Vegetable garden

The deer fence that we put up in May seems to be doing its job well.  No deer damage or rabbit nibbles in evidence!

The potato plants have sprouted out of the hills and are growing well. The 3 spaghetti squash plants that I started from seeds in April (which I had collected from a spaghetti squash that we ate for supper this winter) are slowly growing.   The 3 zucchini plants that I planted out seem to be in limbo and don't show any growth yet.  (I hope that the 'Miracle Grow" that I put on everything a few days ago will make a difference.)
The 6 tomato plants (against the fence ) are all doing well and I am anxious to see which variety will do best. We have 1 Health Kick, 1 Super Fantastic, (wonder if it will live up to that name?)  1 Bush Champion, 1 Husky Red (it already has 2 small tomatoes on it) and a Lemon Boy (which gets sweet yellow tomatoes.)  The cherry tomato is growing in a large pot on the deck.  The competition has begun!!!

Giant rhubarb

The 3 rhubarb plants (which came up many weeks ago and have been here much longer than we have!) are huge and last week I cut 18 stems off them and baked 3 strawberry rhubarb pies! They turned out really well, if you don't count the mess they made at the bottom of the oven! :)

The vegetable seedlings are all sprouting now too. The first to sprout were the radishes. There are also a half dozen spinach plants that must have self seeded because they popped up in strange places around the garden and have already grown 3 or 4 inches tall (8 to 10 cm). (And one has even sprouted in a flower bed!)  The spinach seeds that I planted myself a few weeks ago are also up, but are quite tiny in comparison.

We somehow have 3 green onions that stayed in the ground all winter and have grown to an edible size already. The ones that we planted this year are only about 2 inches tall (5 cm, in case you think in metric! :)
But its gratifying to see that things are growing!
It never ceases to amaze me each year how a person can put a few seeds into the ground and for such little work, can get such a wonderful and bountiful harvest!

I can't forget to mention the chives! We have a huge clump of chives in the veggie garden that comes up as soon as the snow is gone and it is one of the very first things to turn green. It is a pleasure to go out and cut down a few fresh chives for a salad or to put in an omelet when everything else in the yard is still brown with little signs of life!  Chives are also self seeders and we have 3 or 4 chives plants in other locations, too. One huge chive plant is growing in my flower bed near the birdhouse, and 2 are growing under the deck stairs, just a few steps outside the door. It doesn't require a lot of effort harvest them, just snap off a few leaves and they quickly grow more all summer long.

Tiny strawberry plants, next to rhubarb. We are using grass clippings as mulch here.

We bought 10 new strawberry plants at the farmer's market today for $1.00 each. My diligent husband went out and hoed the chickweed which was trying to take over the strawberry bed, then planted the little strawberry plants into the ground. (I wonder if the fact that he wanted to go golfing tonight had any bearing on his helpfulness?  - "Whatever it takes!" I say....  :)


Tiny evidence of dill is showing, as well as tiny lettuce seedlings and miniature swiss chard. The carrots are being elusive, but I don't think they will be far behind.

This year we decided we would skip the battle to try and get the broccoli and cauliflower bedding plants to grow into anything worthwhile. We had such tremendous luck most years growing broccoli, cauliflower, and brussel sprouts as well when we gardened in northern Manitoba! Our garden there got a huge amount of sunlight and we harvested broccoli until the frost came.  The brussel sprouts did extremely well also and doesn't mind the cold weather in late September, in fact, I believe it helps the yield! But here in our central Alberta garden we have too many beautiful lush spruce trees around the garden providing shade. I guess we could always cut them down, but I really hate to do that! Some of them are over 20 years old now and very tall and beautiful.  So, we'll just have to make due!

Tomatoes, Potatoes, Chives and Onion sets

Vegetable garden and pond

Finally Mother Nature has taken pity on us and eradicated the remains of the last snowstorm that she hit us with on May 4th.  Monday, May 3rd started out as a warm, relatively sunny day, then some much needed rain rolled in late in the afternoon. The rain started as we were driving west on Hwy 11 towards Red Deer for our "date night".  (Went to see the movie by the same name, LOL! ) It started raining here quite heavily not long after we returned from Red Deer later that evening. The wind picked up shortly thereafter and was driving the rain almost horizontally out of the northwest.

