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!

Good tired

It's been a week of hard work to put in the garden and get the yard in shape. At the end of every day, I drag myself into the house to put myself to bed. But my Tai chi through the winter has paid off in that I have yet to be stiff from all the digging, hauling and planting... just my feet are tired!

Here's what's been happening in our yard...

The tulips I dreamed of all winter did not disappoint...

The Emily Carr rosebush that Lee gave me 

for my birthday started to bloom...

My generous guy also built and installed two raised bed boxes

(for the pumpkins and zucchinis that need more space 

than our back garden has to offer) and he also 

moved two yards of compost around...

Jay's Mother's Day present found a home among the flowers...

The vegetable garden was planted 

and staked, ready for tall stuff like 

scarlet runner beans and snow peas.

I just need to spread fresh straw for 

pathways and strawberries...

And there's been garden salad every night...

It feels good to know that everything is finally planted, our greenhouse is empty and shut down until September, and we're just waiting for sun, rain and the growth of good things. I love this season of great potential and God's beauty ever ancient and new. To all my fellow gardeners, blessings on your efforts!

Garden moodlings and miracles

I'm tired. Good tired. I haven't been moodling here very much of late as it has been a week or two of serious gardening -- taking all the plants from the greenhouse (except for a dozen or so tomato plants to be given away) and transplanting them into the soil in various parts of the yard. They all have their homes now, and pretty much everything is in place except for peas and beans, which I'm holding back by two weeks as I don't want them to be ready for picking while we're on vacation. Here are some pictures from today:

Mostly tomatoes, with a few eggplants and peppers 

thrown in for the fun of it... and straw in between the boxes

thanks to my friend, Mark, and the local tobogganing hill...

cucumbers with trellis, thanks to my hubby...

tomato seeds planted March 2nd,

already fruiting, the first ones we'll eat...

Brussels sprouts, also planted March 2nd... 

an experiment...

carrots, planted one month ago today...

and we've already had a few good feeds of spinach...

My moodling as I work in the garden (musing, doodling -- where my mind goes) has been tied up in amazement and wonder at how things grow. Seeds are miracles. Hopefully, now that everything is planted, the rains will come -- and that's a miracle, too. 

But my best miracles are still my husband and kids. What do you consider your best miracles today?

2000-year-old squash and other stories

Lee and I were marveling this weekend at how many garden renos we've completed already this year. Sometimes, April and May are a write-off when it comes to gardening, but June 1st has arrived with everything in the ground this year. I guess you could call this my earliest garden report ever!

We've been eating some pretty colourful lettuce of late...

With the real water (rain) that finally came down on the weekend, 

purple carrots are starting to make an appearance. I've never

grown them before, and they're up sooner than their orange mates.

Our cucumbers are showing up, too. 

Lee mounted some old trellis for them to climb...

Broad beans...

potatoes... with a mound of dirt in the middle, ready for when

they need to be hilled. We had to do a bit of research on

how to hill potatoes grown in raised bed boxes.

This year I'm managing to keep ahead of the cut worms that love my onions.

My neighbour is having a harder time with her cut bunny, 

a local jackrabbit who loves her unfenced garden. 

Brings Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit to mind, 

though Olga isn't nearly as scary as Mr McGregor!

Here come the pumpkins! Half Moons and Sweetie Pies.

I think they'll be happy in their double deep box, 

especially since it got a big share of compost.

The strawberries have thrown their flowers up in the air 

in exaltation ever since we got rain Saturday night!

I learned an important lesson about growing seedlings this year. 

Thought I'd be smart and use my own compost enriched soil, 

which worked well enough until the seedlings reached a certain size 

and started to look a little sickly, probably because there's so much clay in our soil. 

Now I understand why my super-gardener aunt uses potting mix 

to start her seedlings -- they look healthier by garden transplant time.

These plants are recuperating just fine now that they're in full garden soil.

I'm guessing this will be the first oxheart tomato that we eat in 2015.

Saskatoon berries and raspberries are coming along just fine...

and on Saturday, Lee and I installed six new blueberry bushes 

where we removed the dead mugo pine and other half-dead looking shrubs.

I love the idea of having shrubs that will provide food as well as beauty.

The stepping stones make it so easy to water my planter box, which holds

some of my Dad-in-law's baby marigolds that grew from seed. 

Can't wait to see them flower!

My goal to always have something interesting blooming in the front yard

might just come true this year. The tulips have been going steady since April 29th,

and now the perennials are kicking in -- cornflowers, anemones, and day lilies.

And my birthday dahlia, thanks to Stan and Charleen!

I'm posting this picture and planning to take updates on the first of each month.

Watch this space grow!

