English Community

How are your gardens growing everyone?  I'm having good luck with my carrots, peas, beets and onions this year,etc. but my peppers don't seem to be growing well and the darn voles have chewed off the crowns of all my pole beans!  Also, we had poor germination of much of the lettuce we planted.  Thankfully, our flowers and shrubs are all doing well, so that's some consolation.  I'm curious what things are like across the country...here in SK, many are finding that the critters are eating their beet tops, which is unusual and are suspecting that, like us because of Covid, the critters too are having a particularly difficult year and are turning to things they don't usually eat.  We had a very cool and wet spring, which meant little grew well initially.

Hi @maggiemae. I am in central ontario and I only grow tomatoes but they are doing exceptionally well this year. Not sure if it is because of the weather of because of covid I am spending more time outside tending to them. Either way I am looking forward to them riping up a bit more and having them to eat. My flowrers and shrubs are also doing very well. Lots of blooms.

Hi @countryliving, good to hear you're having such great luck with your tomatoes this year! Mine are doing fine as are my cukes.  I've got some canteloupe in this year and it's doing fine too, along with the parsnips. Nothing is really going gangbusters this year though, but it's been 3 years since I've been able to garden or put in any cover crops, so I suspect the soil may be somewhat depleted.  I fell downstairs a week ago and was laid up for a few days so I had lots of weeds to clear out yesterday!  (my dog accidentally tripped me - she also had to go to the vet - we're both ok; I'm still hobbling a bit but no worse for the wear),   Do you do any canning with your harvest?  

Hi @maggiemae and @CountryLiving  Our garden is a disaster this year. We've devoted a 1/4 acre of our land here in SE Ontario to growing organic and mostly heirloom vegetables the past 10 years. In fact the past 3 we have put up a stand at our entrance and sell the overage on a "donation to the OCC Walk of Hope" basis.  Not this year though.  I think we were late planting because we had so much rain. Now we've been in a drought the past month or more which makes it even worse.  Looks like our potatoes are ready to dig up but I'm going to bet they're very small.  Beets are doing ok though as are carrots.  Tomatoes have taken forever and only now seeing some evidence of fruit. Completely lost our leeks, most of the lettuces which we were famous for. The only thing that seems to really have taken hold is our butternut squash.  Really a sad state especially given my husband spends so much time germinating seeds through the winter and spring and then tilling and planting and weeding. I'm just not in physical shape to help this year unfortunately...but I do direct traffic well !  I think next year we'll just let it all go fallow and rebuild the nutrients in the soil and instead focus on some much needed landscaping; especially the rose garden I've been wanting for a long time now.  Oh well, at least the bunnies are being well fed.

Hi @Fearless, I love your humor about directing traffic!  Same here.  Though I'm more capable now than I've been in the past 2-3 years, its my hubby that does the hard digging, etc.  So sorry your garden is a poor one this year but I feel your pain as we're in the same boat.  When I told Andrew about the darn voles eating our beans at the crown, his response was, "They're just trying to survive too."  We've never had this happen before but have now learned a valuable lesson about hardware cloth, LOL - use it!  So we've begun building some new raised beds incorporating it; something we didn't do first time around.  Nice that you grow organic - so do we!  Even nicer that you sell overage (most years :-) for donations to OCC - what a great idea!  Hope you're having a pleasant day and here's to all the bunnies out there.