We get bailed out

This has been an eventful week and a half, both in the garden and out. I have had limited time to work on the garden between a wedding out of town, my son's graduation ceremony from high school and a few related family events, science fair and invention convention, multiple large school projects and upcoming exams, a wonderful string orchestra concert with attendant rehearsals and madness, and a few family members, friends and colleagues experiencing medical and personal crises. I suppose the rare bits of time in my garden have been a bit of a panacea for the madness all around me, but even there I had some tense moments setting up my leaky-pipes watering system with Josh. He is not very good at noticing where he is stepping (not on the beans!!!) and I am less than adept at figuring out attachment systems (I put down two entire hoses facing the wrong way and could not connect them, and had to redo the whole thing.) Needless to say it was not our most harmonious collaboration.

Last weekend I was weeding and moving some plants around when a woman passed by with two small children, on her way to the park. She spoke to her children about the nice garden and we started to chat. Debbie asked me how I could tell the difference between the weeds and the flowers. I started to tell her how  I learned the hard way by letting the weeds grow and flourish long enough to know they were weeds and not what I planted, but after a few years I am getting the hang of it although I now have more weeds than I would have if I had known better when I started. She ended up spending an hour or so checking out my garden and her kids disappeared into my house to play with mine while she told me she was interested in starting to garden and looking to buy a house. I gave her my blog URL, so maybe she is reading this. I was really struggling with the weeds, as we still had not received our hay, and having been out of town and otherwise very busy, I have not kept up. So when I saw Jack chatting on our front lawn with Josh on Monday after work, I think I whooped for joy, and was thrilled to see a pyramid of hay stacked on the back fence. I have yet to finish laying it down, but I got a good start. Hopefully this weekend I will get the rest out. I did throw an entire large bag of potatoes which had sprouted beneath the hay in the section of the garden where I did not plant the carrots and onions as originally planned (as per map #1 last November). I also put in the ends of 15 green onions and a celery stump to see what they will do.

It turns out that I was mistaken about my failure in growing carrots. Shortly after my last post, thousands of closely packed carrot sprouts materializes in rows between the garlic, along the water hoses. I guess I am smarter or luckier than I thought, and put them in the wettest spot possible. I made a frantic call to Chloe about how to thin them out. Her advice: they don't transplant well (I tried anyways, maybe I will get lucky again), and don't thin them completely but let some grow to the size of baby carrots, and thin them at that level, so we get both baby and mature carrots at different times.

We bought a black tulip magnolia tree which we are hoping to plant this weekend between our driveway and the corner of the garden facing Iulia's house, so she will see it from her window too. She is planning on cutting her spruce tree which is a few feet away on her side of  the property line, so we should have a net gain in light. While Josh was at the nursery, he picked up some pickling cucumbers to replace the ones which have not yet sprouted (and perhaps never will), some pineapple mint, rosemary, and dark purple petunias which I planted in a box along the driveway together with some mystery sprouts I begged from Iulia and a sweet potato. I have no idea what will grow, sort of like the mystery surprise of the garden.

So far, at least from what I remember planting, the following items have yet to show signs of life:
Last year's rosemary which we thought was perennial. I chucked it and put in a new one.

Coriander

Not one of the poppies which we
seeded directly outside sprouted. Not one. Josh insisted that Alex just tosses them in the garden and they come up. Alex also produces lettuces the size of big watermelons and pumpkins as large as my shed, so I can't assume that what works for Alex will be repeated in my garden.

Hay, hay, hay!!

