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!
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