Welcome Summer!

I know I'm a little late on the season but I've been a bit preoccupied - I work for PRIDE Toronto and this past weekend was our annual parade and festival. For most of the month of June I am tethered to a computer, planning and organizing the musical stages that are a large part of the festival. This year we had six stages and the amount of email generated in getting those organized is mindboggling!I love my work but the down side of course is that there is little time for much else just when the season starts. Thankfully my gardens are in full swing and the daily breaks to weed and water act as a much needed respite from the constant stream of information I channel. So even tho I haven't had the time to post much, my gardens have been chugging away and I've even managed to take some photos of the progression. The festival is now complete for this year, I have no voice and some serious blisters on my feet but my veggies are kicking in and my gardens have welcomed me back with open arms and fresh food.

Everything is doing well in the backyard garden. The tomato plants are huge and bearing lots of fruit.

The peppers are lagging a bit- they love the heat and we haven't had any consistant hot spells yet.

The zucchini are flowering and the patty pan squash should follow suit any day now.

The cukes are also making themselves known and I have some lemon cukes snuck in places including beside the compost - these were a gift from ellieT of Wet My Plants along with a much appreciated moonflower- my favourite flower of ever!


Potatoes in the bucket are coming along nicely although I think I should have added more soil. They haven't started flowering yet so no point in looking for early potatoes sadly.


The final addition was 8 brussel sprout plants I added a few weeks ago- I haven't had much luck growing them in the past but I love them so much I decided to give it another shot- I spaced them well, in a spot that gets a fair bit of sun.


The clear winners so far are the bush beans!
Although I lost all but one of the wax plants, I have a nice bunch of green beans starting to produce and we had the first bunch for dinner last night!


Up on the deck the tomatoes are also coming along nicely- I don't have any ripe fruit yet but it won't be long! Everything up here is exposed to more heat so the peppers are a bit advanced to their in ground counterparts- there are already tiny peppers forming on some. I think I may have been duped on this tomato tho:

It's a Baxter's Bush Cherry that I bought as a seedling but so far it it neither bush-like nor cherry-like and it's threatening to take over!

The carrots in a bin are a bit thin at the moment but making progress. I'm planning on filling the matching bin with some black radish and beet seeds, now that I have time!


The roof squash are loving it up there and I'm excited to watch their progress



I read lot of gardening blogs and I find it very interesting what's growing at any given time in different areas of the continent. Obviously the southern US is always ahead of me but I'm often surprised to read what's ready elsewhere. I know some gardeners growing north of me are already eating new potatoes and baby zucchini (jealous!), where as some gardeners quite a bit south of here were only planting beans a few weeks ago and mine have been in the ground since the first week of May! Is it due to micro climates, using greenhouses, or just preference? What's ready now in your garden?