No freesia action yet. They are in a pot beside my door looking very empty.
The daffodils which I planted around my spruce tree have not bloomed two years running (not since I planted them, so tonight after returning from the science fair, I sent the kids to get ready for bed and went out in the rain to transplant them, as well as a few stray cosmos that sprouted among my morning glories (bad spot). I put the daffodils along the front and side gardens where there is much more sun, which I hope will encourage them to bloom. By the time I was getting the last ones in, it was getting too dark to see much. As I dug the hole to bury the bulbs, two green dots glowed at me from the earth, and then another two. I reached in and pulled out a small worm with what looked like two glowing eyes (more likely it was his butt). I got really excited, having never seen a glow worm, and called the kids out to see. Zara was pretty jaded (yeah, so what) but Orianne was appropriately impressed.
I have just today seen a single blade of green on the big lavender plant, but I cannot figure out what happened to the smaller one I planted that Maya and Kate gave us. I was giving up hope but will wait and see.
The Blue bird Rose of sharon is just dry sticks. I need to go back and see if I wrote about it last year.

On a positive note, the peonies, columbines, lamium, Lysimachi, evening primroses and gooseneck loosestrife are going nuts and looking great.

Baby mantis on clematis

Another exciting change is that my neighbour Ovidiu has given in to Iulia to allow for climbing flowers on the fence. She planted a gorgeous clematis and some climbing roses, as well as a row of beans set back a few inches on a frame. I am being as diligent as possible to clear every emerging bindweed (white wild morning glories) from the garden to keep my side of the fence clear and my neighbours both happy.

I also added some suspended pots off the side of the cucumber frame and seeded them with chives, green onions and some other garden herb I can't remember.Things are looking good!

New maps

I decided to redo my map of the back yard to reflect what I actually planted. I had to rearrange tomatoes because the raspberries spread on one side, and I did not like the design on the other. I removed the carrots from the map because they did not grow. Chloe told me I need to keep the seeds wet a long time, and I think they dried out and died before they had a chance to germinate. I also did not plant onions so have some space for more basil or lettuce later. Please bear with me as I repost changes, I found the original map invaluable when I planted last week, and I know I will not remember where I planted what by next summer so my map will help me with crop rotation. (Click to see larger image). 

Today my pageviews hit 2013, and I had readers in Japan and Columbia and Australia and Turkey. I copied the map because I thought it was pretty cool, even if some are just spammers. 

We are getting a magnolia for the front of the house. I will posts pics when we get it planted, although we won't see the flowers until next year. I am hoping to get a black tulip magnolia.

I did some more weeding today, and my black eyed susans are beginning to be distinguished from the creeping bell flowers. I have been tearing the latter out along with the remaining goutweed and new crop of dandilions with great abandon. Gone are my days of guilt at killing an innocent plant.

I also moved some of my smaller flowers around so they would have more visibility. All this in the rain, which although a bit uncomfortable, made the work easier as the soil was soft and I did not have to water everything afterwards.

Spring fever

My front door

Normally, May is a month in which I have a lot to write about and tend to start blogging regularly. Somehow this month flew by. I got back from Vancouver at the end of April, and instead of putting out last year's compost, weeding, cleaning up and putting down fresh hay, I committed myself to presenting at a conference in Quebec city during the first week of May.
We had a beautiful bit of very summery weather during the first two weeks of May, temperatures hitting 29 degrees Celcius (we average 17 usually). Iulia very enthusiastically planted her tomatoes despite my warning her that we can still get frost up until the third week of May. I was spending my time getting ready to present, and helping kids with huge projects. Then we (finally) renovated our windows and doors. I had hoped that the company we ordered them from would have them ready early in April so we could finish the construction before my garden came up. There were inevitable delays, and instead of taking two days to do the job it took four. I was a bit nervous about workmen stomping on my tulips and daffodils, so Josh built wooden bridges over the garden beds under the windows with wood and concrete blocks. He did a rather good job, there were no major casualties. In the meantime, I was not getting much done outside.

The third week of May it got cold again. We had some hail, a touch of snow and temperatures hovering just above zero at night. I had put all my sprouts outside long before, and had hoped to plant early, but ended up taking them all back inside for a couple of days. Iulia borrowed some mason jars and popped a jar on top of each tomato plant. They survived and seem to be thriving.

