Fresh from the garden

It has been a while since my last post. Moving kind of sucks the life out of you.

Despite the upheaval, I have still managed to get to the garden and sample a few early veggies. There is nothing like the taste of fresh vegetables that you have grown yourself. I'm kicking myself that I didn't grow more peas. They were fabulous!! For sure next year I will try and grow more. I think the taller ones would be a better idea.

I haven't been giving the garden as much attention as I would like but today I'm going to spend a couple of hours there. My compost needs turning badly and I would love to find some brown matter to dig in. Bad time of year to try and find leaves to dig in. We are near a wooded area and I could probably find some but I don't want to run into any bears!!

I have made a few mistakes in the garden and I'm sure I will make more next year but you never know til you try. My potatoes are all rather top heavy and fell over. I might try and dig up some today and try and cut them back a bit. My boxes don't quite have enough in them yet (I need more compost!!) and I had trouble hilling them up. The soil was a bit compacted and hard to move around. Next year hopefully the soil will be a bit better.

In the fall I plan on adding more manure, seaweed, compost and will top it off with leaves. Those raised beds are going to be as full as I can get them!

My great experiment of placing a teepee around my zucchini with scarlet runner beans was kind of pretty but a bad bad idea. The beans are now shading the zucchini and it isn't liking it one bit. I am getting some zucchini but some are kind of rotting. It is pretty though. I hate to pull the runner beans and I guess a few less zucchini isn't such a bad thing.

Carrots... what can I say. I didn't thin them and I must must try and do it today. I have only managed a few stubby ones and I know that is the problem. Beets too, but I have thinned them a bit while eating the tops (yum).

The tomatoes have done much better after their trimming but I could have trimmed a lot more and I planted them too close together. Another mistake! I will need to rig up another way of protecting them for next year. A permanent structure will be in order I think. My little cover fills with water in the rain and is a bit of a shaky thing. It has helped but definitely will have to get something a little more sturdy for next year.

My cucumbers are doing well so far. The plant I bought died and I threw in the entire packet of seeds and three plants grew. Not a great success rate but with our wet cold spring I will take anything. I have spotted a small cucumber so fingers crossed!

Someone asked me the other day if I thought I was saving money by growing my own veggies. Certainly not this year that's for sure but I didn't do it to save money. I think it is the satisfaction of watching things grow that you planted and put effort into and of course for the taste. What a difference that makes.

There are ways to save money I know and I really should thin things more but for this year I'm happy....

Dreaming of Tomatoes

I'm finding myself dreaming of tomatoes. I don't think I have had a good tomato for over 13 years. Growing tomatoes here will be a bit of a challenge and I know I might not get any but it won't stop me from trying.

There is nothing like a fresh tomato. Sometimes I wish I had never had one as it spoils you forever. I buy them at the store but unless they are smothered in dressing or in a sauce they are horrible rubbery things. Even the so called "field tomatoes" that you can buy in the summer still taste like rubber. Nothing compares to a warm tomato fresh from the garden sliced and put in a sandwich with a little dressing, salt and pepper. Heaven! It would be sacrilege to put these tomatoes in a sauce. Fresh salads or just eaten with a little salt are all they need.

Last year I grew a few patio tomatoes on a long hanging basket in full sun the back yard.



It worked pretty good but I found that when the fruit was setting it needed more water than I could give it. I watered it at night but by the time I got home from work it had wilted and I would have to give it a drink twice a day. It really needed water in the afternoon. As a result the tomatoes weren't bad, actually they were quite nice but the skin was a bit tough. In my opinion the flavour just wasn't as good as when they are grown in the ground but the next best thing.

The best place I have ever grown tomatoes was under our bedroom window at our house in Calgary. They got the afternoon sun and were protected right under the bay window overhang when the hail came and ruined my entire vegetable garden. The tomatoes were beautiful. My poor vegetable garden which was doing so well looked like a blender had gone through it. The tomatoes helped.

Apparently there is always blight at the community garden and it tends to spread. A lot of people have small greenhouses at the garden specifically for the tomatoes. I did buy a small little plastic pop up greenhouse but it won't be big enough once they get big so I will have to rig up some kind of contraption to protect them later. There doesn't seem to be much you can do once blight hits the garden so I will just hope that it doesn't happen. The rules seem to be to warm the soil a couple of weeks before, plant deep, keep leaves off the soil, mulch, water from underneath and try to protect them from the heavy rains.

A lot of trouble I know, but oh I'm dreaming of tomatoes.