Summer in the Garden

It’s been a lackluster gardening season – except for the tomatoes!

It’s been a strange gardening year.

On one hand I think I did more work in the garden this year than I have in the last two or three – in other words I was feeling a bit better and was more into getting my hands dirty and my arms scratched up by the roses, but then the weather was well … blah … more like a warm spring than summer, so the plants didn’t grow as well as I’d hoped earlier in the year and that put a damper on my garden enthusiasm.

It’s a stunted garden in some ways because of the cold July we had. My Cleomes are only just now starting to grow … they’ve reached maybe 3.5 to 4 feet in height where they should be about 6 feet tall by now.

My Tomatoes are possibly my best garden crop this year. In the past few years I’ve planted my tomatoes late, and well last summer was rainy and cold too so my tomatoes never really turned red. This year I planted them early enough that they grew well in June, stagnated in July with green fruit on the vine that wasn’t really growing and then come August the tomatoes really took off (as they should!).

We’ve been eating Tomatoes since maybe the first week of August (second at the latest) and it’s been great. There’s nothing better than a fresh tasty tomato right off the vine.

I’ve been eating tomato sandwiches, adding tomatoes to our salads and other foods and pretty soon I think I might try grilling some tomatoes or well maybe sauteing them as my sisters recipe calls for putting them in a frying pan (saute garlic in oil then cut a tomato in half and cook – apparently the garlic oil just goes right up into the tomato – delicious!).

I think I’ll also have enough tomatoes that I’ll be able to freeze some for tomato sauce.

I discovered a very easy way to freeze tomatoes a few years ago. Forget dropping them in boiling water to get the skin off before freezing. Just place whole tomatoes on a baking pan and place in the freezer. Let them freeze (while not touching other tomatoes) and then place them in a freezer bag. Later on when you thaw them the skins just slip off as they thaw and once thawed you can put them in a pot and start making a nice tomato sauce from scratch.

One thing that I must do soon is take some pictures of the garden and all the plants in bloom. For some reason I haven’t taken as many pictures this year as I usually do. I could be short on pictures for Green Thumb Sundays in the winter if I don’t start snapping away now!

How is your garden doing this week? What late summer/ fall flowers are blooming?

A little late, but Summer’s finally here

by Tricia

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Well it was a slow start, but as of this past week summer’s finally arrived in Toronto!

The week, well let’s say last Sunday, started with rain and a massive lightening storm. Spectacular really – with sheet lighting and huge vibrant lightening all over the city for about an hour and a half! It was the most vibrant lightening storm I’ve seen in a year or two!

After that the heat that is usually so much a part of our summers here in Toronto finally arrived. As the week has progressed it seems each day that passes is hotter than the last! We’ve also had a lot of humidity. Currently with humidity it supposedly feels like 36 C (96.8 F).

I think by Wednesday of this week the true summer like heat will be gone again though … so that means we’ll have only had about one true week of summer this year! Perhaps that’s still better than last summer though – last summer we had record breaking rain!

All through July I watched my Tiny Tom and Cherry, Early Girl and Glam tomatoes grow on the vine. I began to wonder if they’d ever change from green to red as they seemed to stay green and the same size for the longest time – probably due to the lower than normal summer temperatures that we were having.

However after a week of true summer like heat I can finally say that I was able to pick two ripe tomatoes and a handful of Tiny Tom tomatoes yesterday.

Likewise, my pole beans, cucumbers, raspberries and strawberries have been behind this summer. Over the last two weeks though we picked our first beans and a new (very small) crop of strawberries came in. The raspberries started to ripen and we’ve had a couple of handfuls over the last week as well.

The cucumbers are growing very very slowly! Three weeks ago I noticed that we had our first cucumbers, but they were smaller than Gherkins! Now those cucumbers are a little bigger and thicker than my thumb so it’s still slow going. They’re English Burpless cucumbers so they have a long way to go before we can pick them!

Our roses are starting to rebloom now too. Maybe well have two more flushes of blooms before summer truly ends.

The pro’s of having a cooler and slightly drier summer are:

1. The lawn has been growing slowly so we haven’t had to cut it as much, and due to the cooler weather and occasional really heavy rain it’s stayed green.

2. We haven’t had the air-conditioning on for most of the summer (with the exception of this week and the last week of June) so for a change, we’ve been able to enjoy the summer with our window and doors open, and of course, we’ve saved a lot of money on the electricity bill!

3. We’ve been watering less this summer. With the cooler weather the plants don’t seem to need as much water – so again we’ve saved some money on the water bill (which doubled on the last bill anyway- Thanks City of Toronto due to increased prices, taxes and sewer and trash collection fees!)

Overall it seems like my plants don’t mind the weather we’ve had this summer although I do have a few roses that have almost totally lost their leaves due to powdery mildew (cooler weather, more dew at night on the leaves?).

The Balloon flowers seem to love this weather. They’re taller than normal (4 feet!) and blooming their pretty little heads off. Here’s a picture of a Balloon flower bud, and a Balloon flower in bloom – you can definitely see where they get their name from:

How is your garden doing this summer? Have you managed to eat any of the veggies that you’re growing yet?

Rose of Sharon in Bloom

by Tricia

This is the time of year when my Rose of Sharon tree becomes on the bright stars of my garden.

Our Rose of Sharon begins blooming anywhere from mid-July to the end of July, and continues pretty much through to the end of August. It’s lovely purple blooms brightening up the garden. Lovely.

We moved into our house in June 2001 and it wasn’t until the spring of 2002 that we started landscaping our backyard to create our lovely raised bed garden.

Our neighbor, beside us, has a lovely old Rose of Sharon tree and for some reason hers was always sprouting little baby trees nearby. Now I can’t remember what year it was that she gave us one of her tree’s babies – but I think it was probably in 2003. That would make ours about 6 years old now.

We planted our gifted Rose of Sharon tree in the middle of one of our raised garden beds – basically it’s on the left side of the yard in the middle of the garden. A perfect place to see if from the kitchen window as I cook, clean or putter around or from our patio when we sit outside in the garden.

Here’s a view of the tree from the back of the garden looking towards the house –

Unlike my neighbors old tree ours doesn’t tend to have young trees sprouting up around it in the spring … but maybe that’s just because we mulch our garden so heavily.

I just went out to measure our tree and it’s over 9 feet tall. I think I’ll prune it and shape it in the fall so that next year it won’t get any taller than it is now!

So far we haven’t had any problems with our tree. It’s late to leaf out in the spring – one of the last to develop leaf buds (often in June!), but otherwise it’s healthy and hardy.

I love the trees prolific beautiful hibiscus like flowers … aren’t they pretty?

Do you have a Rose of Sharon tree on your property or perhaps a Hibiscus if you live in a warm area? Don’t you love it?

It’s been a lackluster gardening season – except for the tomatoes!

A little late, but Summer’s finally here

Rose of Sharon in Bloom

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