Lettuce Love Liquid

Lettuce love liquid . . . yes, indeedy they do. Particularly when it comes in the form of 3 inches of rain!!

 (Top: Buttercrunch; bottom: Romaine - these photos were taken on Thursday. They're bigger now)

That's how much rain we've had in our latest dump since Friday, 3 more inches. Gotta tell you though, the weeds are loving it entirely too much. I'd just finished weeding before the rain and Presto! more weeds had appeared when I went out to empty my rain gauge yesterday evening.

The potatoes are also loving the rain - in fact, they've grown so much in the past few days, I think I'm going to have to hoe them again, and I only did that a week ago! Not that I'm complaining, the growth is awesome, especially if I don't have to use our temperamental well to do the watering . . . but the old arthritis in my fingers makes hoeing a bit more of  a chore than it used to be.

The two plants which do not seem to like this rain at all, are the tomatoes and the cucumbers in the garden. They are not at all happy. Especially when one compares them to the ones in the greenhouse. The plants in the greenhouse are growing like weeds (but in a good way, haha) and I have to rearrange my greenhouse because in the past couple of days,  my broccoli have grown too big for the spot I had them in. Ooops.

 (First photo is of the Sub-Arctics in the greenhouse; second is the Sub-Arctics in the garden. Quite a difference!)

I'm beginning to think I might need that second greenhouse after-all!! Yet last year, I only managed to successfully grow 2 cucumber plants, everything else died. This year however, I have 5 healthy, growing cucumber plants in the greenhouse, 6 healthy tomato plants, 6 healthy broccoli and 3 healthy pepper plants. Although, I must admit, I'm having a wee issue with my Balls Beefsteak tomatoes - the plant is healthy and is growing well, but, the tomatoes themselves have a weird green part on the top around the stem. It just appeared the day after the last time I fertilized, so I'm not sure what's up with that. The other tomatoes are fine. Perhaps, I'm just not meant to grow beefsteak tomatoes??

(If you look closely, you can see the green part on the top of the tomato - this was taken on Thursday, since then, the biggest one has started to ripen and the green part is even more noticeable.)

It's bizarre, what's going on with the tomatoes, because they're all in the same dirt. They're all on the same side of the greenhouse. They all get watered and fertilized at the same time. And only the Beefsteak have this problem - perhaps another gardener out there, who is reading this, could tell me if Beefsteaks are prone to this type of thing? And are the fruit still edible? Beefsteaks are huge, so I would be wasting a lot of tomato if I had to compost them!!

Mourning Christchurch

Today, I'm mourning Christchurch, NZ again. On Friday, deconstruction started in the CBD, also known as the "Red Zone" of Christchurch. I've recently discovered the work of Ross Becker, who has been commissioned by the National Library (of NZ) to record the devastation of Christchurch for their digital archives. And record it he has! His work is fabulous (other photos as well as those of the earthquakes' damage), and yesterday, he uploaded photos of the deconstruction to his website ( https://picasaweb.google.com/RossBeckerNZ ). I thought the images of how the earthquakes had destroyed the buildings in the Central City were bad enough, but the actual deconstruction . . . well, that just makes it worse.

I know it had to be done. There's no other option, really. The buildings were dangerous how they were, and despite their former beauty and the history they represented, they have to go. But now, alas, all I'm left with are memories (no photos, bugger it) of what was once there.

Cashel Mall, which to the untrained eye, looked somewhat intact, now resembles a wasteland or war-zone, with building after building falling to the buckets of the exacavators . . . including the Whitcoulls building, where I spent much of my hard-saved money as both a high school and university student. All I have to show for it, that I am positive came from that particular store, is a Stadlaeter eraser, which I bought there in 1987. Yes, it's weird that I have this "keepsake" of Whitcoulls, but I do.

In Cathedral Square, buildings are also being demolished, including the Regent Theatre on Worcester St. How many times did my friends and I go to the pictures there?? Countless. I remember several times in the 6th Form, we went and several of us shorter people (who were 16 or so at the time) lied and got in for the price of a 13-year old!! I think it was there, that one of the boys in the group (I'm thinking Daniel or Mike?) dropped their box of Snifters and they spilled all over the floor in a noisy cascade!

