Celery starts in the garden
Always eager to try something new, I decided to try growing our own celery this year. I thought it would be nice to see if we could have our own fresh celery to add to potato salads during the summer and to my Neapolitan Tomato Sauce at the end of the season.
Celery has a reputation as a hard to grow vegetable so I’ve tried to take this into consideration in the process.
The main issues I read about when it comes to celery are:
- germination is difficult
- celery requires cool weather for as long as possible yet doesn’t like to be planted out until risk of frost is past, and
- it requires a lot of water. Letting the plants dry out apparently produces bitter, tough celery stalks
So to start I chose the variety ‘Tango’. According to Veseys, Tango “is a great improvement over older celery varieties, as it is more tolerant of less than ideal conditions. This hybrid produces dark green, thick stalks with lots of great celery flavour. Less likely to become stringy and tough than older varieties.” In addition it matures in approximately 90 days from transplant, a shorter time frame so one that may work better in our warmer summer climate.
I started my seeds indoors March 5, about 10 weeks before I expected to be able to plant them outdoors with some protection. I started 24 plants, expecting poor germination. I was quite surprised to find the first signs of growth by March 13, just a little over a week after planting and ultimately I ended up with 19 good starts. Way more than the 9-12 I wanted but that’s OK, I can always find homes for the extras among my fellow gardeners.
The starts grew quite well, although they did soak up a lot of water, as suggested. Within 9 weeks my starts were almost a foot high and thankfully the weather was warm enough to get them into the garden. Keeping in mind the high need for water, I planted my celery close to the entrance of the garden and close to our water spout. This will make supplemental watering much easier.
The next step will be to “blanch” the celery by covering the stalks. My plan is to use milk cartons. Since it seems you do this about two weeks before harvesting I’ll start checking my crop by cutting some outer branches in early August.
If anyone has experience with celery, I’d love some advice. Experimenting is good, but there is nothing like learning from someone else’s experience.
A garter snake eating a frog.
It’s getting a little bit crowded in the neighbourhood. While planting potatoes in the back vegetable garden today my husband spotted a rather lazy garter snake. Despite making noise the snake didn’t move so of course my husband had to investigate. What he found thrilled my two sons — a garter snake in the middle of eating his lunch, a rather large frog. The snake was so lethargic while trying to consume his tasty treat he was easily scooped up into a bucket. Our oldest took the picture — mid chew. After the excitement they decided to let the snake go. Unfortunately for me after digesting his meal the snake had a lot more energy and jumped out of the bucket in the gardens right next to our kitchen patio. Great, there goes the neighbourhood. I think I will have to drink my morning coffee in the front yard for a while.
The last white onion from our winter storage - 8 months after harvesting.
The time has arrived — we are now down to the last of our winter stores from last year’s harvest. This week we enjoyed the last white onion and it was still crisp and fresh. Pretty good for something harvested over 8 months earlier. We still have a couple red onions and a few potatoes left although many are now sprouting. Since we are currently eating fresh spinach and kale from our garden, I am pleased to say we have successfully eaten something harvested from our own vegetable garden year round this past year. Here’s looking forward to this year’s bounty.
Rabbits chewed the leaves and flower stems from my tulips.
Once again the rabbits enjoyed the tulips in my garden more than I did. In the past I’ve tried repellent and this year did drop a wire planter over a couple patches but with almost two acres to garden I don’t have the time, or the energy, to run around and cover everything up for fear of damage from our local critters. I’d much rather spend the time protecting my vegetables. We live in the country — that means deer and rabbits but apparently it also means no tulips.
So note to self, this fall plant more daffodils.
Frost damage on Magnolia late March
Well it has been a busy couple of weeks. The early arrival of spring in our area pushed many plants ahead at least three weeks pulling forward my spring pruning schedule. Then the cold weather returned which meant watching the weather network nightly to check for the need to cover plants seeded early in the vegetable garden. Luckily, with the exception of the magnolia blooms, we have not seen too much in the way of frost damage so far this year.
We’ve also had little rain the last few weeks and the soil is surprisingly dry for April. Since the forecast called for rain later this weekend I decided to take advantage and plant out my onion and cabbage seedlings. Each have only been hardening off outside for about three days but should be okay given the predicted cloud cover and rain in the forecast.
Mammoth Red Rock Cabbage Starts
After planting out my onion seedlings last spring I was quite surprised, and not to happy, to find that our local chipmunk population ate the tops off all of my seedlings. So this year, I covered my newly planted onion seedlings with a floating row cover. A lightweight row cover fabric, floating row covers can be placed directly over plants, without the need for any support. Filtered sunlight and water penetrate the fabric, but bugs and pests are kept out. Often used to protect plants in early spring or late fall from frost, I’m using mine to give my onions a chance to harden up so the chipmunks won’t find them so tasty.
Cobra and Redwing Onion starts planted next to earlier planted onions from sets.
Lightweight row covers protects young onions from chipmunks
