Still awaiting spring

      We have had yet another storm, with 30 cm. of new snow, so the tiny signs of spring (can you see some crocus and other bulbs peeping out?) are now covered again. I got out last week and did a bit of raking on the south side of the yard, and pruning some evergreens to bring a bit more light in to the "Primuland" bed, just in the upper right of the photo.
      And then the snow came. The seeds in the house are coming along apace - I've pricked out about four dozen tomato plants and there are quite a few more to come.

       The peppers I was so proud about have come a bit of a cropper...I put the flats on the bottom shelf of my mini greenhouse in the living-room, under lights, and one of the cats decided that as it was on her level it must be a new kind of cat grass. Thus I've lost about half of one flat and a third of the other. She obviously didn't like the taste, because she just beheaded them or pulled them up - and left them. They still don't have true leaves so I can't prick them out yet - but I have put them up high and only have pots of seeds which haven't yet sprouted on that fateful bottom shelf.

       Here's the most recent snowfall. The sun is warmer now, so it's going fast, even though the temperature hasn't been above zero - much - since. I did get out to the polytunnel on Saturday to do a clear-out, dumping pots of dead plants and sorting all of the pots into sizes and shapes (round vs. square).  I found the temperature and humidity gauge in a trug and started to record the highs and lows as I did last spring. I will need to have some proof of above-zero in there at night before I dare to put any of the precious stuff indoors now, out there. I did use an electric heater in there last year, but it's not quite so crucial this time - no wedding flowers to grow!! 

        I put in this photo because I had left my rake in the south part of the garden and there it is - resting until the snow goes again.

Possibly Not Spring Quite Yet...

     The snow has (mostly) gone, and quite quickly, too, considering how much of it there was. But Spring is still being a bit coy. Today, for example, we have light freezing drizzle and a minus one big degree outdoors. I had erected my poly tunnel and put out some seedlings a few days ago but I brought them all back indoors yesterday. I suppose I could run a power cord and put the electric heater out there, but it seems like a recipe for conflagration or other disaster...  

     The crocus are doing their best to cheer me up, coming up everywhere under the viburnums - as soon as the snow cleared away they bloomed, the brave things. Some of the daffs and the tulips are poking up as well, but no sign of blooms as yet. Very sensible of them, I'm sure.
Some slugs of unmarried parents have nipped off my hellebore beside the front path - I saw the buds unfurling, went back the next day to trim off the last year's leaves and the buds were gone. I don't have slug pellets but I put down grit, and then put it around the new hellebores I planted in the front yard as well. (I hope the slugs are enjoying the freezing drizzle.) I am planning a trip to Veseys this afternoon and hope to get slug pellets there - or somewhere. They don't deserve beer.
    I have quite a few varieties of tomatoes started - I am going to try to beat the dreaded blight spores this year, including growing them in the poly tunnel in pots. If the Brits can do it, so can I! I got "Defiant" and "Sweet Million" at Veseys, "Sasha's Pride" and "Super Italian Paste" at West Coast Seeds, and Anne sent "Legend" and "Stupice". I have pricked out most of them, and have about a dozen of each. Anne will have to take quite a few - or we'll have to plough up the lawn.  I also have sweet peppers up, and am trying to grow quinoa - the first seeds I planted have germinated, but they got quite stretched indoors. I tried to pot some of them on, but they didn't have their first true leaves yet, and, combined with low light, they have all expired. I have started a few more!
    Anne has sent me some seeds of white plants from VanDusen Garden and I am putting two of them into the cold frame - now that it is out from under the snow. One of them needs 16 degrees ("Asarina procumbens") so I'll keep it in, but the other two are OK for outdoors - "Aquillegia alpina 'alba'" and "Cardiocrinum giganteum". Fingers crossed.

Harvest and storage time

I am already missing my wonderful tomatoes. I had plans to bring in a couple of plants and try to keep them producing for a bit longer, but - alas! - they were stricken with blight at the last and so came to quite an abrupt end. There are quite a few tomatoes in the freezer - the plants were quite productive when they were healthy - but it's not the same as going out and picking a few - or a lot - whenever you wanted to. I must try again with the blight-resistant varieties, and perhaps getting some growing in the greenhouse, next year.
I have closed in the ends of the greenhouse, and am moving annuals (that I think are worth saving) into pots and stashing them in there. And yesterday Anne and I constructed a cold frame, a veritable Rolls Royce of cold frames, with a cover made from poly-carbonate Tuftex. I have to stain it with Water Seal today, and then site it where the sun does shine, and fill it up. It's 5 feet by 3 (150 cm x 90 cm) and looks like it will house quite a bit.