If I'd only known that one day the Regent Theatre would be destroyed by an earthquake, I would've taken some pictures of it. But who goes around taking photos of buildings in their hometown, just in case an earthquake hits? Not me. And now I wish I had.

So many places, so many things about the Garden City, I took for granted and assumed would always be there . . . even sitting along the Avon, feeding the ducks, will not be the same. The skyline has been markedly changed. The best place was on Oxford Terrace, near the Bridge of Remembrance. No doubt the ducks are still there, but with the Central City having been abandonned for months, they're having to rely on themselves for food. No breadcrumbs for the ducks in 2011. Nor the seagulls either, although I guarantee, when the CBD opens again to the public, and people return to feeding the ducks, those seagulls will be more aggressive than ever!!

But the building which makes me the most sad, is St. John's Latimer Square. They've already pulled down the church hall, and no doubt the church itself is next. I wish that were not the case - this building is not just a historic Christchurch building, but a significant one in my family also. It was at St. John's that my grand-parents, great-grandparents and great-great-grandfather (second marriage after his first wife, my great-great-grandmother, died) all got married.

I'm sure everyone in Christchurch is losing a piece of personal history, now that these buildings, by necessity, are being torn down. Theoretically, their passing will make room for more green space, more gardens, and the beauty of Christchurch will rise again from this devastation . . . but it will never be the same.

The city that was, the Garden City of four, twenty and thirty-plus years ago, will live on in my memory as the most beautiful city in New Zealand . . . may it rise again from the havoc wrought by Mother Nature to claim this position again. Regardless of how long it takes, it will always be my home.

Rain, rain, go away . . . please!!!

So, a week after the gigantic downpour which flooded the town of Chetwynd, closed the Pine Pass and overloaded Fort St. John's sewer system, not to mention turning my poor garden into a swamp . . . I read a forecast which says more heavy rain is expected this weekend. The last heavy downpour dumped 4.5 inches of rain into my rain gauge - this forecast says 50 to 80 mm - about the same again!!

Exactly how are my plants supposed to grow??? Sunshine, nice hot, dry sunshine is what's needed right now. For at least 2 weeks, non-stop!!

I have learned something as a result of this rain though. The plants which I took out of the greenhouse and planted in the garden - the tomatoes (Sub-Arctic) and cucumber (Diva, Straight 8 and Spacemaster), definitely like the climate of the greenhouse better. Not so soggy. In the greenhouse, the veges, particularly my Diva cucumber, are growing like weeds - I've had to tie the cucumber to the roof of my greenhouse already . . . the one in the garden is barely any bigger than it was when I put it out there!

Had to replant the peas - only 10 plants of the Little Marvel variety (2 double rows!) I planted sprouted and survived the rain - so I planted a double row of Improved Laxton's Progress, which have grown successfully in other years. Clearly, in gardening, as in many things in life, don't mess with what works! But that's okay - we all love how the Laxton's Progress taste - I didn't get Marvel because of that, I just thought I would try something new - luckily I was going to plant the Laxton's Progress for my late summer harvest anyhow! Also had to replant the beans - all the beans I planted in the house sprouted on schedule and are now in the garden, behind a wind break . . . had a wee issue with the wind blowing the leaves clean off of one baby bean plant, so we erected a wind break. It's just wooden lattice tied to the fence. So, with any luck, these 18 new plants will give us the bounty of previous years.

And with further luck, if this flaming rain would stop, maybe they won't be mouldy either. That happened to me one other year, beans were mouldy because right in the middle of summer, it poured for a week. Think that was last year, as a matter of fact. My corn never matured either, so I've given up on trying to grow corn. At least for now. Maybe in a year of a real good drought, with lots of heat, I'll try it again - in a year like 2006!

Best get off the computer now, and go pull some more of the insidiously popular poplar trees which have decided that my carrot patch is lovely place to grow! Well, it is . . . but only if you're a carrot!

Can one's thumb BE too green??

That is the question of the day . . . can one's thumb be too green? I hope not, because I'm having a blast in mega-green thumb land . . . now, if only I could get some straw bales.

The reason I'm musing about the levels of thumb-greenness is that my greenhouse is full. Truly, bursting at the beams . . . last year, it seemed huge, with only 2 cucumber plants growing in it. I had heating and watering issues, so nothing really grew. Guess that's what happens when you live 10+km away from your garden and greenhouse, eh?

