I have been on a campaign to eradicate creeping bellflower from my vegetable garden. I know I have tried before and failed. I have had teams of friends work together with me to dig up roots. I have covered large swaths of my biggest patch with plastic bags of earth and manure three layers deep for two full years. The stuff just keeps on coming back. So this year, I am engaged in the gargantuan task of digging two feet deep (or more) under fences, bricks and rocks, right down into the grey riverbed clay that lies beneath my fertile loam, to find every last root and rhyzome this zombie plant entrenches. This pretty yet highly invasive plant has managed, despite my best efforts, to produce some rhyzomes (they look like beige carrots or parsnips) that are eight inches long and up to an inch and half thick on top. And inevitably they break while being pulled out, which means that I am using archeologists' techniques and patience to carefully extract them down to the last tiny piece. I am racing against time too, because within a couple of weeks they will start blooming their very pretty purple bell flowers, which I have read can produce up to 3000 seeds per plant. Someone brought them over from Europe because they were pretty, and now they are taking over the world.
I am also determined not to plant anything in the areas they have infested before thoroughly extracting them. I thought that I could manage doing this gradually as most of my tomatoes which I sprouted indoors in March promptly died while I was hardening them in late May. Somehow, though, I have become a tomato magnet this year. I actually bought eight Roma tomato plants at Walmart, thinking that would be my tomato row this year.
Then I found out that my nieces, living in Morin Heights while my brother was on sabbatical this year, sprouted tomatoes at school. They brought them home to plant just before leaving to return to B.C. I suggested that they would do better in my garden than driving for a week across the country in my brother's car. I will be taking regular photos and posting them for posterity and so Audrey and Naomi can make sure I am doing my job right. There are two different varieties, but I have no idea what they are. It took several days of squatting in the dirt and digging and yanking to create enough space to plant those. Then my neighbours donated a bunch of their extra tomato plants, beefsteak or something like that. I actually turned them down, a few times, then said maybe. The pots were sitting in my garden this morning, which means I have more digging to do. Interestingly enough, on the day that most of my tomatoes died, there were around eight new plants that sprouted. The fact that they started growing in late May does not bode well for much fruit, but those are the only San Marzano and Chocolate Cherry plants that I have, so I am making room for them too. I managed to have planted around 18 plants so far, and still have around eight more (two of my nieces', and all of my neighbour's leftover plants), and got the first two cages up this morning before it started to pour. I have also set up hoses for everything that I have planted so far. I did a clean up of the shed, and tested out all of my hoses and soaker hoses, and threw out three garbage bags full of ripped and broken ones, and was left with just enough (until Iulia gave me more tomatoes. Now I need to go shopping again.)
I have been checking my apple tree bug traps, and this week, my container trap has been catching moths on a daily basis (and lots of other small stuff too). The sticky balls are catching flies and apple blossom petals, but no moths. I had a back and forth by email with Chloe, and discovered that in addition to codling moths, apple maggots are another possible culprit for my wormy apple problem. I suggested she add a moth trap to her tree, and checked my sticky balls to find that indeed I had at least two apple maggot flies, possibly more. I have been reading up on apple care, so hopefully I will have a more edible crop this year if my efforts pay off.
Right now the columbines and irises are in full bloom. I have lots of pretty hybrid columbines popping up in a variety of purples, pinks and whites. The poppies are about to bloom (within two days) and are huge this year.
One of the hyssop plants that I planted last year came back and is doing very well. I was not sure what to do with hyssop, and mentioned my question last shabbat to Rabbi Bernath (I go to a discussion group he runs every Saturday afternoon at a local park from May to October).He told me that hyssop is one of the main ingredients of za'atar, but that is not what I found online when looking for recipes. There were very few recipes, in fact, and mostly teas or drinks.
While weeding I discovered that I have a baby ash tree growing between my bee balm patch and where I am clearing space for tomatoes along the fence between my yard and my neighbour's. I have been trying to verify it is in fact an ash and not a box elder, as it has 5 leaves, but I am pretty sure I have a baby from the ash tree that Iulia and Ovi had cut down a year and half ago. It is in a good spot, no wires directly above, but I am sure that Iulia will not be pleased when it gets big. In doing my research on identifying baby trees, I learned that you can get syrup from a box elder tree, and that it is in fact in the maple family (Josh calls them Manitoba maples, one of their many names. Yet another food source growing on my property.)
On that same note, a friend messaged me last night an article about hostas being edible, members of the same family as asparagus. Lots of edible things growing out there.
I had a few surprise sunflower sprouts come up, so this year there will be a lot of sunflowers late in the summer. I am sprouting a lot in the bathtub, and will transfer them to the back of the garden between the garlic patches once I get the weeds out (an easier job, as there are no bellflowers back there.) I have one surviving cucumber plant at the back, and did not get around to planting beans (again, too many weeds to clear out, and I am stuck working on the tomato patch). Lots more work to do....
No comments:
Post a Comment