Home is Where My Dad's Garden is

In another twist to this already disrupted year, shortly after I wrote my last blog post we got word that my dad was not doing well in the hospital and was not expected to live. He has Alzheimers and had entered a long term care facility in Feb, just before everything shut down. We were unable to visit him and like many people in his situation, his disease progressed extremely rapidly in the 4 months we hadn't seen him. We made the decision as a family to bring him home to live out his last days with his family around him. Well that was the plan but as usual my dad had other ideas. It turned out his inability to swallow had more to do with the meds he had been on and not because his dementia had progressed that far. Once he stopped taking those meds his appetite came back and he was soon eating and drinking and putting on weight. He regained his ability to feed himself, and then to sit up unaided and eventually to stand and walk on his own. His cognitive functions however are still typical of his disease progression so he couldn't be left alone. I made the decision to move home to help care for him for as long as we were able to do so. That turned out to be 90 days, which was all  the Ontario government would pay for home care. Without PSW support, 24 hour a day care is too much for us to handle so on Monday my dad will move to another LTC facility, one that meets his needs better without overly medicating him. Or at least that is the hope

I haven't spent a summer in Sarnia for over 30 years. Usually I'm so busy with work running festivals all summer that I'm lucky if I even get home for a brief visit. My parents still live in the large suburban home we grew up in. My mom's gardens are grown for beauty, over 50 years of love are in those garden beds that take up most of the front and back yards. My dad was the compost manager and vegetable grower, his space was  the corners and side yards and containers on the deck. That had dwindled to nothing as his disease progressed. My sister took over some of the containers  on the deck but the side yard had gone fallow and was mostly shaded from overgrowth of the neighbour's shrubs. A few raspberry canes survive and some of those had spread into my mother's flower beds so she asked if I would dig them up and replant them back in the side garden. When I went to do so I discovered that my dad's raised beds were still pretty functional and that the neighbour had recently cut back all the shrubs. So here was 3 lovely raised beds full of healthy soil and amazing light, like a blank canvas! 

 

I was missing my gardens back home so it was good opportunity to get my hands dirty. First I stole few tomato seedlings from the overcrowded containers my sister had planted - 6 in total that had labels originally but I didn't keep track so they were all surprises! Then I discovered a few volunteers that were either squash or pumpkins so I gave them some room to spread out. I also discovered some garlic that had been abandoned so had sprouted in clumps. Lastly I bought some onion sets, bush bean and salad greens seeds and seeded them around the squash vines. My parents have a sandpoint well which meant watering well daily was simple so lack of rain wasn't a factor.  Having a garden to work in was the best stress release and reviving my dad's garden felt very symbolic. 

Meanwhile back in Toronto the Laneway Garden struggled. The late cold spell in May killed off or stunted most of our early seedlings and the drought in July took a heavy toll on the later plantings. Without consistent rain, our rainbarrel irrigation system wasn't much use so Alexey filled two 5 gallon containers every day and dragged them to the laneway in the wagon.  Unfortunately the tree roots were slowly choking things from underneath and our tomatoes barely grew beyond the size they were when we transplanted them in May.  The buckets we were using for some of the root crops and greens did mildly better but we discovered the pernicious tree roots found their way in through the drainage holes eventually. On the few quick trips back to Toronto I was saddened to see our usually lush space looking so sparse but there was little we could do to remedy it - all of the soil augmentation and watering seem to benefit the trees more than our veggies.

So many tree roots...

 

 

My dad's gardens on the other hand flourished wonderfully. The tomatoes soon got too tall for the stakes I had so I tried to send them up the rose trellis.  And the tomatoes were huge! The container versions of the same varieties didn't hold a candle to the monsters that were weighing down the vines in the garden.

The volunteer squash vines took over and produced many male flowers which we ate but it never produced any female flowers at all so no fruit- possibly it was sterile from some kind of hybridization. The beans did well but bunnies kept nibbling on them and all the lettuces. But my dad's garden gave me the dirt fix I needed when I needed it most and I'm grateful for the summer I got to spend with my family.

No One Expected a Global Pandemic

And yet here we are! After 3.5 months of lockdown, gardening is pretty much the only thing keeping me occupied. Normally at this time of year I'd be in full festival mode with work and the gardens would be a tad neglected. this year they have my undivided attention which has allowed us to catch up on some previous plans and add some additional elements.

First up- the Pollinator bed! With the grant from the Parkdale and Toronto Horticultural Society last year we purchased some native pollinators and then hastily stuck them in the ground when we realized that the neighbour wasn't going to work on the property line after all. So it didn't end up looking much like a garden, more just a pit dug into the existing gravel driveway. With time on our hands for a change, Anthony and I were able to create an edge for it using scrap lumber we had on hand and we dug a trench around the perimeter to dig it in, then topped it up with the leftover bags of compost we got from the city last year. Good thing we took extra bags last year since there will be no Environmental Days this year to acquire more. Most of the plants we purchased last year seem to have survived the winter and we look forward to seeing it fill in this year. Our beloved Juliette cherry shrub also lives here and although she flowered beautifully this year, it occurred right at the same time we had a late freeze. We covered her nightly to keep her from freezing in temps below zero and all of the blossoms survived but without pollinators visiting  we got exactly one tiny cherry. Hopefully she'll grow a few new branches instead of putting energy into fruit this year at least.




