Trying some new things

This year we had tricky weather. It was warm very early in the spring, then we had some cold nights mid-May, followed by a lot of rain then a heat wave. By late July we had unseasonably cold weather and some more rain on and off, and now that we are heading into late August we seem to be getting one last heat wave. This resulted in some things doing fantastic and others not too impressive. To the right you can see my pepper plants which I grew all in pots with the intention of taking at least some inside to overwinter. They have just started to produce peppers, which seems to me to be somewhat later than in years past. I have been dutifully spraying the plants with my anti-aphid solution as they are close to the apple tree which is still infested but improving noticeably. The nasturtiums did fantastic, as did the basil plants. The Thai basil  (below) was wonderful, and with the corriander (left with white flowers), we made a lot of Thai stirfries this past month.



Before I planted the basil in the garden, I had almost killed off the Thai basil and the lemon basil. Chloe had given me seedlings which were pretty far advanced ahead of the basil which I grew from seed, and I don't think it had enough light or water. I put them in the ground and they did come back to full strength by mid June. I have been using the lemon basil directly in salads. This week we harvested the Monmouth basil, the sweet basil and the bush basil, leaving enough behind to regrow for a second harvest. We used our own garlic and basil to make a first batch of pesto. I don't think I have as much as last year,  which does not bother me as we still have a bit of pesto from last year. We are also still working our way through last year's tomatoes, which is good because the tomato harvest is also late. I had a relapse of the tomato bacteria, and the first few tomatoes I harvested were half rotten. Josh and I have been spraying with a hydrogen peroxide solution after it rains, and the tomatoes I picked today were mostly in good shape. My friend Julie noted correctly that the San Marzano tomatoes seem to be more susceptible.

 I finished the garlic harvest. I cannot for the life of me figure out how some of the heads are massive with huge cloves, and others are tiny. Regardless of the size, they are all beautiful with no rot or badly developped cloves and they are bursting with juice and flavour. My bicycle shed is decorated with a couple of hundred hanging garlic plants, and everytime I take out my bike I get dried mud in my hair and I get hungry.

The sunflowers are at their peak right now. They are by far my favorite flower. I planted a mix of seeds from packages, from friends and from harvests from the past two years. I have been refreshing the coyote urine to attempt to keep the squirrels away, but they were brave enough to nip the buds off the two Kong sunflowers to my dismay. I managed to have two of them grow to seven feet. The plants are doing well but are unfortunately flower-less. All the other varieties have kept their heads on more or less, but have not been large enough to produce big seeds. I have been trying to introduce sunflower heads as a treat to my bird Coco who does not seem to have been exposed to them before. For the first time he did a real happy bird dance, but I am not sure it was connected with the sunflower as he was not eating it at the moment he started dancing.  My black-eyed susans and white echinacea are still going strong, and I had some surprise purple and white flowers which Iulia had given me last year start to bloom. I may have accidentally pulled some of them out thinking they were weeds. I hope not as they are very pretty.

 This year my cosmos were a wipe out. I had a lot of the pink ones come back, but none of the orange and red ones which I planted last  year. They stopped growing at six inches high and only a few have bloomed. They reseeded themselves further into the shade which I think is the problem,
as my neighbours down the street whose cosmos have some sun are having a lot more success than I. I am reseeding them closer to the sidewalk next spring and hoping for the best.  Last week, Iulia and I ordered a batch of bulbs from Vesey's catalogue: hyacinths and tulips, allium and some wildflowers. We had planned to get some lilies too, but while I was on vacation, Iulia found some nice lilies on special at Reno Depot. So I took a trip with her to see what we could get on special end of season, and she convinced me to buy a hibiscus despite the fact I have managed to kill every hibiscus I ever grew including the apparently dead Blue bird Rose of Sharon bush which looks suspiciously like sticks right now (Iulia's is doing fine and spreading.) We also found some nice day lilies, so I have added those to the garden as well.

 

 

 I arranged the largest, nicest of the stones I picked up in Grand Manan and put them on display in the front of the house. At Josh's suggestion, they are on top of large flat stones to prevent them from being swallowed up into the earth. I will also cover them with containers in the winter.

 I had a surprise. The freesias which I had given up on  have produced a single shoot. So far that is all. I am not sure what prompted it to start growing this late in the season, but I am interested to see what it does next.

Today's harvest included my first significant number of tomatoes and a lot of beans. Turns out that the kids do not like cooked beans, they like them raw. I found this out after I cooked them. More for me! I also decided to pick a few of the carrots. They are pretty small still, but as I planted them far too close together, I am thinning them out a bit by eating them gradually. A few of the ones I picked were a decent size, beyond "baby carrot". They tasted a bit green and earthy, but they were juicy and crunchy too. I am planning to try cold frames this winter for the first time. We saved a few old windows when we had our windows changed this spring, and I have a lot of hay we haven't used yet. I hope to keep some carrots going and I planted some more lettuce today for fall/winter. The plan is to surround the plants with hay bale and put a window on top to create a mini green house. I know it works better if you put your plant bed in a raised box, which is what Chloe has been doing, but I am going to give it a try anyways and see what happens.

 Some of my poppies managed to grow and bloom. I had some orange ones in a window box under one of my kitchen windows, and some white ones with a purple centre in the middle of the nasturtiums. I realized that I have to plant a lot of poppies, and start them indoors because the ones I planted directly in the garden did not come up, the perennial ones I planted last year and the year before never came back, and the few which grew bloomed one at a time. The effect leaves something to be desired.


We try for large quantity next year.

I grew marigold from seed and they were huge!

One poppy amid nasturtiums