Sunday 30 October 2016

Fall update

Garden is pretty much shut down for winter.  We still need to plant garlic for the next year but it seems that weather next week is summer like (according to forecast) so we will wait another week or so as it will be too warm.  We also need to put some tulips bulb in flower bed for the spring.  In general, I was planning to continue to mulch  leafs this weekend, but unexpected snowfall on Friday, delayed these plans.  Our two mountain ash trees produce so much of leafs, and so late in the season that this is big challenge to keep up with management.

We lost our Molly and she is dearly missed.  The best dog ever!  

Saturday 15 October 2016

Fall cleanup

After -9 C on Tuesday this week, nothing survived in the tunnels  and garden and officially garden season 2016 is over.  We will still plant garlic for the next year crop, in about two weeks time.  We cleaned garden, our compost is full to the point that nothing more can fit into one of the composting bins and left some space for day use in the other one.  Weather was great today despite forecast calling for rain and cool weather.  At one point my weather station recorded +12C.
Now we are still processing harvest and enjoying fresh produce as well. 
We had pretty sad week as we had to make decision on "putting down" our beloved golden who reached age of fourteen and her conditions deteriorated so rapidly that we decided inevitable.  It was and still is so hard on us as she was such a wonderful dog.  RIP Molly.

Monday 10 October 2016

Winter...?!

IT has been a while since last post, so decide to provide quick update on state of the garden.  It is Canadian Thanksgiving and snowy one here.  It has been snowing everyday for the past two days and the effect left about 4-5 cm on the ground, making my dog so happy. Snow would melt at the end of the day, but today it was snowing again and ground again is covered by wet snow.  It was also be unusually cold and I mean cold as temps are around 0 most of the time and hardly reaching into positive territory.  My large tunnel double wall design proved to be a winner.  I have temperature recording device and it shows me the lowest and highest temps and also current temp, humidity.  Even at days where temp went down at night to -3C it was still positive temp inside and during the day when it was very cloudy and temp. outside was at -2C, we had +6C inside.  So we still have tomato plants growing and producing red tomatoes.  We still have quiet a lot of green tomatoes. I decided to evacuate sprinkler system and thus close water to the garden.  We have covered lettuce but lots of wind moved cover to strawberries that surprisingly, are still producing and I had strawberries last Wednesday straight from the plant.
We have now assumed that small tunnel is done, despite kale still growing in it.  In the next few weeks we will focus our energy on cleaning our garden and prepping it for winter.