Gardening Bloom Day
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I have to confess that these coneflowers are one of my favorite plants, I particularly like the way they collect morning light.
If you want to see other plants in bloom right now in the blogosphere, Carol at MayDreamsGarden has a full listing on her blog right here.
But I note the only problem with having a plant looking great in the morning light is that you actually have to get up to see it. 
Garden Design at Someday
Regular readers may recall that we named our garden and home “Someday” because this was someday for us. We’ve landed, we’re enjoying life, and this is what we’ve worked for. No sense putting off till tomorrow what you can enjoy today.
This picture shows the overall layout - between the garage concrete floor - the location of the garden shed (unpainted as of yet - family volunteers are not coming out of the woodwork) and the guest cottage (also unpainted in the new colors - hint - hint to family)
This is the next sketch in my book. You can see the garden shed has taken up a place at the end of the garden. With the location of the garage, this shed turned out to be in the middle of the driveway so the decision point was whether to hide it away behind the guest cottage (bunkhouse or bunkie in our family) or make it an integral part of this garden. I decided it was going to be an integral part of the garden and would be upgraded significantly as well in the process.
The garden design is now a little more like a garden. Some of the collections have been moved right away from this area because of soil depth. The beds are a little more winding and not as loose - it looks a bit more like a garden here.
Note the addition of the deer fencing (more on that later) in the top of the sketch. This is going to be necessary to protect the plants and will wind up protecting about 2 acres of ground (including the fruit orchard).
Hedges have also reared their head to differentiate some of the garden areas. The workroom with compost bins etc is going to be hidden away behind the guest cottage but I’ll need tractor access to this area for turning and collecting. (more on tractors later) 
And I do want manual access for wheelbarrows etc to this area for the cold frames and seedling germination areas.
The overall design is now more like a garden rather than a collection - the soils to the north will be left undisturbed (if soil is a term we can use on this rock shale) because it should provide an excellent area for species bulbs and some plants that demand excellent drainage. The area to the right of the picture will be completely rebuilt with excavation and soils being brought in to augment and replace the rock strata here.
The shaded in areas are pathways - from the garage to the house - from guest parking to the house and again back to the garden shed and a pathway inside the garden off to the south.
Again, this was a concept drawing for thinking on but it’s closer to what I want than the previous one.
Garden Design Aug 08
Another Fall Online Order
I went to Fraser’s Thimble Farm as well to see what was on offer out there in BC this fall. And I filled up my order from this small specialist plant nursery. Check ‘em out - I think you’re going to like the plants.
Now - this is a small family nursery and I don’t expect the same level of Net-service as I do from the big retailers. (Ever notice how the smaller the operation - the more idiosyncratic the owners - and the more interesting range of plants?)
And I wasn’t surprised. No online ordering forms, no credit card taking. An online catalog (oh yeah, can you drool over those plant descriptions because there’s no pictures) for a plant nut who has to look stuff up before ordering (they warn you about this). This is not for beginners. This is for those who would be serious gardeners.
As a would-be serious gardener, I ordered.
Mind you, I sent in the order via email and now I have to figure out how to get my credit card number to them to complete the transaction. They only open their email every few days (preferring fax - but I don’t own one of those anymore) so we’ll see how this goes. Why not put my order in over the phone - well, because they don’t take phone orders.
So here’s a company that puts a ton of stuff in the way of you placing your order yet I still ordered. Go figure. Mind you, the prices for the bulbs I wanted from these folks were lower than Garden Import and the service charge appears to be a one-stop price so while the order total was higher (I couldn’t resist adding just a few other bulbs to my order) the shipping is far less.
They ship to Canada and the U.S. (but US gardeners will require a few extra bucks because of your phytosanitary and security issues for permits).
I’ll be reporting on the quality of plants from both of my orders this fall when they arrive.
And if you’ll excuse me, now I really have to get my garden-building going.
Ordering Fall Plants Online
I’ve just had an interesting experience ordering plants online that I thought I’d share. The first nursery - Botanus - sent me a catalogue earlier in the summer and I just got around to ordering a few new bulbs to grace the garden. I didn’t order anything out of the ordinary but basic staple bulbs including the fragrant tulip ‘Angelique’, two short daffodils ‘Quail’ and N poeticus recurvus (both fragrant) and an Iris ‘Speeding Again’ a rebloomer. This is my first shot across the bows of starting to lay in new plants for this rather largish garden I have in my mind. It’s a tiny shot given the size of the garden but you gotta start somewhere. Ordering from Botanus was fast, easy and quick.
Ordering a few plants was a statement of faith that I’ll have the new tractor, garden soil, and some beds built by this fall rather than a need for new plants. It was a signal to myself that I had better keep my butt moving if I wanted to really get this garden underway.
