Seed and Bean

Over these last couple of weeks I’ve been reminded that surviving an Edmonton winter is nothing compared to surviving an Edmonton spring!  A week of warm weather that prompts the pulling off of sweaters and putting on of shorts is abruptly terminated by a week of temperatures barely hovering above the necessity of a parka, and I, along with my tomato, tomatillo, pepper, basil, cucumber, and zucchini plants, are all struggling to adapt.

Zucchini blossoms

Tomatillo blossom

Tomato blossoms

Lemon basil cold damage

I admit, the plants are having a tougher time hardening-off than I am.  Because we have yet to create sweaters for basil plants, some have leaves that are slightly blackened in spots (a sign that temperatures have been too cold for them).  Two out of the four lemon cucumbers I started informed me, in no uncertain terms, that they were unhappy by quickly wilting and then, just as quickly, by dying (wimps!).  The peppers won’t let me know for a while whether they’ve been affected – if they have, they’ll delay blossoming until they feel they’ve met their heat quotient and, if I’m lucky, push out a few fruits before the temperatures drop again.  My heart goes out to the tomatoes and the tomatillos though – they’ve been so eagerly growing, pushing out flowers, clearly anticipating their new life out in the garden (in the newly renovated beds we recently constructed).  But they’re weathering the disappointment the best of all of them except maybe the zucchini; they’ve started to open up some exuberant, relentlessly cheerful blossoms, optimistically hoping for, I guess, a winged pollinator to stop by – but it’s too cold for even a house fly. 

So the hardening-off process will have to start all over again – when the nightime temperatures don’t fall below 10 deg. C.  Usually I start hardening-off my plants by putting them outside in a shaded spot for about four hours when the day time temperature is about 15 deg. C.  I gradually extend the time the plants spend outside and, by the second week, when I start leaving them outside overnight, I move them into a sunnier spot during the day.

If only I could toughen myself up in a similar way…please let spring arrive soon!

Tools too delicate to store in the shed

Along with the expected arsenal of gardening tools – trowel, spade, fork, pruners – I count my books; in particular, The Kitchen Garden: A Passionate Gardener’s Comprehensive Guide to Growing Good Things to Eat by Sylvia Thompson is the one I reach for most often. 

Every gardener who grows food is concerned with taste.  After all, isn’t that one of the strongest reasons why we put in all that time, sweat, and money? – to eat something that resembles a grocery store vegetable in appearance only?  But it’s difficult to find a book that has extensive information of even the most popular plants, forget the more unusual ones.  And taste seems to be a criteria that is rarely mentioned as part of the reason why one should grow a particular plant (unless it’s to rave about the sweetness of some cherry tomato).

The Kitchen Garden covers it all from yard-long beans to Jerusalem artichokes to edible flowers to lemon cucumbers to scented geraniums to lemon verbena to Asian greens to dandelions to tomatillos to strawberries to…well, I could go on and on!  But it’s not enough to merely list all the things you can grow in your kitchen garden, Sylvia Thompson can also describe what they taste like, describing ripe tomatillos as having a “sharp-sweet” flavor or garden sorrel being like a lemony spinach without the aftertaste.  And, while she describes the Sweet 100 cherry tomato as being sweet, she discouragingly says it’s “cloying” with no “sharpness”.  Strong opinions abound in this book, understandably so, since this was written by a gardener who’s spent a lot of time and effort trying out these different plants – if she felt her time was wasted, she honestly says so!

A small selection of my kitchen garden books

But it’s not just the extensive listing of edibles and notes on their flavor that makes this such a useful book; in fact, that’s just a small part of this book.  What makes it so helpful is the amount of information on the cultural requirements, history, aesthetic descriptions, recommended cultivars, and her personal experience of each and every plant.  And if that wasn’t enough, the charts at the back of the book detailing plant tolerances, optimal soil, optimal sun, seed/tuber life expectancy, length of growing season, optimal soil temperature for germination, sowing depth, days to germination, minimum weeks to transplanting size, intensive bed spacing, watering requirements, days to harvest, length of harvest…well, I’ve never found another book as comprehensive.

To top it all off, this a good book to just sit down and read for pleasure.  Sylvia Thompson’s writing shows her to be a truly passionate gardener and that passion is infectious.  Best $13.48 I ever spent on a tool!