itvbrandon.com Comes for a Visit!

Have you been missing Karen Chrest since our local TV station, CKX, shut down? Well, you can find her on itvbrandon.com. itvbrandon.com is our new 'tv' station, featuring local news, entertainment and sports online. It's fabulous to have! Karen is doing weekly segments on stuff going on around town. She's already covered Earth Day, the new show at the Museum at Shilo and a bunch of other interesting stuff. Now, she's going to be doing a few gardening segments, so she and Nate Bower came for a visit today. We covered some earth-friendly lawn and garden tips and composting, including meeting my worms. Don't worry - I'll definitely have a link when something goes online! In the meantime, catch up on what's going on around Brandon on this great site!

'Blue Moon' Wisteria: The Great Hope

Ahhh, wisteria. This time of year, garden blogs and magazines are featuring pictures of wisteria in all it's glory! And it just doesn't want to grow here - until now! 'Blue Moon' wisteria has been bred and selected to be hardy; depending on which source one reads, hardy enough for Zone 3 or 4. So, of course I had to plant one! If it IS Zone 3 hardy, that would be delightful. My hope is, even if it is Zone 4 hardy, if I can protect the roots, a wisteria is rampant enough to still get to six or eight feet high, even if it gets killed back to the ground. So, I'll add it to the list, along with the barberry, to mulch well in fall, and I'll try to shovel some extra snow onto it as the winter season progresses. Fingers crossed!

Sweet Potatoes on the Prairies?

We love sweet potatoes. But they don't really grow here, not just in Manitoba, but in Canada. They want a really long, hot growing season - and well, we're just too short a summer. We've tried to buy them from America, but with bans on soils and tubers coming across the border it was always mission impossible. I was, therefore, very excited when I saw them offered in Vesey's catalogue this spring. Before I had even read all the info I had clicked the icon to add them to my shopping basket! They didn't come with our seed order, didn't come with the back orders and I figured it wasn't happening. I expected tubers and I expected them early, so that we could get them off to an early start. What just arrived - unrooted cuttings. They arrived with an apology because Vesey's seems to have been expecting rooted cuttings. So, after a little dithering as we decided what to do, they got planted in big pots so that we can bring them into the greenhouse or even the sun room in order to get them finished. We'll keep you posted!

Patience is the Key on the Prairies

The Barberry is alive!! Many a Prairie gardener would have pulled this little bush out a month ago. I, however, always give everything the utmost chance. I saw a few buds down at soil level, and I waited, patiently. It's coming fabulously! Granted, it was two feet high last year and it is currently six inches - and that's being generous. But, it survived, it has obviously rooted well and it will be a foot high again in a month or six weeks. It's a 'Rosy Glow' barberry, with burgundy leaves mottled with pink on the new growth. It's adorable, and well worth the wait! This fall I will endeavor to protect it a little better with a good mulch. I know the damage was either done in December, when we were cold without much snow cover, or in March, when we had lost the snow cover, got really warm and then got really cold. There's not much I can do to combat the whims of Mother Nature here on the Prairies, but I'll do what I can. And then wait, patiently......

Planting the Upside-down Tomato!

Got the upside-down tomato planted! We've had this little hanging gadget for three years, and quite enjoy it. Yes, we'll have a field of tomatoes, but we like to keep something close to the house for convenient snacking. We cleaned it out, including a little rinse with vinegar and water. It comes with the hanging bag, a lid and a little foam ring that fits around the tomato. In the wheelbarrow picture, we've fitted the ring around the top growth of the tomato. We chose a 'Celebrity' tomato we started from seed - a reliable producer of medium size tasty fruit. (The hardest part of this whole adventure was picking which tomato to put in!). Now, tomatoes are one of the few things that you can bury the stem, and it will root. So, we've got the foam collar high around the plant. Next, we gently inserted it into the bag, with Farmer Man holding the root ball, keeping the stem from bending or breaking. He kept the root ball in place with the dandelion fork while I filled the bag with soil less mix containing a water-retention gel, mixed with some of the worm compost. A handful of kelp meal on top, put the lid on and - voila! Upside-down tomato, ready to grow!

An Awesome Idea for Urban Areas!

Catching up on my blog reading, found something interesting (as always) on Garden Rant. Gating scruffy urban alleys, to allow the residents, essentially, their own 'park'. It's been a great way to cut down on crime, provide garden space and to provide family and community gathering space. What an awesome idea! Check it out here.

