Though we had no winter in Toronto until January, so last Christmas I was able to bring fresh sage from the garden to my mother-in-law for the turkey stuffing.

I've been planting sage in Toronto for 15 years, and this year, for the 1st time, it survived the winter.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Sineed:
Boom Boom, maybe instead of planting your herbs in the ground, you could put them into clay pots and then bring them inside just before killing frost.

---

I've got 4 types of tomatoes growing (and 2 plants of each): Pink Caspian (big eating tomato), Black Cherry (an eating cherry tomato) and San Marzano and Roma paste tomatoes. I'm hoping to make a lot of my own tomato sauce come harvest time. I got all the plants at the organic farmers' market at Withrow Park the first Saturday it was open. The city allotment gardens are pesticide free.

Also growing some basil (gotta have basil with tomatoes!) and (I hope they'll sprout) 3 birdhouse gourd plants (let the gourds grow and harden, then drill a bird-sized hole for nesting and clean them out).

I finally got some seeds to take from some roadside flowers I took a liking to, and it has done well this year-- although it is not quite where I would prefer it to be growing.

It's "Dame's Rocket", a non native species that one might see growing at the edge of tree lines in Ontario, and points east, from what I read. I like the colour and the hardyness. I will take seeds and try to get them growing where I'd prefer them to grow. My stand of golden rod, after many years of growing, is stunted this year. Whatever nutrients they like must be used up now. So, I will rip them out, try to get the Dame's Rocket to grow in that place, after I have revitalized the soil with compost.

The nicest surprise in the garden for me has been my weeds.

At the top of the driveway, near the gate is am obtuse triangle patch of gravel laden dirt that no one parks on, and no one walks on. In years past I had spent time trying to keep the weeds down, until it struck me that it might be easier to just encourage weeds I like.

So, I did.

I have Queen Anne's Lace growing, and it is about five and a half feet tall. I wanted Queen Anne's Lace as part of the mix because there are a couple of varieties of large butterflies that need this plant, and other members of the carrot family to survive. There is also a stand of yellow sweet clover, though it did not erupt in as large a riot of flowers as I have seen on other examples. Still, the bees and smaller butterflies appreciated them. There is also Catnip growing, and flowering now. Bumble bees like it, and I like it to use as a natural mosquito repelant.

Interspersed with this is some decorative peas that add a splash of pinky red in spots, and Black Eyed Susans that provide some nice colour.

There's also a tall weed that has small pastel yellow flowers that I like. Don't know the name of it, I must have collected the seeds from one of my walks in a woods or meadow and dropped them there last year or the year before. I think it's part of the mullin family.

I have to get into my octagonal garden and dig out Blue Bell bulbs. They need thining in the worst way, and I want to replant them in the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the road, for early spring colour.

And there are tree seedlings to dig up and pot for friends. Elm, mostly. Some nice straight little maples. And a large walnut.

I am also constantly on a quest for meadow flowers, and try to nab seeds whenever I can when I am out and about. Along with trying to learn how to identify rare native species of trees. As I mentioned in another thread, I think I have found a Paw paw tree. It fruits in august, so I will be keeping an eye on it.

I'd love to propagate those and distribute them to friends who live in this area.

[ 16 July 2007: Message edited by: Tommy_Paine ]

quote:

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(I steralize the soil to kill off weed seeds and little insect grubs). I grew a new kind of spinach this year (with little berrys that havnt ripened yet) and if I do not steralize the soil, i will not know what is plant and what is weed!

---

Sorry, man, I realy admire what you are doing, but identifying weeds from what you want to grow is key. The problem with sterilizing the soil is that you also kill off the Microherd.

Industrial farming has been likened to hydroponics with the soil as a medium because the topsoil is so depleted and beneficial bacterias and insects basically wiped out.

quote:

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I think your reaction is a knee jerk one.

---

Boy, is that guy grouchy or what?

[ 17 July 2007: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

The big garden is doing well. I'm having a very good sweet corn season, and I've upped my prices. Hah, take that consumers. You're going to have to pay for quality.

