Growing

One of the purple cabbages I've got growing in our balcony garden.  Our garden is doing really well this year, as is everyone else's.  It's been a good year for growing things!

Road Trip 2011, part three

I've added a bunch of photos to my flickr set for this trip. While out, we stayed with my parents on the farm I grew up on. One of my brothers has his own place just up the road, a handy little walk away.

A lot of the farm shots have stories behind them, and will probably get posts of their own. Until then, here some others for you to enjoy.




This is one of several gardens my mother has. The vegetable garden has gotten smaller over the years, though it's still quite large. There are flower gardens, fruit trees and berry bushes as well. This little garden was mostly flowers when I was growing up on the farm. Now it's got more veggies in it - handy to have, closer to the house. With all the rain and cold in MB, the gardens when in a month late and the ground has often been too muddy to tend. It was just starting to dry up a bit during our visit.






There is a new addition near my parents' big garden - a couple of honey bee hives! My late uncle always kept bees, and he loved tending them. After my uncle died, one of his son in laws took over. Now my cousin in law runs Honeybee Meadows and he and his wife sell their honey as a nice little business. I made a point of picking up a big bucket of honey from them to bring home with me! :-) These are their hives, taking advantage of the many seasonal flowers my mother has, though from here, clover is all you can see. The row of trees behind the hives is mostly lilac, though there is a chokecherry tree in there as well (which my dad has used to make wine in the past). I'm sure there are others my mom has added over the years I don't know the names of! *L*






The ditch between my parents' place and my brother's was filled with flowers. Mostly Daisies and Wild Roses, but also Black Eyes Susans, creeping Buttercups, and many more I just don't know the names of.

During one of our walks back, however, we spotted this single Lady's Slipper that suddenly appeared. It wasn't blooming when we walked past the day before. It was hard to get a photo with the breeze, but I think this one worked out all right. We had found two more of a different type of Lady's Slipper in the spruce grove near my parents' house that I just wasn't able to get a good shot of.






It was a beautiful evening when we visited with my brother, so we sat outside to chat - thoroughly covered in bug spray, I might add. It was so nice to sit out there, surrounded by trees and flowers, several cats and the dog, enjoying each other's company. While there, we saw several deer passing through a clearing. They were a bit too fast for me, but I did manage to get a couple of shots.

Gotta love country living!





This is a neighbour's field we pass when driving from my parents' farm to town. When I was a kid, I loved bison, so I was pretty thrilled when people started to keep them. The babies you can just see over the tall grass are so adorable! They're such fascinating animals to look at.

Tasty, too.

In my mother's garden

Sunshine
Originally uploaded by amkb
Anna: The girls and I made the trip to Manitoba for my brother's funeral this past weekend. While there, I visited with my parents as much as possible. This flower was in one of my mother's many gardens around their yard.

More photos of the trip are here.

How does your garden grow?

Anna:  A few days ago, a group of us met up at a local nursery and picked up plants for our container gardens.  It was a gorgeous day for it, too.



I got to say hello to the resident cat, who was obviously used to large numbers of people, and quite adept at ignoring them.

My fellow gardeners picked up some lovely flowers.  Here are a few of them.









Me, I didn't pick up any flowers at all.  Instead, I picked up edibles.



'cause I'm like that. 

 I'd already planted some seeds in my old containers, but the ones in the rail planters didn't survive the snowfall.  The container with lettuce seeds was showing leaflets too small to be seen in this photo.  One of my new bin planters has something new for me - Strawberry Spinach, which is neither strawberry, nor spinach, but looked neat, so I wanted to give it a try.  I hope my bin is deep enough for them.  I'm not sure how the planting will turn out.  As I was trying to open the seed packet, it slipped out of my hands and landed upside down in a corner of the bin.  I have no idea how many seeds were in there, but they were incredibly tiny and black.  Aside from what was stuck to the sides of the packet, for all I know, I dumbed dozens of seeds in that one spot.  I tried scooping up the soil from the area and adding them to where I intended to plant them, so we'll see how it turns out.

The other new bin was supposed to be just seeded with Purple Haze carrots, but when I saw them available as transplants, I decided to pick up a few.  This gives me a head start with the successive sowing I was planning on.  They even look to have survived having one of my extra bags of soil fall over onto them on the ride home!

