Elli Gardens - And You Can, Too!

Everything has been growing just tickety-boo lately! We had a very dry June, but I still didn’t need to water the in-ground box garden very much at all. The tomatoes in containers needed daily watering, though. For the last couple of days we’ve had a soft Vancouver drizzle, which everything seemed to enjoy quite a lot. A few notes and observations on the gardening project this year:

- the strawberries have formed as if they were melting. The tops are shiny and stretched looking. I’ve never seen this before, but they taste great so I won’t worry.
- the zucchini, squash, and pumpkin patch needed a hard trimming session last week. It was threatening to take over everything.
- the tomatoes are much better this year. Last year their bottoms rotted out of the fruit, but this year the yields look good even though everything (except a few) is still green.
- compared to last year, this year’s cilantro was a disaster. Last year I grew it from a seedling in an herb box, and it did well. This year I tried to grow from seed and they each sent up one little stalk about 5″ tall, and now those are already going to seed with no leaves in sight.
- the pepper plants have grown well, but the fruit seems to be very slow in coming. I’m not sure if they will riped in time.
- the green onions are fabulous, but 6 sets was a bit too much for my needs. Maybe 2 next year would be better.
- the celery is extremely bitter and stringy. Not sure what I did wrong. They grew just fine, though.

I hope you enjoy the photos!

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The sun has been fairly regular for weeks now and the rain has been nowhere to be seen, which is highly irregular for Vancouver, Canada. But as long as I’m around to water the plants when they get thirsty, I’m happy that they’re happy.

What’s new this week? One of my potato quarters that I had stuck in the garden about a month ago finally showed itself as a sprout a few days ago. The nicotania flowers are going absolutely crazy, and even my heliobore, which I had my doubts about, seems to be content.

As for the tomatoes, my “Tumbler” variety has some nearly golf ball sized green fruit on it. The others are still putting energy into flowers. Interestingly enough, some tiny sprouts that I had thought were cilantro in my pepper pot turned out to be baby tomatoes! I’ve never had it happen before, but possibly some tomato roots could have been left behind when I separated out the tomato seedlings and peppers from the big pot I had them in previously? Has anyone else experienced this? Anyway, I now have five bonus tomato plants, but they’re very wee. I doubt they will grow fast enough to have fruit at this point.

I still haven’t acquired a “poro poro” like I had last year for my patio. It’s a lovely Australian tree with beautiful purple flowers, but is a bit difficult to source around here. They aren’t hardy below 8C, so last year’s winter killed my previous poro dead.

Onward and upward, as they say! Grow babies, grow!

I was just cruising around the internet (my mother would say I was “wasting time”) and found a great article on how much water a garden really needs, and how to protect your soil from moisture loss!

http://www.alternet.org/water/140433/save_water_by_learning_how_much_your_plants_really_need/

A small excerpt:

“If a garden’s soil is rich with humus, the decomposing organic matter will absorb water like a sponge and hold in the moisture, making it available to growing plants. Mulching also makes for moist soil, because it prevents the evaporation of water from the ground’s surface. That’s why, in American Intensive Gardening, we grow plants close together to form a living mulch. Just like a miniature rainforest, the canopy of leaves shades the soil, keeping it cooler and reducing moisture loss through evaporation.”

Obviously the trout didn’t come from my garden, but at least the herbs did! My neighbour gifted me with a fresh rainbow trout he caught yesterday, so I had to think up a quick way to do the lovely little fishie justice! Here’s what I came up with:

Elli’s Pan Fried Rainbow Trout
Heat butter and olive oil (half and half) in a cast iron skillet on medium-low.
From the garden: sage, rosemary, thyme, all chopped fine
Rinse cleaned and gutted fish in cold water, then pat dry with paper towel.
Dredge fish lightly with all purpose flour. Sprinkle on herbs, salt and pepper.
Sizzle fish in butter, about 5 minutes a side.
After both side are done, put a lid on the skillet and remove it from heat for 5 more minutes.

Zucchini and White Onion Sauce for trout:
In half butter, half olive oil sweat 3 tbsp fresh zucchini, diced and 2 tbsp white onion, diced. Once onions are translucent, stir in 1 tsp cilantro, chopped fine, a dash of lemon juice, and 3 tbsp plain balkan style yogurt. Add some coarse salt and a few cracks of fresh pepper if you prefer. Lid the pot and turn off the heat, but you can leave the pot on the element to keep warm. Stir again before serving. Drizzle liberally over fish.

