Mini-Hoop Houses

The urge to garden got to me!  After weeks of reading through my seed catalogue until it was dog eared, and checking out Pinterest and Facebook for fresh ideas, I needed to get some dirt under my nails! 

After the torrential rains of Friday and Saturday, Sunday was a perfect day, balmy and bright, warm enough to work outside with just a light sweatshirt on.

Chuck and I got busy and made some mini hoop houses for our raised beds.

 Hoop houses are now trendy, as full sized greenhouses and as what we used to call cold frames back in the olden days, when I was a kid.



The Materials Assembled
 

 

Taking shape

 Using some PVC tubing, poly and scrap wood from the ongoing workshop project, we made covers for three of the beds.  In a couple of hours we turned the raised beds into little greenhouses, into which I have now planted Endive, Grand Rapids leaf lettuce, Kale and Peas. 

Adding the Poly
 

 

It's a bit early, I admit it.  However, there's a 50 50 chance by my estimation that we could get through the rest of winter without another freeze, so I think these little crops might work out, and soon we could be munching on some fresh greens.

And if not, well I had a marvellous time with my sleeves rolled up, in my gum boots, digging in the dirt with the sun on my back and Bogey chasing the odd stick I stopped to throw!

Garlic sprouting
 

A quick trip to the back garden yielded this great news - the garlic planted in October is all up now.  We can look forward to another (bigger) crop of garlic this year.  I am going to put more in this spring to see how it performs alongside the fall planted crop.

Veggie Garden Review

The Veggie Garden In Review

Even without the fence we planned to build, the garden thrived and

didn't get eaten by bunnies or deer.

 

I've been looking at the seeds I ordered and planted, and trying to make plans for what to get for next season.  Mostly I was pretty pleased with my  first effort, considering I planted quite late (May long weekend), and basically created the garden in a single day, from a corner of a former horse pasture.  

 

Bush Beans – Carson – yellow beans.  These were very productive at first, but flagged a little through the heat, but once the weather cooled they came on strong again and lasted well into the fall, probably the first week of October they finished.  I got about 12 ft of row from 1 25 g packet of seeds.   I would need at least twice that to preserve any as we ate all fresh except for some given away.

Pole Beans, Fortex Filet – these were great  green beans, they get really long, and are very tender.  They were very productive.    I also planted some seeds from my 2010 garden, which turned out to be a few scarlet runners, which didn’t do well at all, and then some other beans which I think may have come from the in-laws garden, which did better.  I would like to plant more of the Fortex Filet beans next year, especially if preserving any.

Beets were a dead loss.  I only planted the Cylindra which I bought because their cylindrical, uniform shape appealed to me.  However, the greens didn’t develop very well, and stayed very red and tough.  The beets themselves also were very small.  Very late in the season, as I was dismantling the garden, I dug up the rest and there were a few decent sized ones, but overall I would not say these could be defined as successful by any standard of measure.  Not sure if it was the soil composition, the late planting date or just not a seed I was happy with.

Lettuce, Carrots, Beets, Radishes, and Cilantro Bed

 

Carrots did well but the 2g packet of pelleted seeds I bought did not go very far.  I got a 4 ft long 4” wide swath of carrots.  I would definitely go with the pelleted seeds again, but need about 4-6 times as many. 

Corn Sprouting

Corn maturing

Corn Ready for the Pot!

Corn was a success!  From the 15g packet of seedsof Jubilee Super Sweet I got seven 6 ft long rows and yielded about 30-40 cobs of corn.  The first picking wasn’t very sweet, although it looked beautiful and had a nice firm texture.  Later pickings were much sweeter but the texture was mushier.  I would grow this again and plant earlier.  Probably better soil will help.

Lettuce .  I planted Buttercrunch and Coastal Star.  Both grew well in the early months, but the transplants didn’t do well once the heat of summer arrived and we weren’t there to water often enough. 

Onion sets did very well, but I am not sure that the tiny onions that we yielded were worth the effort.  How do you grow larger onions?  Different kind?  Must look into.

Onions and Garlic ready to use

 

Garlic and Daffodils planted together

 

The garlic was fantastic.  I grew Russian Red.  We enjoyed the scapes in the spring and the bulbs we harvested were large with enormous cloves with a nice sweet garlicky flavour.  I only planted two of the small raised beds, but have already planted a much larger crop in the main garden for next years harvest.

Parsnips flopped.  None even sprouted. 

Peas were great.  The 25g packet of Green Arrow peas planted about 20 ft of row in two plantings.  I planted these in the back garden and they were affected by pea moths, which I now realize is most likely to happen when you plant them later and they flower in June/July.  The peas planted in the raised bed planter from seeds from my previous garden were less affected because they were planted earlier.