Green beans aren't doing well. Not sure why. Onions, good. Cabbage, good. Carrots, okay. Tomatoes look epic. Sweet corn is outstanding, entirely due to irrigation.

Life, I've never had luck with lettuce, or brocoli or cauliflower. Cauliflower is just too much work, and prone to bolting in seconds. We've switched more to cabbage, a very tough plant, for leafy greens.

Beets are good, too. I love beat tops. Better than spinach, in my opinion. And I like spinach.

Life, irrigation is everything anymore for veggies in SWO. In good years you might not need it, but in others it's totally necessary.

I have been spot watering with salvaged grey water. My rinse water from dish doing isn't very soapy, so I have been filling a large watering can and wandering out to the more fragile or wilting plants.

I grow golden rod as an ornamental plant. I think we all know how hardy that is. I had to water the stand of it the other day, and if I hadn't I would have lost the lot. As it is they are stunted, and a few did die.

How dry is it?

I read the other day that our area, T-P, is having it's worst rain year since the '30s. I think I remember the amount being somewhere in the range of nine cms since early May. That's not enough.

Then again, last year was wet, and farmers complained about that.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Farmpunk:
It's so dry that T-P had to water his weed.

I read the other day that our area, T-P, is having it's worst rain year since the '30s. I think I remember the amount being somewhere in the range of nine cms since early May. That's not enough.

Then again, last year was wet, and farmers complained about that.

One thing that does hearten me is that the trees here don't appear to be suffering. They're working on last year's rainfall. It's a bad feeling to watch the forest suffer.

---

It seems to me that back about... I'd say ten years ago we had a drought the nature of which we hadn't seen since the summer of 1969, which I have memory of. They said the drought ten years ago was a "40 year drought". Seems we've now had two of them in a matter of ten years.

All the little trees I planted last year at my niece's place are surely dead now. lack of time, and lack of water means they had to fend for themselves.

The exceptions are two small ash trees I found growing in the back yard, likely from the seeds from the boulevard trees the city plants. They have grown fantastically.

I have a plan though, so the replacement seedlings I give them this year might survive. I will give them large empty plastic containers with a pin hole in the bottom. If they manage to fill them once a week or so, the slow drip should keep them alive. I've tried it with a fern I have growing at the back of the yard, and it is working great. The fern is quite happy.

I'm not sure the established trees and trees in forested areas don't suffer. We may not see the results this year, but we may in years to come. The trees will be stressed, and more open to infestations.

T-P, for tree watering check into Lee Valley. They sell an innertube like water-er that goes around the base of a tree and drip irrigates.

In a year like this, I wouldn't feel guilty about irrigating. But, if irrigating is to become the norm for s/w Ontario, then some thought has to go into it. We can't just keep taking from the aquifers.

I think the climatologists are saying that these dry ( if not quite this dry) summers are to become the norm. But at the same time, our autumns and winters are supposed to be wetter. While our yearly precipitation isn't going to change, the timing of it, as we are seeing, is.

It means that storage systems for irrigation will have to be utilized. Wish I owned a back hoe.

My niece and nephew's well is above the retard, and not below it where a good well should be. Consequently, they are forever hauling water.

Outdoor watering, for them, is usually done with a pail on a rope thrown down into the pond. ( It looks like a small version of a typical irrigation pond) and with two small and energetic boys to watch over, watering the trees is, well, catch as catch can.

Going to Lee Valley is cheating. It robs one of the feeling of inventiveness.

And speaking of some plants doing better than others, my weeds in the corner of the old driveway are unaffected by the drought. And, I have never watered them. I think their height shades the ground and prevents it from drying out. But it's pretty crappy ground. Mostly gravel, packed from it's former use as a driveway, and what "soil" there is amoungst the rocks has little to no organic matter in it. And below that is five feet of fine sand before you hit a bed of fine sticky light brown clay. "Well drained" would be an understatement.

