FOY: Harvested one volunteer garlic

Harvested one of the volunteer garlic from last year's elephant garlic bed.  Woo hoo, this one was a very nice size and had cloves.

Waiting a bit longer for the rest of the garlic, as the two next scapes aren't quite fully up yet, and there still aren't three brown leaves at the bottom.

GA: Spooned all onions

I've never ever "spooned" onions before but learned about it recently (though a random YT video I think) so decided to do that.  Just used my finger to ring around each onion to loose things and try to expose the bulb (most have started to bulb out).

Some of them, the ground is SO hard, like cement, once you get below the few cms of compost.  Next year I definitely want to add chopped straw to the soil when tranplanting, to help have a softer soil.

Started rutabaga in PT

First time trying rutabaga.  I'll start them in PTs, then put the seeds into the garden (GA) -- some where the pulled bolted cauliflower was, others in random spots probably.

FOY / GA: First zuke of the year harvested

Several of the GA zukes are looking great and harvested the first zuke today.  None of of the four backyard zukes are though -- all looking pretty puny.

GA: A cauliflower has bolted! And tied the leaves of the other four cauliflowers

The one that bolted, the "head" is still very small BUT it went all spikey -- I tied its leaves anyway because why not, but pretty sure that one will be no good.

The other four -- one has a wee head, the others I didn't look closely into but tied them all up, we'll see how it goes.  This week is a mega heat wave so I'm not too confident!

GA: 3rd and 4th Belstar broccoli heads harvested -- still nice and big!

^^^

GA: 2nd and 3rd Belstar broccoli heads harvested -- nice and big! :D

Great big heads!  ~1 pound each.

With 1 head, I made two batches of the walnut-broccoli stirfy; next time I would instead try a single batch and just have a higher ratio of broccoli in it.

With the other 1 head, I made one batch of the Am veg soup -- 5 cups broccoli, no other vegetable (other than celery/onion/garlic).  At first I didn't put any tahini and it was just kinda okay -- then I added tahini and it was delicious!

GA: Leek moth in uncovered onions?

A few days ago all of a sudden the uncovered onions started looking they have leek moth damage.  I'm not totally sure though because when I removed a few of the worst leaves and slit them open, I didn't see any larvae.  

Also, the covered sets' cover broke a week or so ago so I had removed it altogether, but today I decided to cover it again with a new cover.  But likely there are some leek moth eggs/larvae in there.

Planning to spray some BTK, but lately it's been raining every day, so not much point in spraying right now.

SO MUCH RAIN over the past week -- multiple days of lots of rain

The peppers are not looking great.  Nothing else seems to be suffering too much, but still waiting the garden to look like everything has taken off.  Broc/caul/kale/chard doing great, and potatoes also look fabulous.

GA: First head from Belstar -- some individual flowers drying/brown like last year

While piracicaba harvest has been ongoing for a week or two (puny harvests though), today the first Belstar head was ready.  Decent size, but not huge, but still plenty for the 2 cups needed for the walnut broccoli recipe, which is what it got used for.

Not sure why, but same as last year, some of the individual little flowers are drying and turning brown and falling off, but not a big deal.

GA: Clover sown

 Sowed some clover in 7A.  Loosed the soil (didn't amend it), sprinkled the (dry) seeds, hand "raked" to cover, watered, covered with burlap.

GA: Aphids all over the buckwheat ---- volunteers and sown!!!!! Apparently a risk of May buckwheat

Argh!!!! A day or two ago, I noticed there were lots of ladybugs at GA, especially on the buckwheat.  I didn't think much of it.  Well, today I happened to notice green aphids on some buckwheat I had pulled and dropped yesterday ---- then inspected all of the volunteer uckwheat and ALL had green aphids!!!!    Then had a look at the sown buckwheat patch -- at first I thought it was in the clear, but upon closer inspection it also had green aphids throughout!!!

A Cornell website says it can be a risk of buckwheat sown in May and it even says this is the case for both volunteers and sown.

So, today I pulled ALL buckwheat and tossed it all in the compost heap, worried that these might be aphids who might move on to other types of plants.  

SAD!!!

I'll try another round of buckwheat later in the summer and see if it happens again.

(I don't know what type of aphids they are, but they are green in colour.)

Oh! Aphids on backyard buckwheat too!! I've leave those in place anyway.

^^^

Scapes starting appearing several days ago (garlic)

Scapes starting appearing several days ago (garlic).  No full loops yet, but likely within a few more days for some.

GA: Flops (partial) so far: Includes cukes, beans, watermelons, a tomatillo, and a tomato

Here are the flops at GA so far -- at least they're just partial flops at this point:

- Cukes:  3 or 4 of the little transplants died, no idea why.  Could there be a cutworm?  I don't have pencil crayons with the cukes.

- Watermelon:  Thinking I'd be smart and start from seed onsite rather than transplants (since last year most of the transplants went kaput within a day or two of transplanting) -- well, not having great results with the pre-sprouted seeds.  Next year, plant 2 or 3 PSSs per location!

