The Giant Green Post

The post is giant (not that I'm saying size matters, this is more of a warning) and it's about the garden. I had meant to post bit by bit but in the crazy business of life that just didn't happen. So here you go, the summer of the garden:

When I am playing a new board game, particularly if the game is German and complicated and whoever is teaching it to everyone (naming no one here!) needs 45 minutes to get us all through the rule book, I don’t play to win. I don’t even plan to do well, although I don’t complain if I do. What I do do, so to speak, is play to learn. I figure I can wade through one game, and then when it hits the table the next time around I’ll know the game. And then I’ll play it with the hopes of doing well. Or at the least well-ish!

I decided – yesterday – that I’m going to have to think of the garden plot that way. Not that I haven’t been successful, it’s just that there are a lot of things I intend to do differently next year. Stuff that I didn’t think about until the garden was well underway. So, in chronological order here is what’s been going on:

March, 2008 I contacted the Community Garden people about getting a plot. They were polite – inasmuch as they saved their huge guffaws until I’d hung up – and let me know that I was MONTHS too late for the 2008 gardening season. Did I want to be put on a waiting list for 2009? Yes, yes I did. See? I can plan ahead!

Early January, 2009 I get an email…they have an available plot for me! Every year there are some people who don’t return, and I guess there would be those that move or die or what have you. Some people have had their plots forever, it seems. I know two couples, both of whom at the more-than-twenty-years point. The only changes one couple has done is to divide their large part in half, once the kids had moved out. There is only so much produce one couple can eat! The email wanted to know if I wanted a full plot (20’x50’) or a half (20’x25’). I opted for the latter.

February Awesome brother-in-law flies me out to BC. I find it much easier to think about gardening, as they have FLOWERS. That are BLOOMING. In FEBRUARY. Lucky buggers. Decide not to bring plants back with me. I’ve done than before, one time taking a whole flat of herbs as a carry-on. I figured that they’d die before I got them home and if by some chance that didn’t happen, I’d have to keep seedlings living for MONTHS before I could plant them in the garden. Good call, as we had to walk outside from the plane to the airport in screaming wind, with a temp at minus thirty something.

April Having decided what to plant – potatoes, carrots, peas, strawberries, tomatoes, corn and peppers – I get an email reminding people that there are no perennials allowed in the garden plots. So, out go the strawberry plans.

Late April The gardens are roto-tilled every fall. If you want it done in the spring as well, you have to hire someone to do it or do it yourself. I decide to pass on the tilling. Bad call, or at least not a great call. The soil where we ended up planting carrots was really dense, heavy with lots of clay. I should have gone the extra step. Lesson learned for next year!

May Cold. And snowy. I’m beginning to wonder if we’ll be able to use the traditional date of the May long weekend for planting. As it turns out no…it was much to cold. I did buy seed potatoes, though. And learned another lesson. Don’t worry about what the bin says, read the label. The store I went to had an enormous bin of Yukon Gold seed potatoes. So I grabbed one, and added it to the card of seeds. When we got home I put them all out on newspaper to sprout, just like the instructions said. After we’d done all of that the girl said “you do know that these aren’t Yukon Gold, right?” No, I didn’t know. Turns out that the bag I’d grabbed from the Yukon bin was a bag of Red Pontiacs. Ah well, I’ll be more careful next time.

Mid-May Time to plant. To start with we had:
Seed Potatoes, sort of sprouted
Seeds for: carrots, peas (the mange-tout kind) cucumber, pumpkins (two types, regular and a heritage orange and black)and corn.

Plants: tomatoes, red yellow and green peppers (here’s a question: I thought red and yellow sweet peppers were just green peppers, ripened. Is that not the case?), hot banana peppers and four different types of melon: Mini Sweet Watermelon, Cantaloupe, Early dew and Lambkin. I have no idea what the last one is, but it look healthy, so we bought it.

When we had everything planted it became apparent that I didn’t really understand how big 25’x20’ really is. We had a rectangle of space with nothing planted. So The Girl and I went out and bought a set of six Spanish onions, went back and planted them and considered the whole thing a job well done.

