Meanwhile, in the vegetable garden

The vegetable garden, 3 June:


The vegetable garden, 8 July:


The vegetable garden, 20 July:


Well. That ain't not bad, actually. I never thought the d-ed thing would produce anything, but there's quite a bit of greenery coming up. I even got to eat the spinach that are in the foreground in the middle photo.

The cool thing is, for the longest time, my garden looked like crap compared to everyone else's, but now it's starting to be one of the better-looking ones. Partly, I think it's because I'm actually there every day, or every other day at the latest. Some people seem to garden in fits, a few days once in a blue moon.

Another issue is fertilizing. Many people have been listening to The Local Garden Expert and adding nitrogen to their plants. Then some of them put way too much nitrogen and burned their plants. But either way, nitrogen is not the answer in a vegetable garden. Nitrogen grows leaves and stems. If you're after lettuce, that's a good thing, but if you want your plants to bear fruit, they need... well, I forget whether they need P or K, but that's what they need, not nitrogen. So I've been feeding my garden with tomato fertilizer, once a week, as per the manufacturer's directions, and it does seem to be working. Consider the following:


A pumpkin! First of all, last year I didn't even have my first flower until July 20, the first female bud was August 2, and the first growing fruit was August 19. So I'm doing well for time. Second, this vine does not have a pumpkin, it has four. This is the most developed one, and the others will get eliminated later on to leave only the top contender, but clearly, pumpkins like it way better out there than on my balcony.


Plus, it's colonizing the rest of the garden. Booya!

Then, there is this:


A Brussels sprout or cauliflower (they looked identical back then) on June 17.


A cauliflower yesterday, July 20. They don't have heads yet, but considering how minuscule and fragile they were when I bedded them out, I'm pretty impressed that they turned into such monsters.

Also:


The peas have pods, and some of them (such as this one) are starting to fill out.


The red onions seem to be doing well, though it's hard to tell since the important part is underground. Most of them you can't see anything, I just hadn't mounded this one yet.

And most importantly:


It looks like a jungle. If you ask me, that's the main point of a garden. (Someone described it as "artistic". I think she was trying to be diplomatic.)

Who are you, and what are you doing in my garden?

A pansy. Yes, it's a very crappy photo of a pansy, but that's not even the biggest problem. I planted several varieties of pansies. Expensive ones, might I add. Which I selected carefully from among the immense variety of pansies in my catalogs, because of their beauty. This is not one of them.

I don't know where this thing comes from, but it is NOT any of the pansies that I was expecting. I'm most aggravated. Especially because the dog has been quite determined to destroy all the pansies, and there might not be too many besides this one.

Poop.

At least the roses are well

The flower garden is not going at all according to plan, except this:


My J.P. Connell is in bloom, and doing very well, thank you. So that answers the first question: can roses get enough sun on my balcony?

The second and equally important question is: can roses survive the winter on my balcony? You see, the 4' x 4' x 15" flowerbeds with 2" ridig insulation on the bottom should theoretically provide a fair amount of insulation for my flowers, and therefore a fair chance of wintering, but in order to give the JP Connell the sunniest spot, I had to put it in the most exposed place, uncomfortably close to the windward corner of the flowerbed. Of course I'll add batt and mulch and anything else I can find, but I really have no idea whether it will live.

Baobab some day

Zadok is putting out some new leaves at the top. It's something baobabs do: first they shed all their leaves for the dry season, and then they leaf out before the first rains. Strange, eh? It rained on Monday after weeks of draught, and Zadok put leaves out ahead of that. And I was worried about its straggly appearance, until I looked at it from this angle and noticed it's got a bare trunk and a leafy crown, "just like a real baobab."

BOOYA!

Abimelek is behind Zadok and you can't see much of it because there isn't much to see, but it's still alive. Baobabs are not actually trees, but succulents, so when they die they decay completely and quickly instead of drying out. So as long as Abimelek has a trunk and isn't falling apart, I figure it's still alive, unlike, say, a mayday tree, which could be dead as a door nail and you wouldn't really know it.

It's not all bad

Forgot to mention, my third double lily finally showed up on Wednesday, so now I don't have to buy more next year. Booya! At least one thing went right in the garden this week.

Mulch, schmulch

According to the organic people, you can kill weeds by covering them with cardboard and mulch. Therefore, all the paths at the Community Gardens are covered with cardboard and mulch.

HA!

Let me tell you, that stuff does NOT work! I spent an hour weeding around my plot this morning. So long that my dog got bored with running around digging for varmints and started whining to go home. The weeds are EVERYWHERE and they don't give a fig about the cardboard or the mulch. The cardboard gets wet and decomposed and looks untidy, and the cedar mulch makes it that much harder to find the weeds, but weeds there are. That stuff is bosh.

So other than weeding, I raked up some of the mulch, to make it easier to see the weeds in future. Down with mulch!

You know what else?

How come I had to weed both sides of my plot, all the way to the neighbours'? Shouldn't half of the weeding on each side be done by said neighbours?

