A New Strawberry Bed

We are currently growing two kinds of strawberries, everbearing and June-bearing.

Everbearing strawberry planted in a tire

We bought 4 everbearing plants this spring and will start a proper bed with them soon.  Currently they are housed in a temporary bed and are doing very well.  Everbearing strawberries don't have the deep delicious taste that the June-bearing ones do, but they produce right into the fall and they certainly taste delicious when all you can see in the stores are the hard tasteless ones that are imported!

Totem plants growing in a 4x4 concrete raised bed

The June-bearing strawberries we grow are Totems.  I got them from a friend who got them from me!  We stopped growing strawberries as we were tight for room.  Thank goodness he is still growing them!  We planted these ones in a 4x4 raised bed and they did well for a couple of years.  Since this was a new bed, the nutrition wasn't as good as beds we've been tending for years.  The time had come to de-commission this bed and rebuild the soil.  Strawberries are extremely efficient reproducers and are constantly sending out runners.

9 rooted plants waiting to be settled in their new home

I filled 9 pots with soil and anchored a runner in each.  When they had firmly established themselves -it only took a couple of weeks - they were ready to go.  I snipped each runner from its parent and then moved the plants to their new bed.  And as it happened, each little plant was already making its own little runner.

Soil prepared for the new plants

The bed they were destined for had recently housed my poor rust-infected garlic.  Since no alliums should be planted here for at least 3 years, making it into a strawberry bed is a perfect solution.  For now they will share the bed with carrots, but it won't take long for us to eat them up and free the bed for strawberries.  This bed was well prepared for the garlic and had been mulched with SeaSoil.  All it needed was turning over.

Pots set out to get proper spacing

I placed the new plants approximately where I wanted them, leaving plenty of room so that their runners would have room to root as well.

All done!  They just need a good watering

Then the plants were firmed into the soil.  I was careful not to plant them any deeper - strawberries hate that!  If planted too deeply, the crowns will rot.  Then the runners were placed approximately where I wanted them.  Finally the whole bed got a good watering.

El Nino in the Garden 2015

This is turning out to be the driest year we have experienced in the garden and many of the crops are showing stress in spite of all the water that I'm giving them.

Butternut Squash

Many crops are very early.  Strawberries were weeks ahead of time and the crops were pretty good.  The corn is loving the heat, as are the beans.  Other heat-loving plants like peppers and squash are quite happy so far, but they all need water.

Fruit trusses on Health Kick Tomatoes

The tomato plants are huge and early on set a bumper crop of fruit, but now the flower trusses are not setting.  I've had to really keep an eye on this bed because it's one of the beds that cedar roots have managed to creep into.  I hadn't realized what was happening and almost lost one Principe Borghese plant before I discovered how dry the soil was. (Update 5 hours later:  with a temperature of 28C and a strong wind, the tomato plants were losing moisture so quickly that they were starting to wilt and a second deep watering was required.)

Principe Borghese Tomatoes

In checking back, I can see that most years at this time the fruit is just starting to turn on early tomatoes.  We've been snacking on Gold Nugget and Sweet Millions for a couple of weeks now!

Corn is a heavy feeder, too, but this bed is maintaining a good quality of moisture and I think it's the tallest corn we've ever had.  I'd say we're only a couple of weeks off harvest for the corn and the Italian heritage beans haven't even started to flower yet!

Signs of aphids on the kale

Kale is a cool weather lover and it's really struggling in the heat.  I've noticed leaves are starting to curl up and there are signs of aphids starting to make their homes in the leaves.  I'm picking those off, and the kale is getting lots of water, but the heat is telling on their general health.

Harvested garlic sorted into varieties

I just finished harvesting the garlic and am quite disappointed with the size of the bulbs.  This might be because of the heat.  They reached maturity a couple of weeks early and this means that time that might have been spent growing was lost.

Copra Onions starting to fall over

This was also true for the onions.  The yellow onions have already been harvested and I'm seeing signs that the Copra plants are approaching maturity.

