Garden Share Bristol

We’ve already had nearly two inches of rain this weekend, and it’s coming down again. Luckily, I got my patio pots planted last weekend (mostly annuals, but I scored a couple of hostas at a garage sale {$2.00 each!} to tuck into the pots on my shady front porch, and added some herbs to the pots on my sunny patio), but I have more veggies and a number of perennials I really want to get in the ground now. Right now!

But, hey, at least it’s not snowing!

Correction to the previous post: plant ID is Verbascum phoeniceum.

it's always great fun planting with little ones, playing 'name that plant' and feeling their enthusiam and curiosity about gardening, plants, and food in general. We planted most of what was planned, and it was a lot of fun...

here are a few pics from our planting with the kids from the City Hall Childcare Society -

A few tulips remain, and the chives should open today.

last Sunday was a quiet day in the garden, nothing planted just general maintenance, observation, and a little more delicious harvest

here are some photo updates -

our square foot plot - may 17
a teepee just waiting for beans!

... because it might come true!!

In our search for soil to fill the beds, we had asked the City for a donation of compost. In the meantime, some of the beds had been filled with soil from the Canadian Tire donation, so when the truck came last week and dumped over four cubic metres (i.e. a HUGE pile) of compost for us, we were filling almost every nook and cranny in the garden! Lots of work, but the garden looks GREAT!

our square foot plot - May 10

this is Beng, tending to the tomatoes. note the trellis made of salvaged chain link fence in the background

Lilacs are members of the genus Syringa, and range in size from dwarf (5’x5’) types that are perfect for smaller gardens, to large (15”x12’) tree types that make wonderful specimen plants. Most lilacs feature large clusters (panicles) of small flowers that range in color from white to pink to lavender, deep purple, and red-violet. Their hardiness in tough settings, reliable annual bloom, and distinctive fragrance make them enormously popular choices for home gardens and commercial sites and public parks.

The common lilacs, syringe vulgaris, are large (12-15’x 8’), vase shaped shrubs that are super tough, but do tend to sucker. The French hybrids, such as ‘Charles Joly’ (red, double) and ‘President Grevy’ (blue, double) are similar in size and shape but don’t have that annoying tendency to sucker. A slightly smaller (8’x4’), but still traditional form of lilac is Royalty, Syringa x presoniae ‘Royalty’ (purple to violet flowers). Miss Kim, Syringa patula ‘Miss Kim,’ is considered the best of the dwarf lilacs with a slightly later bloom time and especially fragrant flowers.

We've been on a quest for soil to fill our beds and have had success at different places. This is another lasagna bed that was created last week -

First newspaper to provide some barrier against weeds (and hopefully nematodes!)

Here is some straw mixed with fresh horse manure and chicken manure. Fresh manure can burn roots, so we put a thin layer on the bottom so that by the time the roots reach it, they should be OK.

Then we added a layer of leaves that are partially decomposed because they've been protecting our beds since last fall.

Then we covered with a layer of 1 yr old composted horse manure mixed with sand and woodchips. We removed big pieces of bark because it would steal nitrogen from our plants to use in its decomposition.

Then covered with a thin layer of worm castings we had left over from last year....

and look what we found - two worms making a coccoon!! The bands line up and they knot up and slime up (for lack of propoer terminology) and a little coccoon is produced that between 4 and 20 worms will come out of.

We planted aylssum, carrots, radishes, kale, baby bok choy and kale in this bed. Most things were already coming up this week!

We are still waiting for the City to deliver compost to fill the remaining beds, but in the meantime,

A BIG THANK YOU TO NATHAN AND CANADIAN TIRE FOR DONATING SOIL, MANURE AND TOOLS!!

Thanks to this we were able to fill 3 more beds and start planting our tomatoes. It's nice to have good neighbours....

In other news....

....our strawberries are blooming.....finally!

mmmm.....mesclun, we will harvest this next week and plant tomatoes in its place.

a special visit to our garden today!