Bah.

Baobab Sunday

Bah. I should have shot Zadok a few weeks ago at its peak, when there were lots more leaves and they were much greener. But then, I put both baobabs out on the balcony during the day so they'd get some sun, and with the dry winds and the hot temperatures the first week, I think they figured it's dry season, because they started shedding their leaves. Baobabs normally have no leaves for nine months a year, so I guess this isn't exactly abnormal, but it still looks depressingly ratty. And Ahimelek has no leaves left at all, besides being rather short and squat.

I haven't measured Ahimelek lately, because it hasn't been getting any taller, but Zadok is 10 inches tall. Strange, because I could have sworn I measured it at 11" a while back.

Oh well. They're alive, at least. That's progress over this time last year.

Vegetables, schmegetables

Well, I've learned an important lesson about vegetable gardening. Namely, it sucks.


The alternating cold and hot dry winds killed the pumpkins. I've pulled out almost all the ones I planted; this is the healthiest one that remains. I do have some better ones at home, because there was no room for them and they were the least healthy on the day I planted out. I left the trays in the car for a week with no water, because I figured I could let them die, then I brought them back inside and watered them thinking I might have to replace the ones in the garden, and now I have four pumpkins at home that after all that, are healthier than the ones in the garden. I guess I can put them outside with a cloche and see what happens. Or I could get more seeds, but this late in the season, it's rather pointless. There are 90 days left till first frost, so counting the time spent in the mail and the time from seed to five leafs, I need approximately a 50-day pumpkin. And the fastest pumpkins are 65 days, I think, plus they're carving pumpkins, not eating pumpkins. The fastest eating pumpkins at Stokes are Trickster, which is 75 days. Well, at least I'll know for next year: plant Trickster, not Baby Pam.


Something is eating the cabbages. And yes, my camera failed to focus on the right thing yet again. Actually, I used macro in my garden and missed almost all the shots, then I used regular shooting in the other plot I'm looking after and all the shots were in focus. Darn you, Canon. Darn you to heck. Anyway, something is eating the cabbages, that is, the Brussels sprouts and cauliflowers. One of my clients at work, who is 84 years old and has spent most of her life in agricultural pursuits (besides attending the founding convention of the NDP - she's THAT cool), suspects it might be cabbage moths, although, she said, it's a bit early for them. But then, it's been a really warm spring, so they could well be early. And, she adds, "it's new ground, so there could be anything in it."

Zut alors. I really wanted to eat the Brussels sprouts myself. Still, I have some seedlings left at home, and some of the ones in the garden have put out true leaves despite the wind, the drought, the lack of sun, and the cabbage moths. Everybody else seeded their cabbages straight to the garden at the beginning of June and they have long, densely packed rows of huge baby leaves, but they'll have to thin them anyway, and mine are ahead of theirs developmentally. Neener neener.


And I'm pretty sure this is a weed. I haven't pulled out every last weed, because some of them could be zombies from whatever was growing there last year, but I'm pretty sure this is a weed.


Well, at least the peas are healthy. So far.

Also, there are some seeds on the shelf in the shed, which we're encouraged to apply to our gardens, though of course most of us have way too much stuff as it is. So I found some turnip seeds in there and sowed them, but as they're very small and the same colour as the dirt, I have no idea where they are now. Also there were some very pretty beans, so I made a row of those this morning.

Another problem with this vegetable-gardening schtick is, the soil is not good. There are big clumps of clay here and there, but mostly, it seems to be just black dust. It was bone-dry as far as my hands could reach when I weeded, and despite frequent watering, I don't find it much improved. It hasn't rained any significant amount in two months, the wind is dry, and on top of all that, it's been mostly cloudy for a week, which means the solar-powered water pump hasn't worked very much. I managed to get out there in moments of sun the last two days and water with the hose, but the rest of the time I've been using watering cans, which naturally dampens my ambition. But even when the pump is working, I water, and I think I've given it a good soaking, and then for all that it's still barely wet. I suppose I could just leave the hose lying there for an hour, but the other gardeners might object.

Sigh.

Vegetable gardening sucks.

Perennials, schmerennials

My perennial garden, a month after planting. Now that I can compare my perennials to everyone else's, it's becoming really evident how much sunlight my plants are missing out on. Some people's gardens are getting more than 20 hours of sunlight right now; mine gets barely eight in the sunniest spot, which is where I put my J.P. Connell. Of course the fact that all these perennials were just planted this spring also slows them down compared to established plants, but I blame mostly the sunlight.

More specifically, here is how everyone is doing.

• J.P. Connell is putting out tons of leaves. Not a lot of height being gained, but certainly the leaves are doing great.


• None of the tulips came up. That's too bad, but then again, it would be foolish to underestimate a plant. Maybe they're biding their time.


