Garden Diary - Aug 24

The perennials I planted at the beginning of the summer have gotten big enough that I've finally started dividing them to fill out the new front yard bed a bit more. The lamb's ear has been moved entirely, as it seemed to be crowding the blueberry bush too much. I also moved the sorrel, which turned out to be a much bigger plant (more like the size of a small bush) than I'd realized when I first planted it next to the maidenhair grass.  I'm a little worried about how they've survived the move - they've drastically wilted, but as long as there's enough to come back up, I'll be happy.

I've also transplanted the woolly and lemon thyme in patches between all of the stepping stones. I moved some of the purple clover in to places in the front that needed shorter plants and more colour. And I've added a new decorative grass - a nice little clump of blue fescue, which needed a new home now that Meighan has moved across the country.

The roses are blooming again, almost as strongly as before. The mint and coneflowers are still going strong, as is the perennial sage and bachelor's buttons. I've started looking over the fall bulb catalogues, and am trying to remember to pick plants that will have overlapping blooming periods.

I'm continuing to harvest purple pole beans on a regular basis, as the ones I planted later are now ripening, just as the earlier vines are starting to die off. I've realized that their growth pattern is quite different from the scarlet runner beans, which keep putting out new flowering branches continually. My aunt and uncle, who paid a visit recently to the house for the first time, told me that these beans taste best if allowed to grow very big, and then harvested from their pods. The plum tomatoes are also ripening, and I made a very tasty quiche with them.

I realized that I don't have any evergreen plants, so I'm hoping to start including a few, in order to have some colour through the winter. I was able to find one creeping juniper at Home Depot, although the selection is very slim at this time of year.

Garden Diary - August 10

After 10 days out of town, I was shocked to see how much everything had grown in the garden. I guess that's what happens during the wettest summer on record in Toronto!

It took several hours of weeding and mowing, but things look like they're under control again. In the front I've cut down the overgrown daisies and mystery flower (phlox?) that had splayed out beyond the edges of the bed. The purple coneflowers are still blooming very nicely, and hopefully will continue to do so for some time. My recently planted beans and other assorted container seedlings are doing well - beans are climbing up their lines, rainbow chard is big enough to start eating a bit. The blue bachelor's buttons started to bloom while I was away, and the perennial sage is still blooming strongly. Many of my plants looks large enough to divide now (especially the lamb's ear) so that I can fill in the beds a bit more. I can't believe how large the sorrel has gotten - I may have to move it next year so that it doesn't get crowded by the decorative grass. We ate some of it for the first time this past weekend, in an omelette that also had kale, chard and arugula.

In the back we are finally getting some ripe cherry tomatoes. The beans (both the scarlet runner beans and the purple pole beans) grew to mammoth proportions while I was away, but are still tasty (and are sweet enough to eat raw when freshly picked). There is a tiny zucchini; the kale continues to put out lots of new leaves; the chinese radish is doing well. Slugs have attacked a few of the low-hanging tomatoes and beans, so we'll have to start setting traps and wrapping things with the copper mesh wire that I bought from Lee Valley. I love how the scarlet runner beans have branched out near the top of the shed, forming a beautiful canopy of green leaves and bright red flowers. The effect is overall more dramatic than the mostly non-branching purple pole beans, although I prefer the taste and tenderness of the purple pole beans.

I've done a thorough job of weeding the cracks in the driveway and side walkway. Earlier this summer I experimented with filling one of the cracks with clumping cat litter, which seems to have done an excellent job of shading out the weeds; in the few spaces where they've still managed to sprout they are easier to uproot than in normal soil. I've gone ahead and filled the rest of the cracks, and hopefully now I'll be able to stay on top of the weed growth. Although I'd ultimately like to create some sort of 'green' driveway surface (since it seems something of a waste to devote so much of my real estate to the sole purpose of housing a car I don't possess), I'd like for my property in the meantime to look like it hasn't been abandoned and left to run wild...