I'm Back! 2021 Garden Planting

 I can't believe I haven't written a garden blog post since 2014!  Having a full garden has been difficult living between 2 provinces but this year I got one in and I'm so glad.  I really find gardening relaxing and it gives me a purpose each morning which is great to get me up and going.  I've even become a morning person, which I never thought would happen. While working I would wake up early to do a garden walk and water then do a quick workout before I would start work (teaching remotely from home helped as I didn't have any commute time - though I missed my morning bike rides). 

To start I had to weed the garden - I have a very bad bindweed problem.  Here is the before, it still had old growth from the previous years garden as well (this was a partial late planted garden that I didn't get much harvest from - I vowed to do better this year).

So I weeded with my hula hoe and just pulling by hand, then I topped off with fresh garden soil.  I wish I had dug out the raised beds and put landscaping fabric below the soil but I only put it on top.  Then I went shopping for some seedlings and go planting! I also had the window frame box that was filled with weeds but I could not move that on my own, so it had to wait till I had some help.

So, let's get to what I have growing!!! As always I focused on tomatoes and peppers. The peppers flow from sweet to extreme heat -fun! The no heat varieties are mini sweet, and California wonder bell peppers.  Then I'm trying shishito peppers - I'd never heard of these but after buying the plants I saw them everywhere this spring.  Apparently they are a fad right now for appetizers in chic restaurants.  Then I'm also trying mad hatter peppers this year they are supposed to be a fun shape and not really any heat.  The Bangkok peppers are a typical Thai pepper that will have fruit that grow vertically up on the plant.  Ring of fire peppers will be my cayenne variety for the year and are supposed to be hotter than most cayennes. Then my favourite peppers - habaneros! These ones where just labelled as habanero so I don't know what variety they are unfortunately.  I planted four in a row but moved 2 to containers shortly after to give more space.  Then I've got two superhots - ghost peppers and armageddon.  Im hoping to make hot sauce and marinade for some jerky with these.  The armageddon is supposed to be a slow sweet heat and the ghost is more of a instant dry heat.  For the tomatoes I planted two snacking varieties - midnight snack (which is an indigo cherry tomato - which means the fruit starts green then turns to almost black then to red) and sweet million (a prolific fruiting cherry tomato).  I also added a beefsteak tomato after this picture was taken.

After the plants went in and before I got mulch on we had a late frost which stunted some of the plants a bit and then some extreme sun which heated the landscaping fabric and dried out the soil quickly but the plants did rebound ok.

For mulch I asked a colleague whose family farms for a bail of straw.  A single bail of straw holds A LOT of straw! Kneesacat was very curious about the bail and decided it was a good spot for a nap.

And here's the garden all mulched up.  This is three weeks after planting and you can see the tomatoes are growing but the peppers haven't really started yet.  The old growth mulch on the right is covering a couple rows of carrots and parsnip seeds from the squirrels.  Sadly I don't think it worked as I didn't have any come up :(.  Im not sure I could successfully get a root crop though with the bindweed, so maybe I will try some seeds in containers for fall instead.

 I also planted some lettuce seeds and some herbs in these containers.

So that's my garden planted. Im so happy to have so much planted so early this year and excited to see how it progresses.