• Only two of the three double oriental lilies came up, and I can't remember where the third one is, otherwise I'd dig and see what's happening. Now the thing is, there are three of them because they came as a set: Soft Music, which I really liked, Lodewijk, which I really really really really liked, and Magic Star, which I bought because it was included with the other two. So if the missing one is Soft Music or Magic Star, well, that's one thing. But if it's Lodewijk, I'll be very sad. On the other hand, now that my garden is essentially complete, I can afford to buy a few more Lodewijks next spring if I have to.


• The Celebrity peony (the $40 one) is putting out canes. Not nearly as fast as everyone else's peonies that get three times as much sun, but it's alive and well. You can't be in a rush with peonies anyway, they live 20 years and don't like having their roots disturbed, so it's pretty fair that the first summer is a bit slow.


• The Shirley Temple peony (the $12 one) has live roots, but so far no canes. I wonder if I should have buried the entire thing like I did with Celebrity. But, again, if it fails, there is a lot more room in the garden budget for next year, so I can replace it. In fact, I can replace it with something much fancier, from a peony specialist.


• The Asiatic lilies are... still alive, I guess. They got horribly burned and beaten by the cold north wind since they've been out there, but the roots are alive. The orange one that wasn't what I ordered is even looking like there is new growth on it.


• The Stargazer lily is out there somewhere... maybe. It hasn't come up. But since I paid $6 for it and it gave me some lovely flowers last year, maybe I've got my money's worth out of it.


• The dicentra stopped blooming, but the leaves look very happy.


• The toad lilies are all alive, though not growing quickly.


• The anemones are growing. In fact, they may be the fastest-growing bulb I have.


• The ranunculi which I bought from my work's fundraiser haven't come up, but it was more for a good cause than because I wanted ranunculi anyway.


• Someone donated a foot-tall lilac. They grow everywhere in her yard because there used to be a big one that the landlord cut down. Anyway, it's wide awake. I put it in the shade, since they seem to be highly shade tolerant.


• The flax finally seems to be prospering, though there isn't nearly as much as I should have got out of four packets of seeds. Hopefully this time it will establish itself and I won't have to do it again.


• The pansies are sprouting, but since the dog picked that spot for her bed at first, I suspect most of the seeds stuck to her fur and are gone.


• The hollyhocks are also sprouting.


• The California poppies are also sprouting.


• The pear trees are not moving much. They withstood the wind very well, but I suppose it must still be a drag.


• The two mayday trees haven't leafed out yet and have no new growth whatsoever, even though they're alive and they were growing inside the winter hut. I might have to get more seeds in the fall.

That's pretty much the things I know about. I know I seeded some other things, but I don't know what I put where or what they look like as sprouts. There are certainly many shapes of sprouts coming up. I suspect some of them are from the bird seed mix, but clearly some are weeds. Luckily, I now know a black mustard sprout when I see it, so I've been able to pull them when they're less than an inch tall and still harmless.

Perhaps the greatest sign of progress is that I have not dumped thousands of seeds indiscriminately because "nothing is coming up." So it looks a little sparse right now, but when everything gets moving in July, it's gonna look pretty good, if I do say so myself. On the other hand, it certainly doesn't make for a lot of blogging.

We can't both be right

Today, June 2, was the first work bee of the season at the Community Garden. Where I have a plot, so that hopefully I'll have actual pumpkins this year.

Some people have been planting already on account of the bizarrely warm weather (Yellowknife was the hot spot for Canada earlier this week - WTF?), but I was either too busy, too something else, or too demotivated even to go check it out. Nonetheless, since everyone was encouraged to attend the work bee, I had marked it on my calendar a long time ago. And when something is written on my calendar, I do it. If I say I will, I'm probably just lying to make you go away. If I write it on my calendar, I have to do it. For some reason, I have great difficulty disobeying written instructions. Anyway.

The work bee was scheduled for 9 AM, so I was right on time, partly because I like to be on time, and partly because there was a specific job I wanted: painting numbers on the raised beds. Seemed relaxing. And sure enough, right at 9 o'clock, no one had volunteered for that yet. And no one had brought the right tools, either, so I had to go home and get mine, including the right shape of brush, a sanding block, and 60-grit paper. Because the beds are made of pretty well weathered wood, and you can't just paint over that.

All right then. I set to work. There are 38 beds, therefore I have to sit down on the ground and get up again 38 times. One woman commented that she was glad she didn't have that job, because if she had to sit on the ground she'd never get up again. Another one thought it must be terribly tiring because of the sanding, which of course, requires a certain amount of energy to be successful. So albeit I just sat in the dirt painting numbers, everyone seemed to think I had drawn the toughest job there, and so one person kindly pulled the dandelions from my plot, which given my enduring good fortune, was of course the one with the most weeds in the entire garden.

Meanwhile, everyone else was supposed to be doing... work-like things, particularly weeding the paths and adding cedar mulch. But then the Local Gardening Expert arrived. Now let me say that I have no knowledge whatever of her gardening achievements, and she may well be some kind of gardening guru. But the thing is, you can't have two people who know everything in the same talking space, therefore I don't spend time with her. Also, I already know 97% of everything, and the remaining 3% I can find out faster and more in-depth from Google than from listening to a Local Expert. So I kept on painting numbers, and one guy kept on weeding, and pretty much everyone else went to listen to the Local Gardening Expert. Then they gardened, and when she left, so did they.