I then turned to a competitor called Garden Import. This is another rather good mail order company and I hadn’t ordered from them before either. I’ve received their catalogues on and off over the years so this year I decided to correct that and make a small order to test them out. Three plants (about $50 bucks) produced three different shipping dates and three shipping charges. Neither the website nor the catalog that I could find told me which shipping system the plants were on. So I wandered around the site for 3/4 hour trying to find matches for the plants (fall blooming crocus) I really wanted that I could plant in the garden as it currently sits. Now I know there’s probably a very good reason for the different shipping dates and I know that companies need to recover their costs but adding an 8 dollar shipping charge to each of three plants pretty much added a third to a half to the bill. I backed out of the shopping cart and cleared the data - unpurchased. I’m going to source the crocus at another nursery (probably Botanus and simply have them add it to the order).
Have any of you guys ever done that? Gone through the online ordering process and then found the shipping charges made it difficult to justify only buying a few plants? Or had three different shipping charges added to your order?
Red Spider Hemerocallis Flower
Another of Barry Matthie’s 2008 introductions. What can I tell you? I love ‘em and will be building a garden simply to feature some of this kind of flower.
red spider flowering daylily
Spider Flowering Daylilies
I’m a big fan of spider flowering daylilies and I thought I’d share this one with you. I saw it at Barry Matthie’s Bonnie Brae Nursery in Prince Edward County, Ontario. Barry is a noted Canadian breeder of Hemerocallis and I interviewed him and will have the video uploaded sometime this fall when the summer dust settles and I get back to video editing.
Vegetable Gardening Tips
The vegetable garden is giving us more and more of a harvest and I thought I’d pass along a few tips that will help you increase the yield of your basic crops. Think of it as a advanced vegetable gardening tips.
When you harvest cabbages, cut them off. This gives you a nice clean head of cabbage and it leaves the roots intact and still growing and producing energy. If you rip it out of the ground or twist it off, then these roots are disturbed. We want those roots to keep growing because we’re going to go for a second crop of cabbage. Yes, you can easily get a few more cabbages from the same plant if you use a knife to harvest the main head. After the head is cut off, make two cuts across the remaining stump. The cuts will be in the shape of a cross and leave four equal quadrants of the stump. The cut should be approximately one to two cm deep (1/2 inch) but don’t obsess over this - close counts.
By making four equal quadrants, you’re going to find the cabbage will scab over the original cut pretty quickly and then if you keep watering the plants (not that we need to water a lot lately) you’re going to find four baby cabbages growing; one on each quadrant. They won’t get as large as the main cabbage was but with a bit of luck, a bit of fish emulsion to boost growth and plant energy, you’ll get another crop of small cabbages for yet another salad.
You’re going to be doing almost the same thing of course with your broccoli. After you harvest that main head with a knife to leave the roots intact, you’re going to find the side shoots (every place there’s a leaf up and down the stem) are going to develop into smaller heads. You’ll get as much or more broccoli from these smaller heads as you will from the larger central one. You still have to give the plant a boost in feed to get a ton of these and you still have to pick the green cabbage worms that abound at this time of year but you’ll get a lot of green stuff off one plant if you’re careful.
Closely associated with the vegetable garden is the herb garden and you really want to be cutting and trimming plants right now. I saw our parsley plants trying to bolt (go to seed) this week and immediately whacked them back. I don’t want herbs to go to seed because they’ll lose some of their flavour and start slowing down on leaf production. So get out there and trim that basil and parsley and other annual herbs because even if you don’t want to use them right away, you’ll need to maintain them for when you do want the leaves.
Finally, we come to the tomatoes. There are several things you can do to really push your tomatoes along in the production sense. The first is to keep feeding them. Give them a dose of fish emulsion or compost tea every two weeks and you’re going to see amazing differences in the yields of this plant. While it should not be a problem this year with all the water we’re having, it is good to remember that a tomato fruit is over 95% water and any restriction on the water is going to reduce the size of the harvest. So do make sure the soil water is even with no ups and downs - from soaking to dry - this year. This might be a problem if we get to August, the rains slow down and we get some high heat days. The fruit will start to expand in the heat and because the plant has all the water it requires, the plant will grow quickly, too quickly. With sudden turns in high heat, we’re going to see cracking.
As soon as you see plants cracking, harvest the fruit you can. It’s still useable. Immediate harvesting will reduce the tempting fruit from wasps and slugs because once they get a sniff of the sugars, you’re going to find them all over your plant eating away and reducing the insides of the individual tomatoes to their own advantage. This is why if we do go to high heat, it is going to be really necessary to maintain the water levels in the plant. We want to maintain the plant’s growing abilities as best we can but do expect cracking this year.
