Garlic, melons, water, and thistle

Well, we had both big heat and big rain this week! The garden welcomed both. On the rainy day, I spent some time in the garage trimming off the stalks from the garlic. It was mostly dried but I decided to leave it another two weeks to finish curing.

Flowers of the friendly and unfriendly kind are in heavy bloom this week. I'm not a bit fan of thistle, but this picture turned out really well.

Raspberry picking continues and I tried a second batch of saskatoon-raspberry syrup, with a slightly different recipe. The dog has a bit of a raspberry problem and insisted on closely supervising all work.

The result this time was tasty but a bit too runny. Next time I'll ad the lemon juice back in. This made enough that I canned four jars for winter.

We're also experimenting with other raspberry recipes, including raspberry crisp (sour!). The freezer is nearing capacity so I fear I will be jamming in the heat this week.

We had the mother of all rain storms. It is unusual for the water to pool in the pathways as well as in between the rows of carrots!

But the heat has kicked the squash and melon plants into gear. Finally, I'm seeing some vining and blooming on the cantaloupe.

The cucumber plants is also finally starting to climb.

The second sowing of lettuce is also now ready. The first sowing is well into bolting. Not a great picture below but I thought the colours were lovely.

I am hopeful we'll be done with raspberries this week and I can have a short break before the apples start. I did get the dehydrator going and got another batch of mint dried and put away. It will be a few more weeks before the basil is big enough to get a huge harvest off of.

Fruit and peonies!

 Summer is in full swing and I've been spending a fair bit of time weeding! This includes a bumper crop of self-seeded violets (in the wrong spot) and some very aggressive growth by perennials.

It looks like the fruit crop will be a good one this year. The apples seem to coming along well and the raspberries and Saskatoons have both set fruit.

Our flowering baskets are also beautifully colourful.

I'm thrilled to see the potatoes blooming. I've never tried to grow potatoes from seed but I might try to snag a few seeds this year and try in the spring.

The real star of late June is the peony. We have half a dozen of these (mostly gifts from Jenn's mom).

The have just started opening and we'll have likely two weeks of blooms. The bees have gone mental for them and it is hard to walk along the side of the house without colliding with fliers.

The intensity of the colours has been amazing this year. And the subtle shading looks like water colours.

Around back we also have a huge bunch of mock orange bushes in bloom.

These need to be cut back each year so I feel free to bring in as many blooms as we have vases for.

The rhubarb wine is still cooking in the basement. It is a bit of a slow ferment but progress is being made. Apparently we also have enough points to buy a free beer kit. I need to drink my way down to enough free bottles before we do a beer kit. I have some more oregano in the drier today and we harvested enough gooseberries last night to make jam.

Spring flowers and more planting

Spring seems to have finally arrived and we decided to plant the tomatoes. All of the blush and the crimson sprinter tomatoes we seeded came up and I managed to avoid cooking them while I hardened them off (like last year...). So we plunked them in along with some starters we picked up at Apache (some roma and early girl and beefsteak).

The garlic came up quite suddenly last week and has really jumped ahead. The onions are also now peeking above ground.

We still have a bed in the back where I'm making a determined effort to eradicate the purple bell flower. This stuff is a nightmare. After literally years of fighting it, we're getting the upperhand. But the picture below shows what we're up against: there was 1 inch of growth above ground and 11 or more inches of root (gardening knife is 12 inches of scale).

Only in really loose soil is this kind of extraction possible. In heavier clay, I'm basically stuck topping it and hoping to starve out the tuber. In happier news, the oregano is back and seems to have spread over the winter.

Along with the tomato starts, we also picked up a tomatillo and hot pepper plant. Jess was keen to plant. I questioned her wardrobe choice ("I'm glam-ting!") and, after getting snagged on the black raspberry canes, she saw my point.

The raspberry hedge we put in along the north side of the property is coming up very nicely this year. I'm hopeful we'll get enough to make lots of jam as we ran out this winter).

The peas have come up so we planted the pole beans in behind them to get two crops from this trellis this year.

We're also starting to see the flowering shrubs start. This crab apple tree is one I pass on my daily walk.

Our efforts to move this tulip tarde have only been partly successful and it came up in the back veggy bed again (really thickly) so we'll pull these out when the leaves die back and move more around to plant among the irises.

Rain has kept us inside today but we'll be back out putting on some annual flowers and herbs. Our efforts to grow musk melons were a bust (second year nothing happened so we bought a watermelon start and planted it in the back.