I wonder, though, if the few showers we have had soak into this ground quickly, where weed type plants like golden rod, sweet clover, black eyed susans and others can utilize it before it evaporates.

The golden rod that is stressed is in very organic soil.

[ 04 August 2007: Message edited by: Tommy_Paine ]

One of the neat things about not owning a farm is fantasizing about owning one. This way, one is free to imagine the possible without the constraints of economic realities.

So, along those lines, what I would do would be to dig an intercepting trench at right angles to drainage tiles that most farms seem to have.

I'd slope this trench down to an irrigation pond of appropriate size. This way, runoff from our wet autumns, and snow run off would be captured.

It would also capture excess pesticide and herbicides, and if they are as biodegradable as advertised, give them even more time to break down in the pond, instead of running off into a nearby creek or river.

I would try to make the irrigation pond long and narrow as opposed to square. This way I could plant trees to block the sun and keep the water temperature down in the summer to prevent evaporation. A shaded pond could also use duck weed to further reduce evaporation. A pond in full sun could utilize water hyacinth. An invasive species in the Southern U.S., the water hyacinth can't over winter here. The water hyacinth pulls a lot of nutrients out of the water that would foster algae blooms, and blocks sunlight due to it's phenomenal growth rate.

And in the fall maybe it could be harvested for compost.

I'd also, if geography co-operated, try to hook up all the out building's eaves troughs to the pond. And maybe have a modest well, and one of those old fashioned wind mill pumps to take a small, but constant amount of water from the aquifer above the retard.

I'd also take a good look at the land not under cultivation. Gone would be the big lawn, and grassy strips along field edges and roads. I would have trees planted where ever I could.

One could tell which corn fields were irrigated, and which ones fended for themselves. The difference was dramatic. There were a few fields that looked like either white or soya beans that looked as if they had been napalmed.

I was close to being certain from my last visit that I had found a paw paw tree, but closer examination yesterday showed that I had fooled myself. While the leaves were long and very oblong, like members of the magnolia family, these trees turned out to be young shag bark hickory. too young yet to show the characteristic shaggy bark, leaving me only the leaves to go by previously. Leaves, and hope.

As far as the Paw Paw quest goes, next time I am by the Springfield conservation area near Aylmer, I will go for a walk there. They have paw paw there, and by looking at them I will know exactly what they look like, and be better able to identify them. It strikes me, thinking about it, that a likely place to check might be around the banks of Medway Creek here in London, or around the Attawandaran museum. Paw Paw is thought to be brought up here by native peoples in trade from what is today the southern U.S.

The trees I planted on my niece and nephew's place last fall are, surprisingly, clinging to life. Barely. I will be surprised if they survive the stress of the winter though.

Paste tomatoes I'm washing and freezing immediately -- when I have lots frozen I'll thaw them and make a big pot of tomato sauce with fresh basil.

I've got about a kilo (that's 4 tomatoes) of Caspian pinks... one of those with a bocconcini or two and some basil makes a wonderful dinner (add a drizzle of olive oil and basamic vinegar).

quote:

---

Originally posted by Tommy_Paine:
As far as my garden grows, my weeds still flower nicely, and Rebecca West has added soil and a few more plants to the arid west facing garden at the front of the house.

---

Rained, finally. I think we got an inch. Haven't had anything approaching that since early April in my area. Might be a little late for the field crops. Some bean fields are already being worked up and will likely be planted with, I would guess, wheat, which a nice price right now.

Digiteyes, I've never had luck with heirloom tomatoes. Maybe they like organic ferts better. The peppers are yielding heavy this year. But for whatever reason I've always had luck with peppers. Cabbage is getting massive. Onions doing well, too. We grow mainly storage onions, for winter use. Nothing like a garden grown red onion come February.

quote:

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Originally posted by Fidel:
Well my runner beans survived whatever it was eating the leaves. I bought some 10-10-10 fertilizer from Canadian Tire and some bug powder made from natural stuff, and I can't tell if the fertilizer did anything positive. They've got red flowers all over but no beans yet. My neighbor next door has regular pole beans, and they've got huge leaves and have grown higher than the fence already while mine are just approaching five feet in climb.

