It has been a challenge, to garden up here. I thought I was a pretty good gardener on the Island... not so good at weeding, but very good at growing things. It turns out that may have had more to do with the climate on the Island, than my abilities as a gardener!Slowly my garden is taking shape, slowly the trees and shrubs are growing. Apparently "slow" is the key word for anything perennial up here. My backyard garden which I was bemoaning the state of earlier this summer, looks quite good now. The trees recovered, somewhat, and the shrubs are looking great and my Mom and I added a bunch of new things (lillies, hostas, astilbe, and other plants) which have done really well over the summer. Still it seems slow, and we will have to wait to see the state of it next year.
Annuals, on the other hand, grow like crazy! I have never been particularly fond of annuals, except for a little bit here or there... I still am of much the same mind, but they do have there places, and up North is one of them! I have a very plain, rectangular front garden which I planted with veggies and annuals this year.
Early in the summer
Mid-summer
Yesterday!This front garden has grown amazingly well! I planted quite a lot in it, considering its size, but I figured I might as well fill it up. I was slightly concerned that it would look sparse, being a veggie garden... boy was I wrong! I planted tomatoes, carrots, radishes, kale, lettuce, spinach, peas, zucchini, beans, marigolds that Papa MacLeod started from seed before he passed away this year and sunflowers. The snapdragons came back, all by themselves!
Everything grew and grew and grew! We ate all the carrots and radishes, peas and beans. We are almost finished the lettuce (miniature Iceberg lettuce, it was fantastic!).
I am working us through the zucchini, we ate some spinach (I planted way too much).
The tomato plant is absolutely loaded with tomatoes, however they are mostly green still (they better hurry, we had frost already!). The kale, however, was supposed to be purple and pretty, but it isn't either. It also isn't very tasty. So we left the kale for the caterpillars, who LOVE it! The kids love the caterpillars and the little white butterflies which come before/after the caterpillars!
There seems to be another advantage of leaving the kale for the bugs in that the bugs have left everything else alone... including my lettuce which was right beside the kale! Fair trade I think! It has been fun having a veggie garden and the kids love picking and eating everything, which is great. It has also been nice just planting and seeing what happens, knowing it will only be for the year anyway... a bit more "c'est la vie" than I normally am when it comes to my garden!
No comments:
Post a Comment