Hey, what the? What about the weeding and the mulching and everything? Come back here, you slackers!

Dang it. They didn't even weed half the weeds. And they didn't even start on the cedar mulch. Some people...

Anyway. Once I got done painting all the numbers (and my name on my own bed, of course), I started preparing my plot.

Ok.

So.


First, weed. Because the woman did kindly pull the dandelions, but she left the other weeds because she can't bend down easily. So, weed. I was hoping to use one of those awesome stirrup-shaped root-cutting tools that was lying around; unfortunately, it had gone home when its owner did. Boohoohoo... I personally own no weeding tools, because I've never needed them. Yet.

Oh well then. I'll dig by hand, like my Neolithic ancestors. Or so I thought. But then I remembered that my Neolithic ancestors used antlers for digging, so I'm about 12,000 years behind times in my gardening technology. How sad.

The good thing though, is that after a massive amount of snow through the winter, we've had a horribly dry spring. Which isn't exactly "good" but has the very magical effect that everything is turning green without any rain at all, thanks to the moisture still held in the ground. But ground that has no plant cover, such as a raised vegetable bed, is pretty much just dust right now. And that was handy in that even some pretty fat taproots simply pulled right up, as long as you put your hand in the ground and pull the root, not the leaves. So, weeding went really quite well, if I may say so myself. Though I started to wonder why people had been telling each other to "just cut them with a knife." What? I'm pretty sure that if you cut weeds at the surface with a knife, they just come right back. And I do know 97% of everything. But oh well.


Two, cultivate. There were bags of manure donated by one of the hardware stores, which was very nice of them, except we were allowed one per bed, and mine could have used six or eight. But I didn't have that kind of money, and I'm supposed you don't look a gift horse in the... wait, let's not go there. But I pride myself on playing by the rules, so, one bag. I dumped my one bag of manure, and then turned the soil over with a big fork, until it was all, hopefully, well aerated. Given how dry it is, that wasn't too hard.


Three, water. Water is donated by the town and there is a very long hose and a pump, though I haven't determined how it gets its energy. And since so many people were there (not the ones from the work bee, who were mostly gone by then, but the ones who showed up fashionably after the bee), there was some waiting for the hose. And I didn't like how they were watering, because first they had one of those fancy nozzles that breaks up the water into various patterns like "shower", "jet", "mist" etc. Very cute, but it's a big waste of water. The more you break it up, the more surface area it has; the more surface area it has, the more it evaporates; the more it evaporates, the more you have to use. So just water straight from the hose. And second, they were barely using any water. Now granted, when 40 people have to share trucked water on a hot weekend, it makes sense to use it sparingly, but it's not much good putting a tiny bit of water on dust-dry dirt. And besides, if you're trying to save water, take that nozzle thing off and water straight from the hose.

But what do I know, right? I mean, other than 97% of everything. So when it was my turn with the hose, I took off the nozzle and watered as much as I dared. Somebody else was waiting, so I couldn't just leave the hose there for the afternoon, but I was hoping to get water at least as deep as I was going to plant. Which, as it turns out, I failed.


Four, mulch. Someone had brought in a big bag of grass clippings, which I had immediately claimed. There are some disadvantages to grass mulch, which the Local Gardening Expert explained and I didn't listen, but there are some advantages in that it contains lots of water, and in a drought, I think that will help me retain moisture. Unfortunately, it had been sitting for some time, and the grass was fermenting and quite smelly, not to mention really hot. But as I didn't have any other, I used it anyway. I covered my entire bed with grass mulch until none of the soil was showing. It's at least an inch thick, two in some places. And did I mention, none of the soil was showing? I thought that was the point of mulch. That way it keeps heat and moisture in the ground and, hopefully, weeds too. But meanwhile, most people used no mulch at all, and those who did used some very dry hay that was available at the site, and laid it on so thinly that you could see everything that was underneath. Um... What? How is that going to control heat, moisture and weeds?


I was getting aggravated. All these people listened to the Local Gardening Expert and then cut their weeds at the surface, used hardly any water, and threw on a very thin sprinkling of hay. I, who know 97% of everything, cut my weeds way down the roots, watered heavily, and mulched heavily with fresh grass clippings. And we can't both be right. But if I'm wrong, then why does my flower garden look so good?

It's bugging me.


