Permablitzes

“Permablitzes change urban landscape, one garden at a time” is a report from Adrienne Beattie about permablitzes — “a day in which a group of people converge on an urban space to install a permaculture design.”

From Flower to Fruit (May Bloomday)

So many times with our fruits and vegetables we focus on the edibles and not the flowers that created them. This post pays tribute to the flower, for without her we would have no fruits or vegetables to speak of, let alone eat!

The pomegranate has beautiful red flowers. It produces so many of them it is impossible for them all to turn into fruit without making the tree topple over.

The tangerine blossom is small and sweet. Notice the small tangerine beginning to form out of the spent flower.

The tomato blossom is small and yellow; it slowly creates a hard green fruit that develops into a vine ripened masterpiece.

15th Annual Clairemont Garden Tour 2011

This year's garden tour felt less like a garden tour and more like a landscape tour. Landscapes are pretty, no doubt, but they lack the heart and soul of a true garden. Turning a landscape into a garden takes so much more than building basic structures: it takes time for plants to grow into their placements, there is art of choosing the best possible plants, and most importantly, the outdoor space must be meaningful to the owner.

The gardens on this year's tour lacked that sense of meaning. Rather, they were lovely landscapes designed by professionals. Most gardens had an over abundance of hardscape, drought tolerant plants, and many had pools. There was very little diversity; we saw the same succulents at many yards, and xeriscaping was the new fashion du jour. Hubby found it very ironic that the pool owners touted the most xeriscaped of the gardens being shown. All the water guzzling plants one could fit in a yard would not waste the amount of water that a pool does.

This tour lacked the show stoppers of year's past. There was no unbelievably mind-blowing Sie Garden terracing (2010) or whimsical canyon trails of the Banta Garden (2009). The 2011 yards felt forced and lacked creativity. The were overly dependent on professionals, which is so antithetical to the do-it-yourself nature of Clairemont. It was Clairemont attempting to be bourgeoise - Clairemont should never attempt to be anything but its wonderful, diverse, blue collar, hard working, diamond-in-the-rough self. And for this false identity portrayed by this garden show, I am most disappointed. I am getting down off my soap box now; time to go work in my own beautiful, messy, DIY garden.


For more garden pictures, please click here.

On farmers markets in Calgary

Calgary Herald writer, Jeremy Klaszus, has written an article “City Hall can help markets grow” about the farmers' markets situation in Calgary.

Flowers feed the Soul (April Bloomday)

Every work-day I return home and make a bee-line for my patio flower garden. I inhale the wondrous mix of scents, rose, sweet pea, lavender and I am rejuvenated. This small meditation helps my troubles dissipate. I’d like to think that the bees carry them away with harvested pollen. It is so easy to get caught up in the rat race of modern life; the flowers entreat me to slow down and recognize that the sun continues to shine, the rain continues to fall, plants sprout, and animals grow. My petty cares are vanity and a chase after the wind.

 

Nasturtiums growing under and around the roses - happy accidents!

 Lavender for the bees

Detail of Blue (well, purple) Hibiscus

Dazzling Successes and Epic Fails

The purpose of my blog is in part to dole out advice on vegetable gardening; it is also a record of my (mis)adventures in gardening that I hope entertains as well as informs. But at the risk of sounding too high and mighty, I feel I need to knock myself off my perch of gardening know-how. I’ve had great successes in terms of amount and quality of vegetables harvested, but I’ve also had some epic fails. In some of my endeavors, the jury is still out. But I like to think I can learn from my mistakes.

My previous weed abatement attempts have been dismal. My first sin was pride; who am I to completely counteract millennia of weed evolution? My second sin was using the wrong tools. I used two types of weed control fabrics to cover my seven vegetable beds. The first type was black, permeable to rain, but not to smaller particles. This kind worked reasonably well, only the most determined weeds poked through the surface of the material. The second weed control fabric was white and gauzy, opaque enough that the sun’s rays could penetrate its filmy surface and give weed seeds the chance to germinate. And germinate they did, in spades. Ever the recycler in the garden, I plan to reuse the black weed cover fabric for parts of the garden next fall. The opaque fabric can be used as a shield to protect lettuces from the full strength of the summer sun, but it will never ever again be used as weed guard.

About two weeks ago I orchestrated moving my herb garden including mature rosemary and Cleveland sage bushes. I wanted the herb garden closer to the back door for easier access. I also wanted to re-purpose the bed (vegetable bed four of seven) to serve as Hubby’s new home for his collard greens and my cucumber trellis. Alas, I did not know it then, but in the transplant process, we had damaged the root balls beyond repair. First, the sage and rosemary drooped, then they withered, then they burnt to a crisp despite plenty of watering. Replacement was the only option, so off I went to the local nursery. I have planted the new sage and rosemary seedlings in their new home. Hopefully I can train them to conform nicely to their new space. In the meantime, I’ll have to make do with my dried herbs until they grow large enough to safely provide fodder for my spice rack.

As for my attempts at growing perennial flowers, the jury is still out.  I started my second planting of cooler season vegetables, including perennial flower seeds, in February with some success. I have radishes galore and my carrots are beginning to make an appearance. I also have a significant amount of ‘volunteer’ tomatoes, the children of last year’s crop. The humor is not lost on me; I plant lettuces, broccoli, carrots, and flowers and the first thing that comes out of the ground is tomatoes. Though the vegetables are making their appearance, it is harder to discern the flowers from the weeds. I think I see a couple of suspects, but only time will tell if they are really the hollyhocks, black-eyed susans, butterfly bush and yarrow that I originally planted. I have high hopes though, and that is the promise of a seed, that it will germinate in the future.

Extending the Pretty

It is hard not to become overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work my garden needs to produce vegetables and maintain a beautiful appearance. The winter weeds are still insidious, the slugs are munching my tender sprouts, and rain threatens to flatten my tomato seedlings. When it comes to dealing with cleaning up the garden, I have adopted a new philosophy called Extending the Pretty. I have separated my garden into zones, starting first with the patio area, and focus on making that zone pretty. Each time I work in the garden, I extend that zone. When I feel frustrated I go back to the pretty patio zone, have a glass of water, relax and smell the roses and sweet peas. (All pictures are of my beautiful, relaxing patio.)

Using this strategy, I have cleaned up the patio, the butterfly flower garden, and the first of three of seven vegetable beds, starting on the west side of the yard and moving toward the east. The west side is beauty, vibrant and fragrant roses and sweet peas, happy accident nasturtiums blooming red, orange, and yellow, lavender blowing in the breeze.  The east side is beast, ugly, seedy weeds growing wild and some half dying in an ill conceiving poisoning attempt, piles of yard refuse waiting to be tossed in the garbage, and multiple scattered tools in need of a new home in a tool shed.

Since Hubby spend last weekend playing with hot rods, he agreed to help me in the garden this weekend. I plan to send him to the east side with a flat head shovel to slice weeds. (If he needs a machete, we do have one!)  I will continue to clean up the remaining four of the seven vegetable beds and will renew my weed poisoning campaign against the weeds breaking through my brick hardscape. Sometimes you just have to resort to chemical support.