And this makes things difficult for the young Brussels Sprouts plants which were just transplanted.  I will probably have to rig up some sort of shade for them to carry them through to fall.

Everything else seems to be coming along well, but each day I'm out there giving the veggies a good drink.  The perennial beds have been ignored.  Water is so precious that only the vegetables and plants in pots are being catered to.  A newsletter from West Coast Seeds addressed this issue and also finished with the sobering thought that the National Oceanographic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is predicting that there's a 95% chance that these conditions will continue through fall - and an 85% chance that they'll go through the coming winter.  Now that's scary!

Experimenting with Tomatoes

Out in the stores and garden nurseries, tomato, pepper and squash plants are for sale.  It's much too early to put them out yet, but they're for sale because people want them.  Lovely warm days like today make you think it's safe, but you really need steady 10C nighttime temperatures for them to be transplanted outside.

We are in a nice warm spell and have more and better on the way so I thought I'd make a little experiment with my tomatoes.  Today I started getting my tomato bed ready and am planning on planting out the tomatoes in a couple of weeks if the weather is nice then.  The bed was turned over and I placed the 6' poles in the bed where each tomato is going to be seated - 10 in all.  Each pair was joined across the top with curved plastic water piping.  I dug a good-sized hole beside each pole and put a cup of my homemade fertilizer in each, mixing it in well with the earth, then watered each hole.

Planted and ready for its hotcap

I picked one of the bigger Health Kick plants for the experiment.  Another the same size will be the control and be planted beside it when the time comes.  I removed the bottom seed leaves and planted it fairly deep - just to where the seed leaves would have been - and then filled around it.  I topped it off with a hotcap which will stay on until the weather is reliably warm.

Protection in place for the experiment, the rest of the bed waits a couple of weeks

I've already performed this experiment once this year.  a couple of months earlier, I seeded celery which I'm growing for the first time.  Half a dozen plants were set in March.  The rest of the seeding remained in the potting shed until a couple of weeks ago, when I set out another half dozen seedlings.

Victoria Celery

The difference is very obvious.  The plants on the left were the latest to be set out, while the plants on the right, seeded at the same time, have been delayed by their cooler environment.

Totem Strawberries

In the rest of the garden, the strawberries are now flowering.  A week ago, I gave this bed a good watering with diluted fish fertilizer.  Next month we can expect to harvest juicy delicious Totem strawberries.

Looking up into the pink dogwood tree

Cherokee Chief pink dogwood is coming into full bloom.  This young tree has struggled against deer predation until a few years ago when we enlarged our fenced area and brought it into protection.  This year, it's going to be gorgeous!

Update May 12th - It's only 9 days later, but the weather's been so nice I decided to go ahead and plant the rest of the tomatoes.  Night time temps are above 10C.  The control plant in the potting shed is taller than the one planted out early, but the experimental plant is much sturdier whereas the plants in the potting shed are starting to get a bit too lanky.  If the weather turns cool, I'll cover the tomatoes with Remay cloth for protection.

Looking Back - 2014

Now that the main gardening season is coming to a close, it's time to take a look back at what worked, what didn't and how things can be improved.

SUCCESSES

Onions - the best crop ever!  Huge onions and only 2 transplants failed.  In view of what I discovered when I turned over this bed after harvest, I'm not sure why the onions were so successful.  The bed was full of cedar roots!  Perhaps it was the soil itself.  Last year this bed held tomatoes.  The tomatoes themselves weren't that successful mainly due to the fact that the varieties I chose weren't what I really wanted.  A lot of tomatoes fell and were turned into the soil.  So perhaps this bed got some extra nutrients other beds didn't.  Likewise, the shallots and multiplier onions were also good crops.  I have a nice basket of fat shallot bulbs and lots of multiplier onions to start next year's crop.  In addition, I planted 5 multiplier bulbs in the winter bed as an experiment.

