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!
