Monday June 21, 2021

I really liked how the front flower garden performed this year. There’s a good show of crocus first and snowdrops, followed by tulips and grape hyacinths and then an early yellow allium popped up. I must have planted it, I just don’t remember. 

This is followed by the soapwort, which I planted from seed and thought it didn’t take until all of a sudden, flowers, the next year. 

The dutch irises and Lace Perfume Dianthus pierce through the soapwort ground cover, along with lavender and some oriental lilies that a previous tenant planted. There’s also some wild strawberries adding another texture of foliage and the nigella and calendula that self-seeded from last year. 

The soapwort is finally starting to fade after going for at least a month or more strong. I’m hoping the nigella will take over flowering, along with the calendula and eventually the bearded iris. I’ll have to keep an eye out for ‘flowerless holes’ in the garden but this soapwort/dutch iris, nigella/bearded iris blooms-following-blooms combo is good. 

The beans that I planted under the first tripod I made are also popping up so they should start vining within the week. The tripods haven’t blown over and we’ve had some pretty strong winds so the staking that I did must be doing it’s job. Once they’re heavy with beans and vines we’ll see how they hold up. 

Tuesday June 22, 2021

My salad burnet has been flowering for about a month now and I am absolutely in love. It has these little sprays of hot pink anthers that shoot out from the green nubbin on the end, covered in bright yellow pollen. 

I’ve been adding them to all of the bouquets that I bring in for some fun texture and shape contrast with the other flowers in the bunch. 

If you’re looking for something delicious that tastes like cucumber and makes a lovely bouquet addition then you should really try planting some. 

Wednesday June 23, 2021

I got my hands on some more cardboard and continued to smother and mulch the grass for the Rose Garden. Slowly, slowly it’s taking shape. By the fall I should be able to plant the native flowers and grasses in the clean earth and probably dig out the holes for the roses and prepare them so that everything is ready for April when we either pick them up or they ship to us. 

I may try and get some this fall and have them already a little ahead so we might have some blooms in the rose garden next year. I’m not sure how the just planted roses will fare. I’m assuming that they’ll be putting most of their efforts into roots not flowers in the first season but we may get a few surprises. 

The phlox that I had in the Potager border got powdery mildew again, I’m assuming they're just susceptible because of how dense they are, so I had to move them. Last year they started with it and then their leaves must have blown through the Potager because the squash got it next and I didn’t get much out of them. I don’t want the same thing to happen this year. 

I transplanted some of my sage that was getting too big for it’s spot in the Potager and I think it will look lovely blooming along the edge with the widow’s tears and peonies. 

Around the Potager there were a couple plants that looked like they were something I may have sown from seed so I left them. They were not something I planted so they must have blown in on the wind. One is Motherwort, which is apparently good for the heart and relieves anxiety, something I could use. 

It is not native, and seeds prolifically. We had it all through the Potager but now I’ve located the mother plant. I think she’ll go in one of the back gardens and I’m going to try a tincture to see if it does anything. As with anything you consider ingesting, be careful. Make sure that your identification is without question, and also remember, just because it’s ‘natural’ doesn't mean it's automatically safe or without side-effects/adverse reactions. A friend of mine was having trouble sleeping so someone suggested to her to sprinkle lavender essential oil on her pillows and that would help her sleep. She did and found out very quickly, and uncomfortably, that she is allergic to lavender. Just saying. 

The other random plant I identified is Field Pennycress, a member of the brassica family. It appears that the leaf is rich in protein and seeds can be ground when dry into a mustard substitute. It does appear to have the ability to be just as irritating as garlic mustard though and so I’m not sure I want it sticking around. I thought it was Honesty to start with because of the seeds but alas, another weed. 

I also moved some shasta daisies that my neighbour gave me that were just too tall and bushy for their spot in the front flower garden. I want the effect of low ground cover with other flowers poking through but the daisies were more of a hulking mass. Josh says it wouldn’t be a proper gardening day for me if I wasn’t moving a plant from here to there. 

I don’t know about you, but I find sometimes I have to get to know the plant before I know exactly where I want them. If we’re not well acquainted I usually just get them into the ground and then observe how they look, and grow, and flower throughout the year. If they leave a hole in one of the seasons. If they get scraggly after they bloom and need something growing up around them. Then I can find the perfect place for them. And sometimes that takes a year or two to really get to know them. ‘The right plant for the right place’, as Beth Chatto would say.

