Julie's garden

I promised to do an late season update on my friend Julie's garden. She has two gardening areas, one being her large balcony, and the other a very small yet fertile plot of land across an alley behind the duplex where she lives.

I gave Julie some beans which came from my neighbours originally, and some tomato seedlings too. She tried an upside down hanging tomato plant and a flower garden in an upright wooden pallet, as well as pots and balcony boxes with flowers and herbs.

Her beans did far better than mine did, and unlike me, she let them mature fully. I ate mine when they were underdeveloped as though they were string beans rather than the type of bean that you discard the hull and boil in soups. I just love the taste of whole fresh beans. I also am the only avid bean eater in the house so I just snack on them as I garden.  Julie grew her beans along the fence of the property backing onto her garden plot, and the beans grew along the fence and bolted right up a telephone pole.

Julie sent me some photos of her garden which I asked permission to share on the blog.

Her pineapple sage had a lot of sun, and grew from a small plant to three feet tall. When Jasmyn gave me some from her garden up north a couple of years ago, she told me that they are very tolerant of shade. In fact they were the only flowering plant to have survived in my "black hole of death," the area on the left side of my front stairs which was in full shade before Josh trimmed a few choice branches off one of the trees in the front yard.  Now that I see what they look like when they get sun, I know better than to put them in a dark area.

Julie does not have a sunny spot inside to keep it overwinter, so she offered for me to take it in. We both did some research and found that you can take cuttings to make new plants in the spring, so we can share next year if I don't kill it over the winter. At least I now know what it is called, and where Julie bought it in Montreal so we can always start new ones next year. I am not super confident in keeping it going, I seem to have much better success with plants outside than inside.

In the meantime, we have started getting colder temperatures but so far no frost. The few pepper plants I brought inside look droopy and are losing leaves, and the peppers are still not turning red. I have left most of them outside and only will move more of them in once there is a frost warning. I still need to make room to house them with sufficient lighting.

Speaking of weathering the cold, I am waiting for signs of my dahlias, begonias and canas dying so I can uproot them and store the roots indoors. I am going to try to keep some of my annuals intact for another year.

I have also been selectively reseeding my dark purple cosmos in some of the sunnier patches in the front where I put down fresh earth. I am hoping for some bigger, earlier and more impressive growth next year.

Julie's pallet garden is still going well and makes an interesting decoration and conversation piece on her balcony. The flowers that need less water did better nearer the top. I think she rearranged them a bit to take advantage of the different micro-climates produced by the slope where the top dried quickly and the bottom section retained water better. Julie is already coming up with ideas for next year.