Happy May! Our weather has been beautiful these past few weeks! The last of the snow melted in April, the sun is warm, the plants, shrubs and trees are coming to life and that means it’s time to plant the garden!
We decided to do Garden Week and finish prepping the garden beds that we didn’t get to last summer, pull those pesky weeds, plant the garden, plant some flowers, beautify the garden a bit and of course have some yummy food!
Let’s get to it!
Day One – Monday, May 5
To start, we pulled the tree that the wasps ate and damaged last fall. I never saw such a thing before. They burrowed into some branches, hollowed it out and ate the sap. I tried to save the tree but until we noticed, it was too late. The branches were so crispy it was almost like it was burnt. We covered up the hole and we will be planting a new tree in the front yard but will be moving it over a bit.
Next up, dirt! On Saturday, we spent half the day getting dirt. We are using bags of dirt because it seems to grow everything the best.
We did get garden dirt trucked in last year but it was horrible and nothing grew in it. So, we decided to stay with the bags of garden dirt!
To start, we have 102 bags here. The back garden bed is more than half empty and the side beds here are half empty too. All the other garden beds need to be topped up as well.
It was a bit chilly this morning. That’s a lot of dirt! I sure hope we can get lots done.
First, we pulled the weeds, removed the strawberries and worked up the “strawberry” bed. Then we added dirt.
The second garden bed we worked up – the dirt was really hard. We pulled the weeds, worked it up as best we could and then added dirt.
Then we did the garden bed that had the pumpkins last summer. The dirt was easier to work up. We picked the weeds, removed the mint plant and replenished the dirt.
Here’s all three of the garden beds after we fixed them all up. Looks great!
I also pulled all the weeds in the mulch on this side of the yard! We will be replenishing the mulch later this spring.
Onto the front yard! Here is the Victoria rhubarb, garlic chives and chives. The garlic chives did not do well last year but amazingly they came back up this year!! And the chives were trimmed back to the dirt last fall and they came back so nice this year!! They look great! And we have been eating them already. So tasty!
Onto the shrubs and trees! Everything is coming back, even the burning bush! The blueberry bushes are very slow, but they’re starting to bud.
We went to Canadian Tire to look at the flowers and trees. We got some herbs and we did decide on the tree we are going to get to replace the Goodland Apple Tree that the wasps wrecked, and which flowers we are planting in our flower bed. Rusty took time to smell the flowers!
We bought Basil and Parsley which I planted near the chives in my herb garden bed. We also bought Mojito Mint and Peppermint which my daughter planted near the rhubarb in the garden bed where we usually plant mint. I tasted a bunch of different kinds of mint but decided to only get the two kinds. We decided to not go mint-crazy this year!!
And that’s Day One. We got 3 garden beds ready in the backyard, plus the one small garden bed and part of the big garden bed. We pulled the weeds in half the backyard, watered everything and went to the store to look at trees, flowers and herbs. We planted mint, basil and parsley and overall, had a great and productive day!!
“The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul.”
— Alfred Austin
Day Two – Tuesday, May 6
Here is the dirt we have leftover from yesterday. Still quite a bit, so I hope we can get a lot done today.
Here is the Cherry Tree. It is budding which is so exciting to see. I wasn’t sure how the tree would do over the winter, but it’s going good!!
The shrubs in the backyard are doing great. The gooseberry is doing really well and is all leafed out! The blueberry is budding and the saskatoon has leafed out. The honeyberry bushes (there’s 3 in the backyard) are leafing out as well. I’m so grateful and happy to see everything doing so well!
We began by working in the large garden bed in the middle of the yard. We had to pull the weeds, work up the dirt and then replenish the dirt.
After 2 hours, we finished this garden bed. We just need to add mulch in the centre so we can walk into the garden. It really sank over the winter. Between all the snow and the dogs running and playing n the garden bed, the dirt and mulch packed considerably!
In hindsight, this garden bed was a bad idea — and instead of a large garden bed which I initially thought would be our pumpkin patch (I thought there would be lots of room for the plants to spread), we should have had about 8 small, short garden beds much like the other small one we have. That would have been easier to garden in. Or, we could have had about 4 long ones instead. But it’s always easy to say what should have been done after the fact. It’s all a learning curve! We do not want to tear this up and redo it, so for now, we will make it work!
We poured the rest of the dirt into the south garden bed but we did not have quite enough dirt. We will definitely need plenty more!!