Anyway, once my plot was weeded, fertilised, cultivated, watered and mulched, I had to plant it. So I went home to fetch my seedlings, only to discover that the landlord had broken the second elevator. Whenever the landlord is in town, he breaks at least one elevator. This time, the first one had crapped out early in the week, if not last weekend. The second one had broken down once on Thursday, but been reset by the Fire Department. The landlord got in on Thursday or Friday, did nothing about the elevator, and got his army of badly paid, under-the-table, no insurance, no training, casual-labour goons running all over the building, as usual, and sure enough, today he broke the one remaining elevator. So now we have no elevators at all, and it's an emergency call-out for Blair the Elevator Mechanic, who has to come from Yellowknife. So he'll be here tomorrow at a considerably higher cost than had we scheduled him to come in on Friday, or better yet, not broken the elevators in the first place. And what's more annoying is, this isn't the first time. One time there was one elevator down for nearly three weeks, and the other one acted up for a week before it quit, and yet nothing was done until we were without elevators for the weekend and Blair the Elevator Mechanic had to come on an emergency call-out. And now the Fire Department is very unhappy because if they get a call while we have no elevators, they'll have to walk up and somehow try to get hypothetical victims down the stairs (where some of the lights are burnt out, I might add). And of course the RCMP aren't gonna be running up and down the building babysitting rowdies if they have to use the stairs. Though as to that, it's very quiet in here tonight, so maybe the rowdies decided to go party somewhere they don't have to walk up. But I digress.

My seedlings included pumpkins (Baby Pam - I slew the Atlantic Giant because it was taking up too much space), onions (Red Zeppelin - I had to buy them because of the name), cauliflower (Orbit, because it's too cool not to) and Brussels sprouts (Jade Cross). I hauled them back to the garden and dug holes through the mulch to plant them, and then firmed the ground and closed up the mulch around the plants again. They looked happy enough, though indeed the water didn't go more than four inches down in the best places, which is sad. Also, there wasn't room for all my seedlings. I planted almost all the pumpkins and all the Brussels sprouts, half of the onions, and less than half of the cauliflower, of which there weren't many to begin with. I hope I get one head of cauliflower, because I really want to taste this variety. If it's good, maybe I'll get two plots next year and grow more crazy cauliflowers.

Also, I had peas, but I hadn't started them because they're fast-growing. I just poked holes in the ground with a dowel, hopefully to a more or less suitable depth, dropped one or two peas in each, and closed them over. Now of course the mulch might prevent the peas from coming up, since it's supposed to prevent things emerging from the ground. That's among the 3% of things I don't know yet. Time will tell.

After that, I watered again, more than the first time. Because you always water in when you transplant, obviously, and because I hadn't watered enough the first time, also obviously. Also because there was hardly anyone left by then and the water tank looked about half full still, and because I wanted to cool and saturate my mulch. I'll go back tomorrow and give it another soaking.


Now my plot looks totally unlike anyone else's. In fact, it looks terribly messy, because it's covered in grass clippings. So I better be getting a kick-ass crop of everything, otherwise I'll look like I should have listened to the Local Gardening Expert, which is the last thing I want to do.

Still, it's hideously dry out, and it's also June 2, that is, 22 days before the average date of last frost. So anything that can keep my plot warm and wet has got to be a good thing. If we get a frost, with how dry and bare those other plots are, I think their plants are gonna be really sorry they're not mulched.

Inshallah, right?

I hate my camera, or, the new summer garden

Once upon a time, I had the best camera ever: the Canon PowerShot S5 IS. Then Canon came up with the next generation of big zooms: the Canon PowerShot SX30 IS. I immediately bought it and gave my S5 away to a friend. Sadly the SX30 is worthless. Yes, it has a big zoom. That's nice. On the other hand, it's nearly impossible to focus. The autofocus is bad, the macro doesn't work at all, and the manual focus not only can't be worked in cold weather, it also re-focuses to be out of focus every time. Supposedly you could stop it doing that by setting "Safety MF" to "off", but I did that and it's still doing it. I emailed Canon about it and they said thanks for the feedback, we will certainly work on it. And everyone else said the same thing. So when Canon issued the next model, it was... exactly identical. Oh, wait, no: it has a CMOS instead of a CCD processor. Other than that, it's exactly the same piece of worthless, unusable junk that everyone told them wasn't working.

At times I've considered buying a Canon DSLR, although it would be a waste of money and I don't feel like walking around with that much weight around my neck. But since they're obviously not interested in selling me a camera, I'm now in the market for anything but a Canon.

Anyway, the point of this long story is, I'm not getting any reasonable pictures of sprouts, because my camera can't focus. But that being said, here is what's happening in the garden.

You may remember that back in October, I had winterised my garden, thusly:


I wasn't sure when would be a good date to open it up, but the weather has been so warm this spring, I could probably have done it much earlier than May 4. The reason I did it that day is, it was a Saturday, it was warm, and my spring bulbs had been shipped.

So. Step 1, clear my living room floor.


Wow, I have a living room? Who knew?

Step 2: remove the tarp from the garden, spread it on the living room floor.


Step 3: remove all the batts and pile them neatly on the tarp. I was extremely please to find that both the batts and the cardboard were still in their original condition: no weathering, no mold, nothing. Perfectly preserved. Yay, me!


Step 4: fold up the tarp and use the same rope to tie it all up. It didn't pack down exactly as small as in the original packaging, but it's pretty compact, as used-batt-storage goes.


