Thursday, 26 May 2011

gardening for food, take two

Argh. It turns out that I am either sensitive or mildly allergic to something in the garden; we don't know what. I did a lot of work in the garden this weekend — not just the flowers, but the herbs as well, and more to the point, there was a lot of weeding and pruning — so it could conceivably be anything. (Except tulips. Or, actually, herbs, because I touch those on a regular basis.) I noticed that I had been spouting random little red bits on my arms since Sunday, which I dismissed because I'd been pricked by several rose thorns, so I thought they were just scratches, like small cat scratches. But no. We realised last night that it had escalated to a minor rash. It's mostly on my right arm, so it is probably from something that I brushed against while pruning — I had been wearing gloves, but no sleeves — which means it could be the roses. Or the forsythia. Or the spirea. Or the weird unnamed shrub thing under the roses. Or the rhubarb leaves. Or even the lavender.

Seriously. There was a lot of gardening there.

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More herbs! I picked up a bunch of seedlings for the herb pot and garden before the weekend. Front row: Greek oregano from the big box store, "Dark Opal" basil and chocolate mint from Urban Harvest — the mint was an impulse buy; I don't usually use mint but it smells exactly like my favourite kind of fundraising chocolate, so how could I not? Second row: rosemary and lemon thyme, again from a box store, and Genovese basil, again from Urban Harvest. And the strawberry pot, of course, with its giant garden sage.

There should also be a small-leaf basil hiding in there somewhere.

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The chocolate mint and some of the small-leaf basil went into the herb pot, which will remain outdoors for the summer. Hopefully it will last. I learned recently that basil is an annual in pretty much all of Canada, so I feel less bad about its ignominious demise, but I'd still like to make an effort. I don't think the thyme is coming back, though. Ever.

The rest of the herbs went into the garden. I'm hoping that the lemon thyme and oregano will establish themselves as ground cover (enough, maybe, that I'll be able to steal some and propagate them back into the herb pot for winter). The weather has obliged by dumping a lot of rain on us since Saturday, so at least I know the roots are nice and wet.

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I also transplanted the two tomato seedlings that sprouted. They don't look nearly as good as this right now. The cooler weather and lack of sun this week is probably not doing them any favours.

And finally, this is why I've been trying to be diligent about harvesting the rhubarb: its giant leaves were stealing sunlight from these:

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Strawberries! With blossoms! A lot of them, even! Well, it seems like a lot to us, anyway — last year we didn't even get one. (We got maybe half. It wasn't really fully formed.) They were planted right in front of the rhubarb patch — it's the sunniest place in the whole back yard — and now some of the bigger rhubarb leaves have started to shade the plants (you can sort of see it in the picture), so I've been picking them off. I'm not fond of rhubarb, but I do like strawberries. I know my priorities.

Pd and I aren't counting our berries before they're berries, though. We have some rapacious squirrels in the neighbourhood, and it's conceivable that they might beat us to them. One of them chewed through our window screen in two places this weekend, trying to get in to the kitchen. (We think it was lured by the scent of the banana loaf I was baking.) Walking into the kitchen to find a rat-with-a-bushy-tail hanging upside down on your window screen, with bared teeth and crazed eyes, is kind of terrifying, let me tell you. And the cats were useless; completely uninterested. Which is probably a good thing, in hindsight — they probably would have gotten beaten up.

1 comment:

  1. Wow, your strawberry plants are so big. Most of my original plants died (I think—it's hard to tell with some of them), likely because they were in hanging planters and not in the ground. Luckily I did plant some of their offshoots in the ground last year, and THOSE are definitely not dead.

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