Another long weekend has pasted, this time for Canada Day. My day was spent tinkering around the house on never ending renovations, weeding the perennial borders which have not been getting much attention with all the vegetable action and of course lounging on the patio.
I was in Hamilton over the weekend as well and stopped in Harpers Greenhouse in Ancaster. I found another Banana plant, this one has red and green leaves. This is the third Banana plant I have and this one I placed in the front perennial border because I am out of large containers and it costs a fortune to fill them with potting soil. The tag says it will grow to 5-7 feet so I will keep everyone posted on how it does. I think this will be the last Banana I can accumulate, I over winter tropical plants in my basement under a metal halide grow light which is almost at a bursting point with plants.
Now about the veggies, all my tomato plants now have a few tomatoes each starting to form with the Japanese Black Trifele being the larges of them all. This is the first time growing this tomato so I am excited to try it. The peas are just starting to plump up and I have already shelled some baby peas and they tasted like pure sugar almost! I am hoping the peas hurry up because I am going to plant turnips in their place and they are also shading my peppers. Next year I need to put more thought into plant placement.
The broccoli is almost ready to be pulled out, it is still producing side shoots but they are bolting before they are big enough to eat. I think I will pull them and plant some radishes for the time being. The second crop of broccoli that I started has not done well, the slugs keep eating the new leaves. I have started new transplant, this time inside, in a south facing window. I am hoping they do better then the first ones.When I was taking some photo's of the vegetable garden I came across the little guy below. We have a far amount of garter snakes visit our yard and this is one of the smallest ones I have seen. He was hanging out in the rhubarb and hopefully was resting after eating all the slugs that ate my broccoli transplants.
I know a lot of people freak out when they see snakes in the garden.
ReplyDeleteProvided they're not the unfriendly type, I try to encourage them to stick around. (I've got a 4' snake hook to steer the naughty ones away.)
A couple snakes and perhaps a few toads and you won't have many large bugs left in most gardens.
Great pics! I know, July already!!! Wow. Glad to see your garden responding to the nice weather!
ReplyDeleteCute little guy. Glad to see he's keeping the slugs away. Darn slugs, can I import snakes, hehe?
Snakes scare me, even if they are friendly little creatures.
ReplyDeleteYour garden looks really awesome!
hydroponica - I am lucky not to have venomous snakes in my area, especially in the city, there are some in Northern Ontario.
ReplyDeleteSinfonian - hmm importing snakes, maybe that could be a new green business lol
DP - If you are scared of snakes then you would not like to be in my yard. I have basement door the is half below grade and very often when I open the door there is a garter cooling its body temperature on the concrete landing.
I don't know about importing snakes... too much chance they'd just wander off.
ReplyDeleteI love snakes myself, I actually have one as a pet. You could probably buy garter snakes or something similar but again the problem would be keeping them in your garden. They're escape artists of a caliber that even Houdini would be jealous of.