Garden Update (a few too many pictures!)

My garden looks OK this year.  Last year was dreadful.  The spring was so wet and cold and it persisted for so long that I had a lot of seeds rot in the ground.  I reseeded carrots and parsnips 3 times to no avail.  Then it was wet and warm. A few things that had germinated just went mouldy.  I never saw so much mould in my garden.  This year is better.  It's been cooler than last year overall, but a more normal amount of rain has fallen and we've had a few warm days.

We'll see what the coming weeks bring in terms of warmth and precipitation, but for now, things are perhaps a bit slow, but overall not bad.  In the meantime, I thought I'd share some pictures of how it's going so far.

Here's the view outside the front door.  There are some new perennials still waiting to be planted, but the hostas are putting on a lovely show and the astilbes are getting ready to bloom.  I'm pleased with the clematis on the right as it has a lot more flowers than it did last year.

My front step containers have been planted for a couple of weeks now and they look reasonably good, I think.  They should get a bit more colourful as the weeks go on.  I definitely did a pink/purple theme this year.

My climbing rose looks really lovely right now.  Lots of blooms.

This yellow rose isn't a climber and it's very thorny but pretty all the same.

Another lovely blossom.

Here's a closer look at that clematis - such a lovely colour!

I have some pots out on my back deck, including some cleome in the foreground that have yet to be planted out.  My dwarf citrus plants are all outside now.

Nasturtiums, Asiatic lilies, and a patio tomato.

Colourful coleus with gazanias, geraniums and citrus in the back row.

Here's my autumn sweet clematis which won't flower until the fall but is putting on a lot of growth this year, which makes me very happy. I haven't yet planted the coir-lined chair yet.  It'll probably get a few little annuals in it.

My grapevine is planning world domination.  In the fall I think I will do a hard pruning.  This year the harvest looks promising though, if the raccoons don't get it first.

One of my veggie raised beds has become a perennial 'holding bed' until I decide where to put things.  It has some Canterbury bells, some threadleaf coreopsis, astrantia, hosta, phlox, and such, waiting to be planted elsewhere.

My older raised beds are having some structural issues.  I have to figure out what to do here.  These two beds haven't been planted.  I might transfer the soil from the one at the far left to the one on the back where my potatoes are this year.

This is carrots and Swiss chard.  I've had to replant 2 rows.  I think the seed was old.  I left a few sunflowers in place that were kindly planted by squirrels or chipmunks!

Here I have cucumber (left), rows of parsnips (middle) and squash (right).  The squash will tumble out of the bed and grow all over.

Here I have cucumbers, bush beans, lettuce, and kale.  And weeds.  Ha!

I have a great volunteer squash plant in one of the compost heaps.  We'll see what that produces.

The blackberries were incredibly floriferous this spring, meaning a good harvest this fall.  Best since I've lived here.

I planted asparagus for the first time this year, in this bed.  You wouldn't really know it because it's now got some potatoes that I didn't plant but must have missed harvesting last fall, and a lot of weeds, but...

...here's one of the asparagus plants closer up...they are very fern-like.  You can't harvest asparagus until it's had about 3 years to grow, so this is a long term crop.

The tomatoes in the greenhouse are looking good, and there's a squash volunteer in there as well!  I left it in place to see what it would produce.

Tomatoes - recently weeded by my very helpful university student whom I have hired for some work this summer to help me keep up with garden tasks.  

My plum tree is having fruit for the first time ever, so I'm really excited about that.  I'm upset because 2 of my 3 plum trees have black knot fungus, which means I shall have to cut them down, but I hope the third one will stay healthy.

My second greenhouse, which used to be the duck house, has melons, herbs, zucchini, and a few more tomatoes.

I have some lovely geraniums blooming.

The peonies are almost finished now.

The bees are happily harvesting from the comfrey flowers.

My first few daylilies have bloomed in the past couple of days.

The hostas are doing very well this year, even the little ones that got planted at the end of last year.

There is a riot of foxgloves, and when I stand near them, I can hear all the bees buzzing.  The bumble bees love the foxgloves.