Here is the small garden bed. I can’t believe the mint came back! Out of all the garden beds that we planted mint in, this is the only one to come back after the winter! I pulled out the main plant being careful to not pull the main roots out.
We bought flowers for the flower beds and flower pots! We bought an assortment of pansies and violas. I love that they seed themselves and come back each year. I’m hoping that enough will come back that we won’t need to buy as many flowers next year! Aren’t they beautiful!?! We also bought some pepper plants and tomatoes as well.
For lunch we had vegetable barley soup and sandwiches. It was a great meal for garden week!
And that’s Day Two. We got the large garden bed ready, began to fill another garden bed and bought flowers and other plants for the garden.
“He causes the grass to grow for the livestock, and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth.”
— Psalm 104:14
Day Three – Wednesday, May 7
Here’s the middle garden bed. We are ready to plant! We do need some more mulch in the centre though.
Here’s the one south garden bed — we had to get more dirt to finish filling it up. It’s ready for planting!! We did not have this garden bed last summer so I’m looking forward to planting it this year!
I planted Tasty Green cucumber and pickling cucumbers. ‘H’ and I planted jalapeno pepper, tamale pepper, candy cane red sweet pepper and pear tomato.
This is my daughter’s (H) garden box. This is the pumpkin & melon garden box. From left to right we have Jack o’ Lantern, Spookie Pumpkin and Sugar Pumpkin. Then we have 3 kinds of watermelon — Jubilee, Early Canada and Garden Leader Monster. We also have cantaloupe.
In the next garden box (my daughter L’s), we have spaghetti squash, carrots, beets, more pumpkin, patty pan (sunburst) squash, peas and lettuce.
We planted 5 kinds of potatoes. We have Queen Anne, Red Apple, Cerisa, Bintje and Yukon Gold. We had some left from last fall, so we planted those and we bought some other kinds to try. We place the potatoes on top and slightly push it into the dirt and hill them. In a few days, we will hill them again.
We planted 5 kinds of corn – Double Sweet, Honey Triple Sweet, Triple Crown Bi-Color and corn seed we harvested from what we planted last year.
We also planted Pak Choi, asparagus and dill.
We finally planted in this southern garden bed! Yay!! From left to right, ‘H’ planted two types of rutabaga — Swede Laurentian and American Purple Top. She also planted Detroit Red Dark Beets, Utah Celery, 3 kinds of lettuce — Buttercrunch, Iceberg and Bibb then there’s parsnips, three kinds of carrots — Rainbow Blend, Scarlet Nantes and Baby Finger then lastly we have Green Arrow Peas.
Here is our “pollinator box” — the mint is doing even better over these last couple days. We decided to plant flowers here instead of veggies. Looks great!
We planted flowers and placed them around the yard. I also have weeds still to pick in the rocks.
It’s amazing to see how much growth there’s been in the shrubs over the past couple days!
We needed some more herbs for the herb garden box, so we planted Greek basil, more chives and another garlic chives.
My daughter loves growing peppers and the pepper plants always do really well for her! We have a couple sweet peppers, Hot Lemon pepper, Jalapeno pepper, and a Cayenne pepper plant. We have never grown these kinds before aside from the jalapeno so it’ll be interesting to see how they turn out!
The front shrubs are growing great — flowering, budding and leafing out — although the blueberry shrubs are quite slow.
It’s so exciting to see the apple tree starting to flower!
And here’s all the flowers we planted in flower pots around the yard and in the flower bed! It adds a pop of color! So pretty!
The mint is not looking so good. I’m not exactly sure what happened to it!
Here is the rhubarb.
My dad decided to give us a garden “plot” on their acreage, so this evening we planted the rest of the potatoes we had.
Last fall, my folks planted garlic that my aunt sent them. One kind of garlic has been passed on for over 100 years and came from Romania! I thought that was neat! I’m looking forward to homegrown garlic!
Today, my daughter made us “ants on a log” and “snail on a log” for our garden theme snack. It was so good! For the ants, we used raisins and chocolate chips atop wow butter (but you can use any nut or seed butter of choice). And for the snail, she spread hummus on the celery, topped it with cheese for the snail’s head and body, olives for the eyes, and chives for the antennae. It was delicious!
And that was Day 3 — we actually accomplished a lot today! We also bought a fruit tree to replace the tree we had to toss away.
“To plant a garden is to dream of tomorrow.”
