My Gardening community

Just after I did my big spring planting, I was walking in my neighbourhood and saw a fluorescent yellow sign that got me very excited. It said "plant sale," and it was posted right in front of the home of the best gardener in my neighbourhood, a fellow named Allan who told me three years back that he was not having any more plant sales. He didn't for the past two years, and I was surprised to see him giving it one more try. Allan says that preparing for the plant sale is very hard on his back, but he is having one more by popular demand.

Allan has a spectacular garden. One of his secrets, he revealed to me, is pouring 40 new bags of black earth into it each year. Given the square footage of his garden is at most 1/3 what mine is, and that it is exclusively flowers, that is very impressive. The results are extraordinary. He has been gardening for many years, and has moved things around and tried new things, which makes his a much more advanced garden than mine in all ways. He also has more light than I do which allows for a bigger variety. Allan sells off rootings, cuttings, seedlings and babies of the plants in his garden, many of which are rarer cultivars than what one can pick up at the local hardware, nursery or Walmart. He has been trading off and ordering online for a nice interesting mix, and is willing to share offshoots at bargain prices. The last time he had a plant sale, he told me that the proceeds were being donated to the nursing home where he worked as a nurse before he retired. Allan is as unique and special as his garden.

The best part of Allan's plant sale is that I get go tour his garden, because he stays home mostly until he sells out, and is open to anyone coming into the back yard to shop and chat. He told me he had people drive in from Saint Sauveur (about 45 minutes aways from the city) to shop in his back yard. I told all my gardening friends about the sale, which gave me the opportunity to go back numerous times in the past couple of weeks with different people in tow.

Just before I saw the sign up, I had been discussing with a colleague from work a plan to help her set up her garden. When I saw the sign, I told her the next day that she had to come with me to Allan's and then to take some stuff from my garden to get her started. Later this summer I am going to ask if I can have some pictures of her new garden, to see how the colony is doing at her place. I took Iulia over with me, and then Julie. I bought a Monk's hood, some fancy new daylilies and some phlox which I planted right in the vegetable garden so they get enough sun. By my third or fourth visit to Allan's, he decided to give me a "frequent customer" gift of an elephant ear hosta, the last of his babies. He told me that he was given the original plant as a gift and felt that it was good karma to do the same for me. His hostas are the most beautiful I have ever seen. I hope to do justice to its baby. I find it odd, that I have never bought or even asked for a hosta, and somehow I have a growing assortment of them which were all gifts. Iulia bought a few fancy ones, and I suspect that some of her plain green ones will be bumped out to make room for them, meaning I might have a few more hostas to accomodate.

Julie asked if I could give her a hand planting the things she bought, some black eyed susans and sedems, and to rearrange some of her plants between her garden and her vertical wall garden. She had put in some impatiens, not realizing that was what they were, which we thought would do better horizontally. Julie noticed that after the winter there were signs that the wood of the pallet she was using had started to rot, which was a positive sign that it was not chemically treated with preservatives. This means she can use it for food plants if she wants to. I noted that she had planted cosmos in one of the upper rows. Julie has no idea what they look like, and I have no idea how a tall wispy plant like that will do in a pallet, but I will check in periodically during the summer and see how it is turning out. We put in a few perennials which spread and are curious to see how those grow! Julie is growing another upside down tomato plant and some cucumbers in pots. She has big pots and built in containers on the walls of her large balcony, which gets a lot of sun and is a much hotter and dryer climate than my garden. It is interesting to see how things grow differently there.

You will note that I did not post any more pictures, mostly because I am blogging two days in a row and I have no new pictures today. I did, however, decide that I am long overdue to capture my garden plan for this year, so that next year I will be able to figure out what is what and where things have to be planted to keep my rotation going. We expanded the garden in two ways that will make rotation easier for next year than it was the past few years. We opened a new section up between the shed and the laundry platform, and I put one row of tomatoes which take up exactly one-third of the space. I plan to alternate the cage over to the middle next year and then to the front, giving me a three year rotation cycle for tomatoes, alternating with different things every year. The other section was created by laying down haybales coated in fertilizer and planting directly in the haybales. At the end of the summer, we will break up the bales and take out the potatoes (two more plants sprouted today!!), and spread it over the area so we can plant under where the hay was, and move new haybales onto areas of the garden which were heavily used the past few years. Under the hay, the land will lie fallow and we grow on top instead!

