Floral recap

Another recap of this summer's plants - here are the variety of flowers from the garden.  Can you identify them all?  :)

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!  

Remembering.... my buddy..... she will be dearly missed..... 

French Breakfast Radish

First radish of the season!!!  I've been waiting for these "French Breakfast Radish" to be ready for a while now, so today I decided to  dig one up as the top was starting to be visible above the soil.  I read somewhere that the earlier you harvest the radish the less spicy they are, so I decided to give this a try before it gets too "spicy".  The result?  DELICIOUS!  Just slice them up and eat them raw, or mix them into a salad :)  Can't wait to harvest more in a few more days!     

Strawberries

 

We have a strawberry patch in the backyard that the previous owner had planted, and this year we were determined to protect them against the squirrels (we were told that those little monsters cause havoc on any vegetable and fruit garden)

Because of the warm weather we've been having this Spring, by the second week of May the strawberry plants were already full in bloom.  

 

And before the end of May, fruit were already forming and they were in pretty good shape, and some were starting to turn red already.... 

And ta-da!! The first few ripe ones :)  Freshly picked from the garden - it doesn't get any more fresh than that!  (And these are real size strawberries, around 1" big, not like the giant monster ones you see at the supermarket - sometimes you wonder what they use to plump those ones up so much?!)

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! 

" In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt." ~ Margaret Atwood