Garlic cluster

Forget me nots

Last weekend was the big planting weekend in Montreal. We have a three day weekend, in celebration of Queen Victoria's birthday (we just ignore our current Queen on her birthday), but for gardeners in our city, it is the weekend to plant. The magical frost is over date and it is safe to plant weekend. Actually, that applies to plants from southern zones like tomatoes and peppers, and annuals. I had already put in seeds for lettuce, bok choy, cucumber, basil and coriander directly into the garden (and the bathtub and the big herb pots). The garlic I planted last fall are doing wonderfully. Some local cats had decided to use my garlic patch as a litter box, and had in the process undug a bunch of the cloves after they had sprouted, but I stuck them back in the ground and they seem to be doing okay. It turned out that I missed one garlic at harvest time last year and all of the cloves sprouted in a big bunch. I am leaving them to see what they do. I also had a couple of green onions pop up. They did not do well from seed last year, but a couple of last year's seeds sprouted under the snow. I am trying a bunch again but the sprouts are so spindly I am not planting them in the garden for a while. Maybe I should put a row of seeds out in the fall this year.

I also had a red oak lettuce pop up early in the spring (left). The delphiniums I planted in the fall, according to the package, however have not turned up. I may just give up on delphiniums, they don't seem to want to grow for me.  I decided to put in a lot more annuals this year to carry over between the various stages of perennials. I bought a bunch of pansies because Josh loves them. I put in some sweet william and marigold seeds (nothing showing yet). We started a new flower bed in the back yard and put in a combination of sprouted poppies and seeds of a few varieties.  Iulia gave me some red dragon Geum sprouts, some more poppies (annuals) which I put in a window box together, and some bulbs and roots for some other flowers, which I can't remember what they are called. I bought some chrysanthemums and dahlias and Josh bought some more, as well as gerbera daisies. The freesia bulbs Chloe gave me do not seem to be showing any signs of life, but they are in a sunny spot in a pot so I can hope. She gave me a heliotrope sprout too, but I managed to kill it before I got it outside.


 I was very dissappointed, they are really gorgeous. The geraniums I got from my friend Laure are budding but they do not look like they are going to be blue and white, they look pink (right, below). I guess they were not the "splish and splash"  variety that Laure thought she was giving me. It took two years for it to bloom since I transplanted it, so I am happy with whatever it does.












So last weekend, I raked out my compost and got rid of a lot of weeds that had started to thrive in the vegetable garden. I put in the tomatoes and got at least the first levels up of the cages, but then I ran out of zipties so the next levels have to wait. My careful planned design did not work once I started putting things in the ground, so I will be redoing my garden map in order to make sure I know where things were this year for when I rotate things around next year. I put the peppers all in pots, because they seemed to have done better that way, and I may yet have success bring some inside to winter. I planted one row of  basil directly in the garden, more in the bathtub and the rest in pots. I was careful this year to make sure all of it is accessible. I couldn't find a lot of the basil I planted last year once the tomatoes and the nasturtiums got big. I have no idea how much basil I will have, but I planted around 35 each of tomatoes and hot peppers. I gave some to basil and tomatoes to Julie who plans to grow an upside down suspended garden. I need to see this to understand what it is exactly, but will blog about it sometime later this summer. I am also sending some tomatoes up north with my mom for her country garden.

We decided this year to try carrots. I read on the back of the pack that they like to grow near beans, and onions. I had planned to try onions but have not managed to find sets yet (I did not order them. Another mistake). I originally planned to put the carrots near the onions, but with no onions, I ended up putting them near the beans and the garlic. This week Chloe visited and told me that carrot seeds take a long time to sprout and need to stay wet, even covered with boards, for them to sprout. Oh, didn't know that. I may not have carrots this year after all. I did not plan to have potatoes this year, but I have a whole bag of potatoes that have started to sprout so they are going in instead of onions. I am also sprouting sweet potatoes but those are going in the flower garden for decorative purposes.

