End of season roundup - vegetables

The end of the vegetable growing season is near and here's a nice little collage of this summer's various harvest.  Starting from left to right, top to bottom:

French Breakfast Raddish / Bak Choy / Variety of lettuces (Paris Island, Red Salad Bowl, Four Seasons, Arugula)

Nasturdium (Edible flower) / Red Onion / Cherry tomatoes

Cayenne pepper / Thai Basil / English Cucumber

Roma Tomato / Basil (right edge of photo) / Chioggia Beet (heirloom variety for the red & white stripes)

Other things that I didn't get a chance to include in the collage:

Rosemary, Oregano, Mint, Dill, Solar Yellow Carrot, and Strawberries!

I tried to keep track of the amount, but I think I lost track after a while... next year I'm buying a scale to weight the harvest:

   

I have to say this summer's vegetable growing experiment was quite successful (and extremely fun!).  Perhaps it was the early start to the summer or the several weeks of heat wave we had, I found that some of the vegetable plants (such as the cherry tomatoes) were starting to look pretty "tired" starting in mid-August. As well, the variety of plants I planted were mostly harvested early to mid-summer, so towards the end of the summer there were not very many things to harvest.  I think next year I will plant more variety so that there will be some things to harvest into the Fall.  Pumpkin anyone? 

P.S. I was very happy with the vegetable plants resulted from the seeds I purchased from Urban Harvest - they've got a huge selection of organic and heirloom seeds.  Check them out and buy local!  

May 2-4 and Vegetable Planters

It's Victoria Day weekend in Canada and they say this is the weekend that is "safe" to start planting your plants outside (no danger of frost).  Even though I started my seeds wayyyy early this year, I had a bit of a setback in April when a bunch of them didn't make it and  I was left with some pretty fragile seedlings.  The Cherry tomato plants are doing well and they are just waiting for more soil to transplant to the planters.  The French Radish (a few of them) have come back to life and are getting quite strong, as well as an abundant of lettuce (various kinds) seedlings.... 

So today I decided it was time to do the major transplant into the raised planters in the backyard.  The lettuce seedlings are still quite fragile but they were running room to grow in the pot I started the seeds in (my bad for not reading the seed packet instructions).  So I decided, what the heck, I'll just transplant them into the planter to give it lots of space to grow.   Things proved to be a bit trickier than I had anticipated, as the sun today was quite strong and it was starting to "cook" some of these delicate seedlings.  I had to come up with a device to shade the planters as I was doing the transplanting... quite hectic...  

This is the end result, seedlings planted in neat rows/groups and planter is secured with chicken wire (just in case) to prevent the squirrels from doing any "recreational digging".....  

Keep your fingers crossed for me that these seedlings will survive the next few weeks (in terms of facing the weather and the squirrels!)  Happy Victoria Day! 

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 :)