It won’t be long now before I have tomatoes coming out of my ears. I totally welcome this, except I kinda didn’t think through the fact that I’m going to be away for the last two weeks of August, which is about when most of them will be ripening. Thankfully I have a whole crew…
Category: In the Garden
Pickled Chioggia Heirloom Beets
It’s the time of year when there is a distinct lag between when I do something and when I can actually get it posted to this site. There is a lot of maintenance now on the garden. Every year about now I begin to second guess if I could handle more veggie gardens, despite how…
I has carrots!
And beets, and tomatoes, and kohlrabi, and…and…and… The garden is really coming into it’s own. The tomatoes have been staked and I’ve already picked two! That’s right, two tomatoes and it’s only July 6th. They’re Stupice, a Czech heirloom variety that I grew last year and are known to be spectacularly early. They’re a smaller…
Mid-week holiday
It’s Canada Day today and it’s a Wednesday. I’m not complaining about having a holiday at any time, but it kind of has the same effect that moving our Daylight Savings Time around — it throws my sense of timing right out the window. Last night felt like a Friday, and I have to keep…
Peas in bloom
My heirloom peas, called Capuchijiners (I have no idea how to pronounce that), are starting to bloom and they are the most gorgeous colours of lavender and blue. It’s been ages since I grew peas, in fact, as an adult I’ve never grown them, but if I recall correctly, my mother’s always had white flowers….
Environmentally friendly weed exterminator
It’s that time of year when unwanted greenery pushes its way up through every available crack in our patio stones, sidewalk and even in between our retaining wall and driveway. It is of course illegal to use most chemical pesticides and herbicides in Toronto now (not that I would use them if they were still…
Spring eats, part deux
Just the other day I was thinking, “Gee, I probably should have thinned out those radishes a couple weeks ago…” Then my elderly neighbour said, “Just thin them by harvesting them!” Like, duh. I didn’t even realize they were ready yet! All weekend we’ve been munching fresh juicy radishes from the garden, spring onions, as…
Spring eats
Amid the humming of my neighbour’s air conditioners (yes, that’s right, they have their A/C’s running, their doors and windows are open, and it’s all of 23 degrees C outside), I’ve been busily getting the last tasks of planting done around the house this weekend. I mentioned back in early April that I’ve been reading…
Growing things and sewing things
I’ve finally begun disseminating the tomato and chile seedlings. I just repotted a second batch of seedlings because I had run out of room earlier with the first batch. They’ll take a week or two to catch up but the ones I repotted about three weeks ago are huge and need to go in the…