If your tomatoes are staked, then let me suggest you do a fews simple things to increase your harvest. I know you’re taking off the suckers to concentrate the growth along the main growing stem. But as the fruit sets, you’re going to do an extra stage of pruning. A tomato ripens its fruit from the bottom upwards. So the lowest fruit ripens first. As soon as that lower fruit truss is ripe and harvested, you can remove the leaves on that main stem all the way to the second truss of fruit but not above it. This increases air circulation and sunlight onto the next fruit truss. You’ll find the plants will ripen the fruits a little faster if you do this pruning. Finally with staked tomatoes, you want to cut the top off the growing point sometime in the first week of September and prevent any sideshoots from developing as they will want to do. This increases the energy going into the fruit development giving you a chance to ripen those last few tomatoes before the killing frosts arrive.
So do those few things and you’ll see increased vegetables and herbs coming out of your garden from here to frost.
Farewell “Wheel” 1988-2008
It is with great sadness today that I announce the untimely passing of Wheel.
Wheel and I knew each other when he was just a toddler’s tricycle and I’m proud to say that I knew him and recognized his potential even then. He developed his lovely red shade, added a bunch of horsepower and gears - growing up into the fine lawn tractor you see in front you. I very proud to be his friend and mentor.
You see, Wheel ran our nursery for us. Hauling plants from one end to the other, towing two and three nursery carts at a time, loaded down with multiple racks of retail ready perennials fresh from the fields and nursery. He could haul more than his weight and his strength is legendary in our family.
In fact, when our children heard about the death of Wheel, their first reaction was gentle reminiscing about growing up under his protective influence. My eldest summed it up best by commenting that this was indeed “the passing of an era.”
My youngest on the other hand remembered several other facets of Wheel’s existence. He did tend to cut corners a bit towards the end of the day and she held the record for knocking down nursery benches with wagon trains of plants. We believe the number was 6 full benches of plants hitting the ground, knocked over by a big red guy and his faithful followers. I was also reminded how when we tried transforming Wheel from a puller to a common grass cutter, he responded by forcing my youngest to run over one of my very expensive, pure rubber nursery hoses making two fifty-foot hoses instead of the previous 100 foot hose. I’m told the snake that stuck it’s head up one day met a similar end when Wheel rolled on by under full steam.
My son still holds the record for wagon-surfing. After the plants were unloaded, the game was to let Wheel have his head and drive him as fast as possible (assuming the Head Gardener wasn’t looking but he often was smiling secretly to himself) while the siblings stood on the following wagons. My athletic son surely kept his footing quite well - at least well enough to keep himself out of the hospital as Wheel and company (the others safely seated on wagons) hurtled across the rough ground of the nursery.
Wheel passed away the other day in manner befitting horsepower of his age - he was getting old and simply threw a rod while trying to climb a hill under full power. A glorious ending - to go out with a bang rather than a flat whimper. The rough banging and grinding from the engine decidedly indicated a serious lack of internal integrity. It wasn’t pretty. Wheel is so old that the engine company no longer makes engines and the designated replacement, associated wiring harnesses and modifications are going to be more than the cost of a brand new tractor.
My good buddy Wheel and I ran my nursery and hauled everything from kids to peat, plants, and if you name it on a farm and nursery - we hauled it. It was a workhorse of a machine and I’ll miss it terribly. There are few stronger bonds than between a man and his tractor and I really can’t even being to tell you how much I’m going to miss old Wheel. Even when a new tractor comes into my life, there won’t be the history, the memories associated with Wheel. I know every scratch on the paint, every whim and whimsy of that engine and attachments. I’ve skinned knuckles, shared blood and oil and repaired more belts on the tractor than I have on me. I’m going to miss that tractor and the memories he brought along with him.
Wheel was predeceased by his faithful companion Eight’N and while she was a little larger than Wheel, there is no question who was the biggest worker with the biggest heart. With no children, they were the last of their generation; but will live on in our memories.
Farewell old buddy.
How to Sucker Tomatoes
Here’s a short clip on how to take the suckers off tomatoes. It’s not too late to go out and do this on any staked tomato (in fact you should). Leave the tomatoes you have growing on the ground or in cages alone.
As an added thought - you grow staked tomatoes if you’re trying to maximize the amount of fruit per square foot of garden. You let them flop if you’re trying to maximize the amount of fruit per plant.
Tomato Pruning
Yeah, I know you think you don’t need info on tomato pruning at this time of year but if you’re like me, sometimes you let things get out of hand. Here’s the remedy - serious pruning. Would I string you along? (You gotta watch the video to “get” that)
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