Day 8 - Vegs IN

I went to the allotment again today after work around 7:30 pm and beat the 30 C heat. I brought two
trays of vegs and got most in (5 kale + 1 = 6 total), 20 fennel, 11 basils, 5 okra, 3 sour cucs, 2 zucs, 2
pumpkins, 1 chanterelle melon, 1 pocket melon, a hollyhock, lettuces, parsley and some lemon thyme.
I walked around with the melon trying to figure out the best spot for it and circled the garden twice to
realize there is no really perfect spot for it I don't think if it is to really ramble about so I just basically
kind of closed my eyes and put one by the lettuce where it can travel up the hut and the other by the
compost where it can fight with the two pumpkins for the fence by the forest. The zucs can have the
far fence and maybe it can visit that guys plot who never comes after being accused of poisoning dogs.

Day 7 - 18 more tomatoes IN

There were 37 tomato plants put in Day 6 and Day 7 I got 18 more in
... doing the math ... that's 55 tomatoes ... I said 56 from the start and
I'm sure I can rustle up another one from somewhere to hit my target
but I won't! I have quite a few to go in on the roof as well but I'm going
to wait until Saturday when I take Gayla's workshop on container tomatoes
so I know I'm doing everything correctly and can ask questions!

I am sore and even with having put on tons of sunscreen, I can still feel a
little tingle from the sun. Nothing too over the top maybe it's windburn ...
from my bending over and back up so often?


The new tomato patch with 10 tomatoes (black brandywine,
white queen, black krim, beefsteak, eva purple ball, ponderosa
pink, black plum, alicante, black plum, hillbilly, sun gold) ...


Four tomatillos this year (each year I've added another plant)!


The little shaded veggie patch is doing very well.



I pulled up these out of the tomato beds and need to separate them
and find a new place for them -but maybe I'll pickle some of them.


I found a little skull near the new zoo poo pile when I was digging
up some plantain weeds (good for your skin). I break the leaves & use
them to rub on my skin after I'm bit by stinging nettles - it really works.

Day 6 - Original Tomato Patch DUG

When I arrived at 11:30 am, this is where the sun was ... it means the little lettuce patch does get a fair amount of shade and then some sun which is perfect!


I spent about 2 hours pulling weeds and aerating the soil in a 4 x 10' area before dumping one and a half loads of zoo poo. After I punched a few holes in the soaker hose I put the red mulch plastic over it but decided not to plant the tomatoes I'd brought because it was still too hot and I wasn't sticking around to water and rewater.


Here's the red mulch on the original tomato patch ...

Day 4 - 36 Tomatoes IN (phew)

I spent an evening this week weeding and conditioning the soil with water and manure from the second dump brought from the zoo to the allotment (at one point it was gnu poo now its just called zoo poo with nothing new though I thought when I was shoveling ..it into my bucket I detected some things a little fresher than other bits). The large patch took two 2/3 loads and the little ones just one).

... ahh 24 hardened off tomatoes in already with ruffled stunners front and center

It took a little pushing and pulling to get the hoses to line up as right as rain in the paste patch and to still get a little action in with the herbs ... running the hoses for 4 hours still doesn't do to much on these little patches so a good hose squirt will be needed if it doesn't rain. The large patch has a central leak which is useful ... so useful I almost thought about springing a few more with my poker but I'll see how the summer goes before I actually do it next year (maybe).

I filled the cherry patch and just put the red figs into the paste patch so far ... I have another red fig sunning itself on the roof and three or four san marzanos and a gold paste so this will fill up quickly. I noticed that I could add another one or two between the two patches and still be able to get at them all (so that may have to happen)

Nice overview ...

There is a husband and wife team that has an Echo like mine (there's is silver and a little newer) but I struck up a conversation with them about it one day as we were leaving together. I wave at them - they really work hard together in their little plot. Yesterday the husband was there on his own and he stopped by for a chat. Afterwards he brought me some buttery soft lettuces to plant and offered me some bean seeds if I wanted them. I let him know I had some and was glad to hear they could go in now. I might try some. Lots of people now say hi to me ... we seem to have a really nice group in the allotment.

Pickling workshop

I just attended a pickling workshop in Barry's kitchen with yougrowgirl founder, Gayla Trail. It was fun and enlightening.



A good reason to attend a contemporary workshop on canning is to get up-to-date information on new methods because you really don't want to get it wrong and possibly compromise the life of your friends & family ... let alone jeopardize your own good health! Good idea to purchase books that accommodate changes that have taken place at least during your own latest blue jeans lifetime. As well it is a good thing to compliment your knowledge with information from this side of the ocean since guidelines vary from country to country and you know how far ahead of the world we are here in Toronto (and how far into my cheek my tongue is pressed)! Gayla addressed foods that are in season right now as well and she brought produce the day before from our local farmers market. One favourite book Gayla recommended that isn't seen on the book pile because we're thumbing through it is Well Preserved.