Tomatoes - again, the best crop ever.  This time, I'm crediting the success to the varieties I grew.  Principe Borghese always gives me lots of little tomatoes for dehydrating.  Classica turned out to be a good producer as well.  The star of the tomato bed was Health Kick.  I have lots of packages of roasted tomato sauce in the freezer, 2 batches of salsa tucked away in my canning shelves and plenty of dried tomatoes in the pantry.  I'll be growing more Health Kick plants next year - not so much for myself, but because those I gave plants to had similar successes and would like more plants.

Squash - 4 Waltham Butternut plants gave me an abundance of squashes - 20 to be exact and 2 more that may yet ripen before frost.  Next year I might grow squash in the compost bin as I'm going to stop the Three Sisters experiment - more on that later.  Although my husband is not crazy about squash, I love it.  The squashes I have will keep nicely and at Thanksgiving, I'll be using at least one to make butternut squash pie which beats pumpkin pie hands down.  Recipe at a later date!

Swiss Chard - I grew about 5 each of Bright Lights and Silverado.  The Bright Lights plants have huge, colourful leaves, much bigger than the Silverado, so the production is much better on the Bright Lights.  I'll be keeping the plants through the winter.  These 10 plants have given us lots of meals and bunches to give away as well.

Strawberries - This is the first year I can really count strawberries as a success.  This was mainly due to the fact that the raccoons didn't discover them and we netted them against the birds.  We had many lovely desserts of strawberries and ice cream!  The variety is Totem and they are in one of the 4x4 beds.  This fall, I'll have my husband weed-eat the leaves off them, give them a good drink of fish fertilizer and the last of the SeaSoil so that we can have a good crop of strawberries next year.

Grapes - again, this is due to the fact that we beat out the raccoons.  This is only the third time we've done it and I can't hazard a guess as to whether next year we get a crop.  I have one quart jar full of raisins in the pantry and 6 trays in the dehydrator.  And there are lots more waiting their turn!

DISAPPOINTMENTS

Potato Grow Bags - I went into the experiment with high hopes, but this hasn't worked out.  I think growing the plants so close together doesn't give them enough nutrients.  Also, it was difficult to keep sufficient moisture on them.  I will grow potatoes again, but I'll grow in them in the raised beds instead.  We particularly liked Pacific Russet (for baked and mashed potatoes) and Seiglinde (wonderful for potato salads) and were disappointed in German Butter but perhaps that's because they were grown in the bags.

Beets - not sure why they didn't turn out the way I'd hoped.  A friend tells me her beets were disappointing, too.  Perhaps the soil wasn't rich enough.  The beets were small and didn't grow well at all.  I'll prepare the soil better next time.

Parsnips - the germination rate was very poor.  I was using year old seed and perhaps parsnip seeds don't keep well.  I'll buy new seeds for next year.

Herb Pots - another experiment that didn't turn out as I'd hoped.  It seemed like such a good idea to grow these closer to the kitchen, but I think they'd all be better for being in the ground.  I think that our deck didn't receive enough sunshine for the plants.  I'll stick to flowers on the deck in future!

Three Sisters - another experiment that I thought was working out well, but in retrospect have decided that the three plants are better off on their own.  The corn did okay except that because I was growing it with other plants, I didn't seed as much as I would have liked to.  The squash was very happy.   The beans were disappointing.  I hardly got any for picking as they were too hard to find in the foliage.  I think that next year I'll use half a bed for corn and grow a few beans in amongst them just for the stability they provide.  Squash will grow elsewhere.

VEGGIES THAT NEED IMPROVEMENT

Asparagus - my plants are nearing the end of their productive lives.  I have 2 beds a couple of years apart in age, the oldest of which is probably about 16 years old now.  We'll pull up them and replant with new stock after enriching the bed.  Then next year, we'll change the other bed.

Beans - while the beans were productive, my bean rack is too tall for me to reach them.  I'd like to set up some kind of arbour for the beans to grow on so that it will be easier to pick them.