And yes, I did make a handle with the rope. Rope work is one of my many untapped talents, if I do say so myself. (Thank you Dad for all the summers on the ocean sailing Lasers!)

The result:


Ok, you can't see in the picture, but it's perfect. The two trees are still alive, they still have water, they are neither dry nor moldy. The Jungle is neither dry nor moldy. Everything performed exactly as planned. BOOYA!

Now, I need to set up my giant flowerbeds.


What the???? They don't have any bottoms! Aaaaaaaah! Well, that explains why they were so affordable. And it does give me some latitude in setting them up: as you can see in the bottom left corner, I can slide it so it's a rectangle instead of a square, thus giving me a little more room to walk around them.


I used 2" rigid to make a bottom. I'd have needed some rigid insulation underneath for the winter anyway. The only difference between this and having a bottom is, I won't be able to move them. I had been toying with the idea of moving to 707, because the 07s are one-bedrooms with the biggest balconies and the best exposure in the whole building. It would have been rather difficult to move these giant planters had they had a bottom; without a bottom, they'd have to be disassembled and the dirt wheelbarrowed over there, and I doubt I'd have that kind of ambition. Oh well; saves me a fortune on rent and prevents people inviting themselves to live in my house.

The insulation was donated by Drill Guy, who insisted on "helping" with this project. As if I needed help. I did need insulation though, and this is about $70 worth, which is nice. Except I don't like having a $70 obligation to some dude. But oh well.

The gap between the two sides is deliberate, for drainage purposes. Then as you can see, I put some mesh screen over the gap, to prevent the soil from washing away.


Then, I dumped the used soil from previous years, which I was keeping in a large garbage can, and all the planters. The ones you can see here, all root-bound, are the Wall of Insanity. Brutal, isn't it?

But as we know, I needed much, much more soil. Thusly:


I think I ended up with about 20 bags of soil and manure. And this is my very awesome Fnord minivan, which is excellent for hauling anything under the sun.


This is how much bonemeal it takes for one flowerbed. Finally, I'm making a dent in my inexhaustible supply of bonemeal.


The thing is, and I should have thought of it sooner, the pressure from the soil caused the free side to slide out, thus reducing my walking space, increasing the amount of soil needed, and leaving a gap between the insulation and the wall. So, I had to dig the soil away from the wall,


slide the wall back into place, and stabilize it with spacers made from the lumber of the dog's former lawn.


I transplanted everything that was ready to go out, but it didn't lend itself to much photography. I had tulip bulbs in the fridge. The tulip bulbs in the Jungle got too much moisture and were all squishy; I threw them out. Peng Dehuai and Liu Shao-ch'i are wide awake. Deng Xiaoping, sadly, died. Funny that the two that were outside lived and the one inside died, but I'm not surprised. It broke dormancy and then got too much water, or some such problem. Anyway, it's dead as a doornail. I'll have to find something else to name after Deng Xiaoping. Also my two pear trees. Oh yeah, I only have two pear trees left, because the other two got so badly infested with spider mites, I cut them off and put them in the garbage. Sorry, little dudes. Natural selection didn't select you.

What else... My peony, but more on that later. My flax / dogwood / cotoneaster experiment, which is displeasing me considerably. And my old lilies: the orange one that was supposed to be black, the two that never flowered that were supposed to be black, and the Stargazer from last year, which hasn't shown any sign of life since being moved in with the other lilies.

Two days later, my spring bulbs arrived. Yay, spring bulbs! A big box, too. Ooooooooh, exciting!


This is my $40 Celebrity peony. As you can see, it's wide awake. The downside is, I have absolutely no idea which side is up and which side is down. Hmmmm... Think think think. I ended up burying the whole thing. If I know anything about plants, it's that they have excellent proprioception. A few days later, I worried that this was the wrong thing to do, so I dug back to my peony root, and found that it had grabbed on to the soil and was sending upwards growth. Booya!

My other peony, the $13 Shirley Temple one, came in the fall and had no growth on it at all. It shouldn't, of course. Fall bulbs are supposed to be dormant. So I had it in a planter all winter, and it never did anything, and I assumed it was dead. But when I set up the garden, I dug it up, and found the roots were starting to produce some downward growths. Rhizomes, maybe. I don't pretend to know the difference between a root, a bulb, a rhizome, or all the other disturbing things plants do under the ground. I do, however, know the difference between alive and dead, and both my peony roots were very much alive as of two weeks ago. They're still not growing above ground, but I looked at other people's established in-ground peonies, and they're not doing anything above ground yet either.


And this is my J.P. Connell rose. J.P. Connell is one of the hardy Explorer roses, developped by Agriculture Canada for our climate. Back when the Canadian government actually did things for people. Here, J.P. Connell is soaking, along with some anemone bulbs. And as you can see, it too is still alive, with green growth already showing on the canes. At least I don't have to guess what's up and what's down on this one.


These creepy things are toad lilies. There is supposed to be one purple, one orange, and one pink.

There were also three double oriental lilies in the package, which I didn't photograph. If they succeed, they will be absolutely spectacular.