My rail planters now have some Sweet Basil - just one plant this year, as I found them too delicate for our windy balcony last year.  Hopefully, it will be well sheltered by the Joi Choi and Silver Posie Thyme it's with.  I also tried some Grand Chives this year - we found the Garlic Chives we had last year too bitter, and they too didn't survive the snows (they had been showing green shoots shortly after things warmed up, but alas, they didn't make it).  I figured it was a good opportunity to try a different variety, together with the Crinkle Leaf Oregano and Sage I picked up.

In other pots, I've still got my tarragon (I managed to wrest control of them and have just one plant of tarragon to supply us) and rosemary, plus some spinach.  I even seeded some lettuce with our avocado indoors some time ago, and they're ready for eating now. 

Since these were transplanted, it's been on the cool side and raining fairly steadily.  The rain is supposed to continue for a couple more days before it creeps up to the hot side again.  I think the plants should be okay.  If not, I can take the more delicate ones indoors.  I'm hoping our rainfall means the end of the 10 + year dought we've been having in our area.

Snow. Again.

Last time, we were posting photos of some of the flowers blooming all over the place.  Now we've got this.




Yes, it's snowing again.  It had been raining all day.  It's still a couple of degrees above freezing, according to my WeatherEye.





I'd even done some planting last weekend.  Some are cool weather plants, so they might actually survive.  Others... not so much.





No, I won't be using the BBQ tonight.  Not likely to use it tomorrow night, either. 

After that, it's supposed to start getting hot again.

Our co-op is having its spring garage sale this weekend.  We shut down early when no one was showing up over a couple of hours, what with that chilly rain.

As I write this, the snow is coming down even harder.

This is going to be an interesting spring!

Frost thyme

Anna: It's been a long time since we've posted photos. We have them... we just haven't got around to posting them. :-P

We've had huge amounts of fog in the last couple of nights. That left for some lovely frost on the remains of my herbs on the balcony. More than enough incentive to break out the macro lens.

The frost-kissed remains of thyme blossums.

And a few remaining leaves of parsley.

Quenched

basil-drop3685
Originally uploaded by amkb

Anna: The current heat has been very rough on my lettuces, and the herbs aren't doing much better. I've been turning planters, chasing the shade and watering diligently. Even then, I have to be careful, as the watering can I keep full outside ends up with water too hot to comfortably touch!

Here, my blooming basil is perking up with a bit of moisture. My thyme is blooming now, too.

Philippe: Anna mentioned she watered things again... :)

Just a little battered

garden
Originally uploaded by amkb

Anna: We've had some pretty wicked weather lately. First, high winds yesterday, then pouring rain today. The rain was badly needed, though too late for some of the farmers surrounding the city.

Strangely, our balcony has absolutely no shelter from the wind. There are walls on two sides, plus the building itself in the back. Instead of blocking wind, they seem to instead act as a funnel, forcing the wind to blow in circles inside the balcony. Near the floor was only slightly better, so I moved the rail planters down. A couple of my basil were bent over at the stem bases. I don't think they were broken through and should survive, but we'll see. The driving rains battered my second sowing of spinach almost flat. Again, I'm pretty sure they'll survive. I hope they do. The first sowing is starting to bolt, so I'll have to harvest them tomorrow.

Things seem to have calmed down, so I tucked all the planters close together for a picture before putting things back in their various places. This is my entire balcony garden, all in one place.

For a first year, I'm quite happy with it. :-)

307:365 Promises

promises
Originally uploaded by amkb

Anna: Rows of peat pellets slowly expanding, soon to be seeded with a variety of herbs. A promise of future bounty. In a few weeks, I should have the beginnings of an herb garden on our balcony, as well as some carrots, spinach and lettuces.

The balcony in our old apartment faced North/North-west. We didn't get enough sunlight to grow much and, with plans to move ever in the back of my mind, I never tried.

Now we are facing South, with hours and hours of sunlight. I'm starting small this year, but if things work well, I'm hoping to get a decent vegetable garden out there. Maybe even some fruits. Not too much, as we want room for a BBQ and seating. I'll be using the rail and maybe the side wall a lot. Our co-op does have a few garden plots available. Perhaps I'll apply for one next year. For now, the balcony will do. :-)