— Audrey Hepburn
Day Four – Thursday, May 8
We finished planting the last of the flowers! They’re just so pretty!!
We finished filling the second south garden bed and it’s finally ready to be planted!
We also got one last herb – parsley – because we had an extra space in the herb box. The herb box is now complete!
We also planted sorrel and a tomato plant next to the mint. Usually we have rhubarb and the rest of the garden box is mint — but this year we have rhubarb, mint, sorrel and a tomato plant which I am looking forward to. I have never planted sorrel before but noticed it was mentioned a lot in 1940s ration cookbooks, so we thought to give it a try.
And that’s it for Day four! Hauling dirt takes a while so we didn’t get much done but we are happy with our progress!
“There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments.”
— Janet Kilburn Phillips
Day Five – Friday, May 9
We hauled some dirt, partially filled the back garden bed and planted potatoes. We wanted to try another variety so we planted Red Emmalie. I hilled the potatoes, but simply forgot to take a photo.
We did not get much dirt dumped into here today, but after working all week in the yard, we decided to just dump a bit of dirt, plant potatoes and clean up the house! This garden bed is 32’ long…that’s a lot of dirt!!!
“A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating.
— Wendell Berry
Day Six – Saturday, May 10
Today we planted the tree we bought on Wednesday. It’s a Combination Plum Tree. There’s three different kinds of plums on one tree because it was grafted that way. I am interested to see how this tree produces fruit! I hope it does well!
My father-in-law grafted trees many years ago so one tree would produce two kinds of apples. The branches would be spliced in such a way that they could be joined. Then they’d be taped and left to grow. Over time, that splice simply because another branch. I found it fascinating.
We also planted a new blueberry bush since the one did not seem to be doing much here. It has blossoms so we should at least have a few blueberries!
We then went back to my folks’ because my dad wanted us to plant another garden “plot” with other veggies. In this garden, from left to right we have corn, beans, beets and two rows of carrots.
Then my dad asked if we had more seeds to plant so in this garden, we have zucchini, spaghetti squash, patty pans, dill and two rows of cucumbers on the right.
We also planted a saskatoon shrub that we dug up last fall. We had placed it in a flower pot thinking it would have to be thrown away because the slugs attacked it and we did not think it would survive the winter. But this spring, it came back to life, so my dad planted it.
We dug up the Chippewan Blueberry and my dad planted it in a berry patch near the Saskatoon we brought.
We made mud pie for dessert. We used a homemade pie crust that I had blind-baked and froze and then thawed for this pie. We made Fudge Sauce and put some on the bottom of the crust, then scooped homemade triple chocolate pie filling that was cooled over top the fudge sauce and then topped it with a Nanaimo Bar crumble and gummy worms. It’s very chocolatey and very rich so you can’t eat much! It’s great with ice cream or whipped cream. So good!
“I grow plants for many reasons: to please my eye or to please my soul, to challenge the elements or to challenge my patience, for novelty or for nostalgia, but mostly for the joy in seeing them grow.”
— David Hobson
Day Seven – Sunday, May 11
Today it rained. We enjoyed the day and relaxed and will continue filling the back garden box with dirt so we can plant. We need to pick those pesky weeds and mulch the yard too.
Here’s the cherry tree. It’s starting to flower!
The apple tree’s flowers are starting to open!
Looks like we will have a bunch of chokecherries this year!
Here’s the plums on the plum tree.
Like I mentioned earlier, this plum tree has three different kinds of plums. The main part of the tree is Bounty Plum. Bounty plum produces a reddish-orange plum with yellow flesh and tends to be more tart., better for jams or baking with.
Another part of the plum tree is Pfisten #5 Plum is a greenish-yellow plum that is sweet and good for eating.
The last variety of plum on this tree is a hybrid plum crossed with a cherry. It’s a smaller plum with a reddish-green skin and a yellowish-green flesh. It’s a sweet and juicy plum.
And that’s our garden week! The week sure went fast. We got a lot done, but there’s still lots of work to do and that’s ok. Our goal is to complete the garden by the end of May. Then maintaining weeds and watering the garden will be a summer-long thing to do that I quite enjoy! I’ll do another garden update at the end of the month. It’ll be interesting to see the progress!
“I’ve always felt that having a garden is like having a good and loyal friend.”
— C.Z. Guest
How’s your garden! I’d love to know!
enjoy from Our City Homestead to yours