Anyhow, since my husband built me some stands for the plants (Mother's Day present), not only have I managed to organize the greenhouse much better, but it seems that this organization - and living only 10m away from said horticultural enterprises - has enabled the plants to live. To survive. Okay, okay . . . thrive!! As I mentioned in my previous blog posts, I have planted several varieties of tomatoes and cucumbers, as well the peppers and the broccoli. Just experimenting at this stage to see what grows best . . . I thought for sure I'd kill at least half the plants. Not so. Ooops. So now, its over-flowing.

Last week, I planted out 3 of my tomato plants into the garden (the Sub-Arctic variety). I also put out some lettuce (still have 3 in the greenhouse, just for kicks), and the beans I had started early. All have survived. Can't say whether those are thriving or not, because it rained for 5 or 6 days in a row. So now the weeds have grown as well, but I'm not going to moan about those today! Yesterday, I planted out the 2 Romaine lettuce which survived the greenhouse (had a small heat issue with the seedlings), the 4 Buttercrunch lettuce, one Diva cucumber, 2 Straight 8's and 2 Spacemaster's - all except the Diva, I started myself from seed in the dining room! So, there is a little bit more room in the greenhouse, but the remaining plants are only going to get bigger.

I have to repot the Sub-Arctic tomatoes which are staying in the greenhouse . . . hope I can do this successfully, now that there are little green tomatoes on the plants! I need to though, because they need watering 2x a day, when it's not hot, or else they're drooping.

Repotted the broccoli the other day, when it rained - they were seriously root-bound. My Dad says they should be in the garden, not the greenhouse, because of the nature of their roots. Spreading wide and all that. But since the growing season seems to be long, from what I've read - and based on the lack of success I had last year - I've got 'em in pots. Maybe next year, I'll put some out in the garden.

But I suppose you're all wondering just what I'm on about, with the need for straw bales. Well, way back in 1987 a bunch of us went out to Trish's bach at Rakaia (Bernice and Jo, you'll remember this day, I think) - on the way home, we stopped in at our Chemistry teacher's house (I don't remember why) and he was working on his garden . . . he was using straw bales as mulch. Kept the weeds down and the roots cool. My first year of gardening, I tried hay bales. Worked like a charm - the beans were out of the dirt, the leaves stayed clean and the weeds were kept to a minimum. Except for the weeds brought into the garden via the hay bales themselves.

I'm still trying to eradicate those!

So, with a lack of straw, I'm trying peat moss. In the fall, I'll just rototill it into the garden and will be improving the soil - also hopefully lowering the PH in the potato patch, because I have a problem with scab, which would be solved with a lower PH. I put down peat moss around the "early" plants yesterday, and it seems to be doing the trick. As far as keeping the leaves off the dirt - had a thunderstorm last night, and when I went to check this morning, everything looked good.

In the rest of the garden, everything seems to be doing well - all my spuds are up, both Russet Norkota and Sangre. Peas, lettuce, beets, onions and carrots have all sprouted . . . the beans, I've had to restart (in the dining room this time) because the pesky robins dug them all up whilst looking for worms. Kind of a pain, but I do have the other 3 bean plants already growing in the garden (that I started early), to tide us over.

Since it's raining again, there won't be any weeding for me today, bummer. Time to catch up on the laundry, so my kids have clothes to wear, and perhaps a little more greenhouse work. Or, I could just go and play with the new puppy . . . he doesn't seem to mind the rain!!

My Green Thumb is alive and well!!

Yes, my green thumb is thriving . . . I was a little concerned, given my previous lack of success in the greenhouse, in the past 2 years, but this year, I think I can safely say, I've put all that behind me. And after only three weeks of use!

I started my seeds as usual, in the dining room and my little mini-greenhouse/seed propagator, and they grew. However, this time, after testing out the heater in the greenhouse and finding that it did, indeed, do the trick, I moved my biggest tomato plants out to their new home, on Mother's Day. Since then, I've had to re-pot them twice, because they've out grown their pots. To date, the tomatoes have at least 3 bunches (please excuse my incorrect tomato terminology, I'm still new at this!) of flowers growing on each plant. I have 9 plants. This was before I fed them any Miracle Grow, so it seems I'm off to a roaring start.

