Swiss Chard

Here is a shot of some of my swiss chard. I really dont understand why my husband doesnt like the flavour. Its a mystery to me. Mmmm... swiss chard fried with butter and salt... mmm...

Spinach that is bolting

I planted the other row of spinach today and pulled out the rest of those spinach that had bolted a while ago. I didnt find them to be too bitter but the leaves are so tiny and not lush and green. Might as well just start the row new.

Pepper plant. I dont think these will produce anything with our short growing season but its fun to try!!

Most of my radishes bolted and have become woody and tough. I pulled out the majority and replanted.

I also planted more spinach, lettuce and a few more pea plants the other day to have a new crop late summer/early fall. My lettuce did come back though, after the hail. More plants bolted through the week though. I think next year I will look for a bolt resistant variety of lettuce and spinach for the sunny parts of the yard and try something similar to the ones I planted this year in the shadier parts of my garden, like under my ash tree. Especially the Mesculin Spicy mix lettuce that I planted. They seem to be the least tolerant of the summer heat here.

I will also be mixing in a bunch of top soil with manure from the farm this fall and rotor till it in this fall.

Here are some of my peas growing. These are sugar peas with edible pod.

Here are some of my beets after the hail. 

swiss chard, carrots and peas with a little parsley.

Here is some lettuce. This area of the garden didn't have too much bolting.

Lettuce that i bought on clearance from Lowes one day last month. a 6 pack for $0.99

Here are two tomato plants. the one on the left I got from Ellerslie Greenhouse on clearance. The one on the right i started from seed early. When I transplanted the one I started from seed it died back a bit and then came back. It isn't the biggest plant but I still have hopes of yummy tomatoes from it! As you can see, the one from the greenhouse has tomatoes growing already. I believe it is a roma.

This is a shot of the garden under my ask tree, along the west side of the deck. It is shaded a lot of the day and hasn't been thriving. I have carrots, beets, garlic chives and mint in the top left corner. I also had spinach here. It mostly bolted though and was spindly and not very lush. I pulled them and replanted. We will see how it goes.
This mint I got from a greenhouse too. I am not sure if it will come back next year or not. I was told that herbs do quite well in the shade. I might plant an herb garden here instead next summer. With a few lettuce and we will see how it goes.

Here is another shot of my west garden. The corn is taking its sweet time coming up and then growing. A few plants came up but not what I was expecting. I think maybe it needs more sun. The parsley seems to be doing good over here and the tomatoes too. This side is mostly shaded from wind but still gets a good amount of sun. The beets are coming up slower. I will also add to this garden and till it in the fall and hopefully it is more productive next year although it isn't bad this year.

Tomatoes

Here is the mescaline. It really is quite spicy! I thinned it out so much by pulling out all the plants that bolted.

Parsley

Mint

Our new Romeo Cherry tree. The cherries are all gone. My son ate them all! haha!

Here is the new garden we tilled. I planted potatoes here and that should break up the soil more too. I will make this into a raised garden with a bench seat along the edge. 

Potato plant coming up. I planted late in the season and I mostly planted them to help break up the soil in the new garden but I still hope to get some baby potatoes to eat this summer/fall. :D mmm I love fresh garden potatoes! 

Basil. I will take this in the house this fall and keep them in a pot over the winter. I don't know how well they will do inside but we will try! :)

Oregano. I will take this inside too this winter. Hopefully it survives!

And this I don't know what it is... It is growing in the herb container but I don't know if its a weed or what. I planted a bunch of other seeds that didn't come up and then like a month later these grew. anyone know what they are?

So my lettuce was growing so nicely! It was getting lush and growing bigger each day (except the plants that bolted...they were growing more bitter each day :S) Here is a pic of it a few days ago:

But then we had a strong storm here two nights ago. My lettuce was mostly pummelled...

Im going to try to lift the leaves off the mud each day and pull off the leaves so they can start over without getting blight. I think most of the plants will grow again. I am going to pull out the worst ones and replant too. That way I can have new lettuce late summer/early fall too.

We also added a Romeo cherry tree to our back yard about a week ago. My son really likes the cherries it has on the branches. I do too and it looks so nice. I plan to keep it pruned so it doesn't get too big but stays manageable for fruit picking and yard size.

Next spring we plan to get a plum tree too. I want to get one that has more than one kind of plum grafted on for cross pollination. That way I only need to get one tree as my neighbours don't have plum trees. 

We discovered that one of the trees in the back has a few branches towards the fence that are growing apples too. The tree is way over grown. I think it was an apple tree that had been grafted onto the trunk of a different tree from a nursery. I think the trunk had water sprouts that were allowed to grow and actually took over most of the tree leaving only a few branches at the back as apple. This fall I will trim it back and try to help balance this out. I want to be careful though not to be too aggressive as I have never done that before and I don't want to kill the tree. I want it to be prominently apple though. I don't know what kind of apple tree though. I will wait until the fruit matures and then try to determine that from the fruit. 

Also, overnight last night smoke from a fire in Northwest Alberta blew over Edmonton. It is hazy and smoky outside. I am not sure how or if that will affect my garden. I will see.

So we have had quite a hot week. My spinach and some of my lettuce bolted. I pulled the ones that bolted out yesterday and replanted the spinach row and left one bolted row of spinach. The lettuce is too bitter to eat but the spinach was still good. I left one row to experiment with. I want to see how bitter it will get or if it will continue to produce edible greens. I made a salad of spinach, mandarins and vinaigrette with the bolted spinach and it was good.