How does our garden grow?

Not well, that's how.

The herbs and flowers are doing great but vegetables... not so much, not so much at all. Although the onions look to be doing well.

Backyard herb garden

Backyard herb garden behind the tall plants

Grass looks great and the hanging baskets have held up fantastic

Strawberries are doing well and the grape is growing but no fruit yet (1st year didn't expect any)

The largest 1 of our 3 Paste tomatoes

8 paste tomato plants and nothing, these 3 won't do anything before 1st frost in a couple of weeks.

Slicing tomatoes have a dozen or so fruits but again, not before 1st frost. Carrots seem small but who knows what lies below.

Kale was pulled ages ago and replanted with spinach... 3 spinach have cracked the surface.

My 1 lone pepper on my Thai hot pepper plants

1 lone bell pepper too and its dinky

This years garlic harvest didn't produce much of anything

Potato plants were moved into the shed to allow for drying as we've had so much damn rain.

Celery and Parsley are doing great! and my 11 sunflowers have been whittled down to 4 but they are growing well.

3 are here and...

Sunflower #4

Kidney beans don't seem to be doing much, peas and red scarlet runner beans aren't so hot either.

All in all, given the work we put in to building the gardens this year, it is a massive disappointment. We console ourselves with the knowledge that it is the same for farmers and growers everywhere this year.

We will have to go to the big city for some organic produce so that I can at least get enough ferments made for the year.

I will update after onion harvest and by then I will have the potato count also. Some people have grown potatoes in bags as I did and got diddly squat out of it, so I'm not getting my hopes up.

Next year: Greenhouse 10' x 20'+

A bit of rain and family trips

We built a garbage container for the front yard. Tired of forgetting to put out the garbage bins every week, we finally decided to use some remnants from around the property to put together this beauty! It actually looks pretty damn good. I don't have a front pic of it as it wasn't my intention to talk about it but as I was publishing this photo to show the 3 ft wide strip of rain running down the side of the road during a storm, I thought I'd mention it too. 

Heavy rains, only minimal and tiny hail this time

and our amazing new garbage bucket (every container is a 'bucket' to me)

We went fishing at a local lake not far from the house

Brad caught a little fish (Trout, I think) which he caught by the tail presumably when he yanked the line in an attempt to set the hook in the fish's mouth. Fishy was released back to the water.

Our raised beds at night with our little garden twinkle lights on the fence

The gazebo at night

Relaxing with a book with my feet in the grass

A few days after Meg went home, we were experiencing a rainy spell here and it was getting us down so we decided to go to Saskatoon for the weekend and get some sun. Unfortunately, my mother came on ill the morning after we arrived and was taken to hospital. She spent about 5 days there and we drove back here once she was home safe and sound.

Yesterday, Mum called to ask me to come back and look after her, she isn't doing well again, so I'm off to the big city yet again to get her set right once more.