What about the 2000-year-old squash, you ask? Well, last fall, my daughter and her boyfriend attended a workshop on small scale farms, local food, and the importance of seed-saving to preserve genetic diversity. One of the presenters told how some squash seed had been discovered in an earthenware jug that had been buried some 2000 years ago. The archaeologists who found it were delighted to discover that the seed was still viable -- and the presenter offered workshop participants some seeds taken from squash grown from the 2000-year-old seed. Christina and Landon brought home two "great-grandchildren" seeds of the orginal for me, and wouldn't you know it, of all the squash seeds I planted this year, the 2000-year-old variety were the first two up! Here's one below. I have no idea what the fruit will be like, but God- and weather-willing, we'll see! (And if they're good, I'll have seeds to share...)

If I'm missing in action when it comes to these moodlings, you know where to find me! Happy gardening!

That was a whole shootload* of work...

My hubby, who never swears, shocked me a little on Saturday when he used the above phrase (*cleaned up for public consumption) to describe what we've been doing these past two weekends. It was a shootload of work, but now I have the garden of my dreams!

The dream itself came eight years ago during my Master Composter/Recycler course. One of the presenters was Ron Berezan, The Urban Farmer. I'd never heard of raised bed gardening (or many of the fancy terms he used, like permaculture) up to that point, and was gardening in rows like my parents and grandparents. When Ron talked about how he raised food on his city lot, it made more sense than what I was doing. I was an instant convert, and signed out library books and started implementing some of the gardening practices Ron had mentioned. In doing so, our yields increased, and my hubby became a convert, too.

And now we're finally getting our garden to where I've always dreamed it could be. The soil for our raised beds is boxed in, preventing it from washing away or becoming compacted along the paths. The weeds that grow on the pathways won't be climbing up the sides and mixing in with the plants, and the soil above ground warms sooner and drains better. The pictures below tell the story of two weekends of good, hard labour.

First, we went out to the garden to plot how many garden boxes we would need to fill our space and still leave room to work near the compost bins.

After concluding that 17 more should suffice, we visited our local hardware stores for some 16 foot long floor joist boards, and bought the straightest ones we could find. Then we helped the guys at the store to cut our boards into 3 foot and five foot lengths using the big power saw, and carted home the pieces in our car. We took two weekends to do it, half at a time.

Below, Lee is cutting our 2x2s that will brace the corners of the boxes.

We developed a system as we went, 

doing a bit of pre-drilling and counting out screws (9 per corner).

It became like a choreography,

and by the time we had made our first ten boxes, 

we could finish assembling one in under ten minutes.

I timed us!

Here, we've got three sides of a box together,

and I'm dancing it around so we can add the fourth.

One more side to go on this one.

Below is last weekend's work set in place.

Here are the first three boxes we made this Saturday,

waiting to be placed.

Once they were all assembled, the "fun" of placing them began.

Lee amazed me with his ability to level the boxes.

He'd shovel dirt paths through my old raised beds, 

and I'd think, "There's no way this box will sit right."

But I'd set the level, and more often than not, it sat straight!

By Saturday at 6 p.m., we had all 17 new boxes placed and 

partly filled with garden dirt. I couldn't lift another shovelful, I was so tired!

The 3 yards of City of Edmonton compost (ordered from a local landscaping co.)

arrived on Saturday but had to wait until Sunday.

We covered the pile below with a shiny silver tarp, 

and joked that it was our own personal UFO.

Sunday after church and brunch, Lee moved wheelbarrows full of compost,

and our kids and I helped dig it into the soil in the boxes. 

With four of us working,

we got it all done in just under three hours. 

Thanks, kids! We celebrated by going for icecream.

And here it is, the garden of my dreams. 

Just waiting for future occupants.

Definitely a shootload of work, but so worth it when we eat fresh vegetables later this year!!

And all because of a dream that began eight years ago in my Master Composter/Recycler course...

Things are shaping up

My farm boy husband amazes me. 

He's the hardest working guy I know.

 Here's a picture of him, back on March 11th, 

getting my tomato planters ready to go.

Two weeks later, he invented a little "greenhouse" 

for the tomato plants I started in our green room.

Below is the finished product.

See those happy tomato plants now? 

On Saturday, before I even got out of bed, the amazing man dropped our daughter off at school for a drama rehearsal and stopped at the hardware store for a load of boards to make me six raised bed planters for our garden. By one o'clock, we had picked up materials for another six raised beds. By four o'clock that afternoon, he and my dad had them put together (Thanks, Dad!), and by nine o'clock last night, they were all set up in the garden. What I thought might take us a week took him only two days! My man moved more dirt and compost around than I can believe. Just two more weeks and our tomato plants will be even happier in their raised bed boxes! 

Strawberries and onions will be living here soon,

and carrots, beets, kale and chard in the boxes to the left.

And, of course, none of this would be possible without

my amazing husband. Thank you, Lee!

Our yard has gone through huge changes since we moved in almost nine years ago. 

In a few weeks I'll post some amazing before and after pics!

P.S. Happy Compost Awareness Week!!