Harvest May 12

This week we're finally eating our own greens. I propbably picked more asparagus than I should have at one time, but it was so tasty! Some fresh scallions, salad and mustard greens were nice and crispy and made a perfect salad.

And then there was small harvest from the forest - fresh Morels and Ramps. They are so yummy!

Join us at Daphne's to see what others are harvesting this week and share your pictures!

Planting beans

It finally got warm enough outside this week to plant more veggies, and so we planted more peas and first batch of beans in both gardens. I've planted peas in April but germination was very poor and they were really not growing well at all. I hope the new batch will be doing better. The ones I'm looking forward to are Green Arrow, Cascadia and Garden sweet. I also have super-snappy that I usually freeze for winter. if I had more space I'd probably plant ten times as many because I love eating them fresh right there in the garden. I did have to add more soil to the border by the fence where I had peas last year to balance it out - otherwise all that nitrogen that was deposited in soil would have been too much and would inhibit growth.

On another side also by fence we have poll beans like Dragon Tongue and green and red Asparagus varieties. And one I really like is French Gold. And of course several types of bush beans. Last year we lost most of them to rabbits, but I hope this year will be better. We have a long pot with few bush beans already growing, but it's just a few plants to get an early start. I love Velour - purple variety because it's very tasty and is strikingly pretty in the garden, but my hands-down favourite is roc d'or - a yellow wax type. It's almost buttery taste is wonderful in summer and freezes really well.

Now just have to sit back and wait and see what grows well and what doesn't.

Good Bye Granny

Gardening community lost one of its great gardeners. We are saying Goodbye Granny who passed away yesterday - she was my inspiration on many levels and I will miss her greatly. Her garden was a work of art, her quips about bugs, wind and ever present weeds were always with positive view, and her gorgeous pictures were inspiring others to grow just as well as she did. RIP Carol.

First May Harvest

Finally warm enough that the garden really started growing - asparagus took off and salads are happy. Brassicas seedlings (wave 3 as we lost all others to heavy frost) were transplanted once again and looks like they are doing well. And everything is in bloom! My cherry trees got battered by 3 days of rain storms, but I still hope they'll produce. Apple trees, peach and nectarine - all in bloom. Loving it. And of course I had my fresh greens for dinner - it really doesn't get better than that.

Visit Daphne's page to see what others are harvesting this week. How is your garden coming along?

Going vertical with Strawberries

This year's new experiment is an addition to our small side garden - we build new strawberry beds. Yes, we do have plenty of strawberries in the main garden in the front of the house, but I wanted to add few to see how it would work and if any squirrels or other animals will cause problems. So my hubby build it for me on a sunny weekend afternoon and we used our second garden so it's not too visible from main road. It  may not be pretty but it's functional.

We used 4" pipe, he cut out strip and put a small wooden blocks inside to keep sides from closing in. I'm sure there was better way to do this, but I wanted to keep it simple and to have minimum work on his part. He put it on 4-feet supports by the edge of the garden next to the fence. This way it's out of  the way, not shading beds and the main benefit - it's perfect height for him to reach for berries once they start producing. Will keep you updated on how it works. For now transplanted berries need to start growing properly.

Spring is finally here!

Better late than never and spring finally starting to show its face. Some of these beauties normally bloom in March - not end of April, but this year everything is skewed so I'm just happy to see splashes of colors!

Inside the beds veggies also waking up, with Asparagus that got hit by heavy freeze is in the recovery mode, garlic doing very well and rhubarb taking over as usual. Everything needs weeding of course.

On the patio, Lemon and Lime ready to go into bloom - they had hard time inside as it's too dry for them, so they didn't show much growth and shed few leaves. I hop we'll see some citrus ripe for picking by Christmas like last year.

I also bought two new plants - blackberry to add to our back side of the property - we have a "bold" spot where tree was downed by storm so need to fill it up and this would be useful to have. Another one is a new fig that is a replacement of our figs that died off this winter. It went to -18 degrees Fahrenheit and figs can't survive that cold even if we tried wrapping them in rags.

And of course inside the house my seedlings are growing away - these are  my tomato seedlings that are ready to be transplanted into larger containers. They will remain in-house for at least 3 more weeks until it gets to 70 degrees outside in the garden.

I was worried that I planted everything very late, but with Mother Nature  not cooperating this year I'm wondering now if I will have enough time in the garden to actually harvest anything at all. Time will tell.

Preping potatoes for planting

Yes, it is that time of the year again - time to plant potatoes outside! Actually I'm over a month behind on this task thanks to Mother Nature not cooperating with weather. This year I ordered additional potatoes to add to my garden: German Butterball, Kenebec and Gold Rush. I already had Yukon Gold, Purple, French Fingerlings and regular white and I'm still deciding if I want to plant any rose/red potatoes as I'm not a big fan, but my husband really likes them. Here's a short video of my cut up new varieties as well as some of the overwintered and ready to grow plants.

I've had them sitting in my warm laundry room where they get full light to really get them growing fast. You can clearly see difference between newcomers and the ones from last year that I did not keep it the cold cellar and they are really overgrown. But it's fine, they'll be producing just as well as new varieties.

Have you started planting yours?