I also made a vegetable storage bin - from jute and an old deep-freeze wire basket. It's full of carrots and damp sawdust, and is in the 'root cellar' - ie., the insulated garage.

Wire basket with jute bag, sewn to fit, inside. I got the jute as a remnant for $1. 

Carrots from a market, washed - and huge.

I used wood pellets for the sawdust - they were free as well.  I think I should look for more wire baskets!

Life begins....in June!

The newcomer - a rhododendron!

      I have reached the month in which I turn 60. I am quite contented with my life, compared to this time last year - and, in spite of having few dollars in my wallet I am finding life is good. Even great. How unexpectedly wonderful! I have always been a contented person, I think, but I have recently endured a lot of work-related stress and have come through it.  Life begins at 60? Who knew?
     Today I spent mostly in the vegetable garden. We have "boarded  in" three of the five beds, which means that there is more planting space. There are two beds which are - and will be for this growing season - just mounds. However, there are now three beds which are 1 metre wide and 10 metres long. The other two are just as long, but not so wide (yet). Today I specialized in onions - regular yellow, Spanish, and bunching - and I planted out the three pots of leeks which I had raised from seed. The leeks made four rows, each about 4 metres long. Mmm.
     I put all the tomato plants (except the Early Girl ones) out of the greenhouse, as I would like to harden them off. I want them in the ground soon. I have moved the hoops from the asparagus bed so I can cover the tomatoes with plastic and give them some shelter from the wind and a good warm start. We don't have any frost warnings for the next week, so this may be the propitious moment.
     I had planted zucchini seeds in the lasagne bed, and two of them have germinated. I may just put the seedlings I've raised into the other planting pockets in that bed. That will save space in the regular vegetable plot for other things. I put several more tatties into pots in the greenhouse, but I think that the rest will go into the ground. The ones I planted in the ground last week (they were Irish Cobblers) haven't shown themselves yet. We have had a cold and rainy week, which may have slowed things down. I have a few beans, and some carrots, peeking up.  Also another row of something which might be basil. I rather hope not, as I planted more of that today. (I certainly already have the memory of a 60-year-old.)
     In flower news, the white tree peony is blooming! The burgundy one is some days behind, and the pink one is suffering quite a bit - it has not put on growth like the others. It did have several suckers coming up from the root stock, which I have ruthlessly pulled away. I hope it manages to survive.
       I was listening to GQT today, and they talked again about the "Chelsea Chop" - pinching back late-blooming perennials by 1/3 to 1/2 to encourage bushing up. So I did some of the phlox and some of the sedum "Autumn Joy" - they especially recommended it, as it has a tendency to flop over. Mine certainly DOES. I hope this is the cure. I took the tips to the greenhouse and tried propagating them. Not the phlox of course. I have far too many of those.
     I have a three-day weekend, so I plan to garden and sew and generally make the most of it.

Too busy to post...

 The greenhouse, tidied up. Needs a few more shelves, and doors at both ends, I think, to get the breeze through. So, currently, the things in there are enjoying shelter but not exactly warm greenhouse conditions.
I have planted all the tomatoes out in the garden (except the 6 I plan to keep indoors, 2 Sweet Million, and 4 Early Girl). I need a couple of tomato cages and they will all be ready for the growing season. I also put in the ground cherries and the rhubarb in the lasagne bed yesterday, and planted carrots, more lettuce and spinach, and a short row of beets. I'm really getting into this succession planting lark.
I managed to get most of the plants from Veseys $2 sale, which had been soaking overnight, potted up, Now to wait until they are a bit bigger before putting them out in the garden beds.  Some of them looked quite healthy - and others are definite long shots.
We dug a trench in the western garden and put in the willow twigs - we have been keeping them in water, and the ones with their heads covered have done best. However, they apparently root readily anywhere so we are hopeful.

Must go arrange dinner, as we are at Small Halls tonight! Cynthia MacLeod, Tony McManus, and Nuala Kennedy.

Peony and Iris Time

We put the rest of the raspberry posts in on the weekend - we ran into some issues with the septic tile, which is lurking just 16 inches below the surface, so we decided to brace the posts, rather than putting in a middle one. I bought 12 big zinc screweyes and 200 feet of 12 ga. galvanized wire. It's chilly out again today, and rain is threatened for this afternoon, so I may not even get a sample wire put up today - and tomorrow I'm volunteering at the PGI (it's supposed to be sunny, drat) so I am cleaning house and doing some baking, as my sister arrives on Friday for a visit.
I ordered my rebar for the greenhouse - it comes in 20-foot pieces! but luckily they are going to cut them up into 2.5 foot pieces for me. They only had 6 pieces of conduit (I need 16) so I will pick it up in Summerside when I pick up Fred tomorrow after the golf. They have 25 pieces in stock at Kent in Summerside. They might have some more of the screweyes too. I need four more.

