You may have noticed that I have not been keeping up my blog this summer. I apologize to my loyal fans for apparently falling off the planet (I am still here, I am doing fine!). I even periodically took photos so when the spirit moved me to do so, I would catch up. So what happened to my blog?
Well, I learned that working more than full time as a teacher for two consecutive semesters is not a great idea. By the end of May (after I pushed myself to write my last blog post) I discovered that I was really tired and really needed a break. Then we had a lot of rain, and weather that was cold, then a heat wave. All of which had some interesting effects on the garden, both the things I planted and the weeds. Some things did exceptionally well. The weeds particularly. I had a shift in the composition of my garden's ecosystem, and ended up with almost no lamb's quarters, but a ton of yellow wildflowers and some other plants that I have never seen in such numbers. Between the weather and my lack of motivation, the garden got quite wild in the back. Back in June I put a lot of effort into clearing the weeds in the flower beds, so at least the front yard looked amazing. Truly amazing. I cheated on the creeping bellflowers this year. I did not have the energy to excavate root (again) and anyhow no matter how much I try to dig them out around the flowers, they infiltrate between their roots and the only way I could get rid of them is scrap everything, dig out all the earth and plants and start from scratch. Which I really do not want to do. So I have been pulling up each of the shoots before they flower (or sometimes just after), and leaving all the short ground cover leaves. Rather than getting rid of the stuff, it keeps it at bay and seems to have less of an effect on the plants around it. All very interesting, but nothing I felt compelled to show off about.
My flowers were bigger and taller and more beautiful than ever, and it seemed to me that there was a constant flow of things blooming. I also spent some time creating two big new garden areas after construction finished, but some of the plants I had moved to the back yard had already started to bloom so I left them alongside my tomatoes where they get more sun than they had ever seen in the front and behaved accordingly. But the vegetable areas were quite overgrown. I shared a pallet of manure with Iulia this year, much more than I planned to put on the garden, and used the extra bags to cover over the worst infestation of the creeping bellflower in the back yard, where I had garlic last year. I am hoping that might kill some of it off. I had plans to leave it for a couple of months, then dig up the area and put in new earth, but that is a lot of physical labour. I am thinking maybe of hiring someone to do it, if I have the money to spare. Now that the ash tree next door is gone, that area is prime garden zone.
My groundhog is also getting really big and fat this year. I managed to rescue my lettuce and broccoli from his buffet table by planting it out of reach, in a planter and in the bathtub, but something else (maybe slugs or beetles) munched on the broccoli and rapini, and only three of the dozen I planted have survived. The groundhog munched all but one sunflower (I tried to hid those in hard to reach places this year, but that critter is clever), all the carrots, all but one bean. Fortunately he is not interested in garlic or berries, and this year has been extraordinary for those crops. I harvested the garlic over the past two weeks, and my garden has produced some incredibly large heads this year. I planted in 4 different areas of the garden, and each area had different sized garlic. The back, near the raspberries, was extraordinary. The area that is still infested with creeping bellflowers and partially shaded by the crab apple trees did not do very well at all. The other two areas were mixed. I harvested 200 heads this year, less than the previous years, but even then I had to open up a new area of garden in the centre of the lawn. An interesting thing, when I harvested the garlic, I found an earthworm in the roots of almost every single head of garlic I pulled up. The bigger the garlic, the bigger the worm. Some of the ones at the back of the garden were the largest earthworms I have ever seen, almost the size of hot dogs. I carefully rescued each one and left them in the garden to do their work.
My berries are amazing. This is the first year that the black raspberries took off, and I was picking a cup or more of those every two days for several weeks rather than a handful over a few days. Their season just overlapped with the beginning of the red raspberries, which have also been as productive. The tomatoes are quite late this year. I have some green ones, but none ripe yet. Also, with all the rain, I probably should have been spraying them daily with hydrogen peroxide, but I just started doing it regularly now and branches are already turning yellow. Oops.
I have three corn stalks, and one squash plant (the mystery one) doing well in the back, close to the groundhog hole. Hopefully the squash leaves will annoy him enough to push him to other gardens and leave mine alone in the fall.The apple tree is covered in fruit, but it is not very pretty. I am not sure if it is insect or fungal problems (no surprise with all the rain), but I have not taken the time this summer to research it or do anything about it.