Peppers - the main problem here was the soil in the pots.  One pot had some of the soil I used to fill the potato grow bags.  This plant (a cayenne) grew well and produced lots of attractive red peppers.  The other pots had a different brand of soil and you can really see the difference in the health of the plants.  The plants that were in the raised beds grew well.  Next year I might set aside half a bed for peppers and create some kind of plastic tunnel over them to give them more heat so they produce earlier and last longer.

Dinner from the Garden

Tomorrow is the first day of summer - and today is the first day that most of the fixings came from the garden.  Not the chicken, of course, but the coating contains our own garlic and the herbs were picked from the pots on the deck.

Our first picking of snow peas, cooked tender crisp, and Seiglinde potatoes with just a smear of butter.  Absolutely delicious!

The coating for the chicken is really simple:  Panko crumbs, grated parmesan cheese, finely minced garlic and chopped fresh thyme, rosemary and parsley, all moistened with a little melted butter.  Smear the chicken pieces with Dijon mustard and then press into the coating.  Since the chicken pieces were thigh/leg combinations, I baked them for 45 minutes at 375F.

And to top it all off, Totem strawberries from the garden and vanilla ice cream!  What could be better?

June Adjustments

No garden ever behaves the way you want it to.  It's you that has to make the accommodation.  And my garden is no different.

My potato grow bag experiment was flagging badly.  The spot I'd chosen for them didn't get enough sunshine and the potatoes growth was spindly and very much smaller than potatoes planted in the full sun at the same time.  My husband and I carefully moved the bags to a much sunnier spot in front of the bed that has roses and rhubarb in it.  After only 3 days, I can already see a difference.

No matter how much room I think I have, there's never enough.  I therefore now have a collection of 6 large pots, each of which is home to a pepper plant.  A friend and I exchange plants every year.  I give her tomatoes and she gives me peppers (and this year a Japanese cucumber!)  In addition, I purchased 2 sweet pepper plants.  Unfortunately, I think I've mixed her labels up.  Once they've started bearing, however, there won't be any mystery.  Two are cayenne peppers and 2 are jalapeños.  The Japanese cucumber has been placed beside the pole that holds up our satellite dish and I'll wrap the post with fencing wire so the cucumber can grow vertically instead of horizontally.

Speaking of things containered, the Sweet Million tomato is living up to its name.  Each flower cluster is populated with an enormous number of buds.  I foresee lots of cherry tomatoes for salads!  This plant is in a half-barrel - and very happy, too!

I'm impressed with the rest of the tomatoes as well.  One Health Kick tomato is nicely forming fruit in the classic plum shape.  The plants are very sturdy - in fact all of the tomatoes in that bed are looking very happy.

I've already had a little foray into the Pacific Russet potato bed.  These plants have no flowers on them at all.  I understand that when the flowers start to fall, you have baby potatoes you can rob, but seeing no flowers here I decided to root in the soil and turned up a lovely little potato.  I've decided, however, to leave these spuds alone.  I'll let the tops die down and we'll keep these ones for the winter.

The Sieglinde potatoes, however, have got flowers well formed.  These ones will likely have the honour of gracing our table first.  Potato salads!  Yum!

Yesterday I put plastic netting over the strawberries.  Lovely big fat berries are starting to ripen and with one already falling prey to the birds, I decided I wasn't willing to share!

End of May - Things Are Flourishing!

This post will be mostly pictures so that I can compare end of May progress from year to year.

In one week, the Totem strawberries are plumping out rapidly and a few are starting to take on a bit of colour.  It won't be long now!

In my Tulameen raspberry jungle, flowers are forming.  Raspberries are always later than strawberries and mine aren't in total sun, so they're probably a bit later than most peoples'.

I have moved the cherry tomatoes from the deck.  They weren't getting as much sun as I'd thought they would.  The pots have been positioned in front of the tomato bed.  I bought a small pot of basil and split it into 3 clumps.  They've been planted at the front of the tomato bed as tomatoes and basil go very well together.

