on our property so here's hoping they won't arrive this year.

I realized that if I have too many potatoes for us to eat up in the fall, I can always blanche and freeze them. 

Home grown potatoes in February will be lovely.

Happy gardening!

Reblooming Orchid

This is the third rebloom for this orchid in two years.  That's the most success I've ever had with an orchid.  

I water it with a quarter cup of room temperature water once a week.  I always use rain water or distilled water - that seems to be really important.  When it starts to make a flower stalk, I give it half-strength regular liquid plant fertilizer about once a month.  It lives on a south facing windowsill but during the winter that doesn't mean it's getting hot sun.  I leave it on the cool windowsill, unless it is very cold at night, as I read that the cooler air triggers the flower stem. If we do get a day with strong sun, I move it away from the window.  In the summer, our south windows actually get quite a bit of shade from trees so the orchid is OK in the south window even then.  If it was more exposed, I would move it to an east window.

I cut the last flowering stalk to the nearest node when it finished blooming as sometimes they will shoot again.  Nothing yet but I'm still hoping as the stem is still green.

I noticed aphids on my celery a few weeks ago so it has been banished to the basement.  I gave it a good rinse with water and haven't seen any more aphids but I'm not taking any chances.  It gets quite a bit of light where it is but it is chilly so not much new growth.  If we get some mild days in March, I'll pop it outside for a few hours in the middle of the day.

One of my seed orders has been delayed as the seed company didn't receive its seeds as early as usual, and they also have lots of orders. No matter.  I'm really glad to hear that many people have taken up gardening during the past two years.

 

Once Upon A Time

 Once upon a time there was a group of unacceptables.  They were called the "fringe".  They were smelly, they swore a lot and they had dirty jobs.  One day they decided they needed a break.  They parked their big rigs and set up. They were loud - VERY LOUD but they had rhythm. Soon they had built a canteen and gave out free hot soup and hamburgers.  They gave out clothes.  They played music and people danced.  Someone hired a bouncy castle for the kids.  They put flags on hockey sticks when they weren't playing pick-up games of ball hockey.  

The acceptables went ballistic.  "HOW DARE THEY!" "THEY ARE TERRIBLE AND SCARY!"

One day, the unacceptables decided to pick up camp.  They drove away, blaring their horns, back to life on the road.  And as they drove down the long, long highways, mile after mile, they had the odd chuckle about the days when they were truly unacceptable.

Bougainvillea, Poinsettia, Celery

 Happy New Year!

After the next few months, I think we will be in a much better place.

The bougainvillea has bloomed almost two months earlier than last year.  I have no idea why but it has been nice to have its pretty pink blooms at the darkest time of the year.

After a regime of 14 hrs of darkness, 10 hours daylight for 8 weeks, the poinsettia did set red bracts. It will be a few weeks yet before the poinsettia flowers (small little yellow flowers)  mature so the red bracts will be around for quite a while.  Next year, I will start the regime earlier, in late September, so that the red bracts will  have more time to grow before Christmas.

I ended up potting up a few celery plants from the garden. It's been enjoyable to have some fresh crunch for my tuna sandwiches and the celery leaves and stalks are a welcome addition to soup.  As they are biennial and will go to seed next June, I will be starting new plants from seed in February.

I have spent some pleasant time scouring seed catalogues and planning next summer's garden.  Hope you have as well.