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Tulips on last legs

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White Tulip

It’s funny, with the summer like heat we’ve had this week the tulips that were still blooming grew even more. Some of the tulip blooms are sitting on stems that are easily 2.5 feet in height! Those stems were only a foot to a foot and a half tall a week ago. They look kind of strange.

The tulip that I’ve shown you in the above picture is no more. Time and the heat took it out of the picture. Now it’s leaves are wilting and turning yellow.

A tip for those of you who are new to gardening. Once your tulips have finished blooming cut off the stems but don’t do anything that will damage the leaves. You want the green leaves to stay as long as possible because they are gathering nutrients and energy for the tulip bulb. You will have a strong healthy looking flower next year if you let the green tulip leaves wilt and die down naturally.

Yes, once the tulip leaves are more than 50% yellowed I do go around and cut them down, but I don’t do it any earlier than that as I love my strong and healthy tulips each spring.






Mini heat wave here!

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It seems that summer has come to Toronto early! Yesterday it reached at least 31 Celsius (88F)! Most of the week had been in the low 20’s or high teens so this was a big jump! Today’s going to be almost as hot and we’re expecting Thunderstorms.

Of course, as a gardener you know I like thunder storms because the lightening puts free nitrogen particles in the air and helps make the plants get a huge boost. They just grow amazingly well within about 24 hours of a lightening storm.

We don’t have any air-conditioning in our home, so I had the house sealed up tight yesterday and had the ceiling fans going. The house stayed quite comfortable until about 5 pm and then the heat either started seeping in, or our home had gradually warmed up enough to start to become uncomfortable.

We have window air-conditioners. I guess we’ll be putting at least one of them in this evening or sometime on the weekend.

We aren’t big on having the air-conditioning on all the time, but sometimes it sure is nice.

Anyone else experiencing temps high enough to start putting in or turning on the air-conditioning?

The sun is shining!

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Finally!

The week started off well, with perhaps our hottest day so far this year, but then it quickly went downhill beginning on Tuesday.

It’s been cold, rainy and kind of dreary most of this week. I’m not complaining because the plants in my garden sure did need that rain and as I’ve said in earlier posts this week the garden has been growing and blooming like crazy.

It’s just that the cold and drizzle haven’t done a thing for my spirits!

Finally, today it’s sunny out. It’s still on the cool side though. It was supposed to reach 18 Celsius which is about 64 F, but as far as I can tell the highest it’s gotten has been to 15 C. Oh well, that’s still warmer than much of the rest of the week.

The weekend looks like it’s going to be really nice. I’m hoping to get outside and finish up the “spring cleaning” of my garden. I still have bulbs to plant too! Remember last fall I bought a bunch of bulbs but didn’t feel well enough to plant them? Well, most of them survived the winter in our cool basement but I’ve got to get them in the ground!

Since I haven’t planted any seeds yet I’ll probably do a bit of that this weekend too. We might even go to a nursery and buy some veggies that have already been started – tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers just to catch up!

We’ll also buy some new cedar mulch to put on the garden beds to hold in moisture.

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