Flowers on Health Kick

Flowers are open on the tomatoes in the raised bed and so far all plants are looking very healthy.

The raised bed with the beans planted at the end is progressing well.  This bed houses beans and zucchini at the far end.  Multiplier onions and shallots are at the front.  In between, I've seeded second crops of carrots, beets and parsnips.  The half barrel in the front has a Sweet Million growing in it.  To the right is a bed of leeks with swiss chard at the back of it.  You can see the grapevine scrambling over the fence at the back of the garden.

I have 2 plantings of Italian heritage beans.  Both have been placed where they can get the maximum support.  In the raised bed, they are starting to climb up the bamboo poles which were placed inside their water bottle collars.  By the time they reach the end of the bamboo supports, they'll be well able to withstand the predation of wood bugs and earwigs.

We've been eating asparagus and the dill I planted in with the asparagus has provided new plants this year.  Dill and asparagus are a good pairing as the dill protects the asparagus from beetles - not that I've had a problem with beetles, but a little prevention could be a good thing.

May is such a wonderful month for flowers!  Irises, peonies, perennial geraniums are thriving in the central bed.

A ceanothus shrub in the garden is loud with bees.  Unfortunately they are all wild bees as it's been a few years since I've seen a domestic honeybee in my garden.

Melons and Strawberries!

May can be such a variable month!  This morning it was pouring with rain and chilly.  This afternoon the sun has come out and it's HOT!  Actually pretty good weather for getting a number of chores done indoors and out.

After we cleaned out the pond filter (whew!  stinky!) I planted out the melons.  I grew them in the compost bin last year and am doing the same this year.  I am, however, preparing a little better.  The wood bugs attacked the young plants last year and I almost lost them.

This year I dug holes in the compost and filled them full of potting mixture.  I transplanted the young melons into the mixture, firmed and then carefully put a water bottle collar around each, then applied a generous ring of diatomaceous earth around each one.  That should keep them safe!

Strawberries are forming and some of the berries are getting quite large.  Keep your fingers crossed that the birds and raccoons leave us some!  The last time I grew strawberries, I protected them with special bird netting cages.  Just as the berries were ripening I went out one morning to find all the cages thrown off and no berries left.  Raccoons!  It was the same for the grapes and hazelnuts.

The beans are lapping up the heat.  The beans on the rack were started in the potting shed and are ahead of the half barrel beans.  They're starting to form vines which will quickly scramble up the rack.

The half barrel beans aren't far behind though, and they got a good dose of pond filter water to help them along.  All in all, the garden is coming along well.  I planted out the last of the corn today - Peaches and Cream as I'd run out of the Bodacious seed.  So the Three Sisters bed is mostly Bodacious with one row of Peaches and Cream planted 4 days later.  When the corn is 6" tall, I'll plant Fortex beans.

Mother's Day in the Garden

May has to be one of the headiest months!  The air is heavy with the scent of lilacs and rhododendrons are in their full glory.

Our Cherokee Chief Dogwood is safely behind deer-proof fencing and looking gorgeous against a blue and white sky.

Many years ago I planted a Clematis Montana Rubens at the base of a cascara tree.  Today the top of the tree is a canopy of pink blossoms.  Too bad it's so hard to photograph!

Corn starting to sprout

A mouse has decided to help himself to my corn seeds!  I have 2 trays of corn planted, which is now starting to come up.  They are protected by a clear plastic dome, but evidently it's not tight enough to prevent a mouse from sneaking in!  One tray has been systematically robbed.  There are a few corn sprouts, but I'm afraid most of the corn in that tray is toast.  The mouse might be, too, because not far from the potting shed I found half a mouse.  In the meantime, I've wedged a pot against the plastic dome for that tray and I'll replant the corn.

The lettuces are almost ready to rob a few leaves from.  Time to seed some more!

The 4x4 beds are all full.  Potatoes well up and I expect some flowers on them soon.  Siberian Kale at the back of the kale bed is starting to go to seed.  Three plants each of Redbor and Improved Siberian will take their place when I pull them out.  In the meantime, I'll just snap off the flower heads.