The burgundy tree peony is blooming (it didn't bloom last year) and it's gorgeous. It's also the first of the three to come out. The white one took a kicking from the snow and its trunk was broken (I must stake them next year), so it's just coming back, and no blooms this year. But the pink one has three buds as well. Last year I was a bit disappointed that they bloomed so early, but I'm pleased this year - they make a nice bridge to other, later blooms.

The white iris has been out for some time, but the other-coloured ones are not out yet. I have quite a few of those common blue-and-yellow ones to divide and move - and share - after they bloom.

I planted some more vegetable garden yesterday, 4 Sweet Million and 8 Early Girl tomatoes, 10 zucchini and 5 shallots. I have the other bed-and-a-half to prep. I put the other two Sweet Million in pots - I am hoping to be able to raise them in the greenhouse, and maybe some of the Early Girl as well (and extend the tomato season). I have found more asparagus coming up - there are now 6 plants (of the 10 I planted), and one of them is already branching.  When they get a bit of headway I hill them up with soil-and-manure. I don't want to fill in the whole trench, as I still have hope of the other 4 showing up.
I also planted some of the cleome I started from seed - I'm pulling out the forget-me-nots and weeds in the middle of the borders and plopping them in - they are still small but they seem vigorous. There are many more to go as well.
Helen gave me a bag of gladiolus that Veseys had given her and she didn't want, so I potted them up too. No more putting bulbs and corms in without starting first (in the spring, anyway. Wouldn't work with fall bulbs!!).
I had dropped in to the York Greenhouses on Tuesday and got three kinds of tomato plants (Sweet Million, Roma and Early Girl), two flats of impatiens (pink), lobelia (bush-type, white) and white begonia, with green leaves this time. I also got a flat of 6 amaranthus with burgundy leaves. The low stuff is for the edges of the borders, and the amaranthus is for a change from cleome!

Home and Garden

I've been clearing up in the garden and have come up with amazing numbers of tomatoes - naturally all the fresh eating ones are close to being finished, but the Roma ones are just getting going in earnest. Of course, we have already had frost episodes, so they don't have much time to ripen.
I went out on Saturday and collected a big green pickle bucket full of ripe and (mostly) not ripe ones, which I washed and separated into hopeful (for sitting around and turning red indoors) and hopeless. There were a LOT of green ones, so I looked up recipes and decided on green tomato chow.
The recipe called for a peck of green tomatoes. Now, I don't know how to measure a peck, but Fred found references on t'internet - one said a peck is 10.5 pounds and another said 12 pounds. I had just enough to come up the middle at 11.25 pounds. Sliced, salted and covered with water, and left them to sit overnight.
Next day, I chopped 5 pounds of onions (my hands still smell) and cooked them up. It made 11 of the big canning jars. Fred said we have to eat fish three times a week to use it all up.
I also found quite a few cucumbers - I had planted them next to the pumpkins, which of course took over, so I had no idea that any cucumbers had survived. I found a total of 11, and, as I had a recipe for mustard pickles which called for 12, I bought two and we chopped and readied the batch last night.
Since it's been so long since I've pickled, I made the classic mistake of putting the sauce on the vegetables, and, combined with high heat, the sauce promptly burned to the bottom of the pot! Dumped them out quite quickly, and, as the pot was BADLY burned, determined to try again tomorrow. Just as I was closing the fridge, I thought of the slow cooker - large capacity, boils liquids slowly - decided to give it a try. The whole batch didn't fit, but I put in what would, and turned it on to low. Got up at 4 and shut it off, and bottled this morning. They're dark, and quite runny - typical of slow cooking, no liquid gets boiled off.
I hope they're edible, and I still have some uncooked in the smaller pot to try in the traditional way tonight. The slow cooker made six large canning jars, and a sampler of about half a cup.
I'd like to try cucumber relish, but I wish that the recipes didn't make such a huge batch - if they don't turn out, you've invested a LOT of time and materials. The recipe I found called for celery, as well as cucumber, and I'm not sure that was a feature of the relish I had at Henry's. Didn't notice it, anyway.
The whole house smells of boiling vinegar, so perhaps I should take a break from all of this and clear up - we're hosting Thanksgiving dinner on the Saturday so some major cleaning is in order. And then salsa!