It may have snowed two weeks ago, and rained for a week solid, but the sun’s out today, and warm weather has been predicted by the augurs going forward, so I’m doing it. I’m prepping the garden for 2013. Continue reading »

Sometimes a zucchini is just a zucchini.

The zucchini is starting. This is the only one I can see so far, but there are a ton of flowers, so it should be a good crop. The flowers look like a terrifying-but-also-kind-of-beautiful species from another galaxy, and while I’ve heard they’re edible, they do not taste delicious raw. Nasturtiums, on the other hand, are quite tasty. And they like to wander.

Entirely of its own accord, the nasturtium somehow crept over or or under the gooseberry bush and found its way to the fence and began to climb. I’m impressed with how far it’s gotten.

Cucumber tendrils are crawling all over the place. I’ve pulled a few off of the tomatoes where they look like they’re starting to choke it. I didn’t realize they’d made it over to the other side of the garden until I found these yellow flowers in my basil. Should I start cutting it back?

The raspberry bush is dropping berries faster than I can gather them. I should have been jamming all this week, but, you know, work. Tomorrow, I’ve decided, is the day. Time to break out Bob.

Garden, June 2012

Tons of activity in my garden this week. It’s very exciting, though I think I may have over planted again.

The zucchini in the bottom left hand corner is getting big. It’s starting to over run my asparagus, and it’s only been a couple of weeks. Not sure how to fix that.

I finally got around to staking the tomato plants, and added four new cherry tomato plants. I’m hoping there’s enough space between them to grow properly.

The stakes look really big. I find it hard to believe that my tiny little plants will one day grow up to be six feet tall, but the dude at the garden centre assured me they can indeed grow that high. We’ll see.

Raspberries, June 2012

The raspberries are just starting to come in. I saw about a dozen ripe ones today, including this little guy on the left. The raspberry bushes run all along the back fence, so I imagine I’ll have enough berries to can for weeks.

Last week the strawberries were starting to come in. Last night two of them were ripe enough to clip. Talk about eating local. A few more are starting to turn red – I took a picture for Twitter, you can see them here. It doesn’t look like there will be enough to jam with, at least not this year, but I’ll be able to nom a few as the summer gets on.

The blueberry bush seems to be doing ok. The berries are still very green though. Looks like it’ll be a while before I get to try them out.

Goth Salad, June 2012

I also mentioned last week that my goth salad was beginning to grow yellow flowers. Well, more have since come in. It’s like a little garden of sunshine in the afternoon shade.

Yellow seems to be a popular colour for flowers. I don’t know if you can see it in the image above, but my jalapeño plant is starting to get little yellow flowers, as are the two larger tomato plants. I’ll get pics when the flowers come in more fully.

I have no idea if the flowers are edible. I don’t see why not? I haven’t actually tried to eat the salad yet, but I think I’ll clip some to go with tonight’s dinner.

All in all, things seem to be going well in the Mara-McKay Great Garden Experiment of 2012.