As for the anemones, they're not supposed to go out until after last frost, and I was in a hurry, so I dumped them into something that had soil and nothing growing, put some dirt over top, and forgot about it for a few days. Then white mold got at them and ate about half of them. Boohoohoohoohoo... How sad. But then again, maybe I shouldn't have bought anemones. They're not even the ones I really wanted. Now the survivors are sprouting. We'll see.

Then, I also seeded everything I could think of: jacks-in-the-pulpit, dodecatheon, all the pansies, hollyhock, columbine, California poppies, regular grass, cat grass... That's all I can think of. And I can't quite remember what I put where. I know where the poppies and hollyhocks are, and more or less the jacks and dodecatheons. For the rest... it will be a surprise, I guess.


Voila. This was the summer garden as of 10:14 on May 12.


This is J.P. Connell today. As you can see, it's wide awake. I'm taking it as a bellwether for the health of the roots that have no above-ground component yet. If the rose is doing ok, so must they. Right? I hope so.


And this is one of the double oriental lilies. Took about eight tries to get the camera to focus on it. Again, if this one is alive, that must mean conditions are adequate for the other ones underground, right? And as you can see, the grass is starting to sprout. There are some other seeds sprouting, but since I forgot what I put where, and the whole thing is riddled with old seeds from the last three years, it could be anything.

This morning the weather being ridiculously warm and comfortable, I also transplanted the dicentra. I bought it from the hardware store a while back. As you may recall, the hardware store has a habit of carrying bulbs in little baggies. It's a horribly unhealthy thing to do to a bulb; they come on a truck from who knows where, and then sit in the store for days or weeks waiting to be bought by someone who doesn't know better. That's how I got my Stargazer. And this particular dicentra looked very healthy for all that, and what's more, it's a white one. Dicentra is commonly known as "bleeding heart" and I don't really like the pink ones. I didn't even know it came in white. So I took it home, put it in some dirt, immediately it grew and flowered. I could have sworn I took pictures of the flowers, but I'm not finding them. Anyway, it's very pretty. But now it's just putting out leaves and no more flowers. Anyway, I didn't want to put it out in the cold wind too soon, but this morning I found it a spot outside. Now I just got to do the anemones, and then I won't have anything left to plant.

Hmmmmmm...

Ok, so what do I do with the rest of the summer? Grow pumpkins, I guess. But that's for another post.

Summer's looking good!

Whoa... What in the world did I order???

I've got good news!

First of all, I found a guy who can lend me a drill to drill drainage holes in my new planters. A friend of his tried to set us up, which isn't necessarily the best thing she ever did for him, but hey, a drill is a drill. I'm not fussy about the ethics of borrowing drills.

Second and more importantly, I repaired to the hardware store that has the cheap bags of dirt (as opposed to the cheap dirtbags - that guy quit his job at Igloo a long time ago) and asked if I needed to order ahead for 40 bags. And the... whatever her title is, said first of all, don't get these 17 L ones, because the 35 L ones are only a dollar more. Only they're stored offsite for now because they're just about to start rotating from... whatever, to gardening. So in just a few days, there will be skids and skids of even cheaper soil ready for pick up. So if I only fill to 2" of the top, and using 35 L bags for only $1 more each, would come to $84. I'm saving about 46%.

Now that's VERY good news to me.

I hate multiplication

You know why I hate multiplication? Because it turns small numbers into big numbers. I first discovered this nefarious aspect of an apparently innocuous mathematical process when I was shopping for books on Amazon. I wanted six books. Each book cost $16. Great, I can afford these books! Except that 16 x 6 = 96 and I didn't have $96 budgeted for books. Thus I can afford all these books, but I can't afford all these books. It annoys me immensely.

What does that have to do with the garden? Nothing. Except of course those two gigantic planters I bought.

Let's see. They're four by four feet by 15" deep, so 20 cu.ft. Each. Ok, yeah, no problemo. A few bags of soil will do her. Just need to see how many I have to get.

So, 40 cu.ft. That's like, 1,133 liters.

Er... What?

You're joking, right? 4 x 4 x 1.25 x 12 x 12 x 12 x .254 x .254 x .254 x 2 =... 1,133 L

No way.

4 x 4 x 1.25 x 12 x 12 x 12 x .254 x .254 x .254 x 2 =... 1,133 L

Well.

Ok, I try to keep this blog G-rated and all that, but the only way to describe this is MOTHERFUCKER!!!!!!

I mean, really. A 17 L bag of the cheap crap soil costs $2.99 + 5% tax = $3.14 (Haha, very funny.) So even considering that I might have as much as 310 L on hand in the form of existing planters, I'm looking at... $154

I kid you not. $154 of soil. Boohoohoohoohoo why didn't I think of this sooner??? I hate you, math!

The upside, of course, is that once this is done, not only I will never have to buy more planters or more soil, but I should be buying less and less plants, too, since I'm starting to plant perennials. So really, I can amortize the $154 of soil over, say, 20 years, which is a peony's life expectancy. That means I'm spending less than $8 a year on soil for the next 20 years.

