16 May 2015

Garden in!

The Victoria Day weekend is the traditional one for putting tender plants in the garden, but I was slightly nervous of doing so when I saw that the temperature was going to drop to 4°C/39°F in the coming week. I went ahead anyway, and the next time I looked at the weather forecast it had changed to 7°C/45°F - so with any luck all will be well.

It's been a madly busy week in the lower vegetable garden, which has only just dried out and warmed up after the cold Spring. There has been a lot of weeding and manuring leading up to the last two days when I've been putting in the tomato, corn, squash and brassica seedlings which had been growing on in the greenhouse. Last year I lost most of the cabbages to rabbits. so this year I'm experimenting with scattering some ground-up dried cayenne peppers around them as a deterrent. 

The tomatoes are all in the ground and surrounded by a mulch of grass-cuttings.


In the much drier upper vegetable garden I'm experimenting with some grain crops this year: barley, oats and wheat. The idea is to become a bit more self-sufficient in grain for the chickens in the future, but I imagine that this year we'll probably just keep any grain we gather as seed for next year.


2 comments:

Lisa from Iroquois said...

The fact that Victoria Day has come a week earlier then most years is a bit confounding re: putting in the garden. I have just returned from New Brunswick and I actually saw ice still on lakes just a few days ago. Have you tried growing barley? I want to experiment with as a garden border but I am afraid the seed heads will leave me with a field of grain next year.

Amanda said...

Hi Lisa

We had ice in one of our big water tanks until the second week of May!

I've not grown barley before, but it is looking quite attractive at the moment. Maybe there's a better type of ornamental grass for your border which wouldn't be so liable to drop seed everywhere?