I also planted some basil in big pots to keep it away from the groundhog. It is not his favorite, but he had munched some of it last year so I did not take chances. My coriander continues to reproduce itself nicely, and I have a small patch of dill that planted itself last year, and also is perpetuating itself. I use the basil and coriander, but have not harvested the dill. I need to figure out the best time to do that before it gets too spindly.
So after writing my first draft of this post, I decided that I should find out what exactly were all those interesting new weeds/wildflowers that took a liking to my back yard this summer. Unfortunately, by the time I started to do this research, I had spent a good few hours (post garlic harvest) ripping out as many of them as I could before it got too hot to continue. Unfortunately because I had no idea that they were edible. It took a long time and many websites to identify what I believe to be Camelina sativa (the tiny yellow flowers in a spray behind the big squash plant, close up below).
I seemed to have been wise in my decision to rip out another weed that was taking over in the raspberry patch, because this one is on the invasive weed watch list. It is a biennial that has been colonizing around the back fence called garlic mustard. Although not something I am going to let take over, I read up on it and found out its leaves and flowers go well in salad (though the leaves tend to get bitter when the weather heats up), and the roots are similar to horseradish. According to the Edible Wild Food website, the plant is super healthy to eat, good for your heart, lowers cholesterol and may even help prevent cancer. Well, if I knew that I would not have chucked them into my compost. I would have had a lot of salad, although without camelina sativa dressing because the leaves of the garlic mustard would be too bitter by the time the camelina seeds are ready to press.
The other weeds/wildflowers that have busily been taking over are Queen Anne's Lace (wild carrot) and Black nightshade. How Victorian does that sound? The Queen Anne's Lace I am quite sure is not any of its nasty poison cousins, poison hemlock and poison parsnip. I have eaten its roots (some grew with the carrots a couple years back and we tried it. Not bad, a bit woody) and brush against the plants daily as I go to pick berries. I don't recommend this as the best way to check, but there are good guides online that distinguish between them. As for nightshade, I have had a lot of climbing nightshade in past years, that did not come back for some reason (replaced by lots of white bindweed behind and on the raspberries). Those have pretty purple flowers with yellow centres, and bright red berries. They are very striking and do not seem to be too invasive so I tolerate them when they pop up. This year, I seem to be flooded with black nightshade, who have identical flowers but white with yellow centres, and will produce black berries. Ironically, these rather toxic plants are the ones I have yet to rip out. I'll know better for next year.
This year has been a good one for slugs, but I am seeing very small ones (just a lot of them.).
It was too wet to put out slug be gone often (it works best after the rain, but not before.) I have seen a few Japanese beetles on the raspberries, but not too many. There were also not too many lily beetles this year. I may have helped things along by a liberal application of diatomaceous earth early in the summer. I have a lot of milkweed spreading slowly on the side of the house. I never bothered to stop and smell them before, until a friend mentioned that they are quite beautiful to smell. I was quite surprised, they are really quite lovely. I also keep hoping for some butterfly action there, but I only saw one monarch all summer, in my calendulas. I ran to get the camera but he was already flying up over the lilacs when I got back outside. I did not give the cucumber beetles a chance this summer. No cukes, and I gave up on the watermelon idea (only one of the four seeds I planted survived, and the package said it takes two plants to get fruit).
On a different note, I am very concerned about the trees in our region. Besides Dutch Elm disease (which has left several small dead elms in the corner behind my fence), emerald ash borers which took the gorgeous huge double trunked tree next door, I have seen signs over in Westmount about inoculating the lindens for some insect infestation. Although I get annoyed with the sticky drips all over my car from my neighbour's linden, I discovered this summer walking with a friend at night in Kent park that when lindens bloom their smell is divine. I think it was particularly striking this year, because I have never noticed it before. Iulia's tree is remarkably bland smelling (I checked when it flowered), but I will definitely return to Kent park at night in early July next year to see if this was an anomaly. That is, if whatever if bugging them doesn't kill them first.
I have been spending some of my vacation time visiting friends and my parents in the Laurentians, and drove quite far north past Mont Laurier. Along the highway, I noticed huge patches of dead conifers. I had been noting more and more dead trees along highway 15 over the past few years, but this was alarming. I am surprised I have not read anything about this. I did some research to see if there is a known reason, and it seems there is yet another beetle, this one migrating from British Columbia, which is wiping out pines and spruces. I read that there are ways to inoculate or treat affected trees, but it does not appear that anything is being done and it is having a major toll on our forests.