Still though, $154??? Seriously? You motherfucker, multiplication. You bloody motherfucker.

Flower #2

The giant pumpkin is in bloom. Oddly, the flowers of the giant pumpkin are quite a bit smaller than the flowers of the non-giant pumpkins. Maybe because it's early in the year and we don't have much light. Or maybe because Atlantic Giant, as far as I can tell, is a deformed mutant strain.

Baobab yesterday and baobab tomorrow

I have no idea how tall the baobabs are just now, but this is the latest leaf on Zadok. Zadok (he? she? it?) resumed growing, if slower than at first. Ahimelek not only hasn't resumed growing but lost two young leaves that shriveled up and fell off instead of developing. That's not a good sign. I've stopped watering it, as it's the only thing I can think of that could be wrong with it. I'd sprout more, but it's still two months until last frost and the place is full already.

Spring in the winter garden

Christos a înviat!

Knowledge is bliss

Thursday. I collect my paycheque, convert most of it into a money order to pay rent, and repair to the hardware store for my Liquid Gypsum.

Yay, Liquid Gypsum!

But I have an engagement for Thursday night, so I leave it till tomorrow.

Friday. Today. First thing I did this morning was to...

read the instructions.

Seriously. I'm the only person I even know who reads instructions. Instructions are awesome. I think it's awesome that somewhere in the world, someone I will never meet has written down all the knowledge I need to use this product, and here I am receiving this knowledge, just like that, effortlessly. Writing is like magic.

Under the instructions, however, they list the ingredients. 90% calcium chloride.

WTF? Calcium chloride is better known to most people as the salt we use on roads. So how is salt supposed to treat my salt problem?

Then I thought about it. First of all, one way to create gypsum is when hydrochloric acid dissolves limestone, which is made of calcium. So indeed, while not all CaCl is gypsum, gypsum is chemically CaCl. And second, the reason we put calcium chloride on roads rather than, say, sodium chloride (table salt), is because calcium chloride doesn't kill plants.

I am so smart! I am so smart! S-M-R-T!

Anyway. Instructions: apply 32 oz. per 1000 sq.ft. For severe problems, it is safe to double the dose.

Ok, great. What's that in metric? Well one cup (in baking) is approximately 8 oz. or approximately 250 mL. It's not exact, but close. Therefore 32 oz. = 4 x 8 oz. = 4 x 250 mL = 1000 L. And my lemon planters are 1 sq.ft. each, so I need (1000 mL / 1000 sq.ft) x 1 sq.ft. = 1 mL per tree, except it's a severe problem, so 2 mL per tree.

Excellent.

But I only have cooking utensils to measure quantities, and in cooking spoons, 1/2 tsp = 2.5 mL. So how do I measure out 2 mL rather than 2.5 mL?

Simple. I measured 2.5 mL, put it in the measuring cup, and then added water to 250 mL. Then I mixed it and dumped out 50 mL. The remaining liquid in the cup is 2 mL of Liquid Gypsum and 198 mL of water. (Approximately, of course.)

The only thing is, it also says to water for 15 minutes to work the gypsum into the soil. Hmmmmmmm... Well my trees can't take 15 minutes of water, but I'm willing to give them 3 L each. That's probably close enough.

In the afternoon, I also split a cup of gypsum solution between Deng Xiaoping and my remaining pear trees.

I love knowledge. In fact, I was recently reading a book about addiction, which as I had already theorised, is a way to replace deficient brain reward systems with artificial ones. And I was wondering why I don't have an addiction when I do seem to have deficient brain reward systems. Then I remembered that "being certain" is a brain reward, and on the other hand, I have a rather obsessive way of pursuing knowledge. I concluded therefore that absorbing knowledge is my way to give myself brain rewards. You might say I'm pleasuring myself with knowledge.

And here you thought this blog was G-rated, eh?

Baobab some day

I keep not getting around to posting a baobab update, and maybe if I had fewer demands on my time I would. I suppose I brought it on myself and I could just say no, but seriously, I'm overcommitted with things to do with/for people as it is, and if I phone someone to confirm a time that I'm to do something for them, and it takes 20 minutes to get off the phone, then that makes me cranky.

In any case. Zadok is now 8 1/2 by 8, and Ahimelek is 6 3/4 by 4 3/4. Or something. I forgot some of the numbers in the time between measuring them and walking back to my computer. Zadok would actually be close to 9 inches now, except the top leaf is curling and so losing a bit of height.

So, Ahimelek has hardly grown in about a month, and Zadok is slowly starting to grow again. I've resumed the watering regimen of 100 mL every four days, then I increased it to 150 mL every four days, and I'm thinking I might increase it again, as clearly it worked. Zadok is no longer turning brown, and is putting out new leaves.

Other than that, I haven't made any attempt to sprout more seeds lately. I've just been too busy and distracted by many things. And it's still 12 weeks until last frost.