Best year ever!

This month has been stunning in my garden. I went big this year. I am, for the first time in many years, using almost all of my garden space in the backyard. To be fair, I am trying to grow watermelon, so I left a big area for them to take over, but before planting them I managed to clear the whole area of weeds, including some very tenacious creeping bellflower and bindweed. Not only have I put more hours into weeding this year than the last few years combined, but I have had a terrific team of helpers. All three of my children (multiple times!), two of their partners, as well as a couple of my friends have been working with me periodically. We did not manage to get all the dandelions. We did not even get half of the dandelions. I did, however, finally obtain a dandelion tool which does not leave huge pits in my lawn. I thank my neighbour Iulia for letting me try this cool device she found at Walmart, and letting several of my children test it out and give approval before I purchased one for us and another one from my friend Julie. I may actually have a fighting chance of making more progress next year, as this year I assigned the dandelions to everyone else, while I struggled valiantly against the creeping bellflowers. I am, however, winning that battle, at least in the vegetable garden and the flower beds where they have not taken over. The rest of the yard, I either mow them or rip out the stems before they flower and spread further by seed. The irises, lilies and other flowers in the front do not seem to be overly affected sharing root space with them, so I have learned to live and let live.

An exciting development is that my magnolia belatedly, after many, many years, produced its first flower. It was after the leaves had grown in, and a few weeks after the rest of the magnolias had already blossomed, but there it was, a gorgeous deep purple-pink blossom, almost at ground level. The tree was damaged in its first winter, around eight years ago, when we had a thaw in February and it started to bud, then froze. The tree almost died, but it started sending out shoots from near the bottom of the dead trunk. When Iulia and Ovidiu had their double ash tree cut down two years ago, the men who cut it happened to cut what was left of the magnolia trunk too, which I only noticed after they had left. I was not sure the tree would survive, but it did, and two years later, it seems to be holding its own!


With the exception of the magnolia blossom, I took all the other photos this evening at sunset. So this is a snapshot of what my garden looks like on June 18, 2020. The peonies are just past their peak (I had just watered them before taking the photo), the irises are finishing, and the roses and the clematis and columbines are at their most beautiful. I just cut my garlic scapes this week, and planted a new batch of lettuce and some pak choy and chard.




I had a lot of trouble with my tomatoes this year. Like last year, I started them a whole month earlier than I had in the past, in March rather than April. This was thanks to the pandemic lockdown. My college shut down just as our March break started, and the government initially declared we would be closed for two weeks, during which time they would decide what would happen next. It was not at all clear if we would be going back to our classrooms, or switching to online teaching, or closing for an extended period. So I had an unprecedented extra week off in March, and planting tomatoes seemed like a good idea. I used seeds I had taken a few years ago, as last year none of my San Marzano or chocolate cherries survived, so I had no recent seed stock. Everything sprouted up nicely, and seemed to be doing well. I was very careful to wait until the third week of May as we had snow and frosts late this year, and brought them out to harden very gradually. Over a week with increasingly longer blocks in the sun, the tomatoes stopped doing well. I have no idea why.  Around half of them died before I got them in the ground.
I ended up buying a bunch of tomato plants from Walmart (Romas) and Home Depot (something called Salsa, a sauce hybrid tomato) and one other type which I picked up with the Salsas which is some kind of fat boy or beefsteak. Two of my chocolate cherries and three or four of my San Marzanos survived, but are really small and not looking very robust. They are in the area of the garden where the raspberries used to be, so they do not get early morning sun, but they should have enough to make them happy. The store-bought tomatoes seem to be thriving and are flowering, but they were much bigger when I planted them. It has been quite dry and increasingly hotter the past few weeks. I have my soaker hoses set up and am watering everything a lot more than I like to, but it has been so dry that if I don't, everything will die.
The grass in the areas I have not been watering (mostly the sod around the edge of my lilacs over my fence, which the city put down after they repaved the sidewalks) is turning brown.

