Mid Summer City Garden

After 4 months spent principally at the cottage, we are now back in the city for a bit. This garden was planted quickly during drop-ins to water house plants and collect mail.

I missed out on harvesting the black currents, so hopefully the birds feasted well. Our timing for blueberries is perfect, however.

Oodles of blueberries on our 3 bushes.

Yellow onions, green onions and leeks are doing best. Some beets grew beautifully while others put all their energy into lush greens and have spindly roots.

A cooperative beet

Uncooperative beets with small roots and excessive greens

I have re- planted carrots twice and still only have about 2 dozen growing. So I’m replanting again here at the beginning of August in hopes that I can still get a crop.

Tomatoes – only 2 this year – are doing well. Considering the amount of neglect caused by our quarantining away, and the massive ant problem I had back in the Spring, I am relatively satisfied. I will plant some garlic in September, and next year concentrate more effort into potatoes and onions which we use most often anyway.

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Spud!

I planted 2 plots of potatoes, 20 plants in all. And so far as I can see, topside, they are a huge success. They have not been nibbled like my radishes, or consumed completely by ants as happened to a whole row of romaine. They are big and vibrantly green, and still growing aggressively. I do sometimes wonder whether all the plants’ energy is going into the leaves and there will be no tubers to speak of. That would be disappointing.

I rummaged around two days ago and came up with one perfect, ping pong ball sized red potato, so feeling optimistic. I plan to dig up one plant in the first week of July, then hopefully harvest the lot two weeks later. The cooking onions are growing similarly trouble free and make me wonder if I shouldn’t just stick to these two crops as they are so trouble free and useful.

Here are some exciting moments in my life as a spud farmer:

The new garden with 8 seed potatoes planted 8 inches down and with a heavy seaweed mulch.

A smaller patch, mulched with dried leaves, sword ferns…

A third layer of timothy went on top, then lots of seaweed on top of that

New garden looking more tamed all the time, and potatoes coming up

I’ve kept putting fresh seaweed on top, as this is a no-hill method. In future years, I will theoretically peel back this layer of mulch and plant under it again with fewer additions of fresh mulch on top

So green and healthy in the early part of June

This potato is hopefully a harbinger of many to come.

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