I can already feel the beginning of the season shifting here. I’ve been trying to paint the outside of our house, or least get the worst of the painting done this season before winter hits. It’s a lot of painting for one person, let alone a middle aged woman with a compromised shoulder, but I’m a nice ‘boss’ for myself. I work at it awhile and take long breaks whenever I feel I need it, so I don’t ‘do’ the shoulder. I’ve been working on this a few years now.
I’m also running the veggie garden, something I neglected until late in the season due to a full-time job in town and other commitments. The garden is just starting to produce in any great amounts. I planted quite late this year, but wanted to get veggies in. The veggie garden is important enough that I keep it going, the perennial border was sort of sacrificed, and some of it has burned out. The best plants here are drought resistant. The flower garden is now recovering, since we had some cooler days for about a week, so I guess that setting up the sprinkler now and again as I dashed out the door, was enough to sustain most of it. There are usually casualties at this time of year, but this year they’ve been minor. I’ve just been lucky.
Most gardeners are shocked when they see my garden. “Where’s the garden?” is the unspoken question in their eyes especially when shown the veggie garden. Most hard-core gardeners have their grass all nicely clipped and everything is carefully weeded. Mulch – often cedar, or something pretty – is present around each shrub or plant. Veggie gardens are always in neat rows or mixed in with flower beds in interesting ways.
In my veggie garden I use raised beds, as I’ve said in previous blogs. Or, I use garden boxes with open bottoms which I move by taking them apart. This year I’ve let the fall rye grass and white Dutch clover grow to its full length in the pathways. This makes it a challenge to walk through, which I don’t mind, but most people probably would. The tall grasses and weeds give me good protection again the winds which are extremely drying here. It also gives the ground grouse something green to eat; and now they aren’t touching my chard, lettuce mixes or any other produce. It acts like a living shield, protecting my produce. My bush beans get wind burn on their tips. The rest of the plant is OK because the fall rye is high enough and bushy enough to mostly protect it.
I’ve got mature weeds in the beds as well as sprinkled throughout the garden. It happened when I got so far behind on tasks this season, due to working outside our place as well. I decided that since I had an overwhelming number of chores to catch up on, weed pulling couldn’t be too close to the top of the list. If they’re helping to hold down soil, but aren’t choking off anything – stay. Dandelions are welcome if they aren’t bothering anything else. Ragweed is everywhere here, but the big ones will overwhelm the smaller ones. Since they’ve got a short tap root, they’re easy to pull. So if I wait until there’s a few big ones, the chore is easier.
Of course I couldn’t get away with doing this if I lived anywhere near another gardener, or even near enough to someone’s house. We’re pretty isolated here. However, if I lived in town, chances are we’d have a much smaller property to maintain, so I might have been able to keep on top of weeds – or at least have a better chance. Less wind there too.
I’m currently harvesting huge amounts of chard, rhubarb and an abundance of herbs such as basil, thyme, sage, motherwort, caraway/thyme, loveage. The bush beans I planted late are just beginning to produce beans, and are mostly still in flower. I probably planted them just in time or a tad late, as beans don’t like cool weather. I hope they are finished completely before the temperatures noticeably dip. Peas planted about two weeks ago are a couple of inches high. They’ll be maturing when the evening temps are much cooler – weather they like.
A few of the onions another gardener gave me survived and are getting big now. I had planted most of them in with the carrots in order to fool the carrot rust fly. That trick works too – but not against greedy little black bears who have a thing for carrots. As soon as the carrots were 2″, he pawed through the whole box, looking for carrot. This wiped out the carrots and the little transplanted onions. Fortunately I’d planted just a few around the gooseberry bush I just put in this year. They are the large Spanish type, and they’re just getting some real size on now. I can see their ‘hips’.
The basil and tomatoes in pots, growing close to the house are doing well. I’ve been making and freezing pesto. So far I haven’t harvested enough tomatoes to freeze any, as they are just beginning.
My blueberry bushes growing in pots are still struggling on. Actually one of them has produced reasonably well for being such a little bush right now. I probably need a huge rectangular container and a ton of peat moss mixed with spruce needles, old cones broken down and sawdust to plant them in. Our local soil is alkaline. Blueberries love very acidic soil – about 4.4 – very acidic for most plants. I love blueberries. They don’t mind shade, so I keep trying to get them going here. I’ve been feeding them fish fertilizer, and they seem to like that.
Since it is so challenging to garden here, I am leaning more toward all native plants except for the veggie garden. Went on a garden tour here earlier in the summer and saw a great garden for our climate. The gardeners rarely water, and use mostly native plantings with a few well-chosen perennials – hardy and very drought tolerant. Smartest garden I ever saw. They hired someone to set up the hardscape, recommend plants, place them etc. I paid careful attention – that’s what we need here!