In addition to tomatoes, garlic, lettuce, pak choy and chard, I am also growing mint, carrots, basil, coriander, beans (scarlet runners and the yellow beans which Iulia gave me, romano I think), potatoes, green onions, leeks, banana peppers, butternut squash, corn, cucumbers and watermelon.  I have not seen the corn yet, so not sure it is happening. I was planning on growing the three sisters together (corn surrounded by squash and beans) but then I ended up with two bags of sprouting potatoes, one that was left behind in my son's girlfriend's apartment from before the pandemic, and some that I bought when I stocked up in advance for Pandemic Passover which heard the call of spring before we managed to eat them all. So inevitably, I had to give up three sister space for potatoes. I planted one squash in a corner between the garlic and the lilacs, hoping it won't hit its stride before I harvest the garlic. The garlic is quite precocious this year, I think it will be an early harvest. The squash is likely to explode when we get some rain, but for now they are happily mind their own business.
I had sprouted broccoli and rapini, which started fine but like the tomatoes, did not take well to the move outside. I had one surviving rapini, and to be quite honest, I remember debating where I could safely plant the tiny thing but not if I did, or where I did. So I may have a rapini surprise later this summer. I had also bought some really fun cultivars of dusty millers and black dragon coleus, which were also very slow to grow. I planted most of them a couple of weeks ago, but I cannot see the sprouts where I put them in the garden. I had too many seedlings, so I kept some in the starter pot waiting until our new shed is built so I could plant them in front once construction is over. They are thriving in the little pots on the table, so at least I will have some survivors, mostly the dusty millers. Maybe a coleus or two, unless some other seed landed in that pot and it is something completely different. Time will tell.

Iulia has planted some lovely clematis along the fence bordering our properties. She had a dark red rose on her side which she dug up and moved to the front of her lawn a couple of year ago, but a bit had crept over to my side of the fence which is thriving now on my property. We have both put some potted flowers hanging from the fence so we can both enjoy the geraniums and nasturtiums.
I spent a lot of time cleaning up the flower bed in the middle of the back yard too this spring. Originally an add-on bed to put garlic and then tomatoes when I was running out of room to properly rotate my crops, the last three years or so I have switched it to a flower bed. I had to move plants from the front yard twice to rescue them from being destroyed by city backhoes redoing water pipes (three years ago) and sidewalks (last year), and some things I left there. I have also had a lot of plants escaping their initial beds, those that spread by seed tend to travel a lot. I have been rescuing Sweet Williams and Calendulas popping up in the lawn, among the garlic, between tomato plants. Sometimes I have let them co-exist, but given how many helpers I have this year, it seemed safer just to move them to prevent overzealous weeding by those who would not recognize which were just misplaced rather than unwanted plants. Two years ago, I had gifts from my friend Moishe, an Ellacampane (now huge, still not flowering) and one surviving of three hyssop plants. The hyssop is also huge, and blooms with purple flowers, which look similar to sage. I have a purple sage in that area too. I had a huge job of getting the weeds out, as I have not had time to keep that area clear, and the creeping bellflowers and Queen Anne's lace were taking over. Also, I think last year, one of the milkweed from the front yard popped up near the centre bed, and I put its seeds all over the bed too. Then I added sunflowers around the edges. So far, the sage is starting to bloom and the Sweet Williams are just beginning to flower.

I am not seeing much action in carrots or coriander, but the lettuce I planted in the bathtub is looking great so far. And of the six watermelons plants I sprouted, two survived, one seedless variety and a more traditional one. I had bought the seedless seeds (I really cannot explain how that works), and only after reading the package, I learned that they won't produce fruit unless grown alongside a seeded watermelon. I assume this means that the seedless hybrid cannot self-pollinate. So dutifully I purchased a pack of seeded watermelon seed.  Fortunately, the survivors should allow for both to fruit. They have interesting leaves, different from squash or cucumber leaves which I did not expect. I gave them a lot of space. I hope they do not disappoint me.