May 2022

This post is going to pretty photo heavy at the end. I’ll try to add captions to the photos to say what they are, but there are so many beautiful things that it is easier to just let the photos speak for themselves.

What I’ve seeded:

3 different types of Zucchini/Squash
Pole/Climbing and Bush Beans
Purple Podded Peas (I might have actually sowed these in the end of April, but I don’t really remember)
4 different types of Beets
2 different types of Lettuce
Easter Egg Blend Radishes
2 different types of carrots (but I have plans to add a few more pots of different types)
20-ish French Shallots (sets and not seed, but still worth mentioning. They aren’t pretty yet, so there isn’t much hope in getting photos of them)
a handful of random “savory” onion sets. I wasn’t the best caretaker of them over the last 2-ish months for these, so they really dried up. I planted what still felt viable, but most of them were totally desiccated.

The Potatoes that I planted at the end of April/beginning of May are all starting to poke through the soil.

All my grape plants survived winter, apart from my cuttings that I took later in the year. I didn’t overwinter them very well, so it’s not a huge loss. I am hoping to get more cuttings this year to propagate them. They haven’t fully leafed out yet, but the buds are all swollen and some in the warmer areas have more open leaves than the rest. This is beneficial for them since we still have a few cold days here and there. They are all still quite young so I don’t expect to get any grapes yet. Maybe a few on the oldest plant I have that has been planted in the ground, but I’m not holding my breath.

My baby apple trees are still too young and haven’t flowered yet. My plan is to get them all planted out at my Dad’s house this spring, but that will be dependent on my shoveling ability. I have one apple left here in a pot (‘Winter Cheeks’), that I bought last year. It will have priority on planting out in the orchard whenever I can get out there. Hopefully it is getting pollinated here in the city, as it is covered in flowers right now.

I wrote about how my haskaps weren’t flowering at the same time, but they have had a little bit of overlap in blooms, so I might be able to have a few berries from them. I still intend to do some cuttings from both of these plants to plant out at my dad’s, and some cuttings from the haskaps there to add to the haskaps here.

My raspberries are all doing well. I can’t wait for the berries later this summer. I think I will appreciate them more this year than any year before.

My rescued Norland apple has almost fully leafed out as well. I need to train a few more of the branches for the eccentric espalier I am attempting to do with it. I don’t expect it to flower, as it is still recovering from so much trauma, so I want it to focus its energy on growing some decent roots.

The double flowering plum has beautiful leaves this year, but it didn’t flower at all. It is another rescue plant, and it struggled in the heat least year, so I’m happy it survived and looks as healthy as it does. I’m toying with the idea of trying to train it into more of a tree shape rather than letting it be a shrub form. This would let more light get to the bed below.

The Nanking Cherry is getting giant, and I am trying to train it so it doesn’t completely take over the bed it is in.

My American Highbush cranberry is also doing well. I think it will have a ton of blooms, but my other ‘Wentworth’ American Highbush Cranberry is struggling a little bit. While it is still alive, it only has leaf buds at the moment, while the other is almost fully leafed out and looks like it will have bloom clusters on every branch. Because of this difference I don’t know if there will be crossover in their bloom times (if the second one even blooms at all) in order to get berries. I don’t suspect there are any other viburnums in the area that the bees and other pollinators would visit.