2010 was not a good year

I was not able to publish what I did this year as I was working on a project at work that took most of my time. From June until August I was working seven days a week 12-18 hours a day and that didn't leave me any free time to enjoy the garden.

This year I put in a tomato plant, but, for some reason the fruit started to rot as soon as it ripened and all I got were three tomatoes.  I eventually took out the plant.  Next year I may work with a cherry tomato plant. The other problem plant was the dill.  There was some critter that stripped each and every stalk of the leaves and seed heads.

When I get some spare time I will take a few photos of what did work (Sage and Rosemary had a great year).

Summer 2009 - The summer that wasn't

So far this year the garden has been almost a total bust. For most of the summer it has been cool and wet. The Blue Stocking Beebalm and the Alask Shasta Daisy has been a total disapointment. They grew up fairly spindly and much less overwhelming in their flowers and foliage. I don't know if this is because of the weather or their being in containers, but, we won't be planting them next year. The wild flowers Emily planted along with her carrots are quite nice. She has already had two meals from her carrots and there are enough for at least two more. This is quite suprising as the box is 30x30 cm.

The other major disappointment has been the Basil. I think the combination of the weather and the fact we planted it with the Sage meant that we only got two small harvest from it. Next year we will be planting it in its own container and change the soil mix to one based on peat moss. The rosemary, savoury and thyme are thriving in their own containers and we should get several more cuttings before the autumn frosts. The rosemary will be brought in and placed in the living room beside the south facing window. We have done this for the last several years and the plant survives and thrives there so we won't be changing that.

The sedums are almost ready to blossom and when they do I will be taking photos of what they look like this year. This will probably be the last year in the pot as they are starting to out-grow the pot and will need to be divided next spring into at least two pots.

Just a short note about the photo at the top. You can thank Emily for this one. She borrowed my camera and took this image. The only thing I had to do was resize the image. She is getting very handy with digital cameras, Linux, digicam and the GIMP.

Garden 2009

It has been a while, but, I finally now have a few minutes to talk about this years garden. During this month (May) we had to protect our plants twice because of frost. Don't spend a lot of money doing this as I found that the plastic drop sheets from the dollar store works quite well. We move all of the plants to beside the living room window, stick in a few bamboo stakes on the corners and drap the drop sheet over the plants. It worked quite well and in the morning nothing was damaged.

We are going with the same thing on the south side fence as last year. On the top we are planting red and white geraniums and along the bottom we are planting red and white impatiens. The two go together quite well. We are still working on all of the plantings for this year, but, so far we have put in Rosemary, Sage, Savoury, Basil and Oregano. Emily has planted a bit of carrots and wild flowers (from seed).

The sedum from last year came back and next spring we will need to divide the plant as it has almost out-grown the current pot. My next project is to edit the current photos of the garden and update the layout to show what is planted and where.