Garden Diary - July 26

The watermelon continues to grow - now it's the size of a grapefruit. There may be a new one starting, although it's still too small to say for sure.

We just got another rain barrel for the front, and Mark installed it yesterday. Both are full to the brim with the serious thunder showers of the last two days.

The daisies have been beaten down by the rain - I really haven't found a good way to prop them up, so I'll probably cut them down instead.

The bee balm that I planted in the back last year is flowering - it has very fine, electric purple flowers.

Garden Diary - July 19

I can't believe how fast the watermelon is growing - it's the size of a peach now. And the squash are growing fast too - Mark has had to set up some supports underneath the ones that are hanging on vines, so that they don't break off as they get heavier.

I'm trying out some of the asparagus peas in a quiche today, for the first time. Here's hoping they taste like asparagus, as promised. The raw pods were pretty bland, but maybe they just need to be cooked.

Garden Diary - July 12

I have a baby watermelon! It's the size of a small egg right now. I've wrapped it in a copper wire mesh bag so that it won't get eaten by a squirrel or raccoon while it's small and vulnerable (I can't wait for it to be big enough to outlast everything). It's an orange-flesh early-ripening variety from Veseys: http://www.veseys.com/ca/en/store/vegetables/melons/watermelon/newqueen

I've also eaten my first blueberries from the bush I planted last year. They're small and delicate - just like wild blueberries should be (although maybe not quite fully ripe yet).

After a torrential downpour on Saturday, Mark put together an overflow system for the rain barrel - we walked back from Rona with a 12-foot length of ABS pipe and a few elbows - it should help direct all the excess water away from the house. There's something a little strange about crossing the intersection with something that big in your hands - I could take out a few cars with a careless move...

I finally got fed up with the lamb's ears and cut off the flowering stalks. I also cut down the ragged dying leaves from the bachelor's buttons. And I took a bit off the back of the tall ornamental grass - it was crowding out some of the nearby plants.

I've finished up all of the weeding from the concrete walk beside the house - now I'm ready to try filling the gaps with polymeric sand to control the weeds (while I was carrying home the ABS from Rona, Mark was carrying the 50-lb bag of sand - thank-you!).

Garden Diary - July 5

On Canada Day we spent a full day working in the garden; we installed our new rain barrel (which after only one rainstorm is quite full - we're harvesting rain from a fairly big area - 400 square feet of the back half of the roof). We also now have 6 more self-watering planters (with peas, Aztec spinach, mesclun greens, radishes, beets, and likely some other seeds I've already forgotten). We've also got a self-seeder tomato in the planter in the backyard - hard to say which it is of the three varieties of tomatoes that grew there last year, but it seems to be getting along fine (although slower growing that the tomatoes getting full sun in front).

We've started harvesting strawberries - I've already had about a dozen, which is 11 more than last year. There have been a few early raspberries. And the greens are well enough advanced that we can start gathering a few leaves from each plant to add to pasta or omelettes; my favourites are the red mustard giant (strong mustard taste, distinctive burgundy colour and doesn't get eaten by any bugs) and the dinosaur kale (dense thick leaves that hold up well to cooking, unique elongated leaf shape and bumpy texture). Yesterday we tried a few leaves of the stevia; they really are sweet (although they don't taste like sugar; I'll be interested to see if the taste changes once they are dried and if they can be directly substituted for sugar).

I pruned the forsythia in front down to size, and also trimmed the hedge in back (now that I at last have a ladder I can trim the hedge from top to bottom!). And I've weeded the driveway (yet again) - I need a longer-lasting solution for discouraging weed growth - I'm considering the polymeric sand sold for filling the spaces between interlocking bricks.

And today I have, at long last, finally hung up laundry on the clothesline. Why has it taken me over two years to do this? A combination of rainy days, a tendency to do laundry in the evenings, and not enough time spent around the house to see it through until it's dry (although I must confess there's some element of laziness in all of this too).