This summer's unusual weather patterns continued through August, although it finally warmed up. We have had some very hot weeks with no rain and then heavy rain for days running. I have not had to water much, but the weeds were rampant and my time to deal with them was more restricted than usual. In addition to taking a longer than usual summer vacation (two whole weeks!), I came back home to a job offer from Vanier College, teaching in the special care counselling program. Very exciting! However, my gardening time has been curtailed significantly as I am busy trying to get myself one step ahead of my students. In theory, I am working part-time, and if I had been working for several years teaching the same material and familiar with the workings of the College, I just might have been working part-time. Currently, I am just being paid part time.
Usually, in my recent but limited gardening experience, I have been flooded by tomatoes by late July, however this years weather patterns resulted in late tomatoes. They flowered late, produced tomatoes late and took a very long time to ripen. This past week we had some very unseasonable hot, sunny weather which made teaching very uncomfortable (the air conditioning system was broken in the part of my building where I had class), but the tomatoes have finally started to turn red.
This year, I did a lot of experimentation. I started a new plot which had less direct sunlight than other parts of the garden. The sunflowers I planted there bloomed three weeks later than those on the other side of the garden, which ended up being a nice touch. The tomatoes plants behind them along the fence, however, are small and have few tomatoes which are slow to ripen. I rotated away from what were my best spots for tomatoes in previous years, and tried growing in hay bales. I had some serious complications later in the season. In one patch, I set up a cage around the plants. I had initially intended only to use one of the bales for tomatoes, but I had a lot of leftover plants with no where to put them. I stuck a few in the other bales without a cage, and staked them up instead. I did not have long enough thin bamboo stakes to go into the ground beneath the bales, but the bales were fairly tight, so I stuck the stakes and the cages into the bales and they appeared to be pretty stable. Unexpectedly, the effect of heavy rain and growing on the bales lead to prolific leaf growth and very heavy, strong branches. By mid-August, following a weekend of non-stop rain, the haybales where I had the caged tomatoes started to come apart and the cage listed to one side. At some point in July, wasps found their way into a crack in the haybale which had opened with the rain, and by the time I got back from vacation, I noticed a constant coming and going of large numbers of wasps under the tomatoes. I planted some potatoes directly into the hay behind the tomatoes, and harvesting by shoving my hands into hay infested with wasps was not very appealing. I am leaving those potatoes to keep growing until later in the fall. I tried to straighten and reposition the cage, which really annoyed the wasps. I did my best, but it has continued to rain heavily at times, and the cage is flopping precariously, thankfully in the direction away from the entrance to the wasp nest. The foliage is very heavy, and it is hard to see the tomatoes. I got a lecture from Iulia that I should have nipped off the suckers, which I have not needed to do in past years, but may have been helpful this year.
The tomatoes which I staked also had their challenges. The hay kept the humidity high and nourished the plants very well, but eventually broke down too much to be a stable base for the stakes. The branches thickened and became hard to stake up over time, probably because I waited too long to tie them up again. I tried running a string from stake to stake to hold the branches up but the plants got too big and the stakes and strings started collapsing over. Josh suggested I put empty buckets along the side of the bales and put chicken wire frames horizontally along them to support the branches. It is not an ideal solution, but it prevents the tomatoes from dragging along the wet surface of the bale and going rotten or feeding the slugs.
Yes, this has been the best year ever for snails and slugs. I used more slug be gone than ever before, but the population is rebounding again and I have to get some more. They have a great fondness for Swiss chard and burgundy beans apparently. It has also been ideal conditions for bacteria growth, and my first tomatoes were heavily affected. I had to wait until there were a few consecutive days of sun to spray with hydrogen peroxide in order for it to be effective, but I did manage to stop the damage, and this week's harvest looked pretty good even if it is still paltry. There are tons of unripe tomatoes, so as long as the weather stays warm and sunny, this year will not be a total write off.
There is no question that the haybales had an effect on the tomato plants. So far, it seems like they have a lot more tomatoes than those grown in earth, but it is hard to tell with all the foliage. I am worried about missing tomatoes as they are much harder to see. Also, I am not tracking scientifically. I will definitely need to work on my support systems for next time to prevent the collapsing haybale jungle effect.
Lettuce and greens and beans were prolific. I am still selectively harvesting the same batch of lettuce (spring mix) since the beginning of spring, and only one plant has gone to seed. I ate beans daily for several weeks, and have left the rest to go for seed and soups, partly because they grew too high for me to reach. I had some powdery fungus or something which grew on the bee balm and seems to have spread to the peas and the phlox. Claude is coming later today, I will ask him about it. The onions are pretty small, so I harvested only half and I am leaving the rest to try for bigger next year. We have eaten some of the baby potatoes (the ones not near the wasp nest), onions, garlic, chard, herbs, celery, carrots and tomatoes. Not huge quantities, but enough to complement whatever we are cooking. The soya beans and bok choy never grew this year at all, and the beach peas sprouted and died off early in the season.
Our coyote pee has done a stellar job keeping the squirrels out, they have not touched my sunflowers or tomatoes, though I see them occasionally come off the fence for a few minutes.
The flowers are now active in the front corner of the yard, white echinacea, black-eyed susans, cosmos and morning glories. The small dahlias have yet to flower, but the giant ones are blooming near the house. The backyard sunflowers are a riot of colour, the sunset variety having 10-12 blooms per plant. I have a few giants which are tall but have smallish flowers just starting. The bee balm look pretty ratty, but still attracting bees so I am not touching them.
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