broccoli

After our road trip of 12 days from Toronto to Vancouver we reached home on 12th June and spent some time to clean up our yard and check on some of the plants I planted a few weeks back. The broccoli were doing great and the cabbages are yet to show some productivity. The Red Russian Garlic is doing well but shows signs of stress as I didn't set up the drip irrigation timer till yesterday. Fortunately we had an extended spring with lots of rain and cool weather which didn't do much damage. Yesterday and today we spent some time planting some vegetables from the nursery and building trellis for the beans.

2011 update

After an extended hiatus on posts I am hoping to catch up again. Since October last year I have been travelling on work to Toronto. Once a month I have been home and have been looking forward to get my hands in the dirt! It won't be until June that I'll be home to put in more plants. However on a short trip this time I have been able to clean up my yard, mow the lawn, plant bulbs and have been glad to see the tulips blooming. This year I wasn't able to start anything from seed. Today I planted some nursery bought Cayenne Peppers and Zucchini. It might be a little early as temperatures are still cool but I am taking a chance.
The potatoes which I sowed a couple of weeks back are beginning to come up.

 The Red Russian Garlic bulbs which my wife planted last fall are growing. This time we switched the beds by planting them in the beds where Tomatoes were planted last year.

 Two weeks ago when I was home I threw in a few Pole Beans seeds in the beds and planted Cabbage and Broccoli seedlings.

End of 2010

I was out of town on work at a project site for more than 2 months. Just arrived before Christmas.A lot had taken place in the yard with all the plants pulled up and my in-laws departing for home. Most of the flowering plants had died due to frost and the front yard is due for a clean up one of these days. The temperatures are freezing now a days and this shot of the back yard beds were taken on 29th Dec 2010. I'll leave again on work and hope to come back in Spring and I fear I'll be unable to plant in time. However my better half has planted the Red Russian Garlic in November for harvesting next summer.

Today's harvest

Today we had a decent harvest of peppers, zucchini pole beans & scarlet runner beans. The beans have been continuously producing without sign of stopping! We anticipate a few more weeks of harvest before they drop. The zucchini is doing good for the cooler weather below 20 deg C.

veggies in the front

I am back after travelling on work across a couple of cities. While I was away my parent's in law tended to the garden. We had lots of tomatoes but the rain in the last couple of weeks did the damage. Most of the tomato leaves turned brown and black and we had to pull them off. The other veggies are doing fine so far. Temperatures are dipping down. The garden in the front of the house is a mix of flowers and veggies in between.
I tried to use of as much available space as possible.

The top picture is self explanatory. In the second one we have broccoli, peppers and pink cabbage in the fore ground and zucchini and peppers in the back ground. We've had a good number of cabbages but they are prone to attacks by snails and slugs after a rain. So they need to be checked every now and then. Also there were nasturtiums which were attacked by aphids and we had to pull them out.

Garden progress

We have been harvesting beans, tomatoes, lettuce and herbs almost every other day for the kitchen. Here are some pictures of the plants:

Tomatoes: Roma

Tomatoes: Sasha's Pride

Eggplant: Dusky

Pickling Cucumber

Hot Peppers

Cabbage: Early Copenhagen

This one was planted in front of the house beside the driveway. We planted a few cabbages, tomatoes, Broccoli, Bell Peppers  and Hot Peppers amongst flowering plants - this was a little experiment to see how it would work for an edible landscape! More pictures to follow in the next post.

We have been trying to grow some Indian vegetables such as Bottle Gourd, Ridge Gourd, Bitter Melon (also called Bitter Gourd) but this had little success. I am not sure if anyone tried these in the Vancouver, BC area. Here the summer temperature hovers around 32 degrees, except for a week or ten days when it jumps to 35 -37 degrees. Also this year we had a long cool spring which didn't help the heat loving vegetables. We don't expect much progress beyond what we see here but anticipate they'll grow a little more.

Bottle Gourd

Bitter Gourd

Today harvest - Cabbage & Zucchini

Vacation pictures,...

Here are a few pictures from our road trip to Saskatoon, Jasper and Banff.

Mount Robson, BC:
The highest peak in BC.

Canola fields of Saskatchewan:
Most of the landscape in Saskatchewan in bathed in yellow with Canola in summer.

Angel Glacier at Mt. Edith Cavell, Jasper:
(if you can zoom in you can see a person near the cave at the center of the picture, 1/3rd from bottom!)

Lake Louise, Banff:
It wasn't the best day to be there as the sun played hide 'n' seek but I could snap some decent pictures.

Athabasca Glacier at The Columbia Icefields:
You can see tourists approaching the mouth of the glacier by foot but we took the buggy where it takes you to a point of turnaround where the glacier is 1000 ft deep. Sad to see the glacier receding with time but it is majestic and a not to be missed sight.