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?

Progress

I wrote this post last week only to have it swallowed up by the Friday the 13th blackhole. Now we have cool temps and rain again but at least I had one week to get few things begun.


At long last, the weather is cooperating, the Election is over (hideous as the results maybe) and I've finally been able to get going on my gardens. It's been a rough start this year; poor germination, lousy weather and a spider mite invasion have left me light years behind where I was this time last year. I'm not sure what's causing the issues with germination but less than half of my seeds took this year. I do find it odd that this is the first year I've ever purchased proper seed starting mix- normally I use whatever soil I have on hand with some compost or worm castings thrown in and everything seeds just fine. Based on the rate of germination I'll not waste money on seed starting mix again.

The real disaster however was the spider mites. By the time I realized I had them it was a full on infestation. I had to discard the two tomatoes I overwintered and the accidental tomatillos; they were less than peak from growing in unsupplimented light and they didn't stand a chance. The new seedlings were also hit but I appear to have caught them in time that an intense regime of homemade insecticide using neem among other things seems to have done the trick. They still look rather pathetic tho. I have most of them potted up and outside now and they appear to be thriving. Fortunately I still had a large number of seedlings in the mini greenhouse and the mites didn't make it that far.

Things in the garden are coming along- I've only just planted my peas and beans but the composters are emptied and the gardens are prepped to go. I think I missed the window for rapini and other greens. I'll save them for a fall crop now which should make them last longer next winter.

My wish list is as usual bigger than the space I have to grow in but I've mapped out my veggie plot and think it will make the best use of my small space.

I've also started my potatoes in a pail again- this year I'm just using potatoes that sprouted on their own in the worm bin so I'm already seeing some action. I remembered to drill some drainage hole in the garbage can this time!


At the Hort sale last week I picked up a few things to add to my tiny flower gardens. For the Sun garden I purchased some Siberian Iris.


For the Shade garden, I got Virginia Bluebells:


And for the Woodland garden, I added a tiny Solomon's Seal to the trillums and foxglove.



Best of all, my bee nesting box finally arrived! It's rather industrial looking and we decided to mount it to the fence that ends in the middle of the veggie plot so the pollinatorswill have ample options to choose from . It's also tucked in beside one of the composters and less noticible this way; hopefully it will be left alone by passersby.













Not having a fenced-in yard is often a drawback. I've already had issue with off leash dogs doing damage to some of my gardens- my columbine, magenta violet and a swatch of ditch lilies all have been mangled in the past week but thankfully, they are bouncing back.

So things are slowly getting there. Now if only we get some sun!