Tomatoes – did very well, especially the early girls.  The romas were pretty good and the beefsteaks did the poorest, as the plants did not get very large.  Big yield. As in 100+ lbs.

 

Basil crop was great.  I planted some good sized plants from a local nursery.  They really took a while to get going, so much so that I bought a tray of seedlings and put a seedling in beside each of the plants.  Once the hot weather came along it all took off.  I made two large batches of pesto, yielding about 24 meals worth, which I froze in muffin tins then transferred frozen into ziplock bags.  Each muffin sized puck is plenty for one meal for two with pasta and veggies.

 

 

 

 Red Currant Bush

 Red Currant Jelly in Progress

 

The red currant bush was loaded again this summer.  I used some of the frozen currants from last year along with some of this years crop to make jelly.  Then I carefully froze each successive picking in a big yogurt container which I then stupidly left out of the freezer by accident ruining all of them. So we are enjoying the jelly sparingly as it will have to last us for at least two seasons!

 

 

 

 

Gardens Shaping Up

When we come out to the country estate, time whizzes by at the speed of light.    Notice I said "come to the estate".  First words of the blog ever written while actually at the country estate!  A combination of using my cellphone as a Wifi connection and a rainy period between garden work and dinner prep created the perfect storm of opportunity to write while here!

Remember the Suzuki?  Hunting buggy and gardening machine at the country estate?  Well, it's gonna be sold, because Chuckles has found a newer, better, road worthy Jeep that he bought for a song and spent a few hours tinkering with to make it run well.  Well, after weeks in the city being prepped for it's first highway drive, Chuckles drove it out to the country estate last Friday.  It will be so handy to have a second insured vehicle at the property, without having to drive both our vehicles out weekly - which we rarely do as it costs a fortune in gas with our gas guzzlers.

 

 

The Jeep is here! 

 

 

 

 I have been very fortunate to be the recipient of many of the plants left over from the WI plant sale in Pemberton since Chuckles parents are very involved with that (and many of the plants for sale come from their garden in the first place!)  This year I got a lot more hostas, hens and chicks, flowering red currant bush, soloman's seal, iris, and probably more that I have forgotten.  I created the bed pictured below for most of the hostas.

 

 

 

 New Hosta bed

 

 

 Unrelated to any text in this blog, here are my first two poppies blooming.  I have always wanted a poppy and it was my good fortune that there was one in the driveway bed.  Although it was sickly when we moved in, I have amended the soil in this bed with the lovely composted horse manure we also inherited with the property and voila!!

 

 

We borrowed a friends bobcat a couple of weeks ago and have used it for raising the walls on the shop, filling up new beds with composted manure, clearing the garden area and putting load after bucket load of composted horse poop on that area too.

I now realize that I have been waiting my whole life for a Bobcat to come along.  Who knew that a Bobcat could be so fulfilling?   It is a fantastic tool that does many things, quickly, and with no muscle required!   Chuckles has been using it to move around piles of wood that have come off the barn and will be used in the re-construction of the shop.



 

The wonderful Bobcat.  With it, just two men were able to raise these wall panels and put them in place!

 

 

The bobcat hard at work clearing the veggie patch.

 



 

The raised beds built by Chuckles, filled by the Bobcat and planted by yours truly with tomatoes and peppers

 

The veggie beds are shaping up!  Now we have tomatoes (early girl, roma and beefsteak) peppers (red and green so far) garlic, peas, cilantro, lots of lettuce in varying stages of development - we are eating our first head now; pole beans, bush beans, radishes, multiplier onions, beets, carrots, corn, potato (1 plant from my mom - she said it was a chrysanthemum but now there is enough foliage to confirm - a potato!

 

Garlic to be envied - Chuckles Dad (the gardener whom I respect most!) says our smallest garlic plants are bigger than his largest ones!  (It's the manure)



Another friend brought by a machine and dug the trench for the water line from the barn to the garden area and Chuckles mounted a tap on a post.  It's fantastic that we have water right there at the garden, it's the only way we could manage a garden this size living here only part-time as we do. 

I have been keeping a garden book  and documenting what is planted where, and what things are blooming when.  Note to self - must learn more of the names of these plants, bushes and trees.

 

A recent entry in the garden book

The rhododendrons are just spectacular right now, as one finishes another begins blooming and there are at least 10 of them along the driveway and in the front yard.  Every colour is represented!  As well, there are three Laburnum trees with their yellow blossom bunches in full flower right now, so
stunning.

 

There are several rhodos around the perimeter of the front yard in various stages of bloom

 

This rhodo on the edge of the driveway reminds me of cotton candy