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It hasn’t been the best summer – garden’s puttering along

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Well, so far this year I can’t say it’s been a great summer or great gardening season … Some of my plants are behind while others are not liking this weather at all!

We’re finally having some warm humid weather here in Toronto (still not as hot and humid as it usually is!) and that’s helping the plants make up for what’s been a cold summer! We haven’t had tons of rain, but when it does rain it rains a lot!

My roses don’t seem to like this weather. They’ve been hit fairly hard with powdery mildew and several have just about completely lost their blooms! I’ve treated the roses with my organic mix and I think they’ll begin to recover soon … but they’re going to look straggly for a while!

Actually … it’s just the roses in the backyard that are depleted of leaves. The ones in the front look great! Especially The Fairy rose and Bonica! Oh and they’re blooming like crazy too! Take a peak:

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Lovely aren’t they? These are The Fairy Roses.

Oh well … at least most of the plants are growing and or producing veggies! My Tomatoes (cherry, tiny tom, early girl and Glam) are all full of green tomatoes. Hopefully the heat starts to help them ripen! Likewise my cucumber plants have tiny (smaller than Gherkins) cucumbers on them that I hope begin to grow soon. I can’t wait to have fresh tomatoes and cucumbers around!

At least I can eat some fresh fruit from my garden – even it’s only a handful! We finally picked our first raspberries off the bushes yesterday. Yummy!

If you’re weather is similar to mine you might have noticed that some of your plants are behind, smaller than normal or even taller than normal! For example, my Hydrangea is blooming, but the flowers are a little smaller than they normally are … yet my Phlox (Phlox David) and Balloon Flowers are blooming like crazy and they’re also much taller than normal … my Balloon flowers are over 4 feet tall! Biggest they’ve ever been!

Here’s my Hydrangea:
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The sunflowers that I always grow in our planted boulevard were only two or so feet tall up until a week ago … then we got all that rain last weekend and they grew another two feet or more just like that. Their flowers are finally blooming, but again, they are smaller than normal. Geez … I’m used to having 8 foot tall sunflowers that the city tells me I have to cut down! LOL

At least my plants are blooming and growing. It could be worse!

I’ll leave you with this lovely picture of my Graham Thomas English rose … aren’t they gorgeous?

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How’s your garden doing this week?






I wish Peonies bloomed all summer long!

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I wish Peonies bloomed all summer long. They are so lovely, so delicate and oh so short lived!

My peonies are long gone … they finished blooming in late June, but I just realized that I never posted a photo of my Peonies.

I only took pictures of my Peony Pecher Peonies this year. My Karl Rosenfield Peonies bloomed, but we were going through a very rainy period when they bloomed and then right after that it finally warmed up here in Toronto at the end of June and the blooms faded fast … too fast for me to capture them while they still looked beautiful!

Anyway … here’s a picture of my lovely Peony Peacher bloom.

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This peony has a beautiful scent. In fact, after a huge rain storm in June, back when we discovered one of trellises had broken and snapped some rose branches, I gathered some lovely scented Baron Prevost roses, one peony and a few hosta leaves for accent and made a bouquet to bring indoors to enjoy. The rose and peony scent filled the house for two or three days! Once the rose scent faded, the peony scent took over for another day or so. Simply lovely to have such scented flowers indoors!

Do you grow Peonies? Do you bring a cut flower or two indoors so you can enjoy their loveliness and beautiful scent? What other flowers do you enjoy bringing indoors?

Time to enjoy the garden

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July has arrived and I think that I’m just about ready to sit back and enjoy my garden for the next few months.

back of garden - facing south

What I mean by this is that from early April until last week or so, every time I visited my garden I had work to do! From spring clean up, pruning the roses and other plants to weeding to planting annuals to finally completing the big task of adding approximately 30 bags of red cedar mulch on my back and front garden beds.

We put mulch on our garden every year, but the last two years we only topped up the beds with a light layer. This year we noticed that the previous applications of mulch had really broken down, so we made sure to add a 3 inch layer this year – hence all the big heavy bags of mulch!

Other than doing a little pruning here and there as the roses grow and become floppy, and or staking the roses and other plants as they grow, most of the work is done. From here on in the main gardening job will be keeping it watered.

Actually there’s at least one more job. My husband and I made up a large garbage pail of Alfalfa tea about a month ago and it should be just about ready to be applied to the garden. Alfalfa seems to contain a growth hormone that causes the plants to row quite well once either alfalfa pellets are added to the soil and break down, or in our case once our evil stinking brew of Alfalfa tea has been applied. It’s a great natural fertilizer.  Obviously it’s also organic.  We are organic gardeners and never use chemicals on our plants or lawn.

We just have to make sure that we apply it to the garden when most of our close neighbors are indoors! It’s stinky! We usually apply alfalfa tea twice a year – once in early June and then again near the end of July, but we’re behind this year, so the garden might only get one dose this year.

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Speaking of enjoying the garden … The first huge flush of roses is just about over. The roses started blooming in early June and now that first flush seems to be dying down. Most of my roses are re-bloomers or continuous bloom … but nothing beats that first Spring flush of roses as it’s usually the largest!

IMG_5848 Other plants in bloom include Lavender, Salvia, Heuchera, some of my hostas, some of my clematis, Gazania, Marigolds, Petunias, Dianthus (Sweet William), Impatiens, Alyssum, Portulaca, Hollyhocks, Lilies, Daylilies, Maltese Cross and the list goes on. More plants will begin to bloom soon as well!

We also have a number of veggies growing ranging from Tomatoes, Tiny tom and Cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, peas, a variety of lettuces, spinach and carrots. Plus we also grow strawberries and raspberries. Yummy.

Now if only it would get a little warmer here in Toronto. It’s been kind of cool the last two weeks with below average temperatures. It looks like it’s supposed to warm up a little bit this weekend, but overall it will still be below normal temps for a while. I do hope summer starts to feel like summer soon.

The only good thing about the slightly cooler temps is that I haven’t had to water the garden daily or even every second day and we haven’t really had the air-conditioning on. So we’re saving money on water and electricity. But enough already … It is after all supposed to be summer!

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How is your garden doing this summer? Are you finished most of the hard work and like me find it’s time to sit back and enjoy the garden? And is your weather a little cooler than normal too?

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