2025 Garden Report

Our garden this year is a bit more chaotic than it has been, mainly because I'm working about eighteen hours a week and dog-walking another eight or nine, and those things eat up a lot of gardening time. But things grow whether I'm paying attention or not, and we've been enjoying produce as it comes. This morning I picked a gallon of beans (5 gallons last week), pruned and watered the tomatoes and squash plants, and marveled at how high some of the weeds got before I pulled them (there are still too many to count)! Oh, the dill!

Last night we tasted our first onion, peppers, and potatoes fried together (yum). I took a huge caesar salad to the Inner City Pastoral Ministry Men's and Women's hot dog roast and picnic two weeks ago, I've got cauliflower in the freezer (the broccoli bolted while we were on vacation in early July), and the peas (snap and snow) are pretty much finished. I'll have plenty of climbing beans, the cucumbers are coming on, and I've managed to keep the pumpkins from growing through the fence into the neighbour's yard.  I'll have lots of seed for next year's tobacco, and though the corn seems a bit stunted, we may get a feed or two. My one regret is that I didn't plant enough carrots, but what can you do? It was a busy spring.

Berry wise, the raspberries, haskaps and domestic Saskatoon (service) berries have been outstanding. I'm still working on improving our strawberry bed -- so there won't be any strawberry jam this summer -- but maybe I can make pear/rhubarb jam instead. It was a big hit this past winter.

Now that I'm too busy to spend a lot of extra time weeding, my husband and kids are making suggestions about how to downsize our garden, but what I'd really like is a bit more help. Jay has a friend who might come and work with me for $20 an hour, and I'm sure we could make a big dent in the disorder together. But in the meantime, I'm enjoying having the ability to share produce, embracing the lushness of it all, and looking forward to good eating!

Don't mind the chaos! Click here for this year's 3-minute video garden report, or watch below. And if you're itching to get your hands into the dirt, I'd love to garden with you. There's so much to do!

2024's last garden moodling

It was another good garden year in most respects. A heatwave in July meant I had hardly any broad beans because the blossoms dried out on the vines, my cabbages didn't manage to get anywhere, and the strawberries had a hard go of it because of some wood shaving mulch that must've had chemicals in it. But Mother Nature did well with the help of a lot of watering from our 4000 L rain tank and my daughter's vigilance when we were away looking after my father-in-law. 

So here's a little 4 minute video from mid-September, before Lee got busy dismantling things, and a few pictures of what's left this morning. It's supposed to freeze tonight, so my basement is full of ripening tomatoes and peppers, and I'll turn the kale into chips and soups very soon (I'm pretty sure they can stand a bit of frost.

Thanks to Creator for this garden space, and for the produce we enjoy from it.

Lee took apart the double-high raised box

next to the compost pile so that our leaf bin

could be closer to the compost, so a few meters 

of dirt are spread around in other boxes.

All that's left: cherry tomatoes, carrots, beets 

and a few potatoes still in the ground

And our new leaf bin next to the compost pile,

waiting for this year's leaves to fall...

We'll cover all the beds with leaves, and start fresh in 2025.

This is your garden moodler, signing off till then.

The return of the gardener/moodler

Hello, friends,

My summer break from Simple Moodlings is over, and I'm back again with a little garden video. I post these as much for myself as for you because I like to look back sometimes at previous years' garden reports, to remember how I've done things in the past, or what worked and what didn't. 

Cornelia Scarecrow is definitely working already this garden season, with a half dozen juvenile magpies and several baby crows around, waiting for her to look the other way (she doesn't). After I made this video, I realized that she needed a slight repair after standing out in the rain on Tuesday night, so she's in fine shape once again. It's just that the young magpies don't seem to be afraid of anything, even when I come after them for snapping the tops off my snow pea plants. You should see what they do to my pansies! I've tried to explain to them that bugs and worms are a much better diet for them, but they just laugh at me, HAA, HAA.

A simple reminder for my readers -- if you want a friendly email whenever I moodle about something, it really is easy peasy -- just put your email into the subscribe box on the right, and you'll get an email from Mail Chimp asking you to click if you agree to receive Simple Moodlings. You can easily unsubscribe at the bottom of those emails, too. I have a few regular readers, mostly family and friends, and I appreciate being able to share with you all.

I'll post highlights from this year's June vacation and other odds and ends soon, I promise. In the meantime, here's what my garden looks like on July 5, 2024. 

Happy Summer!

Cornelia's pumpkins

Cornelia the scarecrow has done her job very well, and we have enjoyed peaches and cream corn and scarlet runner beans for several suppers. And today I found these two at her feet.

There are more hiding among the corn and bean stalks. I guess we'll see how big they get.

July-August 2023 garden report

My plan to show readers my garden at the end of each summer month got away on me. So here's my July garden video, which was made yesterday, August 3rd. A wee garden tour in just under four minutes! Come visit at the end of August and we'll eat lots of wonderful produce together, God and weather willing!

And her name is...

Cornelia among the three sisters

 Cornelia! Kudos to my East Coast cousin, Claire, for her sense of humour... and I'll come up with a first prize of sorts. Honourable mention to Suzanne, my simplicity sister, who suggested TIDDA, which means sister in an Australian aboriginal language, and to Eleanor, a friend and faithful reader, who suggested Grandmother Fox, a mythical figure in indigenous stories of Turtle Island.

All three contest entrants will receive an I'm-not-yet-sure-what by mail at some point down the road, when the exact right thing crosses my path. It's out there somewhere!

In the meantime, Cornelia has withstood some pretty heavy rain storms and is doing a fine job of protecting the corn tops, though some of them are a bit worse for sparrow wear. Hopefully we'll have some nice full cobs in about a month's time!

Today's harvest...

