Thursday, May 19, 2011

Potatoes are up!

After only a couple of warm days, the potato plants are pushing through the soil and starting to open their leaves. This is very exciting news as fresh potatoes are such a treat. These are shepody potatoes but the russets are also up in a different bed.

The strawberry also started blooming en masse today. The fruit we got last year was a bit dodgy; I'm hopeful we'll have nicer looking berries this year. Alas, they will be too few so we'll likely hit South Windermere gardens a couple of times in the summer. If I'm on the ball, we'll also try to get out while the Saskatoons are ripe.

The flowers are putting on a lovely spring show. This is some phlox I bought years ago and have moved around some. I'm always amazed it comes back on this windswept, clay hill on the south side of the house.

We were over visiting a friend on Sunday and puttering in his garden and he offered up two plastic trays. We filled these with soil tonight and stuck in four more tomato plants on the back deck. With some extra room, we decided to try out both yellow and purple varieties. I've always preferred plain old red tomatoes (early girl, in particular) but Jess was intrigued by the different colours.

We had a bit of set-to as she was watering in the tomatoes and took the opportunity to "weed" the clay pot. And by weed, I mean pull out the marigolds she grew from seed and planted in equally spaced spots all around the tomato (just like you find weeds growing in nature...). It wasn't until one of the weeds came out with a peat pellet attached that she figured out what was going on. Fortunately, marigolds are forgiving. Unlike her father :).

The tulips on the south side are looking fantastic. I snapped this picture while swatting mosquitos and was struck by how vivid the colours were. Hopefully these last a bit longer as they are so pretty.

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