Cool, Soggy Garden Update

This has been a long cool spring that finally seems - according to the weather forecast, at any rate - to be shifting into summer. Planting has been slow but steady, and the weeds have yet to really get going. Mr. Ferdzy has thus had a reasonable amount of time for this years' first big project: surrounding the main garden beds with chicken wire and gates in an effort to foil the rabbits. The rabbits have been terrible the last few years, and they seem to get worse every year. This year they are all over the place! Fenced just in time, I would say.

While he worked on that, I got the runners from our seedling strawberry planted out in their newly assigned bed. In spite of which, they are flowering profusely. If the weather warms up we should have a bumper crop.

Mostly, though, the garden still looks very sparse. Carrots are planted but not up. Beets and rutabaga are planted but not up. Garlic is up, and looks good, and a few leeks have sprouted where they went to seed last year. I'm leaving them in to seed again (I hope) as I lost the packet of seeds I had saved from them. I was seriously annoyed, because these are the leeks that overwintered in the garden as seeds - unusually hardy, in other words, and I particularly wanted the seeds. This way I hope to get some at least.

Tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and about half the sweet potatoes have been planted, but it has been too cold to leave them uncovered. Those plastic sheets are starting to wear out - hastened by having deer step on them - but we are really pleased by how long they have lasted. I'd have to go back to see when we first got them, but it must be close to 8 years or even 9 years. It is 6 mil vapour barrier for construction, and we didn't really expect it to last more than 3 or 4 years.

Peas are mostly well up but nowhere close to producing, and beans have just sprouted, mostly. Some are not up yet and I am a little nervous that I will have to re-seed if some of them rot in the cold wet soil we have been having.

Our more established bed of strawberries started blooming about a week later than our seedling strawberries but it too is full of blossoms and should have an impressive crop. We have been picking asparagus for over 2 weeks and hope we have at least another week of picking to go. That's not a long season but since the bed is only 2 years old the plants are mostly not as established enough to bear more. However they are doing well and we expect the crop to improve every year.

The last thing I planted was watermelon seeds for the golden-rind project. We are only doing the one this year, as it will still produce far more watermelon than I ought to be eating. They are sharing the bed with some onions - we got carried away with several new kinds this year.

Another view of the covered beds. In the fore-ground the potatoes are just starting to sprout. That apparently empty bed next to them is actually planted with onions too, but they are still so tiny they really don't show up in the picture. I have to say, one of the reasons I'm doing a garden report today is because there is so little in the way of actual vegetables...

The weather is supposed to be shifting today into a warmer gear so hopefully things will start to change rapidly. If nothing else, I expect the next few weeks to include a lot more weeds.

Posted in: Ontario Food