The strawberry bed is lush with leaves and flowers.  Another month and we could be eating strawberries - if we can keep off the birds!

In the potting shed, tomatoes are starting to get a little leggy and as we have a stretch of wonderful weather starting, I decided to plant out the tomatoes today.  The bed has been ready for a while.  I dug 10 holes to receive the plants and poured a cup of homemade fertilizer in each.  This was worked into the soil, the hole re-dug and the tomato plant popped in a little deeper so that stems can form more roots.

Each plant has a galvanized tomato cage over it and a 6' stake beside it.  Now I'll lash bamboo to the stakes to create a sturdy framework.  This bed now holds 4 Health Kick, 2 Classica and 4 Principe Borghese tomato plants.  As they are all determinate, none of these tomatoes will require pruning.   A Sweet Million cherry tomato occupies a half barrel and 2 more cherries, Gold Nugget and Sweet Baby Girl, are in pots on our deck.  I foresee lots of sauces, salsa and salads in the future!

Volunteers

In any sane, organized person's garden, volunteers are called weeds.  I certainly pull out my share of weeds and use mulches where I can to control them.  There is a definite place, however, in my garden for volunteers.

Foxgloves immediately come to mind when I think of weeds which are welcome to make my garden their home.  Unless they actually show up in a raised bed or the middle of a path, I leave foxgloves alone.  Their stately spires are a good food source for bees and I just think they look lovely.

Currant bush against the potting shed

The currant bush which has grown up against the potting shed is another volunteer.  It looks like a cross between the enormous King Edward bush below the potting shed and the currant bushes I gave up on in the garden as the birds nearly always got most of the crop.  My volunteer has blooms which are a darker pink than the King Edward, but produces berries which I leave for the chickadees and their fluttery babies.  Right now this bush is looking pretty motley because it was pruned back severely so we could install the UV light for the pond, but it won't take long to grow back again and its location means that it must be kept small.

Parsley gone to seed

The flat Italian parsley is another welcome plant in my garden.  I seeded this variety a number of years ago and it turns up regularly in a flowerbed above the pond.  I can nearly always find some parsley thanks to the freely-cast seeds of this useful plant.  Similarly, oregano appears all over the garden - mostly where I don't want it!  There's even a clump of it growing in a grassy area which sends up a delicious, spicy scent whenever it's mowed.

Bright Lights swiss chard growing in the snow pea bed

A couple of years ago, my neighbour Beth gave me some Bright Lights swiss chard plants.  My garden is pretty warm and this variety goes to seed quite easily which is why I generally don't grow it.  A recent weeding in the snow pea bed turned up a lot of little swiss chard plants, easily recognized by their colorful stems.  Some I transplanted to more open areas and others I left where they were growing.  Now that we're heading to fall, Bright Lights swiss chard will be a very useful addition to the winter garden.

Bright Lights in the strawberry bed

I even discovered a well-grown plant in the new strawberry bed!  Of course, I left it.

Beth's Big Fat Tomato

And naturally Beth's Big Fat Tomato was originally a volunteer.  I don't think my plant is producing tomatoes as big as the parent plant, but with a volunteer, you never know what you're going to get.  I do know, however, that this plant is very productive and the tomatoes are just starting to ripen.

Arugula going to seed

Several years ago, a friend gave me several small arugula plants from volunteers in her garden.  This is the wild arugula and of all the varieties of arugula, I like this one best.  It's everywhere in my garden, but quite easy to pull out.

A young arugula seedling popping up beside the snow peas

The bed that is now growing the fall crop of snow peas had the original arugula plants in it and any time the soil is turned over, thousands of little arugula plants appear!   And in my turn, I've passed along lots of little wild arugula plants as well.

I certainly have my share of weeds - chickweed, herb robert, snapweed, wild geranium and many others whose names I don't know - but many other so-called weeds, judiciously transplanted, are more than welcome to take up a spot in my garden.