Some of what was brought to the table is growing right now in my own garden (ok so I won't be attempting asparagus anytime soon nor fiddleheads (see below) ... but I think I have a whole array of alliums to pickle) and so I will be able to put some of my knowledge to the test immediately which is quite exciting ... ok ok ... if we can find the time because gardening season is bearing down upon us like a 7am Go Train at full-steam entering Union Station so I don't know about you but (note to self) I really must pick my own clip up as I'm jamming timely information into my noggin enroute and maybe put the books down and stand up and get out.



We had an amazing sampling of recent foods Gayla canned ... lemon rind with fiddleheads (best to blanche them to get all the little brown bits out and to tenderize), green garlic with no sugar - quite an amazing taste - not at all unlike cocktail onions one would find in one of those cocktails from the 50's, asparagus with a little organic sugar to offset the vinegar ... we had some lemon balm with earl grey tea and later had some seltzer water with mojhito mint syrup before heading off to lunch at the Palmerston Cafe(which incidentally has finished renovations) with a stop at the new little shop next to it called Provenance that recently opened beside the restaurant.

Next week Gayla is doing a hands-on container planting workshop and I'll be there with gloves on and pencil in hand scribbling illegible notes again! I'm an experiential learner - no getting around it - I can read and listen to people talk all I want but it's not until I get my paws grubby that things sink into my muscles memories (and I might as well do it alongside someone who actually knows & shows what they are doing).

Day 4 - Went late in the day but the sun was even HOTTER

I had to get out after spending the day working indoors. What a great balance gardening provides to all the 'office work' I'm doing of late.

I couldn't believe how hot it was late in the day today ... 28C and nowhere to get away from the sun so I set up a little portable shade for myself as a yanked weeds. Hauling manure meant I had to be in the sun so I did roll on extra sunscreen (which doesn't really go with flipping soil much less slinging manure). Before I left I sank up to my ankle in a mud hole I'd created trying to get an entire 'feature film's worth' of ants to leave the little spot they'd chosen at the side of the tomato patch. I hosed the mud off and left with a soaker. I was a right mess by the time I slunk back to the car carrying the rolling cart (which doesn't really do 'bumpy terrain' well). I was able to go about 2" per minute with a full load of poop which was 2" per minute quicker than if I'd not had it - so all in all it was a good think I brought it. I had a load from the day before and just needed one more to cover the new 2009 patch that I weeded.

Today I put in 4 hours and left late but ate while I was there and planted a few things and took water breaks. The entire time I worked I kept the hose on and moving throughout the garden so the soil is getting conditioned for transplanting! Thinking ahead. This is my 3rd year and I can't believe how much more I know than when I began in the garden two years ago. I remember going in with Barry and not understanding a thing he was saying. By the time we left I couldn't remember what he'd said was a weed and what was a treasure. I remember trying to ply Julie for the information again and being as overwhelmed with what she was telling me too. At a certain point, I just bent over and began pulling things out and putting things in.




I got purchases from Fiesta today into the ground and managed to get some out of each of the pots to bring home to the roof as well ... so I can see how well things do in both locations.

I created a little spot for some stevia, sage and winter thyme in the herb patch.

I purchased two new strawberry plants - alpine strawberries (which are to produce this first year and to give a continuous yield through until September - BINGO! (they are the two tiny plants in the background).

I broke down and purchased a pak of leeks. Last year I grew 4 leeks (2 blue solaise and 2 scotish) ... I have no idea what I was thinking when I just put 4 seeds in ... I know I don't normally eat leeks but growing 4 for an entire year just seems silly now. So I have two rows of them now! In the Fall I may also be wondering what I'm going to do with them but hey I'm going to Gayla's pickling workshop tomorrow at Barry's so I might just ask if they'd be good to pickle! Solution!

I left all my plants out tonight - most have been out for a few days already. I did bring the peppers and eggplants in ... I noticed that the leaves got a little fried ... I put them in full sun knowing they like heat - HA - not as much as I thought they might!

I have had my bath and can move again ... feeling this tired must be good! I will sleep well.

Day 3 - Got a fair amount done

I went to the allotment after work today and got a fair amount done. I woke up and began generating school files at 6 am so I was able to get out at a decent time and have a late lunch in the garden around 3:30 pm. I was surprised how much physical labour I was able to put in after a day of brain flexing and butt sitting!



I am kind of really liking the ground cover that's happening on the little path from my chair to the compost pile ... I wonder if it will stay this tame - if not I'm ripping it out my its roots and planting the pretty little flowering ground cover growing in my old potato drawer. Julie has some on her paths and I like it ... a lot!