My other veges are growing extremely well also - some are ready to go out into the garden, if it would stop raining long enough for me to finish weeding and get my potatoes planted, before I plant anything else!! This weekend, hopefully.

I have green peppers, one red pepper plant, cucumbers, broccoli, beans, lettuce, peas and a variety of flowers (these are destined for outdoor pots) in there at the moment, and it is full!! Which is great - it's never had this many plants in it, ever! I just re-potted my 6 broccoli plants yesterday - moved them up from 4 inch pots to 6 inch (or one gallon?) pots. They were seriously root bound. I've put 3 of my lettuce plants in a window box - the other three are going in the garden, plus I have some tiny ones I started from seed myself, which will eventually replace these bigger ones.

All my beans and peas are destined for the garden - I started them early just to see how well they'd do - horticultural experiment #3, I think we'll call that one! The plan is to put a select number of tomatoes and cucumbers in the garden also, and see how they do - if the weather is nice enough for long enough for them to produce a decent crop . . . and to see if all the vege predators will leave them alone!

Aside from the weeds, which once I get ahead of them, are fairly easy to control (the problem is getting rid of them before I plant!), we have a variety of vege predators in the garden. There are the birds, which eat the raspberries - but that's okay, because I have lots - we also have chipmunks and squirrels, which eat my peas and my beans. This would actually also be okay, because again, I have lots, but they only eat half of a bean or a pea pod, and move on to eat another. So, I end up with a lot of half-eaten, and thus useless veges. Oh, and one of those little buggers (don't know which critter, because I didn't catch him in the act) actually dug up some of my potatoes last year and ate part of a couple of them!! Again, I have lots - we're still eating the potatoes I grew last year - but I still had to throw away a few, because they turned green, thanks to the digging critters!

Oh the joys of gardening in the country, eh? Haha, actually, it's a lot of fun . . . and I really don't mind sharing, I would mind even less, if they would let me catch them in the act and pose for my camera. How cool would that be??

The weather this weekend is supposed to be nice, warm and sunny, so I should be able to get all my veges planted out, and the seeds planted too. First, continued weed removal; second, building plant supports (peas and raspberries); and then planting!! As usual, I'm a week late, but it hasn't seemed to make a difference in previous years - this is my fourth year of vege gardening, so although I'm still a novice, I think I'm getting the hang of it!

Now, if only I could find some small, square straw bales, I could launch another experiment!!

Who's YOUR Farmer?

I saw this bumper sticker yesterday, in the middle of tailgate of a Ford pickup. Who's your farmer? I am my farmer!! Now that spring is actually here -- not that season which, according to the calendar is spring, but since there's still several feet of snow on the ground, it's really winter -- the snow has melted, so I can finally seriously start thinking about my garden. Okay, I have been doing a lot of thinking already, but now I can put those thoughts into action. And get my tomato plants off the hearth in the living room, and out into the greenhouse!

Although we live on a farm, and I have been known to "whisper" the hay into growing taller than our kids, I'm not really a farmer. I'd say, more of a wife-whose-husband-owns-the-farm-his-grandparents-homesteaded-on-back-in-the-1930s kind of horticulturalist. In short, I don't farm, I garden. In the garden and the greenhouse. Or rather, I attempt to grow stuff in the greenhouse. I've had a few issues with that in the past couple of years.

However, 2011 is going to be different! I hope.

Last year, I managed to successfully grow cucumbers in the greenhouse - much to the surprise of one of the ladies at our local garden centre. How did you tie them up, she asked. I used a tomato cage. The sticks and string apparatus wasn't working, so since my tomatoes were clearly stunted and not going to need the cages, I just popped them around the cucumbers and tied them up with survey tape. Fabulous. Until the frost got them in September.

This year, now that we finally live on the farm, within sight of the greenhouse, things are going to be different. For Mother's Day, my husband built a two-tiered growing bench for the greenhouse, so now I have 16 feet of growing space (in a 10 foot long greenhouse), and last night, we hooked up a heater and tested it to see how warm it would keep the greenhouse overnight. It went down to 2C last night and there was a frost. But the greenhouse, at 5:30 a.m. was 8C, with no frost. Excellent. Just have to goose the heat up a wee bit, to make it 10C overnight, and my tomatoes can move off the hearth and into their proper home.