Seed Balls: Slightly Subversive Party Favors

I love this idea! Evergreen, the Canadian charity that is all about greening up cities, has a fabulous recipe on their blog for seed balls. A mixture of (generally) wild flower seeds, dirt and clay; the balls are a fun and easy project for kids at parties. Something a little greener and more useful than trinkets and candies! Aside from the fun of playing in dirt - the seed balls can then be 'planted' (tossed, quite literally) and the kids can watch them grow. The subversive part: guerrilla gardeners can take them and 'bomb' derelict lots, sterile back alleys and other places that could use a little life! Evergreen does not recommend the subversive part - they say nothing about that on their blog. I've read it about it other places, Green Frieda was making some last winter in a quest to spread native flowers in her area. Read about Evergreen's recipe here.

Such A Gentleman!

Rocky the Rooster is such a gentleman. He always leaves the coop first in the morning, checking things out for The Hens. He exits, and immediately begins to scout around, peeking high and low. Some of The Hens, usually Isa Browns, come spilling out shortly after, quite confident that it is safe to do so. The rest of the flock come out at their leisure; usually everyone will be out within the hour. Rocky has been waking up Farmer Man earlier and earlier: this morning he started to crow at 4:30 AM. Since it's nice weather, and our bedroom window is open, we can hear him loud and clear, even though he's locked in the coop. Well, Farmer Man can hear him for sure.....I seem to be able to sleep through it!

New Bad Habits

Just what I needed, new things to take me away from my chores! In cruising the Internet, I've gotten hooked into a couple of great sites, but sites which can take up a lot of my time. Wish I'd found them last winter, but I will have them for this coming winter! Kathy of Cold Climate Gardening has a blog directory that pretty much covers the world. You can search by province, state and country where she has member blogs. The other site is Blotanical, a gathering place for garden bloggers and gardeners. Blotanical is truly international, started by a fellow named Stuart in Australia. You can see fabulous gardens, exotic plants, read of other peoples' struggles with poor soil, cold and wind. Or perhaps you'd like to grow a banana tree - find someone that can grow them in their backyard and learn more about what the needs for soil and situation. Taking the laptop to the beach this summer?

Planting Summer Squash!

Farmer Man and I, with Vartan and Natalia's help, got most of the summer squash planted today. We put in two 500 foot double rows - we plant on a slightly larger scale than your average home garden! These are all bush varieties, so we planted pretty close: these are eventually going to form something like two hedges, side by side on the drip lines. We planted regular black zucchini (which is dark green and the most common variety in the stores), golden zucchini, Ronde de Nice (a round zucchini), Portofino (an Italian Largo type, with a nice herbal flavour), Papaya Pear (one of our favourites, great grilled), Lolita (one of the Moroccan or Cousa types) and a whole bunch of different patty pans or scallopinis. Some good eating coming up! We plant these bush types very close, partly for maximum efficiency and partly because we do like to take them when they are small - that's when they are the best. Farmer Man also got some of the winter squash seeded. Now, for those of you that don't know: summer squash has edible skin, winter squash has hard skin. Winter squash, like butternut or pumpkins, will generally take longer to crop and will store better. Now you know! Are you planting any summer squash?

New Look: Summer 2010

Don't know if it is the latest fashion, but The Bears have a new look for Summer 2010. It's a little over-due, but it's hard to get into a groomer in Brandon; they are the busiest people around here (after the Tim Horton's coffee people, probably). It would have been nice to have The Bears this short before tick season started, but that is how it goes! They look (and smell) gooooood right now! Next on the agenda: Blaze for a summer strip-down and bath. Blaze, who loves swimming in the dugout, smells really baaaaad right now - so we can hardly wait for his appointment next week! We may even have to have an intervention bath before his appointment.

More Aftermath.....

The effects of the weekends' storm are still being felt! All things considered, we were very fortunate here at Aagaard Farms. Parts of Manitoba experienced flooding, road wash-outs and large trees down on cars and buildings. The biggest thing here, of late, is Farmer Man has had to use the tractor twice to pull out renters who tried to drive down to their garden plots. It kind of falls under the category 'what were they thinking', but who am I to say anything? I made an appointment for a meeting right after dropping The Bears off at the groomers. Went into my meeting with paw prints on my trousers! Both the gardeners who got stuck are new renters this year, and they may not have realized they were driving into the lowest part of the land, right beside the dugout, where all the water drains......Now, a picnic table is across the road, to keep any one else from trying to make the drive for the next couple of days!