Arriving to see something done that I'd forgotten about and not even realized I was doing when dumping Fall leaves from my friends driveway carefully over parts of the garden made me feel good ... mulched garlic that is creating a border around the top of my new tomato patch ... now I know what to do with all the extra garlics growing in it (I did say arriving to see something done ... now I'm seeing what it means I have to do that wasn't ON the list) HA :(


I did a quick hand raking through the old strawberry patch where just a few survived along the far edge so I put in my new one from Saturday's Swap along the far edge giving me more options for using the space close to the new pea patch. This is going to be my little fruit section as it's close to the Tayberry and Raspberry plants. Pumpkins and Melons will do well to use the fences to climb on and over (I'll have to remember to keep an eye on them so they are trained and don't hop 40 feet over into the next allotment like they did in my first year ... fortunately the other gardener never really visited and didn't say anything when I told him about it when I did see him). I also spent a few minutes planting the Callas in beside the compost as a wall to hold the potatoes in. All in all that took about 30-45 minutes.



I had already dug this little area to plant beets so putting in the little bok choy and mitzu that Julie gave me earlier on in the day and the little 6-pak of chard and kale I brought from home was a breeze. It may have taken about 15 minutes to do. I watered before and after. Then the little 'dirt bird' and his teal black friend visited it and ate a couple seeds while I watched them. They came for a little bird bath in the water I was flooding the soil with before I left (so it will be easier to deal with on my next visit)!

Here are my next four days work ... prepping the tomato patches for my 56 tomatoes!

Here's a side view of the paste and cherries patch ... I have ground cherries this year so they should do well along the fence I hope. You can see the newly planted little kale, bok choy, chard and mitzu growing in with the beet seeds in the back.


Here's the original tomato patch that held 20 tomatoes back in 2008 ... I'll be spacing them further apart this year so less will fit ... maybe 16 if I'm lucky. Notice the $15 green plastic recycle bin in the background I just purchased to haul manure (it was hell on wheels literally) ... way too low to hang on to properly and push the poop ... pulling the poop was way worse and I almost had to pick it up and carry it in my arms ... the only thing that darn thing its good for is putting papers and silly things in to bring back and forth to the car ... mind you there's enough of that each trip so it will be useful - just not the same poo I thought it would be good for.


Here's the area of the garden that I used to throw my zucchini into and let them take over but this year I'll be clearing it up for more tomatoes! Zucs will have to figure out their own Plan B ... I'm thinking they can take a hike up the other side of the fence! Pumpkins on the northeast wall and zucs on the south west ... melons to the northwest and ground cherries to the south east. I'm sure I got that all wrong - they will get it right.


Here is the new 2009 tomato patch - it held 20 tomatoes easily and will again this year. Please let there be no tomato blight in my soil.

And finally the tomatillo patch and it's twin on the other side ... maybe this is where the zucs will go which means I am going to really have to be vigilant and keep my eye's on them and not let them grow so big and wander out too far and eat people on the main path. My first year I could barely carry them to the car they grew so big. They were each at least half my size. I had no idea I wasn't supposed to be so proud. It was a rather good year for rain - not too much and not too little - perfect for growing monster zucs without lifting a finger. That was the summer I thought the garden hose was a snake and I didn't return out of fear for about a month or so.

Day 2 - It was cold but ok to work

I'm calling Saturday Day 2 ... but it's really Day 3 as I did get over to the garden on Mother's Day but because I had to walk down since the gates were locked so what I was able to carry in was limited and so I spent most of my time looking and scribbling notes and calculating, I just grabbed up some violets and that was about it.

I got quite a little haul out of the garden today.

I almost totally forgot about the wild leeks that Vanessa, a model for the Portrait at year-end, gave me two years ago - until I saw the big one amongst all the other guys! What a nice recollection. I want to remember to let her know how well they did - albeit two years later - for sure - she will understand how I missed them last year since I am a new gardener. I started transplanting the alliums into an area along the northeast fence at the left of the garden but they continue to pop up inside the tomato patches and so yesterday I put the trowel in deep beside them and teased as many up as I could and scooted them over to where they needed to be (some came home with me and are all clean and chillin' in water)!

I am noticing from last years blog that I am a little behind (and as we all know here in Toronto the weather is a little ahead of itself so this isn't a great combo) and this all means I need to up my game a little. That said though, I think I've learned a little bit over two years (translation: I think I may have whittled a few extra days off by tricking my weeds with a layer of leaves and weaseled in a couple of days ahead on my schedule as a result. I sure yanked some HUGE weeds this year (maybe a combination of amending the soil with leaves and being later to get to the garden) and laid them in the pathways which I now remember I figured out last year was a really good (might I even say geniusly brilliant) idea because it dried them out and at the same it killed the weeds on the path! Laying the leaves over 3/4 of the allotment as a test proved that it really worked and I am going to want to bring even more leaves in and I'll wet them and add another on top of that layer and wet them again so weeds are really given a good set back at this time next year. I suppose if there are enough flattened leaves I can just dig down and put my plants in and let them continue to do their thing!