The round tomatoes and cherry t's are doing good, about 15 plants altogether but not ripe yet. I thought I had five rhubarb plants, but as it turns out they're beets. I wouldn't have known until someone told me.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Farmpunk:
Sounds like some good gardening happening out there.

Rained, finally. I think we got an inch. Haven't had anything approaching that since early April in my area. Might be a little late for the field crops. Some bean fields are already being worked up and will likely be planted with, I would guess, wheat, which a nice price right now.

Digiteyes, I've never had luck with heirloom tomatoes. Maybe they like organic ferts better. The peppers are yielding heavy this year. But for whatever reason I've always had luck with peppers. Cabbage is getting massive. Onions doing well, too. We grow mainly storage onions, for winter use. Nothing like a garden grown red onion come February.

The sweet corn is doing okay. Been a little tricky with bug control. Instead of slopping on spray I've been holding off and grading the corn more carefully, because the bugs have been pretty bad. I should put up a Reduced Pesticide Sign but I don't want to do that. I've found a great variety of corn.

---

My Dad's having problems with his peppers down in Nova Scotia... there's been lots of rain, not too much sun, and he fertilized with sheepo. Might have too much nitrogen, methinks.

I didn't fertilize at all. Maybe I'm just lucky with the varieties of heirloom tomatoes I bought as young plants at Withrop Park this spring.

My veggie garden is an allotment garden that I acquired last summer. The soil seemed pretty good. I planted a bunch of soybeans, just hoping they'd add some nitrogen into the soil. Was disappointed when, in early September, all the leaves had been eaten off the plants (I only got the garden at the beginning of July, and it was almost August before I got it cleaned out and planted the soybeans.

I gave up too easy on the soybeans: they recovered from the rabbits, it seems, and went on to grow. This spring when I went to clear things out, I was wondering what all these hollow silver-gray sticks were on my lot. Maybe they did add nitrogen; maybe there was a good combination of N, P and K from previous tennants of the lot.

I might be losing 5% of my tomatoes to things-that-eat-them... some nibbles look obviously done by teeth, maybe bunnies or racoons or squirrels. Some nibbles are obviously insects.

quote:

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Originally posted by Brian White:
0 10 10 is better because it gives the beans the potasium and phosphorus that they need.
And the weeds cannot compete so good cos they have no N! (nitrates)

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Aha! You're a genus, Brian. Thanks ever so much. I'll be better prepared now for next season.

[ 20 August 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

quote:

---

Six days after Deborah Dale gave a city-sponsored seminar on growing natural gardens filled with native species, the garden that is her front lawn in Scarborough was razed – clipped to the stem by the city after neighbours complained the plants were weeds.

Dale, a biologist and past-president of the North American Native Plant Society, spent 12 years nurturing the garden. It contained about 200 species of plants.

---

One person's weeds....

It reminds me of a person in a snooty suburb of London who planted his front yard with clover, because it was environmentally friendly. His neighbors went ballistic.

I can understand the control of genuinely noxious weeds like poison ivy, hog weed, poison oak and rag weed, but many of our so called "weeds" are in fact flowers.

Aside from the rotting carcass of the raccoon, I think this is an egregious invasion of someone's property and liberty.

Not only should the city pay, but charges of vandalism should be made against the workers and their supervisor, and the manager of that particular department.

A little research tells me that while common milkweed is on Ontario's list of noxious weeds, control is only recommended if it threatens agricultural land. The commom milkweed can be poisonous to live stock.

I doubt there are many horses or cows likely to brows gardens in Scarborough.

There is a difference between noxious and invasive. The list of invasive herbaceous plants is much larger than the noxious list. I doubt there is a property free of invasive species in southern Ontario.

There is a garden at the foot of London's Pioneer Village that is all native species of plants. The butterfly activity there is astounding.