I'm not totally sure if this is what one is supposed to use a greenhouse for, but I'm also giving my other garden plants a head start. I have planted lettuce, cucumbers, beans and peas in little peat pots and they have all sprouted in the past 10 days. My intention is to grow them in the greenhouse until the end of May, when one can finally put stuff out in the garden without too much worry of frost. In theory, this will give me a head-start on the veges, which usually come ripe all at once, and I have a heck of time getting them all harvested, eaten or preserved at once.

I'm also going to kick-start my "deer resistant" perennials this way. I have several peonies, ferns, bleeding hearts and irises ready to plant, which I would love to plant in the garden in early June as actively growing plants, not tubers. Especially since their garden is not quite ready yet.

Who am I kidding? It's not ready at all!! I have two big rocks and two big piles of topsoil (one of which is in the wrong location) and a general idea of how big I want to make the garden. It will, when completed, provide an awesome view from our living room windows, with the native bush behind as a backdrop for the pink, blue and white blooms I've chosen.

Provided, of course, that these plants really are deer-resistant, and Madame Deer and her baby leave them alone. Boris the moose appears only interested in eating the leaves off trees, especially willow trees, so theoretically, she won't eat them. Yes, I know, Boris is a boy name, but the kids thought that would be an excellent name for our resident moose - who, when the house was being built, thought the garage made an excellent moose shelter! She has no antlers, therefore she is a girl moose. I believe her middle name is Princess though, hahaha.

So, today begins Tomato-growing-in-the-greenhouse experiment #3. Experiments #1 & 2 were dismal failures. I actually grew the tomatoes better in the dining room in the past 2 years, than I did in the greenhouse. More on that in my next post.

Thanks for reading - and happy gardening!!

Dr. Evil for PM??

Is it just me, or is anyone else totally disillusioned with the Federal Election this year? Normally, I follow the election coverage, watch the debates etc., in order to vote with an informed opinion. Of course, I always voted for Jay Hill, but it pays to be informed, stay abreast of the issues, keep current. This election, just seems like a total waste of time.

Maybe its the whole fourth election in 7 years thing? Or maybe its because Harper is doing an okay job, and the alternative of Michael Ignatieff is not really appealing. I read somewhere, that he is considered quite charismatic, especially to the ladies . . . this lady just finds him arrogant and creepy. Seriously, he looks evil. And who wants Dr. Evil for a Prime Minister. Although, if it was Austin Powers version of Dr. Evil, Canadians might really have an interesting time of it.

So disillusioned am I, with this whole election business, that for once I didn't even bother to watch the English debate the other day. Of course, I also refused to watch it on principle. They had four party leaders debating, but only three national parties were represented. The Green Party, our fourth legitimate national party, was not allowed to participate. 

Why? Because they have no elected members. Yet the Bloc Quebecois, which is neither a national party, nor a party which has the best interests of Canada and Canadians at its core, was allowed to take part.

The Bloc has always been the party of separatism. And separatists wish to destroy Canada as we know it. Vive le Quebec, they cry . . . not Oh Canada! The people responsible for organising the leaders' debate either don't know, or don't care what the Bloc is all about.

This election is about Canada, and the Bloc is not and never has been, about Canada.

It's not that I begrudge Quebec the right to have a voice in parliament, that wouldn't be democratic of me, now would it? What I object to, is a province or group of people who advocate the destruction of our country as we know it, being two-faced about it. Electing members to parliament, the body which governs Canada as a whole, and has the needs of the entire country at its core, when said group of people doesn't really care about Canada, the country (only Quebec, the imaginary country).

Now that I've got my anti-separatism rant out of the way, I'd just like to add that I wish Ignatieff hadn't orchestrated the whole non-confidence motion last month. It's really too soon for another election - we're supposed to have one every 3 or 4 years, not 4 in 7 years!

If you think about it, what could Ignatieff, the history professor, really bring to the table, that Harper, with his degree in economics, hasn't? It wasn't knowledge of medieval history which got our country through the world economic crisis. It wasn't the lessons learned from the Revolutionary War which got us through it, kept our heads above water, when other countries, most notably our neighbour to the south, were sinking into an abyss of debt, unemployment and looming financial collapse.

No, it was knowledge of economies and aversion to large debt loads that saved us. Not Michael Ignatieff.