Over many years of gardening, I’ve never lost that “frisson” of delight and gleeful anticipation at the beginning of a new growing season. The first indoor seedings conjure visions of new pansy and viola plantings blooming in spring sunshine on the patio.
From those first seedings will come sweet bulb onions to lift, cure and store in late summer, leeks to harvest all winter, sturdy, long-blooming snapdragons, and sweet pea blossoms — surely one of the garden’s most beloved flowers for its intense, nostalgia-inducing fragrance. I’ll have my mother’s smoked glass vase, the one she used for the sweet peas my father grew, at hand.
Getting ready. Two weeks ago, I took a sketch of the food garden plots into the back garden and completed the placing of all the basic, essential vegetables — the peas, carrots and beets, onions and leeks, kale, zucchini, tomatoes and cucumbers, taking care to mark out a space for the fall’s garlic planting.
That space needs to be free of any other plantings by late summer. Meanwhile, it can be used for salad vegetables, the earliest bush bean seedings, or broad beans, which are finished producing in July from a late winter or early spring seeding.
That bit of planning done, I took note of the comfortable temperature that day. The week before had been cold, with overnight temperatures dipping to minus 5 C. The plots all still lay under a thick carpet of maple leaves — including the garlic planting. Considering the warmer day, at 7 C, I realized I needed to check what the garlic was doing under its winter overcoat.
Oops! All the cloves had sprouted into short, thick shoots. Time to uncover the bed.
To protect the planting from neighbourhood cats and raccoons, I’d set panels of stiff wire fencing over the bed, and as cold winter weather loomed I laid a blanket of leaves on the fencing. That made the uncovering easy. I just lifted each panel, leaves still on top, and shook the leaves over other plots.
Weeds had sprouted along with the garlic. First, I weeded and lightly cultivated between the rows. Then I sprinkled a light dusting of lime, then my natural-source, slow-release fertilizer, topping these with a shallow layer of fish compost. A long-handled claw cultivator quickly fluffed it all up together.
As I put away in the garden shed everything I’d used to clean and nourish the garlic patch, it began to rain. Perfect. The immediate care of one of my most prized crops accomplished, I headed back to the house for a lovely shower, dinner, and an evening date with Masterpiece Theatre on PBS.
Next. On the outdoor gardening agenda, next is making plots ready for the first plantings — with last year’s miserable spring and early summer weather in mind. That weather forced long delays in many plantings.
Still, ever the hope-filled optimist, I’d like to be ready for fine weather soon. The first seeding will be the super-hardy broad beans, in the site that will house next year’s crop of garlic, planted this fall.
After that, I’ll prepare two small beds of spinach and lettuce under rectangular, recycled skylight covers I was given. The area to ready next will be for the first long double row of Green Arrow peas on a four-metre length of chicken wire fencing. Then the carrots and beets, side by side in the same 120-cm wide bed for easy covering with floating row cover or insect netting against the carrot rust fly and beet leaf miner.
The soil preparation for all these vegetables will be similar, with additions of lime, fertilizer and compost.
GARDEN EVENT
Bonsai demonstration. Dinter Nursery, 2205 Phipps Rd. in Duncan, has postponed the Saturday, Feb. 25 Bonsai re-potting demonstration to Saturday, March 11, from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. because of weather concerns. The nursery’s bonsai expert will demonstrate re-potting a Japanese maple. The event will be of interest to bonsai enthusiasts looking for tips on a project and to people keen on starting their own piece of living art. The event is free, no registration required. Bring your specimens and questions, between 11 a.m. and 12 p.m. Dress warmly. The event will be in an unheated greenhouse. dinternursery.ca
