Garden Bench!

Here's something new and exciting for the garden! A beautiful willow bench by Off Grid Woodworking (who I happen to be related to :). If you're interested in getting one of these beauties for your own garden, contact Ben!

a new use for jars?

I don't know if this was a good idea or not, but I saw it on Pinterest (so it must be a good idea, right?). It was so windy yesterday that my plastic cloches were zipping all over the yard, so I popped on some canning jars. Think the pepper plants might suffocate though? I hope to open them up once a day to get some fresh CO2 in, hopefully that will help. 

The alien from the deep (of the composter)

Found this interesting little beast in my worm composter. Whatever it was appears to have started sprouting and rooting in the dark! 

Any guesses as to what it is? Three cheers and a free sage plant (if you live near me :) if you can figure out what it is!

the bean fort!!

Theoretically there's no room for this in the yard. Practically, it had to be done! Once we read it in a book, both the boys and I had our hearts set on making a bean fort. 

You make a teepee with sticks, plant beans at the base, and let them twine their way up the sticks. Et voila! A bean fort :) I'll post a picture in August when the beans will be 2 meters tall. 

Busy, busy, terribly busy...

It's been a busy couple of weeks! If I'm not transplanting seedlings, I'm perusing perennials at greenhouses. If I'm not doing that, I'm watering (since, after a winter of insane snow, we have had NO rain this spring). If I'm not doing that, I'm putting in seeds, or edging the front garden, or cleaning up straw from the neighbour's yard, or de-thatching the lawn...let's just say that I completely forgot about the course I was working on. Literally. Remembered today that I'm enrolled. Probably should get back to that before my time runs out!

But the garden is way more fun. This evening I put in a few perennials I picked up from Wal-mart. Yeah, I know, Wal-mart is not my favourite place. And, note to anyone buying perennials at Wal-mart or Costco, not all their plants that have a "perennial" tag are Zone 3. I found a couple listed as Zone 4 or 5 (and one at Costco that, when I looked it up, is Zone 8!), which are almost guaranteed to die over the winter. 

Here's my little shade corner.

A couple big hostas, a bunch of baby hostas, and some shade-loving flowering perennials (aquilegia, toad lily, and some sort of bluebells) that are just poking their heads up out of the ground. And see where that log is in the lower picture? My father-in-law is making us a willow bench to put just in front of it, so it will be close to the apple tree. The area marked off by logs in the upper picture will be pathway eventually. Hopefully the ground cover I put in will start growing soon so I don't have just weeds there. If not, guess I'll just need to do some bark mulching!

And two more fun things are happening - I have a grand total of 4 asparagus spears coming up, and my cherry bush is blooming! I LOVE SPRING.

It's not just me!

Here's a great little post from Salisbury Greenhouse about what you can plant earlier than the May long weekend!

goat crap and other delicious thoughts

I'm going to be in pain tomorrow! Tonight was a busy one - I de-thatched the edges of the yard and re-seeded them with a no-maintenance ground cover. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the neighbours won't think it looks weedy!! My elderly neighbour came out to chat today, and I'm pretty sure she thinks I'm a total nutbar. She asked me, "didn't you have a really nice lawn?" I tried to convince her that this will look a lot better when it's all green and nicely mulched, but the jury's still out on whether or not she'll like it. I hope my berry bushes are loaded this year so I can leave some on her doorstep! Food always eases peoples' minds, doesn't it?

I also finished trenching around the garden in the front - it's my way of keeping the grass from encroaching on the garden. We tried some of that plastic edging last year but that was a bust - even after nailing it in, it was still popping up this year! So I'll probably have to re-trench every once in a while, but for now this is a good solution. (on a side note, see my little strawberry babies? I finally figured out how to propagate them last year and they all happily overwintered!)

I also filled my peat bog in the back with a couple rubbermaids full of goat shi...manure. (I know, I know, it's the proper term. But I just can't bring myself to say "the s-word". I've been properly trained, that I have. :) ) Anyway, I've been amending the crap out of that raised bed in the past couple of weeks. I added lime, compost, and the entire contents of my worm bin. Unfortunately the pile then got so big that it was way too much "soil" for the bed! So then I started transferring it out - I used it on top of my newly seeded path, I tossed some on my strawberries, I even filled up a garbage can with the stuff for anytime I need peat moss in the next 10 years. Now there's 2 rubbermaids full of straw and goat dung worked in as well. I hope the dung works well because I sure didn't need the extra straw! Oh well, I guess it will be a test garden for another year. 

At least now I can get my carrots and lettuce going, which I've been positively itching to do. In lieu of that, I put in some tomatoes in the raised bed that was already prepped. Don't shoot me! I know there's a lot of debate over gardening before the May long weekend in Edmonton, but our actual average last frost date is May 10. I realize that there's a possibility of frost even in June, but I ain't waiting that long! That's what blankets are for. :) And besides, in Edmonton, I bet I've seen frost in every single month at some point in my life. For those that aren't familiar with our weather, on Monday, April 29 we had a snowstorm and it stayed below zero for 2 days. The very next Monday, we were basically the hottest spot in Canada at 30 degrees C. 

So it's possible I'll lose my tomatoes, but what's gardening without a little risk? 

The front yard is HAPPENING!

Unfortunately, no pictures. I was repotting tomatoes tonight and forgot to get some pictures of my husband trenching the edges of the garden. However, I'll get some shots of his lovely job tomorrow. 

We finally figured out what to do with the path - we trenched the edges of the garden, and we're going to plant a low-maintenance grass-substitute along what is all currently grass. Then, in the inner curvy path, we're going to add some flagstones to make it more inviting. The path will also have a little expansion into the garden over by the apple tree. Under the apple tree we plan to put a willow bench that my father-in-law is creating, and surround it with hostas and other shade-loving plants. I'm starting to picture the finished garden in my mind, and I'm getting SO EXCITED! Can you tell? :)

Here's a question for the tomato-lovers: our average last frost date is May 10 - this coming Friday. The forecast says there won't be frost between now and then. I usually plant out my tomatoes on the average last frost date. 

Should I just put my tomatoes in the garden and get it over with? 

Of course, there COULD be frost soon. But then again, we've had frost in mid-June, and I'm not waiting another month to put in my tomatoes! 

So what to do, what to do?