Gardening

My garden view from the tub

There's only one place from inside my house that I can see my garden and it involves standing in the jet tub in my ensuite.  This doesn't stop me though, several times a day I step into my tub and lean on the unfinished windowsill and admire my garden.  I love this part of the season where all the little plants start to pop out of the ground.  When I'm outside I just make laps around my garden noticing any changes since my last visit.  Within 24 hours I saw the zucchini, corn, beans, potatos, and peas all start to peak out.  At this point nearly everything has made an appearance, it makes me oh so happy.

 First sign of Onions

Rather than a traditional row garden I opted for a plan that is modeled on the square foot garden (Square Foot Gardening: A New Way to Garden in Less Space With Less Work).  The garden is separated into various sized quadrants with a few different types of plant in each section.  The individual areas are separated by various pieces of scrap board that we had lying around.  The boards serve as a walking path so that you don't have to walk on the dirt, although both Simon and Luca don't get this and I'm continually hollering at them to get off the dirt. Not an easy concept when the whole yard is dirt.  Most of the areas are no more than 4 feet wide so that the entire square can be reached from the outside boards. The square foot garden is supposed to allow you to fit more plants in a smaller space with less work.  You don't have all of the wasted space between each row where weeds can grow up.  This style of gardening also makes it easier for companion planting so two or more plants can work together to mutually benifit one another.  Another concept of the square foot gardening is that you plant exactly the number of seeds you want rather than planting extra & then thinning down at a later date.  This is a little tricky for carrots, with their small seeds but I made an attempt.  It's a trial year for the garden, I was reading about it and liked the idea.  I thought I would give it a try because you will never know how something works unless you do.  I must say, so far I really enjoy the boards to walk on, rather than the dirt and its very eye pleasing to see all the little separate squares rather than just one large area of black dirt. In my garden I planted zucchini, corn, beans, peas, lettuce, spinach, beats, carrots, cucumber, pumpkin, potatos, onions, garlic, and of course tomatos.

I got my shipment of plants from the Saskatoon Farm on Friday and got them all planted this weekend.  Saskatoons, raspberries, strawberries, asparigus & rhubarb for the garden and a few trees & shrubs for the yard.  I'm not sure that I will get any fruit or vegies off these plants this year but next year they will be producers.  I was a little nervous about getting plants shipped on the Greyhound but they all look great, very healthy and they threw in a few extra of each of the fruit plants.  I guess they know what they are doing, they do make a business of it.  If you are in the market for fruit plants I would highly recommend you check out the Saskatoon Farm, good prices and nice looking plants.

Newly planted Strawberries & Rhubarb

In closing I have another Tomato confessional, I wasn't going to say anything, kind of embarassing.  The  Tomato plants I was talking about in a previous post, I let them freeze.  Agh, the one night I didn't pull them in.  As soon as I woke up in the morning I knew and as the day went on they all wilted and died.  So again I went out to buy some more Tomato plants, I'm sure I'm up over $50 worth of Tomato plants this year. Gardening saves you money, you know.  I planted the new Tomatos in the garden after the weather forcast was showing no sign of frost like evening tempersatures.  Now you may know that I have a hard time throwing anything away so the "dead" tomato plants were still sitting on my deck.  I was watching them and it looks like some of them, most of them may survive. They have new little leaves coming out of the v's of the plant.  I cut off the dead spots & planted them in the garden too.  My garden is basically a tomato garden with a few extra plants.  Maybe I'll get a booth at the Farmers Market in the fall.  That's how Louis Hole got started you know, she just started selling the excess produce from her farm.

 Garden view from the back deck