Thursday, May 12, 2016

Busy spring

The weather has returned to more seasonal temperatures this week but last week's heat wave has pushed things head quite a lot. The viola are coming up everywhere, including this rather pretty specimen.


The heat has meant a lot of watering even though we spaced out the veggie seeds some in anticipation of a drier summer. Fortunately, Jess is now able to be dispatched to do watering while I supervise from my office chair.


I put a dozen tomato plants into the ground this weekend (six Fourth of July and six Manitoba). We've had some cold nights but no frost.


The spring flowers have continued to come on fast, with the tulips being on the way out and the phlox blooming like crazy. The bees are spoiled for choice. While I have seen some around the apple trees, I also went and hand pollinated a fair number of blooms to make sure we got some apples.


The rhubarb is already forming seed heads and the strawberries are flowering. I planted out some melon seeds (a type of cantaloupe) last weekend as my annual homage to stunt gardening in Edmonton. We'll see what we get!


We also put in a second seeding of beans and peas. Other than a few tomatoes and some flowers, we're basically done planting for the year. My task this weekend is is to clean up the raspberry row on the fence--killing off some suckers from the old hedge and transplanting a few raspberry suckers from the front to fill in the gaps.

2 comments:

  1. Looking great! We've had frost here for quite a few nights in a row so I'm glad I don't have anything other than peas and cold hardy greens in the ground. My lettuces are unscathed as they are in a slightly protected area and are frost tolerant varieties. Whew. Heat lovers will go in soon.... once our country night temperatures stabilize for good.

    We have to truck water in to fill the cistern so we must go about growing with water conservation in mind. Wider spacing will be key but also, planting low growing companions to keep the soil shaded and encourage earthworms to tunnel near the surface (which creates lovely penetration holes for rainwater to get deep into the soil when it finally comes). It's such a complicated balance!

    Meanwhile, my newly installed tanks sit empty as we wait for rain. Let's hope that comes soon...

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