I didn't realize gardening was going to be so intellectual. Dang!

I'm being patient but it's difficult with potatoes because they've let me down two years running already!

The peas are coming along ... again the potatoes aren't really doing anything ... I didn't get a good shot of the berry bushes but the tayberries and last years raspberry transplants are putting out leaves and the other two are just like two dead sticks sticking out of the ground (the tayberry is growing some whiskery ball things that might possibly be berries? (I will find out and report back!)



Here's the little patch I amended yesterday with a bag of sheepoop that sat around all last summer gathering worms and bugs inside it YUK-O (but I imagine it's even better than upon purchase) and planted two rows of beets in after going at the rest of the garden yanking big weeds from wherever I saw them for 3-1/2 solid hours. As I said - it was a cool day. When I stopped for a drink of carrot juice the sweat on my back almost froze so I had to get right back at it to get warmed back up!

Oh and check out the new fedora ... I'm thinkin' "too kool for skool' ME!

A Day in the Garden - Catch of the Day - Violets

I got a jar full. The petals are infusing in boiling water!

Tomorrow I'm going to squeeze the dickens out of them
using gauze and I'll boil the blue water with sugar (half
I'll add some lemon to so it'll be pretty pink but half I'm
leaving blue and adding honey to so it's stays blue) ...
according to good old Hildregard von Bingen Violets kill
'vermes' on contact! look it up 'vermes' means worms! HA
... the syrup is also anti-HIV and is used to treat AIDS according to some.

greenhouse peppers and eggplants potted up

I got the tray of peppers and eggplants potted up to give away on Saturday. There are little green peppers on some of the pepper plants. You can see little white flowers on some of them if you look closely. Well - the little peppers somehow come out of the flowers and push all the petals off. I have no idea which peppers are which anymore. Some though have different coloured straws inserted next to them and this means they are different types. I will make sure I get a little collection of various coloured straws for myself so that I can help some others figure out what I've given them. Next year I will be better when I do the repotting up. I was good up until then and knew what was what but once they left their little squares that was it - nameless and mute. And there are about three rather big tomatoes on another one of the whippersnappers, too! I got a couple of e-mails from volunteers at the greenhouse letting me know that one pot of them was looking rather sickly. I went in to rescue it and found one whippersnapper bursting with tomatoes and dropping it's flowers and bottom leaves (which I think they are supposed to drop anyways because they aren't true leaves). As soon as I gave it a little compost and water it cheered right back up. I separated it from it's little friends in the pot and they are all doing very well on their own. I think the one with the 3 tomatoes was stressed after producing them all at once and so quickly.


Mine are pretty embarrassingly big compared to all the others. It
just looks like I feed students who don't do homework to them. I
do admit they are a full-time job on top of the one I already have!
The yellow tags mean 'water me even if I'm soaking wet already' ...
lots of water and a dash of mushroom compost seems to work! Oh
and also, I started mine at home on heat pads and then under lights.
The ones I started in the greenhouse are as tiny as everyone elses.
I think the greenhouse temperatures fluctuated too much in March.
So give them a good start and then send them off into the world ...
& dress'em in a flamboyant colour like red so you know where they are.
And I didn't really talk to them - I know some people believe in that ...
but they might have been listening to me when I was talking to myself?
And don't be totally fooled, Helen's shelf, the one below mine is now on
its second shelf load of plantings. Her cucumbers are almost edible now.

two whippers potted up

These two little whippersnappers
don't know it yet but they are just
about to start hardening off tomorrow.


This little whippersnapper has
3 little tomatoes on it already!


And this little whippersnapper is
going to Uncle Barrys secret garden
once it gets a few more roots along
its stem (I've built the soil up around
the sides by stacking plastic glasses).

now THAT took longer than I thought

38 Tomatoes ready to be hardened off so they can go to the allotment.
+ 5 Tomatoes (not shown)
+ 3 Tomatilloes (not shown)
+14 Determinates (not shown)
+ 2 San Marzanoes (not shown)
TOTAL 62 (54 varieties) 2 didn't make it!
oh plus ones I've flagged in the aerogarden
and the ones growing in the greenhouse
oh almost forgot ones in the windowsills




Not the half of it ... just some extras ...



Here's a shot of the aerogarden tomatoes. They
will go well with all that basil I'm growing. And
there's a lot more basil than what meets the eye
here in this photo ... the copper flags are my way
of putting dibs on tomatoes I want in the garden
- the rest I can give away to friends & Mel's swap.