During the night we heard the frozen sleet against the windows and woke up the next morning to a winter style of blizzard in progress! The cold and storm continued until for the next 3 days!!!

Saturday evening we worked on the vegetable garden, adding some compost from the rich layer at the bottom of our compost pile. We planted two rows of onion sets and 7 hills of red potatoes (which had grown very long eyes already during the last few weeks while stored in the house.)

One thriving bit of greenery is the chives plant! If you want a sure thing which will sprout early and give some greenery try planting a chives or two.  We have been harvesting it for over a week already and using it in salads and a stir fry!  We have one rogue chive plant that sprouted by the deck stairs and it rarely gets much rain or water, but it still grows valiantly and gives us fresh chives for most of the summer.

We have decided to build a permanent 6 foot wire fence around the veggie garden this year to keep out the deer, instead of the plastic fencing we usually erect in the spring and remove in the fall....  A project to add to the "To Do" list.

Deck pots being hauled in and out every day...

I have been hauling plants in and out of the house almost every day (except during the snowstorm of course!) to start hardening them off to eventually plant them outside. There are over 30 pots and I admit I'm getting a little tired of dragging them in and out, but the weatherman says that by Wednesday of this week ( May 12) the night time temperatures should stay above zero. Hopefully by then I can leave all the plants out on the downstairs deck all night without fear of frost. If they are kept close to the house they should survive even a -2C night.

(But then again, last year I thought the same thing! Big mistake!  My 3 week growth on my dahlias, my 10 baby squashes and some of the geraniums froze pretty badly.... Can't totally trust Mother Nature!)

I have 3 pots of dahlia's which I planted in pots in March all of which are over 24 inches tall now. (I dug the tubers out of the flower beds in early October once the frost had killed the dahlia tops and I stored the tubers in bags of peat moss in the laundry room.  I have had these red cactus dahlia tubers for 6 years now and they are just as beautiful every year!)

There are 2 pots of canna lilie, 2 pots of calla lilies, a dozen pots of geraniums and various pots of flower seedlings ( lavatara, bachelor buttons, and some puny portulaca) in my living room, as well as 4 pots of tomatoes and 3 pots of white tuberous begonias. They are outside on the balcony off the living room right now soaking up the cool morning sunshine.

I planted a few other seeds that have not germinated yet, some which were planted in early April, so they likely won't sprout. ( Bad luck with the Red Durango Marigolds, the hollyhocks and the castor bean seeds. I also tried growing bartlett pear seeds without success.)

Last year we had a tomato plant called Black Krill which had the ugliest looking blackish red tomatoes, but they were plentiful and very tasty! We saved a few of the seeds from one of the tomatoes on a square of paper towel wrapped in a baggy. I planted the seeds recently and they sprouted over the weekend! I now have 5 scrawny little Black Krim seedlings of which I hope at least 2 or 3 mature into a decent sized plant.  (My sister-in-law wants a couple if they survive.)

Today I plan on transplanting 6 little 2 inch Velvet Blue petunia plants which I bought for 99 cents each on Saturday. I usually stay away from petunias because everyone else usually plants them (sounds a little perverse, I know) plus the deer around here love them! But I have discovered a product called "Plantskyd" that you can spray on your plants every 2 or 3 months which the deer don't like and it saved my lilies last year from being 'deer lunch" as usual. ( It was the first year since we had moved here 3 years previously that I got to enjoy my lilies blooming for more than a day before the deer discovered them and they got eaten!) More about deer later!

We also cleaned out our little goldfish pond this weekend, and refilled it with clean water. The birds love it! They drink the water and bathe on the edge of the pond regularly! Even our cat will go and take a drink. We over wintered our 7 goldfish in an aquarium in the laundry room.  They have grown quite a bit and are ready to go out in the pond now.  More about the pond and goldfish maintenance later, too!