[ 28 August 2007: Message edited by: Tommy_Paine ]

Meanwhile, in the Carolinian zone, the garlic mustard weed is sending it's chemicals into the dirt, killing off a fungi that hardwoods like maple depend on to live. I never knew that until today, bumping around on the net looking at sites about invasive and noxious weeds.

I've seen this garlic mustard weed everywhere on my walks through wooded areas here. Matter of fact, there is some on my property.

[ 28 August 2007: Message edited by: Tommy_Paine ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Farmpunk:
Raised beds have always interested me. The problem I see is that you'll have to create soil conditions unless you have access to topsoil or a skidsteer. I would suggest a soil-less mixture (peat, coco coir) with organic additions. That would be an awesome raised bed garden.

---

Some day a study on the loss of milkweeds and therefore monarch butterflies due to round-up ready soybeans will be done and it will get messy.

Raised beds always look so nice. I'm not sure what "black earth" is, R-West. A product, or a rich soil?

quote:

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Some day a study on the loss of milkweeds and therefore monarch butterflies due to round-up ready soybeans will be done and it will get messy.

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In spite of round-up usage, I almost always see milkweed still growing in soy bean fields.

quote:

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Originally posted by Tommy_Paine:

In spite of round-up usage, I almost always see milkweed still growing in soy bean fields.

I've always wanted milkweed in my garden, and on my next visit to my niece's I am going to dig some up and transplant it at home.

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There doesn’t seem to be a text version online, but I've found myself googling "forgotten vegetables" and "heirloom gardening" to no end today.

quote:

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Originally posted by jrose:
Did anyone catch the CBC’s report on the Montreal Melon, connecting it to a broader trend of “heirloom gardening?” Very interesting!

There doesn’t seem to be a text version online, but I've found myself googling "forgotten vegetables" and "heirloom gardening" to no end today.

http://www.montrealmelon.com/

---

Thanks for bumping this! It's the perfect time to start thinking about gardening (because believe it or not, Spring is here ...Kinda!)

And there are still a few Seedy Saturdays left through Seeds of Diversity

According to David Howard it is possible to make good compost in 4-6 weeks if you take the time to turn it often. Otherwise if you only turn it once a week it may take up to 12-14 weeks.

If you just let it sit there you are making soil conditioner not compost!

quote:

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Originally posted by Boom Boom:
So - how's the composting going? My composter (and contents) is frozen solid. That link I posted earlier today has an interesting observation:

According to David Howard it is possible to make good compost in 4-6 weeks if you take the time to turn it often. Otherwise if you only turn it once a week it may take up to 12-14 weeks.

If you just let it sit there you are making soil conditioner not compost!

Drat. I haven't turned my compost contents since last November.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by jrose:
That sounds so fun, ElizaQ.

Thanks for bumping this! It's the perfect time to start thinking about gardening (because believe it or not, Spring is here ...Kinda!)

And there are still a few Seedy Saturdays left through Seeds of Diversity

This is a great list of events for gardeners across the country.

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quote:

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Landscape architecture was born amongst the estates and mansions of Victorian Europe, and seems inextricably bound to long, gracious sightlines, and a full-time gardening staff. There is literally nothing in the patrician history of landscape architecture that we 40 x 100 suburban wage slave mortals can relate to. Not yet anyway. What we need is a Leon Trotsky -- nay, a Che Guevara -- of landscape architecture, who can invade its aristocratic domain and pillage principles and pleasures that rightfully belong to us common folk.

It is no wonder that landscape architecture has no currency for the average person. The discipline has gone from serving the estates of the idle rich to being the complacent lapdog of corporate high-rise and big-box architecture, where a lonely strip of bedraggled cotoneaster drowning in bark mulch and surrounded by vast tectonic plates of concrete is called "landscaping." Corporate views of landscape architecture often approximate S&M: the emphasis is on restraint. Some examples are so bad they literally suck the oxygen from the streetscape.

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excerpt:

Active (hot) composting is composting at close to ideal conditions, allowing aerobic bacteria to thrive.