So I spent a lot of time this evening trying to draw with paint an even more accurate scale model of my garden. I think I am getting better every year. I even put a bit of colour and shapes on it!

My wet, purple garden

 This past month it has rained most days. We had a few really nice, sunny days. But mostly it has rained. About a week after my last post we had thunderstorms (in May!) and one sudden downpour in which it hailed. I ran outside to check the tomatoes, and fortunately everything managed to survive. That was the coldest night we had. In the past few weeks, the daytime temperatures have been seasonable, sometimes chilly but generally hitting a high around 20. Nights are cold, but well above the risk of frost. 

These weather conditions have been a real boon for some things in the garden. Snails and slugs are thriving. There is a bumper crop of lily beetles, those jewel red beetles which devour oriental lilies and stargazers and all those types of lilies. I have discovered as well that they lay eggs around the plants, and their larvae cover themselves in disgusting slimy fecal matter and climb up the lilies devouring leaves layer by layer. Last year I noticed some of these beetles, this year they are all over my oriental lilies. I have been using the old fashioned pick and squish approach, but they are proliferating and destroying faster than I can keep them at bay. Today I hosed down the plant and the area around them with diatomaceous earth. I have resisted using this stuff outside, because despite the fact that it is "all natural" (it is powdered fossilized plankton, and works by getting into the joints of insects' exoskeletons and rips them apart), it does not discriminate and will kill any insects that comes into contact with it, including bees. I am hoping I will do enough damage to the beetles before the next rain washes it off.

We have already put out another batch of Slug-be-gone, because the snails are everywhere, and I have holes in my baby lettuce, and have seen very small baby slugs which likely hatched out long after the rain washed away my first generous helping of Slug-be-gone. Orianne, who once kept a pet snail in a jar for months (and called him/her Sparkle, believe it or not) has become a real help in keeping the snail population at bay with snail tossing, away from our garden and onto the street. Our street is not very busy, so the snails do stand a chance of surviving, but may not end up back on my side of the street. 

Last week we had a visit of a youth orchestra from Guelph Ontario who joined my daughter Zara's string orchestra for a stellar performance. One of the reasons for my unseasonable silence on this blog is that I volunteered to "help" organize home hospitality for the visiting group. As the only one who volunteered, I ended up not just "helping" but essentially organizing the Montreal end of the visit. Once I took the pressure off, a number of other parents did step up and offer to host the kids, and did a lovely job of making the group feel welcome and all had a wonderful time. So getting back to snails. Upon arrival at our house, my daughter Orianne immediately took the youngest of the visitors staying with us, a lovely 12 year old, and introduced her to the sport of snail tossing. I did not see them for an hour or so after that, but heard giggles galore. Anyone interested in trying is welcome to come over anytime, we seem to have an ample supply.

One of my fellow Suzuki parents (also a great gardener) asked me if I had black aphids this summer, there seemed to be a lot of them around. I had never seen a black aphid (she used a French name for them which I was not familiar with, but described them so that it was clear what she was referring to), but made sure to check what was curling the top leaves of my orpines and sure enough, I have black aphids on the orpines and green ones starting on the newest leaves of my crab apples. Iulia had a bottle of Safer's which I borrowed and sprayed, and later when I hit the lilies with the diatomaceous earth, I put some of that on the orpines as well. 

Another unwanted guest on our block is the groundhog, which we seemed to have repelled last summer, but is terrorizing the local vegetables and annoying the gardeners on my block. He (she?) seemed to have moved in under Iulia's shed, and she bought some of our coyote pee and has been marking her territory. Today, we were chatting in my back yard and I saw the groundhog run through my garlic. I gave chase and he climbed the fence and ran into Iulia's yard. Now we know how he is getting around (I did not know he can climb chain link fences). We are looking into humane traps or other methods. I think all the rain may have decreased the effectiveness of our coyote pee dispensers.

