What’s Been Going On
November 14, 2008
I’ve been slowly emerging from my gardening depression this year. It started with striped cucumber beetles at the beginning of June:
Continued with some black spot on my apple tree at the beginning of July:
And capped off with devastating early blight on my tomatoes (it was so bad I couldn’t bring myself to take photographic evidence).
On a semi-happier note, I managed to harvest one overflowing bowl of tomatoes (though it was all at once instead of my envisioned continuous seasonal harvest):
Not that I know which tomato is which in this photo, or even my garden. The Sharpie marker had worn off the plastic label and I didn’t care enough to dig out my vegetable garden grid:
Here’s what it looked like back on July 2nd when I was still trying and before it all went to hell:
There’s my bean pole trellis, my soaker hose that’s since busted and my handy twine grids that I think I’ll do next year. Next year I’ll grow tomato plants in my satellite garden or in large pots on the deck – no more in this garden above as the soil is now diseased. I’ll also be taking down the concrete reinforcement grids next spring to set up a twine trellis for beans and peas. Yum, yum, 8′ of beans and 8′ of peas.
So, what have I been up to lately? Well, there was Halloween, a day that I’m crazy about:
Where we carved up these great little pumpkins that I grew called “Jack O’Lantern”:
I loaned a herb book to my favorite local restaurant that I’ve offered to start herbs for. I prepared their herb garden out back for next spring by topping it up with a blend of organic sheep manure and garden soil.
I brought in some herbs and plants from the chilly outdoors to overwinter inside. Left to right is Vick’s Plant, a white datura, lemon oregano, rosemary, and a poinsettia from last Christmas.
I bought a couple of books, one called Four Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman (who coincidentally is married to Barbara Damrosch, who’s book, The Garden Primer, was one of the first few gardening books I bought) and The Heirloom Tomato by Amy Goldman that made me salivate and wish it was spring so I could start a new batch of tomatoes. Truly, that book is gorgeous!
I’m getting interested in extending my growing season, the reason why I bought Four Season Harvest, so that I could learn more about building a cold frame and the types of vegetables I could grow in it. I’m now being exposed to new and exciting vegetables I’ve never heard before or know little about: chicory, endive, mizuna, salsify, mâche, and claytonia.
I’ve also purchased another 4′ wide chrome shelf for my gardening activities as my previous one was re-assigned as storage in the kitchen. I want to start growing some lettuce and mustard greens in my basement for the coming winter months and still need to find the chains for my fluorescent lights.
I saved a lot of seeds this year: cucumber, pumpkin, tomato (not from my diseased crop), coneflower, dill, garlic chives, and butternut squash. Somehow, my pole beans were crossed and 95% of the seeds I saved were white instead of the Cherokee Trail of Tears true-to-type black.
And my worms have been indoors in the basement for the last two months and they are happily munching along.
Looking forward to winter sowing and 2009 catalogues!
Mint Central
June 12, 2008
The Mojito mint cuttings I put in water back on May 28th have all rooted! Woohoo!
The roots looked eerie in the water of their popsicle-stick tray:
Time to pot them up and spread the joy of the Mojito mint! Also, I should divide the 1-gallon pot of Mojito mint into another pot as it has really bushed out.
I must admit that I’ve kind of gone mint crazy this year and have been searching for new and exciting plants. Two so far have made it into my garden this year: Fruit Sensations and a mystery mint.
I bought the Fruit Sensations mint from Richter’s last weekend:
And the mystery mint came home with me when I was weeding Ottawa Hortiphilia’s flower and veggie beds while she’s been on holiday. She let me sneak a few cuttings of mint from her garden, a super-stong mint:
Woo! It’s way potent and quite tall for a mint. It’ll be perfect for candying and putting in my iced tea.
The Busiest Weekend Yet
June 9, 2008
Talk about hot and sticky weather! I took a road trip with my sister and nephew down to Brampton this weekend and the humidity was a little unbearable.
On the way back, we stopped off at Richter’s Herbs, the mecca for Canadian herbs. I was pretty excited to check out their plants for sale and entered their stinking-hot greenhouse in anticipation.
Oh man, someone really needed to crack a window in there as I started sweating immediately upon entering. It was too bad as it would have been nice to stay longer but it was just too ridiculously hot and humid. I headed towards the mint section, specifically looking for the New Westerfield hybrid mints, a trademark of mint-crazy Jim Westerfield in Illinois, USA.
Mint does not come true from seed (meaning it may or may not have the same characteristics as the parent plant) and the best way to ensure that you have the right type is to get a cutting or buy a plant. Since I wanted to get a mint that would do well candied in a glass of iced tea or lemonade, I decided to buy a Fruit Sensations mint. At Richter’s, I kept lightly rubbing the leaves to smell the subtle differences between the different plants, however, at some point all the smells got jumbled together. I do have to say that Sweet Pear (one of the first ones I sniffed) didn’t really smell as much like pear as I’d hoped and Jim’s Fruit mint has a real in-your-face minty scent.
I also picked up some Thai basil, Vietnamese coriander, lime balm and Zorba Red oregano, an ornamental. The only thing I regret not looking for was zaatar, a Middle Eastern herb used in hummus.
Of course there were seeds:
and gifts:
We packed up our herb plants, got back in the air-conditioned car and tootled off to the Cottage Gardener!
We happened to catch them on their last day of selling plants to the public. There was a little nursery with all of their plants for sale:
We did a quick tour of their isolation beds, separated by distance and trees to reduce cross-pollination.
Since Sunday was their last day, they were going to plant all of the plants that were left-over from their stand. They also get late frost in their area and were waiting until this week to start planting out into their isolation beds.
Here’s a funny little story:
My dad was one of the founders of the Organic Crop Producers & Processors (OCPP) back when we were growing up. My sister, then a teenager, designed the logo. When I checked the Cottage Gardener’s website for their address on my phone, I noticed they had been certified organic by OCPP so I told them the story about our family and how my sister had created the logo. Well, they were so happy to meet her they gave her a Djena Lee’s Golden Girl tomato plant, an heirloom tomato plant chosen by Slow Food USA as part of its Ark of Taste. This is the first year that the Cottage Gardener had this variety and it was so new that it wasn’t in the catalogue yet. So of course, I wanted one too so we bartered and my sister and I did some Inuit throat singing for a Djena Lee for me. I have to say that was the first time I’ve ever throat sang for a plant!
I’ll have a report on the Kemptville Farmer’s Market and Veg Stock as soon as I relax a bit from our whirl-wind trip.
Mojito Mint Update
May 30, 2008
My mojito mint plant is doing super-duper.
It’s doing so well, in fact, that I decided to try my hand at propagating some mint cuttings. I clipped off some of the longer stems, nipped off a couple of the lower leaves and stuck them in a popsicle tray filled with water:
Hopefully, in a couple of weeks, they’ll have enough roots that I can pot them up. So exciting!
The Mojito Mint is Alive!
April 24, 2008
I wasn’t sure if the Mojito Mint that I bought from Richter’s Herbs last year would come back despite it being a perennial herb that is hardy in Canadian zones 5 – 9. I had potted it up in a 1 gallon, weed barrier-lined pot and dug it into my vegetable garden to overwinter. Once all the snow had melted off the garden, I started to take pictures. Here it is on April 11:
Not too bad – there are a few green leaves there.
On April 17th:
It’s coming along and has a few more sprigs.
On April 20th:
And here it is as of yesterday:
It looks like it’s going to make a triumphant return and I’m looking forward to harvesting the sprigs to make delicious Mojitos this summer.