We are hoping to get a bunch of composted manure through my in-laws and a lot of hay from our friends Jack and Amy next week. I feel like I am doing everything backwards. The lack of new hay last year meant that I ended up with a lot more weeds last summer and this spring I had a big job to get rid of the weeds especially creeping charley and creeping bell flowers. I am not only getting to know which weeds are really bad news, but I know them by name and have been feeling less guilty about ripping lush green plants out of the garden. I am also starting to remember where I put things so I am ripping out less of the lush green plants that I actually planted in the garden. Where I had put hay two years ago I have now got thick beautiful grass coming up exactly where I don't want it. This apparently happens less if you continue to put thick layers of hay on the areas between plants you want, or if you use straw instead of hay. The downside is that hay decomposes better and fertilizes the garden more than straw. So I am sticking with hay and carefully ripping the growing hay from between the cosmos and the poppies.

One deep purple iris has bloomed  for the first time this year (that was one of Olllie's). My side garden that faces Iulia's house is looking great. The orpine and goose-necked loosestrife , the creeping thyme and columbines are spreading out.

 

I have a lot of little stuff that Iulia gave me coming up, some anemonies but I have no idea what the rest are. Just when I think I know what I have and learn the name of everything, Iulia gives me more stuff I don't know. Some have to be dug up and the bulbs or roots brought in for the winter. I am not very good at that but maybe this year I will give it a go. I think you can do that with dahlias and begonias too.

Once I got all my seeds and sprouts in, I attacked the weeds in the front yard. Having waited until the third week of May to do this, I had a big job, but it has been raining a lot so the earth is soft. I have a hard time teasing out the creeping bellflowers from the black eyed susans because they look very similar, and the spot where my back eyed susans are trying to grow are infested with bellflowers. The weather has been ranging from hot and sunny to very cool and wet, so everything is growing like mad, especially the dandelions and mushrooms.They are huge this year.

the view from my kitchen

Orianne, my 11 year old, has been trying to master blowing all the seeds off in one breath. This has taken her a lot of practice to get right and to keep up her skill, so I am holding her responsible for a good number of the dandelion infested lawns in the neighbourhood. I finally had the time to mow the front lawn today despite it being wet, weed infested and with some of the grass (hay, actually) being over a foot tall. It was a tall order for my manual mower, but it looks a bit more decent out there. I was getting a bit embarrassed.


My beebalm is spreading nicely.

Vancouver Spring Gardens

I went to visit my brother in Vancouver for a few days. He and my sister in law have a new family, twins born in December. I did not plan to see much in the way of gardens, as it is still April, but it turned out that spring arrived early in Vancouver. I have only visited there twice, once when I was eight years old and paid no attention to flowers, and once in November when there was not much left to see in gardens. I planned on putting all my attention on two beautiful baby girls, but as the sun was shining for two days in a row, we did manage to get one or two babies outside for a walk. I also went on the back balcony a couple of times with a tired, cranky baby for some fresh air and distraction. Each time I could not help but be overwhelmed by the lush exuberance of the flowering trees and bushes. I had just missed the tulips and daffodils, although the stems were still visible with a few last blooms. What struck me is that there were trees abloom with flowers I have never seen growing outside, or in such sizes. Camelia and rhododendron trees, huge electric pink azalea bushes, cherry trees and magnolias and red and pink bushes which we could not identify.

This is the view from the lane next to my brother's house (above). The photos here are taken on a quick walk down the block, in their front yard and back yard and around the corner. It took me about 5 minutes to cover this area even while stopping to take photos. I took almost 60 photos, and between feeding and changing diapers my brother and I chose the best pics to post. He recently took some photography lessons and showed me some tricks to improve the lighting of the photos. I did not pick the brightest time of the day, I went out when the babies were quiet so it was already getting cloudier. I did not let him change the colours beyond what they actually looked like in the sun. It really was this spectacular. To the right is his neighbour.

