BACK ON TRACK

I am happy to report that after a solid 3 days of rain, the garden is looking much better than in my last sad post!

First of all, let's take a look at my neighbour's plot. This is what happens when you ignore the advice of gardeners that have been at the KAG for 30 years, and don't make make your beds raised in an area that is prone to flooding:

lol sucks to be you

That puddle is a good foot or so deep. It's hard to tell how wet the actual beds are, but with that much water on the ground I can only imagine that their plant roots are swimming right about now. Only time will tell if their garden survives. And if it doesn't, I'll chalk it up to karma, because these people are pretty rude and probably deserve to have a flooded garden :)

Anyways, back over to my plot!

Here she is in all her rainy glory on Tuesday evening. I really need to do something about that junk pile in the back. It's a bit of an eyesore..

Note the nice big kale plant on the left - this is the only picture I have of it. Oops.

As you may or may not have noticed, I only have two hanging tomato planters left. The other two are sitting on the ground because either something chewed completely through their stems, or they rotted and just broke off. On two different days I went to the garden and found the plants hanging limply by a thread. Oh well... at least I still have two more. And they are doing great - a nice deep green and flowering!

The tomatoes in the ground are also looking much better since my last post. I had given them some blood meal and a good watering with fish emulsion, so that plus the rain seems to have turned them back to a nice green colour. I also planted some marigolds around the bed which are supposed to keep pests away. I'm not sure if that really works, but at least it looks pretty. I've also planted cardinal basil at the end of the beds which are good companion plants for tomatoes - apparently planting these together improves the tomato's flavour. The empty bed on the right hand side is awaiting more tomatoes that are still sitting on my balcony right now. I'm not really sure what I'm waiting for, I should really get around to planting those!

The bed to the right of the tomatoes is where the onions and lettuce are currently growing. These onions are my favourite thing in the garden right now - they're unstoppable! No matter what I do they just keep getting bigger and fatter. I have no idea what is happening underground though... I am not an experienced onion gardener. This was a random kitchen experiment. Am I making more onions? Or just growing these green sprouts? I guess I'll find out at the end of the season. Either way, I'm going to have some delicious omelettes.

The unstoppable onions and freshly sprouted lettuce

I thinned out the lettuce tonight - it really came up quickly once we had a few days of rain. Unfortunately so did a lot of weeds! When I planted the lettuce seeds I was very particular about what kind of lettuce I planted where, but that's all gone to hell now since I decided to replant some of the seedlings that popped up in different areas to fill in the gaps where no seeds had sprouted. Of course I didn't keep track of what went where, so now I have no idea what anything is anymore. Oh well no biggie. One more thing about this picture - can you spot the morning glory? (it has two V-shaped leaves).

A lot of lettuce ended up sprouting, so I transplanted some of the seedlings to the bed with the pole beans, which have also sprouted over the past few days. And when I say they sprouted, I mean every single seed sprouted. Awesome! Can't wait for these guys to take off and start growing up the strings.

lettuce in front, kentucky blue pole beans closest to the strings

Next update is on the rhubarb, which is also looking great! Nice and green and it's getting bushier. This is a different plant from my last post - the one with the weird spots/possible fungus is also looking better though, but still has some damaged areas. Hopefully it's on the mend.

Speaking of rhubarb, one of my plot neighbours kindly offered me some from his garden tonight since I won't be able to harvest any from my plants this year. You're not supposed to harvest rhubarb the first year so that the plant can get big and strong - only start taking stalks the second year. I love rhubarb so this made me very happy. I think I will freeze it until strawberry season starts and then make some tasty strawberry rhubarb crumble and maybe some strawberry rhubarb ice cream!

a happy gardener!

 Let's see what else... the nasturtiums are growing really well! Nasturtiums are edible flowers that apparently have a peppery taste, although I've never tried them. They're also supposed to deter certain bugs, so they really are a superpower flower! 1) they're pretty 2) you can eat them 3) they're bug fighters. Sounds like a win-win-win to me.

Nasturtiums leaves. I'm not sure how big these will actually get or when they will flower. But something to look forward to!

The peppers were looking pretty miserable in my last post, what with them all turning yellowy and black and all. That hasn't really resolved, but I was told by the rhubarb man tonight that it was probably a bit of frost damage from when it was chilly out last week or the week before. Not sure if I believe this because it wasn't thaaaaaat cold, but whatever. I'll go with it. They do seem to be putting on new healthy leaves though, so hopefully they'll spring back from whatever was causing it. I also planted some marigolds and lime basil in amongst the peppers. Lime basil is my new favourite thing - I imagine it would be delicious added to salsa or even mixed with fruit salad, or on tacos, mmmmm tacos. Hurry up and grow, I want to eat you.

Yuck, muddy pathways. Time for more woodchips!

I forgot to take a close up picture of the jalapeno plant, but it's the one in the foreground above. It already has about 6 peppers growing and there are lots of flowers on it. My fellow gardeners were pretty impressed with my overwintered peppers, I think they're jealous I'm getting fruit already! Below is the sweet pickle pepper which is also COVERED in buds. If all goes to plan this guy will put out a ton of little peppers soon!

Last but not least is the peas. These guys also LOVED the rain this week. Some are starting to wrap their tiny tendrils around the first level of rope on the teepees. I can't wait for them to keep growing and slowly cover the entire thing. It's gonna look so cool! And I will have delicious sugar snap peas to munch on while I garden.

I didn't take any pictures of the melons or squash because they're practically dead and it's depressing. I might go pick up some starter plants from the garden center to replace them, or plant some other things from seed in their place. I still need to sow the carrots, bush beans, and beets as well. I probably should've done that already but meh... there's still time.

That's it for now, I'll try to keep the updates shorter and more frequent instead of these long winded posts every week or so. It takes too long to write this all up at once! Plus I'm at the garden practically every day so there's no reason not to snap a few pics and give a quick update. I'll try to do better :)

Thanks for reading, happy gardening!