- Beans:  WTH!?!  Some of the new pops look diseased or something, kaput!

- Tomato:  One wimpy transplant went kaput, not really surprised.

- Tomatillo:  One wimpy transplant went kaput, not really surprised.

GA: Broccoli harvest FOY! (piracicaba) And kale and chard too!

2 or 3 of the piracicabas have already sent flower heads up and a few flowers started opening so I harvested them.  Not very big, just enough to snack on during the ride home, none left at home.

Also did a first small harvest of kale and chard.

GA: Most things in now (but not quite everything bec need to wait to see if compost will be delivered or not re: front beds); spread half the straw (total 4 bales)

Getting lazy in these notes here, but it is what it is.

Everything that's here is looking pretty darn good so far other than the store-bought peppers, but even those are starting to show nicer/darker growth coming in.

Went and got the Trail Road "potting soil" compost: 535 kgs (1179 lbs) for $26

Given the uncertainties around whether or not we'll get compost delivered at the allotment this year, I took the plunge and learned how to go and get it myself.  In fact, went twice today because just one load wasn't enough.

Here are the basics:

- Trail Road Landfill (just west of Farrhaven).

- They're open Monday to Friday 7am to 6pm.

- They're open select Saturdays, with shorter hours -- see https://ottawa.ca/en/garbage-and-recycling/waste-facility-landfills/trail-waste-facility-landfill.

- You drive in, onto the scale, and say you're buying potting soil.

- You drive over to the pile and fill up as much as you want.

- You drive over the scale again (on the exit side).

- You pay based on the change in weight.

- In 2026, Up to 250 kg ( 441 lbs)  = $12 including tax.

What I did was take everything out of the back of the car, lay the back seats down, place a spare rubber-backed mat to cover that area, then lay down the big tarp. Brought some shovels and buckets etc.

I left home at 6:30am to get there for the 7am start, especially since the website says first come first served.  Next time I wouldn't arrive right at opening, because there were a few big trucks waiting in line.  And when I asked the staff if they ever run out of the compost ("potting soil"), she said basically no, they can always bring more over.  And they have it through summer and fall, but obviously not in winter.

For my first load, I just used a shovel (the old broken full-metal head snow shovel) and shovelled it directly onto the tarp.  This got the job done, but I had no idea how much I was getting.  Took around 20 minutes to load.

For my first UNload at the garden, I kept track of how many buckets it was.  Turned out to be 13.5 buckets, 230 kgs (507 lbs), which cost $12 including tax.  Turned out I could have gotten more for no additional cost since I hadn't reached the minimum weight.  (Arrival weight was 1420 kgs (3131 lbs), departure was 1650 kgs (3638 lbs).)

I definitely needed more, so I went back for round 2.

For my second load, I used two buckets to load the car, rather than a shovel, and kept track of how many buckets worth  This way I could make sure I got at least as much as the first time, and more to get full use of my money.  This time, I loaded up 20 buckets worth.  Some of the buckets I dumped in from each rear passenger side; others I dumped in from the back.  These 20 buckets weighted in at 305 kgs (672 lbs), which cost $14.65 including tax.  (Arrival weight was 1410 kgs (3109 lbs), departure was 1650 kgs (3781 lbs).)  I was a bit nervous during the drive back about whether it might be too much for the car, but the car was fine, a bit sluggish but fine, and I avoided braking suddenly to avoid the compost dropping down behind my seat.

For my second UNload, it came to 19.5 buckets, but anyway, close enough.

The two batches, with a total of 33 buckets = 535 kgs (1179 lbs), was sufficient, and that's with keeping  5 buckets for the basement to use next year as a head start for sowing carrots and beets, and to mix in when plant the hardies while waiting to receive (or go and get) more compost.

It was a lot of work, but not bad, I left home at 6:30am and was finished sometime around noon, give or take.  Done for the year!

Bring:

[and go when there has been NO RAIN for at least several days to avoid paying for water]

- big tarp for bottom

- smaller tarp for top

- 2 buckets (I used these for my second load -- much better than a shovel bec I can keep track of how many buckets I've dumped into the car)

- clamp things to clamp the tarps together (I brought some but didn't bother using them)

- gloves (but of course I never bother)

- (shovel is optional as long as you have the buckets)

GA EXPERIMENT: Half the store-bought peppers transplanted today, with some 9-10 degree nights coming up

GA EXPERIMENT:  Transplanted half the store-bought peppers today, with some 9-10 degree nights coming up.  There are in bed 4A, to the west of one of the broccoli etc. beds.

The other half of the store-bought peppers, and most or potentially all of the seed-grown peppers, will go in next week after the last cool night.  (While at home, I bring them in if going below ~13 degrees at night.)

Let's see what difference there is, if any...

Oops, haven't been blogging everything re: GA & yard (oh well -- see paper notebook for notes)