I put in some new astilbe and daylily this year, as well as calamagrostis ornamental grass.

And it looks like the black currant harvest will be reasonably good as well, which it wasn't last year.

So all in all, I'm happy with the garden, and hope it will continue to thrive.  I wish I had more time to spend in it!

Garden Update: Fruiting Plants

In addition to the raised beds I recently posted about, I have also been busy putting in some fruiting shrubs this year.  I wanted to get those planted as soon as possible this year because they can take a while to get properly established.  I'm a big fan of growing my own fruit.  When I lived in Iowa, the climate allowed me to harvest a wider range of fruit, but here in New Brunswick, the growing season is short, so my choices are more limited.

Blackcurrants are a family favourite - something that I grew up with because I have British parents.  Many people aren't familiar with blackcurrants, or think that they are related to "currants" of the raisin type, which are a different fruit altogether.  I had 8 different blackcurrant varieties in Iowa, but here I was having trouble finding any, even by mail order.  Fortunately I was at MacArthur's Nursery in Moncton a couple of weeks ago, shortly after they'd received an order of fruit-bearing plants, including 4 blackcurrant bushes.  I bought 2 of them!  I left the white hanging basket container in this picture to show the size - the hanging basket container is the "regular" size you see in most stores.


The blackcurrants are the Ben Connan variety, which is bred from a combination of Ben Sarek and Ben Lomond varieties, both of which I grew in Iowa.  I was really excited to see such big, healthy plants.  They have already been planted in amongst some of my existing perennials.

At the nursery, the blackcurrants were sitting next to some gooseberry plants, so I immediately grabbed one of those as well.  This is an old classic "Pixwell" variety.  Some people think they're sour but I think they're great!  As you can see, it's found a spot next to the tulips, which are almost finished for this year.  If we could just stop having overnight frosts, it would be great.  These late frosts have already wreaked havoc on our province's grape and blueberry harvests. 

I need to ensure the berries get adequate sunlight, so planting them in with the other perennials is one of the best places, since those beds do receive a reasonable amount of sunlight.  I was also able to purchase a small but relatively healthy looking red currant.  It is also already planted.  The leaves are a bit pale but I'm pretty sure it will green up quickly.

I was also lucky enough to find a jostaberry, which is not a well known berry here, but is another that I used to grow in Iowa.  It's a cross between the blackcurrant (Ribes nigrum), the North American coastal black gooseberry (Ribes divaricatum) and the European gooseberry (Ribes uva-crispa).  The flavour is somewhere between a blackcurrant and a gooseberry - kind of a milder version of a blackcurrant really.  Very nice for jelly and other sweet treats in the fall kitchen!

In addition to the berry bushes, I purchased two different varieties of dwarf sour cherries.


I love the zing in the flavour of sour cherries. Sweet cherries are nice too, but the flavour of the tart cherries is just superb in my opinion.  I bought "Romeo" and "Cupid" varieties, which both originate from the University of Saskatchewan dwarf sour cherry breeding program.

I used to grow "Nanking" shrub cherries in Iowa, so I'm hoping these will do equally well for me here.  I would like to find a couple of Nanking cherry shrubs here as well, but I need to keep looking because I haven't found any yet.  For now, Cupid and Romeo will, I hope, grow big and strong!

This perennial bed has now become a half fruit bed, with 3 currant shrubs and a rhubarb plant from my in-laws that I planted earlier this year.  I also received a lovage plant from a friend of mine who has a vegetable farm.  I've planted it on the left side near the rhubarb.  The same bed  has a white climbing hydrangea on the bird feeder pole, some yellow loosestrife, some cranesbill, daylilies, echinops, irises, and lavender, as well as the forget-me-nots that are in all my garden beds!  In the front left there's a submerged pot that has mint in it - the pot prevents it from taking over the garden, since mint can be so invasive.

I'm not sure whether I'll get much of a fruit crop this year, but the blackcurrant bushes do have a reasonable number of little green fruits already, so maybe I'll have enough for a little jar of jam!