garden July 2017

We had a long cool wet spring in Montreal and my garden had a late start. My friend in Copenhagen tells me he has squash coming out his ears. My squash are the size of my head. I mean the leaves. No gourds yet.

Lettuce and snow peas had a rough start because they were razed by groundhogs. Lettuce has now recovered. I collected a handful of snow peas today. Why are they called snow peas? In French they're called pois mange-tout. Eat-everything peas.

Tomatoes and basil are doing well, though I'll be making pesto before I eat tomato salad.

Beans and Lebanese cukes coming along.

I sowed carrots three times, three weeks apart, and only a dozen came up. Ditto beets. Another gardener said that ants were making off with the seeds. Is that possible? I don't know but I felt desperate. I read online that lavender keeps ants away, so I planted lavender. The lavender is doing well, but ants are as busy as ever around it.

I read that ants don't like cinnamon and sprinkled my whole garden with cinnamon. For a few days, before it rained, I had a garden as red as a PEI beach. And aromatic. I don't know what my Bangladeshi neighbour thought.

I never saw an exodus of ants, the carrots and beets I seeded again didn't show, and the ants are back having a party around the lavender.




My prize plant so far has been rhubarb. I've made rhubarb compote (or jam as some call it), have rhubarb in the freezer, and have given some to friends.

I don't recall what species of hot pepper I got, so I don't know what colour these will finally be. They've been green, then purple, now orange. 

The reason why I'm able to have a garden in the city is that I have a plot in a community garden--Jardin Communautaire la Pointe-Verte--and it's one of the pleasures of gardening to be planting or weeding or watering with another sunhatt-ed or sari-d gardener a couple of plots over doing the same. We're all making stuff grow.