My brother says that Vancouver has been encouraging citizens to cultivate green spaces on sidewalks, so technically this is not guerilla gardening, nor city gardens.

To the right you can see yellow tulips, orange poppies, pink bleeding hearts and something electric pink.  I am not sure what the purple flowers are, maybe irises. It seems that Vancouver explodes into blossom where Montreal gradually phases into spring.

Every possible variety of red leaved, green leaved and red stemmed Japanese maples adorn lawns and public spaces.

These flowers were growing in front of my brother's house. After inquiring about what they are, my sister-in-law's mother (a first time contributor to my blog, thank you Joan!) has identified them as hellebore. They do not grow in my neck of the woods unfortunately because they are so pretty!

This is the view from my brother's back balcony. Rhododendrons, magnolias, Japanese maple and those pink flowered bushes are in the foreground. The pink on the lower left at the back is an azalea bush in full bloom, which looks solid from a distance. I did not include the camelia tree, which my brother called sunny side up egg flowers, because the flowers were starting to turn brown on the edges. I arrived a few days past their peak.

Here is the front yard. On the right and below, the red azaleas and purple periwinkles are a bit small to see in detail.

Never mind the snowstorm, I'm planting inside!

We had another snowstorm yesterday. It was not as big and bad as predicted because the worst of it passed by north of Montreal, but we had snow and ice pellets and freezing rain and slippery roads. Rumour has it that I shouldn't take off my snow tires yet, because there may be more coming. Technically we are five weeks from the magic moment when there is not supposed to be any more risk of frost, that it Victoria Day weekend (around May 21). Just before the snow hit, my daffodils, hyacinths and crocuses were popping up. I am not sure how they are managing under several inches of snow but it was warmer today and things were melting.

While this was going on outside, Josh was working on building a temporary seed sprouting centre in our basement. He built suspended shelves with hanging full spectrum fluorescent lights which his parents bought for us. The set-up is right behind me as I write on my computer in the basement office corner. I picked up some small plastic square baskets from the dollar store as trays to catch any water overflow and allow me to eventually transport the seedlings outside to harden when the weather warms up. I did not use jiffy trays this year, but seeded directly into earth in small pots and plastic cups reused from last year's seedlings, as well as some juice cartons, yogourt containers etc. I was careful to put large holes in the bottom of these so that we would not have the drainage problems I had last year once I moved the seedlings outside and it rained. Josh put gravel at the bottom of each pot and container covered by some potting soil. I have planted mostly seeds left over from last year because we had a lot. I hope they work as well still. I put in three types of basil seed (monmouth, sweet basil and bush basil (Superbo) we ordered from Richters. The tomatoes I used were the ever favorite San Marzano from Landreth, a couple of those amazing chocolate cherry tomatoes and a few of the large chocolates in the hope they do better this year. I planted two varieties of sunflowers, one small decorative multicoloured variety and some giant yellow ones. I have no idea where I am going to put them this year. I put in two types of peppers, goat horn and hot thai peppers. I am also sprouting poppy seeds indoors, because the seeds I planted directly outside all died. I decided to make markers using plastic knives left over from my kids' birthday parties, labelled with a laundry marker. They are totally water proof and reusable. We bought transparent shower curtains and covered the pots and shelves completely to keep in humidity. It is not quite as enclosed as the jiffy trays but we will see how it does. I will also be starting a half-dozen sweet potatoes once I buy toothpicks to suspend them in water. I picked up some dalia bulbs at the dollar store, and Chloe gave me some freesia bulbs which I hope to plant (indoors!) tomorrow.


Next we will be arranging to get some fermented manure from a neighbour of my in-laws out in the country, and hopefully some hay from our friends Jack and Amy. We did not have enough last year and hope to be more generous, although supplies are a bit scarce in the city.