Passive composting is composting in which the level of physical intervention is kept to a minimum, and often as a result the temperatures never reach much above 30°C (86 °F).

excerpt:

Home composters use a range of techniques, varying from extremely passive (throw everything in a pile and leave it for a year or two) to extremely active (monitor the temperature, turn the pile regularly, and adjust the ingredients over time).

quote:

---

Originally posted by Rebecca West:
A friend of mine who lives in the Yarker/Camden East area

---

Hey, that's neat. I went to the rural high school that covers that district. I didn't live in the rural area north of the 401 like Yarker/Camden East though. I lived in the suburbs south by the lake. We all got bussed to a central village where the high school was located.

[ 24 March 2008: Message edited by: Michelle ]

"Thank you for contacting Veseys. Unfortunately we can not supply Russian Olive this season due to crop failure."

Last week I put in broad beans, swiss charge, lettuces, green beans, peas, carrots, a pale courgette from smuggled seed, and beets; plus I transplanted basil, Roma and "Manitoba" tomatoes, cukes, Italian parsley and aubergines that I started in the house.

I had a minor wind disaster with the transplants. I bought a couple of mini-greenhouses from a liquidation store (it has an Italian name like "Bella Maria" or something).

Last week, just as I was about to take the flats out of the greenhouses and set them on the ground to harden off, a gust of wind blew one of them over, spilling flower sprouts all over the place. I was standing right beside it!

Anyway, unless it rains, tomorrow I'm heading out to the allotment to put in spuds, corn, mogettes (a type of dry white bean popular in la Vendée), yet more broad beans, red and yellow onions (they're soaking in a bleach solution now - onion maggots are a huge problem here. I used the bleach cure last year and had decent results) and some more carrots and beets.

I have more tomatoes to transplant, but will hold off on those since there's a possibility of frost Monday night.

My herb beds are partly together, basil, rosemary, sage, oregano, spearmint. Still looking for Italian parsley. My lavendar made it through the winter, as did the thyme and one of my oregano plants, but the other one bought it. Not sure why, it's usually much hardier than lavendar. We've seeded coriander in a bunch of different spots, too.

You'll have to keep us updated on the garlic, Al Q, I've never tried it.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Timebandit:
[QB]Pale courgette? Sounds interesting. QB]

---

Mme. Bong found them for me, since I couldn't get hold of any cousa seeds. Here's the seed packet:

Much to the consternation of my Calgary relatives, I have never failed to harvest every last ear of corn, and most years almost all tomatoes are picked red.

ETA:

"Our bodies are our gardens, to which our wills are gardeners." - William Shakespeare

"We come from the earth, we return to the earth, and in between, we garden". (from the movie 'Fletch Lives')

[ 25 May 2008: Message edited by: Boom Boom ]

quote:

---

My basil took a turn for the worst earlier this week, and I've made it my personal mission to revive it.

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I managed to bring it back to life! It was my good deed for the weekend!

quote:

---

Originally posted by al-Qa'bong:

Mme. Bong found them for me, since I couldn't get hold of any cousa seeds. Here's the seed packet:

http://frenchdb.vilmorin.com.au/detail.asp?iType=49&iPic=607

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Very cool!

Did you get frost last night?

We did. The blond guy is away overnight, so the wild girls and I went out to cover the plants... Howling wind, too, which made it that much worse, had to find rocks and such to anchor the covers. The girls worked together suprisingly well, although there was some whining about cold hands (not that I blame them, it was just nasty out there!). We got home cold and wet (it was still raining, too), but we got it all covered up, finally. Haven't been out to see if the covers stayed put, yet.

As soon as it warms up a bit, I'll be planting everything else.

The wildflowers are all starting to blossom - some very nice ones, too.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Timebandit:

Did you get frost last night?

The forecast for tonight is not good, though -- below zero again for tonight.

---

We have a frost warning tonight again, too. I covered everything last night, and again an hour ago, and I hop this is the end of this sort of activity for five or six months.

On the sprouting front, spinach was up a few days ago...and then birds started eating it. I put tomato cages over the row for now.

