Fruity Fantasies

Well, it's snowing. Again. As I sit here with my cup of tea, glaring through the window at the offending white stuff, I can't help but fantasize about what my yard is going to look like in a few month's time.

In particular, I wonder about my fruit trees. I wonder if I'll actually get any fruit off of them this year. They've been in the ground long enough, so, assuming the vile vermin squirrel beasts don't get them first, I may actually get some freshly grown fruit this summer.

It's a small yard (well, it's reasonably big as far as suburban yards go, but it's still a small space in terms of square footage). But we've got six fruit trees, three currant bushes, a hedge of raspberries, a couple of blackberry canes, and a very sad little grape vine that still hasn't decided whether it wants to grow or not, after two years of careful tending. I have high hopes this year for the Evans cherry and the Flemish Beauty pear, both of which have the potential to be good producers once they get established. The Italian plum is something of an unknown, but it does have the potential for fruiting at least a little bit this year, as do the two Asian pears (a Kinkusu and a Shinseiki). As for the Stella cherry (a sweet variety), it is a complete experiment, being slightly out of it's ideal zone. But it is in a protected location, so hopefully it will surprise us with a nice sweet cherry or two.

Dreaming of Spring

The only thing that can be said about Canadian winters is that they are long, cold and snowy. This one has been no different. It's usually around this time every year that I tend to get really sick and tired of the whole winter scene (trust me, the novelty of fluffy white snow wears off after about a week and then you want it gone) and start dreaming about spring.

And with dreams of spring come dreams of what this year's garden will look like. Yes, even though there's still two feet of snow on the ground, and still well below zero, I find myself mentally planning the layout of the garden. It's got to be done soon because in another few weeks it will be time to start sprouting seedlings indoor! YAY! It's almost garden season again!

We tend to start our seedlings in March, under a heavy-duty grow light in the basement so that they are all ready for transplant as soon as the ground is warm enough. Cold-hardy crops such as spincah and Romaine lettuce can actually go out fairly early, but we have discovered, through trial and error, that putting things like peppers and tomatoes out before the end of May doesn't give you any sort of head start on the growing season as the still cool nights tend to stunt these types of plants.

Beyond my edibles, I'm also starting to think about annuals; where will I put my morning glories this year, and should I use climbing nasturtiums or the bush variety? And should I split my bulbs this year or should I wait another season? So many decisions to be made, but what fun it is! Ah, happy garden days ahead... and the warm-weather daydreams make it slightly easier to get through the final weeks of miserable winter.

2007 Calendar Update

Apologies for the long hiatus between posts. Been working like a madwoman to get the TTG Creations web site redesigned, in addition to moving house and starting a new day job!

Anyhow, I just wanted to post a quick garden stuff update: I'm currently working on the new 2007 calendars, and will hopefull have them up and available for sale within the next two weeks. Keep an eye out for the 2007 Funky Fungi calendar with all-new fabulous mushrooms for all year long, and the new as-yet-untitled flower calendar (I'm very excited about this one... should be gorgeous!).

In the meantime, be sure to check out the new Cherry Blossoms greeting cards and our "Got Peanuts?" Chipmunk tote bag for great gift ideas for gardeners...

Garden Critters

One of the things that I really enjoy about our garden is the abundance of wildlife that it seems to attract. Last weekend I got this fantastic shot of a big dragonfly sunning himself on one of the stakes holding up the currant bush netting. I just love the pattern on this guy's wings, and once he figured out that I was only interested in photographing him (and not in eating him!), I'm convinced that he actually started posing for me... LOL!

These big dragonflies are really neat; they congregate together in large groups and you'll see masses of them in the sky, dipping and soaring in their never-ending quest for food. It's an amazing sight. And of course, they eat mosquitoes, which makes them all heroes in my book!

If you're interested in cool gift items featuring garden critters, be sure to check out the Naturescapes section in my CafePress store -- I've got lots of garden buddies in there, plus all sorts of flowers and landscape stuff, too!

Dealing with garden pests...

One of the pain in the butt parts about having a garden is dealing with the never-ending onslaught of nasty things that want to eat said garden, before you ever get a chance to! In our garden, it's a constant battle of human ingenuity over canny critter persistence. The main problem areas are, of course, the prized fruit trees, which seem to be that particular favourites of birds and evil parasitic bugs.

The best way we've found to protect our trees against birds (which can clean out the emerging fruit on an apple tree or berry bush within days) is netting. Netting is a royal pain to put up, because it just tangles so easily, but we have found it to be very effective in keeping bird damage to a minimum. For things like bushes we just strategically drape the nets around the bush using stakes to keep the nets from tangling into the new leaf growth. We also just drape nets in a tent-like formation over our espaliered apple trees.

Last year, we also did the draping thing with our Northstar Cherry tree, but that once little sappling grew alot and we had to come up with a new plan for this year. After a couple of somewhat disastrous attempts, we ended up making a set of wooden frames that we stapled plastic netting to. We then assembled the frames into an upright cage and drapped a sheet of un-framed netting over the top. So far the cage is holding up great, which is good 'cause we've got a nice crop of cherries coming up this year!

Well, it's cottage season again here in Canada! With the water finally in, we spend most weekends up at the bf's family cottage, where we have a rather large and impressive garden happening (if I do say so myself!). This past weekend, however, was a rather miserable weekend to be lakeside, with howling winds (see picture) and unseasonably cold temperatures. It was not a comfortable weekend. Although, with the wood stove going almost constantly, it wasn't too bad.

We've had an early start to our garden this year! We experimented with greenhouses this spring, and set a couple of the long Lee Valley ones up about for about two weeks before we actually planted anything. We suspect that this heated the ground up sufficiently to give our plants a great head start on the growing season. By the time we took the plastic coverings off (last week, I think it was) our tomato seedlings already had flower buds! This weekend we saw open tomoto flowers, so I'm actually hoping to see some tiny new tomatoes starting next weekend.

Check out this picture of our Romaine Lettuce... I just can't get over how well this stuff is doing! Might be hard to tell from the photograph, but those leaves are bigger than my hand! Plus, this romaine keeps really well in the fridge... we've had some in ours for over a week and it's still in great shape -- makes great salads, too... nice and crispy, and not bitter at all. We've actually decided not to bother with planting leaf lettuce anymore and are just doing the romaine now because of how well it grows and how well it keeps.

Now, if you thought the lettuce was impressive, you have got to check out our pears! I am SO excited about this. This picture is from our Flemish Beauty pear tree. We planted the sapling two years ago and this is the first year that we've gotten flowers and FRUIT! Is this not just the cutest little thing you've ever seen? It's a tiny little brand-new pear, about an inch and half long. It should grow to be about the size of the ones you see in grocery stores by the time it's ready to be picked. We originally had seven pears on this little tree, but the tree has dropped all but two (apparently this is normal for fruit trees... they select the strongest ones and drop the others). Even with two tiny pears, though, I am very excited about this tree and can't wait to see how these fruits turn out! :-)