Enjoy!

Too hot to eat a real lunch? Do what I did and blend up one of these.

The Perfect Back Yard Drink

In a blender, blend the following:

1 banana
4 pitted dates
1/3 cup crushed pineapple (mostly drained)

Once broken up well, add

1 1/4 cups milk or milk substitute
4 shots white rum
dash nutmeg, cinnamon

Serve over a few whole ice cubes!

I do love my hoe. My Dutch neighbour at my previous house taught me that there is one indispensable tool to a gardener: the Dutch hoe, also knows as a “scuffle hoe” or “action hoe.” It’s easy to use and easy on the back and hands – no gloves required! You just stand where you like and run the blade of the hoe around your garden. It knocks down any weeds or undesirables that get in its way. If it’s a hot day, you can leave the uprooted weeds to dry up in the sun before you pick them up and put them in the garbage or compost. If it’s not too hot out, I suggest picking up the weeds before they put their roots back down and stand up again! If you keep the hoe’s blade sharp, there should be very little resistance as you run it through the top layer of soil. Doing this every other day will keep your garden weed-free with only minutes of work! I like to call it “vacuuming my garden” because the action is very similar to vacuuming a carpet.

You can get your own Dutch hoe at a garden supply store or online at Amazon. They have them available for under $20 this summer!

It’s been a blisteringly hot week or so in Vancouver. I’ve been watering my garden daily, sometimes twice, and still my tomatoes look tired at the end of the day. Luckily all appears to be going well!

I thinned my beets out in the garden box. Not having the heart to let the little seedlings die, I tried to replant them in a flower box and as a second row of beets in the garden. Not sure if they’ll survive or not. They look pretty wilty still and it’s been two days.

Today cucumber sprouts started showing in my big 15″ container! Only three sprouts so far, but since I’ve forgotten how many seeds I planted, I’ll take that as a good sign! These are slicing cukes, not English cucumbers. I find the English variety too watery tasting.

The garden guardian seems to be doing an excellent job. No birds have pestered the plants since our owl went on duty!

On Friday my man and his friend filled about 14 15″ black plastic gardening pots with beautiful compost soil from the bottom of a 15-year-old horse farm manure pile. The dirt is brown and lovely and rich and doesn’t smell nasty at all.

So yesterday I fulfilled my womanly duties by mixing the new soil with about 1 shovel full of peat moss per 15″ bucket load and a sprinkling of perlite. I then repotted everything. I do mean everything. All ten tomatoes went into their own 14″ pots. All 8 peppers went into their own 12″ pots. My flowers got repotted, as did the herbs. Celery was removed from the herb flower bed and put into 12″ pots in pairs, as was the green onion. after that I had so much energy left over (read: sarcasm) that I filled a 15″ pot with cucumber seeds, another one with more onion sets, and another with the zucchini sprouts that had sprung up in the in-ground garden bed.

My back would probably have been fine had I not lifted the full 14″ pots across the yard and back again. Surprisingly, my legs and arms are not sore at all. Used, yes, but not sore. Yoga and step class must really be paying off!

My new dirt has arrived! I’m filled with excitement at putting my plants into better soil and trepidation at the amount of work ahead.

What’s wrong with the dirt at hand? Well, after much discussion with my gardening friends, we’ve determined that the “garden soil” and “organic enhancement” I purchased to house my lovelies in are poor substitutes for real dirt. Also, I hadn’t realized that re-using last year’s dirt (which resulted in a few sick tomato plants) was rather hazardous. Since this year’s massive undertaking seemed to be at risk, I deemed it safer to replant everything. It’s tiring just thinking about it.

On the good side, we did pick up a new patio set that was on sale! Now we can enjoy our garden in style!

Unbelievable! I was just getting some lunch and looking out my kitchen window when I saw a pretty Stellar’s Jay hopping around my backyard. “How cute, ” I thought. Then he jumped into my garden. Then he started pulling up an onion! Since when do birds eat baby onions? When I got out to the yard I chased him off, but he’d already uprooted the admittedly leggy and not likely to survive broccoli, and stolen two onions!

A Thief in Waiting