Both Janis and I have been accessing online gardening webinars and doing research on various techniques. We have both become fascinated with perennial vegetables since realizing that many of the crops we added last year were already up and growing this year much earlier than we can plant annuals. Janis also did quite a bit or researching into permaculture and square foot gardening so we decided to modify one of the raised beds with this technique. This bed also has issues with roots from nearby trees taking hold so we adapted by using square buckets for some of vegetables we are growing in this spot. The various veggies seem to be doing well with this and we are excited to be trying some new things including salsify, a root crop also known as oyster plant.





We are still trying to increase our growing space by making use of vertical space. There was room for some containers on the back of our composter but it doesn't get a lot of sun until later in the afternoon. So  we are attempting to grow climbing vines like cucumbers which we hope will get tall enough to reach more light as the sun angles change. The concrete blocks also absorb heat and reflect it back and so far they seem to be happy there but whether they get enough light to produce fruit remains to be seen.




Along that same cinderblock wall we have a lot of unused space that's home to a bunch of  'weed trees" -manitoba and norway maples. It was another pile of tangled roots and broken concrete that we hadn't bothered doing anything with because it gets almost no light and was very unlevel. Earlier this year I had the idea to turn it into a spot to try to propagate wild mushrooms so I came up with a plan to create the optimal conditions. First we had to find a way to level it - the tree roots had grown around debris and it was quite a bit higher than  he rest of the area. So I decided to build a wattle fence using some excess 1 x 2" and cut branches from bushes and weed trees nearby to weave the fencing with. Once that was accomplished we started filling the are with wood chips, soil, sand and ashes. After doing more  research I  realized that my dream of growing morels there is at best a longshot so we are now looking at other options like growing easy to cultivate species in buckets. Janis had stumbled onto a website for perennial vegetables called Fiddlehead Nursery and we both realized that our new growing space would actually be ideal for some shade loving plants that are also edible. So now we are planning to plant it with ferns and hostas and searching for other possibilities to grow there.

 

Probably the most exciting thing in our garden is the fedge. This is its third year now and everything has started to fill out and produce fruit. The haskaps were such a delight and so early- our Cinderella variety was ripe at the end of May!The Aurora bush is just ripening now, still well ahead of the strawberries. We also have gooseberries and red raspberries coming but the most prolific looks like it will be the black raspberry - can't wait for those! We also finally have a sign.

Year End Round up

We had a cold spring and a late start which made seeding vegetables a bit dismal this year. Our garlic was the first success, it came up beautifully as soon as the snow melted. We planted some rapini and peas in early April and the rapini did well- the peas not so much. Last year we had squash vines running everywhere so we opted to build a trellis that could support peas in the spring and squash later in the season. Well as every gardener knows plants don’t always do what we hope for- after several seeding attempts the peas finally emerged in June and enjoyed the trellis for most of the summer. The squash seedlings on the other hand all sulked and never grew above 6 inches.

 In April we received news that we were the recipients of an Edible Community Garden Grant from Tree Mobile and Orchard People! Our food hedge (aka fedge) got a big boost with the addition of a Juliet cherry shrub tree, a gooseberry bush, 2 haskaps (1 Borealis, 1 Cinderella for cross pollination), a number of strawberry plants, 10 asparagus crowns, and some sorrel and hyssop. We also received some rhubarb and raspberry canes from a gardening friend and along with our serviceberry, white currant and black raspberry canes, our fedge is starting to fill in!

 

 

Our other big project for this year was the creation of a pollinator garden.This was the main project that we asked for support from the Parkdale and Toronto Horticultural Society. We had a location and design laid out but as we started to dig the bed we heard from the neighbour to the west that he had plans to do some work along the property line that would impact the area we hoped to use. We had concerns that anything we planted would be in danger of being damaged during the construction.So we put that plan on hold until the work was finished. Sadly the work never even started so we were stalled for most of the summer. We went ahead and purchased a yard of soil which we stored in bins and over the season we acquired many pollinator friendly plants. We built small extensions on 2 of the raised beds to accommodate some of them and the rest lived happily in pots for the summer awaiting their permanent home

 Lindsay digging the pollinator bed!

Janis and Nadia had a fantastic time at the Hort Sale in May, chatting with members and getting advice as well as some plants! They came home with some Sweet Cicily, a rubekia and a lily among others

 

Nancy and I went to the High Park Native Plant sale at the end of Aug and brought home a lovely assortment of plants from our wish list, including Cardinal flower, Great blue lobelia, wild bergamot, wild columbine, sky blue aster, and butterfly milkweed. We also picked up a blue flag iris to plant near the makeshift pond we created from the neighbour’s sump pump overflow. A pond was one project that wasn’t in the plans but since our water sources are weather dependent it made sense to capitalize on a relatively constant source of water and use it in a beneficial way.

By September when it was clear that no work was going to be done next door we roughly dug out the rest of the planned pollinator bed and filled it with the soil we had set aside. We wanted to make sure that the plants we lovingly collected all summer had time to get established before the cold hit. Heather attended an In the Zone event and brought home a few more plants.

 

Most of the vegetables we planted did fairly well- we had a bumper crops of both green and yellow bush beans that lasted all summer. We had loads of tomatoes too. Things that didn't fare as well were squash- we got none, zucchini, again none. We seem to be challenged in the cucurbit dept.

But there's always next year!