My brother in Vancouver has been teasing me about cherry blossoms already in bloom. Still winter here...

Snow day

 Winter showed signs of ending early. A few weeks ago, I saw buds on a magnolia tree, and the snow has been gradually melting. Last week, my flower beds were exposed and I could see some signs that the crocuses or daffodils were coming out. Today we are having a snow storm, so it seems that winter is back for a while. Such is life in Montreal. I have been pawing through my Vesey's seed catalogues and the intensity of the colour is getting me all excited.

   I have come a long way, I can now just look at a page and say forget it, those need sun. I am starting to rethink my attempts to grow flowers on the edge of the sidewalk despite the fact that is the sunniest strip on my front lawn. I left my short metal fencing defending the edges up for the winter and they were run over and completely mangled by snow plows all winter. It feels like a losing battle.

Recently I googled my name for fun to see what came up, and lo and behold, my blog didn't. I realized that I have never properly introduced myself. Initially, I did not expect that this blog would be read by anyone who is not related to me, or at least a close friend, but somehow people have found me in countries where I really don't now anyone so I suppose some of my readers have no clue who I am.

My name is Francine Cytrynbaum. I am a social worker by profession, coordinator of day centre services for seniors in the area of Montreal where I work, live and garden. When it is not garden season I teach courses on Ethics in social work at a local university part time. I only teach in the winter semester, so from May to November I have time to garden, blog, and occasionally pay some attention to my three kids. My husband, an electrician, loves gardening in principle but is not obsessed enough with it to pull off what he wants. He has big ideas, but not enough follow through. He is great at building new beds, building me a seed sprouting area in the basement (he is working on that now), doing the big, time consuming projects but I end up doing a lot of the day to day work.

Right now I am focusing my energy on spring cleaning and Passover, then we will start planting the sprouts for this summer. Suddenly today with a blizzard outside it feels like summer is far, far away.

These photos were taken by my youngest daughter, Orianne, on the first day of spring, at least that was what it says on the calendar. Spring and winter dance back and forth for a while in Montreal. Everything might start to bud (trees, spring flowers) as early as March but we still have snow, even snowstorms right up to the beginning of May.

A taste of summer

This year we had decided that once we bought the chest freezer, and were able to fit all our frozen garden produce in our own house, we did not need to rush to cook and can everything immediately. Josh had the intention of cooking up all the tomato pulp over Christmas vacation and making a big batch of pasta sauce, but somehow we got busy. Instead, every few weeks, Josh took out a bag and made a batch to last a week or so, and leftover sauce was frozen until the next time. We have had a steady stream of pesto, tomato sauce, chili and  pizza sauce as needed, and my supply of frozen tomato pulp is holding out nicely. I also have been tapping occasionally into the few bags of frozen beans I put aside. Not many lovers of cooked long beans in my house, so I have been mostly using those for myself.

The one thing I have not touched yet is the bucket of pickles. For a couple of months, my laundry room had a definite sulfurous smell. We consulted with my neighbour Iulia about whether the salt content was sufficient, and whether the smell was normal. She felt that everything appeared as it should. I suppose it was from the fermenting cauliflower in the mix. Other friends of mine who have made mixed pickles have generally sealed them in glass jars, so no odour escapes. Eventually, my laundry room lost the smell, but we were leery about opening the bucket. We will get there, and I will tell you how it turned out.

We still have plenty of hot sauce and Chow Chow pickles, which we are slowly making our way through. Josh wisely froze some of the hot sauce because we noticed that once it is close to a year old, it does start to go bad unless you can it and seal it. So far there has been no freezer burn.

The tomato sauce produced from last year's harvest has been far superior to the previous year, and I believe that my refusal to include all the tomatoes which ripened after picking in October made a huge difference.

I have been dreamily perusing my Vesey's seed and bulb catalogues, then looking out through the frost coated windows at my snow covered yard (sigh) and wait for spring.