Peas and beans popped up today, and a few of those French courgettes are up as well.

Even though it's just 10C, I worked up quite a sweat.

Still have carrots and lettuce to plant, and
the tomato plants to move inside the greenhouse
when it warms up a bit, but I'm getting there.

Am rigging up aluminum foil pie plate scarecrows
to keep the birds out of the garden now. They're
welcome to the birdseed I leave for them in their
regular places, but not in the gardens.

quote:

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My garden consists of four little pots of herbs growing in my window.

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[ 07 June 2008: Message edited by: Boom Boom ]

But I loved the tomatoes and the basil!

So this year I bought 4 San Marzano tomato plants from my trusty local garden shop, and have planted them in my front garden, in among the roses and foxgloves. My front garden gets sunshine: my back garden is completely shaded, which won't grow veggies.
To help protect (and I hope, confuse the raccoons) I also planted four jalapeno peppers.

quote:

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Originally posted by Digiteyes:
To help protect (and I hope, confuse the raccoons) I also planted four jalapeno peppers.

---

Where did you get the jalapeno seeds from, or did you just harvest the seeds from peppers you had at home? And, do you know what climate zone they are hardy to?

quote:

---

Originally posted by Boom Boom:

Where did you get the jalapeno seeds from, or did you just harvest the seeds from peppers you had at home? And, do you know what climate zone they are hardy to?

I don't think I can get jalapeno seeds from Veseys, never seen them advertised there.

---

I bought plants that had already been started (I don't have any south-facing windows in my home, so I can't really start seeds well: everything gets far too leggy and falls over).

Here, I found the page on Vesey's for organic jalapeno seed.
They say it's an "early jalapeno" -- maybe it would work with your shorter season.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Catchfire:
Okay, I'm waay to late, and probably doomed to failure, but I impulse-bought a tiny Roma tomato plant (about 10" high) to go with my usual potted herbs on my window. Does it have a chance? Should I plant it in the ground if I can? How should I care for the poor runt?

---

I got mine in the ground in mid-May, and they're not much taller. We can expect growth spurts on tomatoes when the weather stays warm.

quote:

---

Originally posted by al-Qa'bong:
I started my tomatoes indoors in March, and they're still only 4-6 inches high. They'll come around once it warms up.

It hasn't been very warm yet this year, but my spinach has started to bolt already.

---

Mine is on a windowsill with lots of nice sun, but it seems to get a white mould on the leaves.

quote:

---

The biggest problem with growing rosemary indoors is its tendency to get powdery mildew. Powdery mildew is a white, powdery fungus that can develop if the surrounding air is humid and there is not enough air movement.

Powdery mildew won't kill your rosemary, but it will weaken the plant. Keep the humidity low by allowing the soil to dry somewhat between waterings, keeping the plant in sunlight and, if necessary, running a fan for a few hours a day to create a breeze.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Catchfire:
I had no idea cats could be such bastards.

---

I had cat trouble last year, so I got a trap from the Animal Control people. I managed to trap one cat, but another wily bugger kept eating the bait and escaping, not to mention continuing to violate my flower beds.

His owners moved away over the winter, so things are better now.

I checked the allottment yesterday. It looks like hell. The corn and onions are barely up (I planted around Victoria Day) and the peas, carrots and beets are sketchy too. I bought Norland seed potatoes, and they're doing well, but only two out of 30 of my French spuds are up. It ain't the seed, as I planted the same potatoes in the back yard, and they're fine.

I think we need some heat to get things going.

A killdeer has a nest in one of the gardens at the allottments. I was walking around, checking out my neighbours' progress, when I heard her squawk, then saw her going through her broken wing act. I looked around quickly to make sure I wasn't stomping on her nest, then found it, safe and sound. The bird was getting rather distressed by then, so I played along and followed her until she lured me a safe distance away.

[ 17 June 2008: Message edited by: al-Qa'bong ]

Although we have had success with a line of electrical wire placed on very low voltage. They seem to sniff it and then walk off to greener pastures like eating our free range eggs before we get to them.