We are trying to get a head start on the garden this year since planting everything in a two week time frame can be a bit overwhelming. I purchased 8 small San Marzano Plum tomatoes Monday from a local garden center and rather than nurse them along in the tiny pots for a couple of weeks I planted them outside under my new plastic cloches. We usually don’t put our tomatoes out until the last weekend in May but I’m hoping these cloches will give me a good jump start to the season.

Unfortunately my coldframe was full of planted lettuce this spring so that meant no room to put my starter plants out to harden them off. Looking around I decided to use my window wells as cold frames and they worked beautifully.

Sunken window well protects plants from cold winds and the gravel bottom makes for easy watering.

Plants covered by plastic mini-greenhouse on cold nights

Cornus florida 'rubra', flowering dogwood finally blooms

I planted my Cornus Florida ‘Rubra’, flowering pink dogwood, in 2009 and have been waiting, not always patiently, ever since for it to bloom. With all the cold weather this year many of our spring blooming trees and shrubs have been a disappointment. The magnolia blooms have been hit by freezing temperatures more than once and the crab apple blooms are a bit sparse. The new foliage on my Golden Mock Orange is completely brown now and I doubt I will smell any fragrant blooms from that source this year. Given all that, I was quite surprised this past week to see my flowering dogwood put on such a nice display. This tree is situated right outside my office window, so I can enjoy the show while it lasts. Any I must say, it was worth the wait.

I’m starting to think perhaps I have too many garden beds. OK never mind, that’s just not possible but 83 yards of mulch does seem a little crazy. So we started out like this:

20 yards of mulch in the driveway, twice = 40 yards

20 yards of mulch, delivered twice to our driveway, and spread out by ourselves over two weekends.

Then we ended like this:

43 yards inside the truck

Mulch being blown into the beds

The ends result looked like this:

One of our beds newly mulched

Guess which option we are going with next year!

Red Admiral butterfly on Choke Cherry Blossom

The people friendly Red Admiral butterfly is back in Ontario.  I’ve seen quite a few in the garden since early April but several were out today, I guess enjoying the return to good weather as was I.  Red Admiral caterpillars feed on nettles, and while I don’t have any in my garden I know they are natural to our area.  At this time of year the adults find nectar on any flower they can find, and in my garden today it was from the blossoms of my native Choke Cherry. They will lay eggs on the nettle; these will hatch and mature into a second generation of adults later this spring. In Ontario, there may be two or three generations per year for us to enjoy, with little damage to the garden.