The fourth sister...

Yesterday when I went out to water our tomato plants, I realized that the sparrows were eating the tops of the corn plants. Until I figured out what was happening last year, the tops were mostly gone, and I wasn't very happy with the birds. The cobs of corn ended up pretty stunted, too, though they tasted delicious!

So I got creative with some old clothes, a paper bag, and a too small hat and made a fourth sister to stand among the other three sisters that brilliant Indigenous peoples knew all about planting together: corn, beans, and squash. (If you've followed these moodlings you might recall that I've moodled about them before.) I'm curious to see how long it will take for a bird to sit on top of the lady's hat.

Hopefully madame scarecrow will keep this year's planting as the nicest one yet. I did things right this year -- the corn sister got enough of a head start over the squash and bean sisters for all of them to grow well together. Last night we had cheese stuffed fried squash blossoms for supper, yum. And we're looking forward to some good feeds provided by all three sisters, God and weather willing.

One minor problem: I'm not sure what name to give the extra sister in the three sisters' patch. My cousin made me laugh with her scarecrow's name, which echoes a line from Copa Cabana, a Barry Manilow dance tune we liked when we were kids -- "Her name is Lola, she is a scarecrow" ("was a showgirl" is the actual lyric...). 

I'm not that clever... so let's have a Name the Scarecrow Contest. Send me your suggestions, I'll pull one out of a hat, and the winner will receive... I dunno -- a dinner invitation to a harvest supper? A shipment of fresh garden produce in the fall? Some sort of small surprise. Anyway, I'd love to hear from any of my readers who have ideas. You can leave a comment below, or send a quick email to simplemoodler@ gmail.com.

2019 garden report

You know it's been a busy summer

 when there haven't been regular garden updates in my moodlings. 

So to make up for it, here's my single 2019 garden report, 

posted on a rainy Friday morning with pictures from earlier in the week.

2019 has definitely been a year for flowers.

I've never had dahlias like these, or sweetpeas. 

Our "sunrise" rosebush hasn't stopped blooming!

It seems they all like cool and rainy weather,

and we've had no shortage of either in 2019.

It also helped that the feet of our sweetpeas 

are shaded by carrots that seem to have done very well this year.

Unfortunately, 2019 has also been the year of slugs and voles.

My poor kohlrabi and some beets look like lace,

and between the slugs and the sparrows, 

our peas didn't amount to more than two feeds (out of 30 sq ft).

The lettuces and chard went to pieces, pretty much.

I'm afraid that next year I'll have to put up a scarecrow 

and spend my beer on the slugs, 

much as I'd rather drink it myself!

(They'll die very happy!)

I had a dozen cabbages to start with, 

but voles ate out the roots of five of them

before I understood what was going on.

Thanks to serious vigilance with BTK,

a yeast-based organic treatment

for dealing with cabbage moths,

I still have seven cabbages left, 

and managed to freeze 18 500 mL servings

of cauliflower. We ate our broccoli as it matured,

and when I didn't pull out the rest of the plants,

they went to flower, much to the joy of local bees!

I started my onions from seed back in March,

and they've done very well -- the slugs don't like them! 

We also have some really nice leeks, 

even though my seed packet said 2005 on the back 

and I didn't think they'd come up at all.

Also grew some hard neck garlic for the first time, 

and it did very well. I'll be sure to plant more this fall.

I wish I had planted more pepper and pansy pots.

(Maybe that could be turned into a tongue twister...)

On Mother's Day weekend, Lee rebuilt our cold frame, 

and as I'd already planted lettuce elsewhere, 

I put the three sisters in it. We've had two lovely feeds of corn,

but, as you can see, the scarlet runner and purple peacock beans

 got so heavy, they pulled the corn down!

 I'm not sure what happened to the 2000-year-old squash plants,

 but I'm guessing the slugs got them too, sigh.

Fortunately, a few spaghetti squash have their own space elsewhere.

There will be lots of fava (broad) beans if it doesn't freeze too soon,

but my snow peas seem to have gotten lost in them somehow.

I had thought they'd do well climbing the walls, but they kept climbing

into the beans. Next year the snow peas will get their very own dedicated boxes.

Or maybe I'll just plant more broad beans because my family really loves them!

Should have taken this picture BEFORE I picked. 

Our bush beans turned out really well this year 

in spite of slug bites here and there. My best friend

gave me a bean mix that included Kentucky blue,

yellow wax, and these purple ones.

I love colourful produce!

Including these black cherry tomatoes. 

(Forgot to take a picture of the red and gold ones!)

I spent a fair bit of time with my 94-year-old friend, Ralph, this summer,

and he gave me several pointers on how to grow tomatoes,

but I'm afraid I didn't listen to some of what he told me. 

With our weather being so unpredictable in this era

of climate emergencies, I decided not to prune anything 

so that in the event of a hailstorm, at least 

some of the fruit will be sheltered by foliage.

These two strawberry beds were transplanted just this spring, 

and I'm delighted how well they've filled out.

I'm hoping frost will hold off, as they're flowering like mad right now,

and producing the odd humungous strawberry.

I'd also like the cucumbers to have a bit more time, 

as they've been really slow thanks to the chilly weather,

and they're loaded with the possibility of pickles at the moment.

Everything has been a bit slow this year -- I've never found myself 

still picking raspberries at the end of August before!

I am grateful that so much of my knowledge about gardening

 has come to me from family members and friends like Ralph

 Even the internet is helpful on occasion. 

But I suspect more of what I know has come from trial and error. 

Next year, I will definitely be doing some things differently. 

But in the meantime, our freezers are filling

with good things from the back yard, 

so I won't complain too much about my mistakes with our 2019 garden. 

I'll just put in an order for a little more sunshine next year!