Limbing Up

Pruning advice for most ornamental trees indicates that it's best to do so in late-winter - for us, that would be around February/March.  The problem is, the last thing I'm thinking about at that point in time is pruning so I either end up doing a bit of tree maintenance at the wrong time of year or it doesn't get done at all.

This type of thing happens all the time - I look at a plant in the garden and think "I want to prune / divide / move that plant next winter / spring / fall, and then I completely forget.  This year I decided to start a monthly list of things that need get done the following year, which includes pruning trees that require a bit of tidying up in late winter.

There are a couple of trees on our property, however, that do best when pruned in early to mid-summer:  Maple and birch.  The fact that maples "bleed" if injured in early spring (maple syrup!) didn't even occur to me until just this week.  Sort of a 'duh!' moment 😉.  This, of course prompted me to do a bit more research which lead me to find out that maintenance on birch trees was also best done during the summer.  So both of these trees were removed from my winter list & added to my July list.  And since we are still in July, I tackled the maple trees that have been a right pain (literally) for years now.

Mowing underneath the maples was not easy

Front Entrance Pots - Success at last!

This is the tale of my front porch.  I've been meaning to write something up about my journey for a while now so, heads up, it's a bit lengthy...you may as well grab a cup o' something 😉

I am absolutely thrilled with my front entrance pots this year.  I have made a go of this area - albeit as more of an afterthought than a concerted effort - for a few years.  This time, however, I wanted to do a better job - plus I was able to get out to the garden centre a bit earlier than usual and actually snag some lovely plants, which definitely ignited my enthusiasm.

Going to the garden centre early in the season means that there is still
plenty to choose from & I ended up with a couple of trays of goodies

An Earlyish Garlic Harvest :)

 It's not surprising that with all the heat this year, the garlic harvest is about 2 weeks earlier than usual.

The garlic bed before harvesting

When to harvest garlic is all about the visual cues rather than a set time on the calendar.  Once the bottom two or three leaves are brown, that's my signal that it's time to harvest.

Bottom two leaves have dried up

Another cue comes from the leave tips, which should be starting to brown...check!

Practically all of the tips are browning

I could have waited another week or so to harvest but I decided that I had better take advantage of the couple of days of dry weather we've had.  The water to the garlic bed was turned off about 3 weeks ago but I was getting a bit worried as it has been raining here consistently ever since then, practically every other day.  In fact, just over a week ago I turned off the drip irrigation to the entire garden.

A Lightbulb Moment? Getting to the Cherries before the Birds.

 

About a year after we moved here, we planted a cherry tree beside our house.  At only 4' tall, it was a tiny thing but it was nonetheless a very exciting moment as this, together with a plum tree, were the first edibles that I planted in our garden.  My kids were toddlers at the time, but we needed the mandatory stand beside the cherry tree pic.  I obviously picked the worst time of day as is evidenced by my son's "the sun is so bright, I can't open my eyes!" squinting, lol.

We tasted the first cherries that year

My Favourites Right Now

As I work around the garden, I can't help but stop and smile.  So many of the plants that I've added in the past couple of years are starting to really take off and it just makes my heart sing.  While I have always loved strolling through the garden, my little walks have been especially joyful this year.  So I decided to take my camera with me and snap a few pictures of my mid-June favourites.

Each year, the solitary David Austin rose in my garden just gets better and better - I believe it's in its 4th year now:

'Crown Princess Margaretta'

End of May Update

 As is always the case at this time of year, things have been busy in the garden.  Our first frost date is on May 10th, so the two weeks before and after always see a flurry of activity with lots of transplanting, seeding and, of course, weeding.

Last week, however, we ran into a bit of a glitch when we had a string of truly horrible weather that was cold, wet and windy.  One day in particular really did a number on newly transplanted seedlings.  It started out a bit chilly, at 11C/52F, but then the weather kept getting colder as the day progressed, a rare occurrence.  By early afternoon, we were sitting at 1C/34F which is unheard of for this late in May.  Unfortunately, I had put the cucumbers in the ground only a couple of days earlier.  They survived but are definitely worse for wear.  We'll have to wait and see if there is any lasting impact.

Cucumbers took a beating during the recent frigid/windy weather

Tomatoes are Potted Up

This weekend, I potted up the tomatoes. They are not as far along as they normally are but I'm not overly concerned.  They tend to grow really quickly once potted up, so much so that I've moved their sowing date up by at least a couple of weeks over the years as they were getting too big before I could transplant them outside.

This year, however, I had a few issues with germination.  I'm not sure what was going on, but most of the seeds ended up on the tail end of what I would consider the normal germination time.

Usually the seedlings are at this stage by the end of April