June Still cold. And when the temp. went down to +3 a few nights in a row we went to see what damage the garden had sustained. All of the peppers were sad and dead looking, and more than half of the tomatoes had definitely given up the ghost. Happily for us, a good and kind friend (yeah Allison!) had extra tomato plants, so we replanted. And got a few new peppers as well. The rest we just left, lesson learned.

Mid June Where is everything? The peas and corn have sprouted, but no potatoes, no carrots, no pumpkins no cucumbers. I thought for sure the potatoes would be up, but no.

End of June The girl is leaving for a month in BC (oooh, envy) and at least the cucumbers and about half of the potatoes are poking about the ground. The peas, too, are up. And considering that we just planted them willy-nilly in the ground and then shoved tomato cages over them they’re looking ok. Not more than four inches tall, but they’re there!

Early July Well, once those potatoes started coming up, they almost all came up with great enthusiasm. 39 for 40 potato hills have lovely green plants thriving on them. The corn looks excellent, the peas are thriving and the pumpkins are up. And in the wrong spot! Turns out that believing that I’d remember where the blank rectangle was about as stupid as it sounds. What was I thinking? So the pumpkin vines started growing in and amongst the onions. Right beside the empty space. It kills me everytime I see them.

Third Week of July I get a cold and miss a whole week of gardening. The weeds are crazy and everything that we planted is doing well. Even the almost-dead peppers have come back to life, somewhat. I take a coffee break to race over in the morning and water…the days are hot, and we haven’t had rain. In the few minutes I’m there, The Girl (who returned from BC at twelve am and went to Kenosee at nine am the same time) appears. Giant hugs and excitement all round. Turns out that the family that she went to a cottage with were driving her home and wanted to see the garden, since it was on the way. She realized someone was in the garden, and then realized it was me. Joyous reunion, many hugs and kisses. What can I say, we’re a huggy family! She is thrilled with how wonderful everything but the carrots look, and wants to pick stuff RIGHT AWAY. I explain that we’re not there yet, but that before I head to BC for a while, we’ll get some potatoes for supper. Mainly because if I tell The Boy don’t pick any potatoes whilst I’m gone he won’t, but if I tell The Girl the same thing she’ll come up with some very convoluted explanation as to why the fate of the world hung on the need to pick one plant. And that she knew I would understand. So I figured that if she got to eat something before I left, then perhaps she leave the rest be until I got back.

Last Week of July There are bald patches with the carrots and the cukes. We used seed tape for both, and in the cucumber spot I found nibbled bits of seed tape to explain the blank patches. I’m assuming the same thing happened to the carrots, although I continue to water the blank spots just in case. I never did find eat tape so perhaps some seeds were just slow. For no reason that we can figure out, the 40th potato plant peeks its leaves above ground. What was it doing whilst its mates flourished?

First Week of August Just about to go to BC for a while, so I get everything weeded and watered. The house and puppies are being watched after by The Boy, so The Girl is responsible for the garden. We pick some potatoes, and steam them with herbs from the garden (I have an extensive herb garden at the house, totally unrelated to the plot), eat them with butter and pink salt. Heaven on a fork. Even if they are Pontiac Reds!

End of August The scraggly little banana pepper plants are producing like mad, as are the peas. The pepper plants produce peppers as long as the plants are tall. Turns out they’re sweet, so The Boy is a bit sad, but still, we end up with more than twenty six inch peppers from four sad looking little pepper plants. Sadly, the green peppers don’t seem to be doing as well. And the tomatoes…lots of them, but no colour yet. And the cukes, which were a mass of flowers when I left were a mass of flowers when I returned. Will be ever get actual cukes from them?

Early September We’ve eaten potatoes, carrots, pea, onions and peppers from the garden. The melons…suffice it to say that I have AWESOME melons (ha!). There are at least six that are almost ready to eat, and if the 30 degree weather we’ve had so far continues, we’ll do just fine by the melon crop. The pumpkins are finally more than just flowers, and there are a few minute cucumbers amongst all the cucumber vines and leaves, so they may be ok too. This weather is what we should have had – but didn’t – in August. Better late than never!
So there, that’s the garden story. Overall I’m thrilled that I decided to get a spot of a plot in the community gardens. Next year I’ll till in the spring, write down what got planted where, add some sand to the carrot spot and read labels carefully before buying.