Tomatoes this year

This has not been the best summer for my tomato plants.  This year, I planted two variety of tomatoes - Caspian Pink tomatoes and Big Rainbow tomatoes.  I decided to try planting larger tomatoes rather than Cherry tomatoes like last year to give it a try.  I had a late start with starting the tomato seeds this year, so the seedlings were small to begin with at the beginning of summer.  The cool and wet summer weather we've been having didn't help either.  I took the plants till early August to form fruits.  

The tomatoes actually stayed green for a very long time, almost one month.  I think it was almost the beginning of September when the first tomato turned orange/red.  

 Unfortunately I think the tomato plants were blighted (late blight) so by the time the fruits were changing colour, some of the leafs and stems were starting to turn brown.  At the end of the season, we only got a handful of edible tomatoes, rather disappointing results from five tomato plants.  I did a bit of research and found some resources on how to prevent tomato blight.  I think the key will be in air circulation, as well as having variety of tomato species (going to plan some cherry tomatoes for sure), at which some species are more blight-resistant than others.  I will need to start the seeds much earlier next season to ensure the seedlings have plenty of time to develop before going outdoors.    

Also, some warmer summer weather would help as well (keeping my fingers crossed for next season).   

Here's a good link to some resources related to tomato blight: 

http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/factsheets/dc20.php

Tips for keeping garden pests away

And..... they are back (my nemeses - the squirrels).  They seem to have no fear of human what so ever and love to hang out on top of the backyard fence.  You actually have to run outside and stomp of the deck pretty hard and charge at them before they will start to run away.  

 

The latest casualty were the cucumbers.  They take perfect little cucumbers and shreds them to pieces and throw half of it on the ground..... 

I know it's the squirrels destroying the vegetables this year because I believe the family of raccoon in the neighborhood have moved away (they haven't been seen too often this summer).  I really don't know how to keep them away other than put cages around all my vegetables but that's rather unsightly.....  

Any one have some environmentally friendly & humane way to keep pests away?  I was browsing around and found this article - may have to try some of these methods next year... 

http://ca.shine.yahoo.com/blogs/shine-on/top-five-tips-keeping-garden-pests-away-191806583.html

Clematis

The clematis in the backyard this year is FINALLY growing into the shape I've been training it to.  The eventual goal is to have them grow onto the large tree trunk that's along the fence and covered by the beautiful purple flowers and foliage.  

I never know how to prune back clematis during the off season (Fall?  or Spring?).  So I did a little bit of research on the "inter-web" and found some useful links:

http://www.raymondevisonclematis.com/main/guidesPruning-simple.asp?a=1

http://www.finegardening.com/how-to/articles/clematis-pruning-guide.aspx

Also, I've been trying to figure out what kind of clematis this is as it was planted by the previous owners of the house.  After some research, I think this is the common "Clematis Jackmanii" - purple in colour and four-petal configuration.  

Spring Bulbs

 

Spring bulbs in the front yard have started to come up for a few weeks now.  This year, we have:

(Left above) Hyacinth (Orientalis Mix - various colours) - first ones out of the gate this year, very fragrant and beautiful colours.  The kids in the neighborhood seems to like them :) 

(Right above) Daffodil "Sir Winston Churchill" - these are beautiful as well as incredibly fragrant.  The only downside to them is that they are quite "head heavy", as they have double petals as well as multiple flowers per stem.  So if there's heavy rain fall, the think stems aren't actually strong enough to hold up the flowers and ends up snapping.  So this years these ended up as cut flowers I have in my house, which are perfect because they smell so nice! 

(Left above) Narcissi "Texas" - double petal yellow bright yellow daffodil.  Really gorgeous, strong stems.  

(Right above) Muscari "Armeniacum" - first year planting these.  Apparently they're also known as Grape Hyacinth.    They are low to the ground and have very pretty purple colour.  