I am very pleased with how my flower garden is doing. It seems that I have passed a turning point, where a lot of things I planted are settled enough to bloom and spread. All my irises were in flower this past week, and lots of columbines (not all because I have a lot of babies coming up now), peonies, centaurus, creeping thyme, clematis, purple sage, . The general effect is lots of purple, with hints of white, red and pink,  which changes the whole feel of the garden. Once the lilies start, I will move into yellow and orange again. My tulips lasted right into the first week of June, long after everyone elses' were long gone, and the irises took over. So far this year, I have not had any gaps in blooming from April right through to mid-June. Last year, I think I had almost a month, mid-June to mid July which was pretty sparse, but the weather pattern is different so I cannot predict what will happen this year.

The mystery flowers which Iulia translated from Romanian as "National carpet" are actually sweet williams and are in bloom finally. They are biennial and do not blossom the first year. I have one patch in the back yard in full bloom, and a patch on the side of the house which are destined to show their colours next year (although one is ready to go). Iulia tells me they reseed and keep blooming every year, and spread. I have a lot of things spreading, so next summer I will need to find more people looking to expand their gardens to keep mine under control.

In the back yard, I have a few of the annual poppies coming up, though most did not. I planted a variety of sunflower seeds, some new ones I bought, and some from older packages, as well as a row of Alex’s Kong variety and a few I kept from the pretty multicoloured ones I grew two or three years ago. Half of what I planted, including the Kongs, did not grow. I fed the remainder of the Kong seeds I saved to our bird Coco (who was very grateful). I put a bunch in the front of the house too, and only one or two sprouted. I had doubled up on the seeds and so had enough to spread them around. When we expanded the garden, we put the concrete blocks in strategic spots and planted sunflowers in most of them. In the end I did not have enough sprouts to fill all of the blocks, so some got peppers or basil instead. I put calendula in two areas where I have poppies, and in one bed they all grew, and in the other, very few did. I also had very sporadic results from nasturtiums. I had a few returnees in the garden beds, but nothing in the boxes and containers sprouted despite there being plenty of seeds from last year, and a full pack I bought this year.  Julie gave me some of her extra seeds which had already sprouted, so I have some in the front and side of the house.

I did a huge clean up of weeds with Josh two weeks ago, and restrung the morning glory area so hopefully this year they will climb up the tree again. The attempt to use chicken wire last year was a bust, so I pulled off the chicken wire that covered the area horizontally, allowing me to get in there and clear the weeds out properly. I also removed the grass which had infiltrated the cosmos, and dug out the roots of the purple bellflowers. Josh did a good job on the goutweed (still one patch to go off to the side). The next two weeks were very busy for both of us, and so I have a huge job of weeding to do yet again tomorrow, this time in the vegetable mostly. We have a lot of baby trees popping up, and if I don’t keep at it, I will have a forest here. It makes me think of the Little Prince who had to weed out the Baobabs to protect his rose, and his planet. Some of these baby trees take hold and it can sometimes feel like you are uprooting a Baobab.

 My cucumbers have been another problem. Not one of the seeds I planted grew, or maybe one did but died within a few days. I suspect that putting them in suspended containers to foil the beetles had the side effect of it being harder to keep the soil as wet as the ground. This may sound strange as it has been raining so much, but the week or two after I planted, we had some very hot dry days and I think I did not water the cukes quite as much as they needed. Fortunately, Julie had given me a few of her extra cucumber plants which she bought, and I picked up a cucumber plant at a local oriental store hoping it was one of those cool Japanese cucumbers which we had three years ago, and those cukes have all survived and are doing well. The tomatoes need more sun and are a bit small still. The beans and peas seem to have something eating them, not sure if it is bacterial or yet another beetle. 

I have been keeping an eye on how things are doing in the hay bales, and so far they are doing at least as well as the same plants are in the garden. Lots of weeds are sprouting up too. Only one of the pieces of potato Josh planted has grown, but it is doing well and the potatoes will be nice and clean and easy to remove in the fall. It is a nice experiment, and so far working well.