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Helen Chesnut: Relax — it’s a garden, not a race

As the growing season progresses, it’s usual to begin assessing its peculiarities while catching the flavour of individual gardens’ joys and woes.

As the growing season progresses, it’s usual to begin assessing its peculiarities while catching the flavour of individual gardens’ joys and woes.

Though I’ve heard some gardeners complaining bitterly over having to re-seed several times before achieving decent germination in peas, carrrots and beans, germination in my garden was unusually successful this year. I didn’t have to fill in any gaps at all in the pea rows. Even the climbing beans germinated perfectly. Often, wood bugs feed on the germinating seeds and destroy them.

I’m wondering whether shifts in planting times contributed to this. I seeded carrots and peas in April instead of the usual March, and the beans in April instead of May.

Then there is the common zucchini lament: Young fruits form, then rot and drop off the plant. This happens most often early in the season, when conditions are not yet congenial for perfect fertilization of the female flowers’ ovaries. Cool, wet or windy weather affects both bee activity and pollen quality and mobility.

I almost always lose a few newly formed zucchini as the plants start producing. Not this year. Every one clung on to develop properly. A later than usual transplanting may have helped. As well, I have six plants grouped together, with enough flowers open at the same time to attract bees, and the late spring and early summer weather was warm and sunny this year.

Squash plants bear both male and female flowers on the same plant. Male flowers have longer, straight stems and pollen at the blooms’ centres. Female flowers have short stems with a small bump or miniature fruit located immediately beneath the bloom base.

 

A Field Guide to Edible Fruits & Berries, by Richard J. Hebda (Harbour Publishing, weather-proof pamphlet with 50 colour photographs, $7.95). Here’s a lightweigh, pocket-sized guide to accompany walkers and hikers on forays through woods and back country.

This reference is useful also for gardeners seeking ideas for incorporating wild edible items into their collections of native plants. I certainly value the carpets of salal and low Oregon grape in the wild parts of my garden, and the sparkling, coral red berries on the red huckleberry shrubs. Hebda describes them as the “living rubies of our coastal forests.”

The usual conditions under which the plants grow in the wild are included in each plant profile, along with its geographical habitat, harvesting season and a description of the plant, bloom and berry. There are comments on the berry’s flavour and texture, tips on using them and historical uses by First Nations people.

Evergreen huckleberries, which ripen “gradually from late summer and remain until winter,” are said to “taste best after the first frost.” Coastal aboriginal people dried them into cakes.

A useful addition to the directory is a section indicating fruits and berries to avoid.

 

Relax. A theme that continues to appear in my mail is an expression of regret at being a “very poor, unaccomplished gardener.”

I believe we’d all be happier gardeners, best able to reap the considerable calming, sanity-restoring benefits gardening can bring, if we just allowed ourselves to enjoy the process and concentrate a little less on judging the results. Every perceived failure is, after all, an opportunity to learn. And we’re all continually learning as we pursue this useful avocation.

I realize that some home gardeners revel in the competitive aspects of gardening, but that’s a personal choice. No one has to buy into it. Relax.

Pure enjoyment in gardening, with the highest likelihood of easily achieving desired results, is most likely when we grow the vegetables, fruits, herbs, shrubs and flowers that we like best and that suit the garden’s growing conditions.

Trying to grow most roses in shade, for instance, or lilies in dry, hot and sunny places, will always be a tedious hassle and a recipe for disappointment.

 

GARDEN EVENT

Flora of the Dolomites. The Alpine Gardeners of Central Vancouver Island will present Cliff Booker from Lancashire, U.K., speaking on The Definitive Dolomites on Monday, 1-3 p.m., in the Qualicum Beach Civic Centre, 747 Jones St. Doors open at 12:30 p.m. Admission of $5 includes a plant prize draw. This presentation features hundreds of images of the flora, wildlife and scenery of these magnificent Italian mountains, and is based on Booker’s 12 years of leading wildflower walks.

 

hchesnut@bcsupernet.com