 

(Left above) Orange tulips - we got incredibly lucky that the squirrels didn't get to these before they were in bloom.  Theses are not as orange in colour as I was hoping for, but still beautiful to look at :)

(Right above) And lastly, these beautiful little flowers (which I did not plant) came out again this year.  Last year I had a post just for this flower trying to see if any of my friends/family would be able to identify it.  This year I finally found out what they were called!!  These are "Puschkinia".  A flower named in honour of a Russian botanist.  

The only other bulb still yet to bloom are the Allium "Purple Sensation" also known as Dutch garlic.  I'm hoping in a week or two they will be in full bloom.  Can't wait! :)

Here's a link to a handy little bulb planting chart http://www.bhg.com/gardening/flowers/bulbs/planting-charts-for-spring-flowering-bulbs/  .  I'm already brewing some ideas about how to re-arrange some of these bulbs later and what to plant for next season.  

Seed starting 2013 and Frost Chart

I started looking at my calendar and realized that I really need to hurry up and begin starting some seeds for my vegetable gardens.  Compared to last year I am actually quite behind schedule so I need to get to work straight away if I want to have decent size plants to plant outside by the time we get our last frost here in Toronto.  (here's a handy Frost Chart for Canada: http://www.almanac.com/content/frost-chart-canada )

Luckily I've been collecting used food containers all winter so at least I can start the seeds using the wet paper towel method before I have a chance to go purchase and prepare other containers with potting soil etc for the seedlings.   

This year I plan on planting a lot of the same vegetables as last year and some new variety with seeds I purchased at the Canada Blooms show:

- Parisian Market Carrot

- Rosa Bianca Eggplant

- Caspian Pink Tomato

-Big Rainbow Tomato

- California Wonder Golden Pepper

I have never planted eggplants before, so that should be very interesting.  And I'm really looking forward to those Pink and Rainbow tomatoes, they are apparently of heirloom varieties and they have beautiful colours and distinctive/unique shape.  I'm also hoping that I'll have a better handle on how to space out plantings and replantings this year, so that for certain vegetables (i.e. lettuce) I can have a more manageable harvest where I harvest fewer plants at a time, but more continuously throughout the summer (instead of having 10 heads of lettuce at a time and having to wait a few weeks before the next harvest, I can harvest 3 hears of lettuce at a time, but on a weekly basis).  

Wish me luck! :) 

Seed starting chart

Here's a very useful chart I found online today from the Organic Gardening magazine.... it can help you figure out when to start your seeds depending on your vegetable types:

http://www.organicgardening.com/learn-and-grow/seed-starting-chart

Hopefully my vegetable garden this year will be as beautiful as this one I saw at the Canada Blooms show :) 

Fall cleanup

Last weekend I began doing some Fall garden cleanup.  Other than digging up the dead purple sand cherry plant and clearing away some other bits and pieces, I actually needed to clear up some room to plant the remainder of the perennials I bought from Northland Nursery several weekends ago.

As usual, as I dug through the yard I usually find some really random objects.  Sometimes I wonder if people just decide to throw ANYTHING into the ground to fill it out - oh here's a brick, let's toss it in... and here's a broken flower pot, let's toss that in too, and why not a broken plate...?

Anyways, the several hour of work was very productive.  I moved around some daylily plants and planted in the new ??? plant.  I also planted the new clematis plant.  The only one I have left to plant is the new shrub rose...

The new lavenders I added are doing well ...

As I was clearing out the yard, it occurs to me that maybe I shouldn't clear certain plants because I heard before that some plants do better over winter if some of the foilate is left to stay.  So I went to the ever so useful inter-web and found two pages that tells you what plants you can cut in the Fall and what you should wait till the Spring.  Check it out! 

Fall perennials to prune:  http://gardening.about.com/od/maintenance/a/Fall_Pruning.htm

Plants to prune in the Spring:  http://gardening.about.com/od/maintenance/a/Spring_Pruning.htm 

Also, I found a link to a nice little page at Home Depot's website for Fall garden maintenance:  http://www.homedepot.ca/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/GardenCentre?storeId=10051&catalogId=10051&langId=-15&display=gardening_articles_6 .
It covers briefly a wide range of things to do... lots of stuff people probably already know but excellent information for me the novice gardener :) 

Happy pruning!!