Thursday June 26, 2021

Went for a wander through the gardens first thing when I woke up. 

Looks like we may actually get cabbage before the heat of summer this time round. I have already harvested some broccoli and we’re still getting side shoots from the plants. Last year I learned that broccoli leaves are more nutritious than the shoots so instead of wasting all of the leaves in the compost I cut them into very thin ribbons and freeze them for adding to frittatas and basically anywhere I would add chard, or beet tops. 

Lots of greens have enormous nutritional value and taste great so don’t just chuck them. I had a pound and a half of leaves for my first harvest but only three small crowns of florets. Waste not, want not. 

Unfortunately the kohlrabi and daikon that I planted early didn’t really do anything, other than the daikon flowered. 

I got one purple orach and one red orach and no spinach from all of those seed swap seeds I planted. I must have done something wrong in the sowing, or not watered enough, or so many things. 

Sometimes the variables involved in success or failure are legion. Maybe next time. 

Josh has done a fantastic job with the pruning and trellising of the tomatoes and everyone is happy and flowering. I think that next year we won't start them quite so early. They were a little ungainly. Beginning of April seems like the best time for our garden. 

The bush beans and beets are also looking good. I’m going to have to thin the beets soon so there will be lots of thinnings for salad, and if we can't eat them all, they can be frozen for another day to be cooked into something. 

The Golden Scallopini squash are up and the onions that are in those beds are getting ready to flower. I didn’t get to the Dakota Tears onions last year before they got thoroughly snowed on, so I thought that was it. But then this year they were still alright looking. I thought they would be mushy from being frozen so I left them to go to seed, but as I was checking through yesterday two hadn’t put up a flower stalk, so I tested them. And they are firm. 

So we have a harvest of two onions from last year and hopefully lots of seeds because I would grow these onions just for their fantastic alien form. I think they would look amazing interspersed with Prairie Dropseed and maybe some Wild Blue Phlox for a native/culinary/contrast garden a la James van Sweden. I may have to put that together. 

All of the peppers are covered in flowers and some even have reasonable sized fruit. The Black Hungarians in the garden have almost 2 inch fruit all over them and the ones in the pot are covered in flowers. 

It seems like the ones in the ground are farther ahead, even though the ones in the pot were sown first and had to be put in the pot because they needed to be potted up again.

We also have a 2-inch Spanish Padron on one of the plants near the squash. 

The Amish Pimento really didn't like the late frosts so they shriveled all up. They are now starting to come back and produce flowers but they’ll be much later than everyone else. I don’t seem to have success with the Amish Pimentos. 

The Blue Capucigner peas from Seeds of Imbolc are covered in flowers and some teeny tiny dark blue/purple peas. They are extremely pretty. Hopefully they taste good too because I will grow them again next year. 

The eggplant also survived the frosts, surprisingly. Though it has just been sitting there sulking since then, there is new growth so maybe we’ll get some eggplants this year before the fall frosts. 

I had some cells of native plants sown - Lance-leaved Coreopsis, Butterflyweed, Little Bluestem and a mix from the tallgrass prairie seeds - and they are growing away slowly but surely. 

It seems that the tallgrass prairie grasses grow best in warm weather so they get established slowly in the spring and then really get going in summer. So far the prairie is mainly lawn grass and weeds, like buttercup and burdock, so I’m going to scythe it with my new blade and then hopefully the sun will get down to the native grasses and they can grow. 

From what I’ve read it really takes 3 or 4 years for them to get properly established and most people take the top layer of sod off instead of just sowing the seeds like I did. It may not work but I’ll sow some more seeds this fall and maybe try opening up some ground so that they have less competition from the lawn grasses. I like the idea of using plugs of grasses so I may also try winter-sowing some of the grasses so that they are already growing away by the time the ground is thawing and then I can plant them as a sturdy little clump instead of a lonely seed. 

I also noticed that for every cell, where I sowed 3-5 seeds, only one came up so germination for me wasn't the greatest. Maybe I’ll need to add heat to the equation next year?