Valerie reminded me today that I need to post more about gardening. I’ve also been meaning to post some photos for my gardening buddy who recently moved away [who’s on dial-up, and will hate me for this post, then love me]. I have a decidedly unconventional garden with streaks of conventionality running about. I just got in from taking a bunch of photos, so here’s a photo-essay for your perusal:
Oats breaking new ground. In the city.
Apricot - Capilano, year 2
French Fingerling Potato - my fav
Wild Strawberries - ground cover extraodinaire
Nodding Onion in bloom. Tough to acquire, and damn tasty.
Red Sparkle Apples - my wine apple that I care about deeply
Mustard - my fav + saved seed (cost=0) = wicked QPR
Lavender - I have an affection for this plant, and grow lots.
Jerusalem Artichokes, along the front sidewalk, heh.
Garlic, doing heck knows what - C, help me out here...
Black Currant & Red Currant. I'm starting to have a thing for shrubs.
Lovage. 8-9' tall lovage.
Peas, lincoln. Conventional, see? My first crop ever, I'm proud.
Bloody Dock - from Gwen, year 2.
9 Comments on “A Quickie Garden Tour”
Thanks for posting all these great shots! I am incredibly pleased (verging on ecstatic, actually) to tell you that your garlic is blooming; these immature stalks are called scapes. Happily you don’t want it to bloom (you want the energy in the bulb), so you need to snip off all those lovely, tender garlic scapes. Not only are they edible, they are quite possibly my favorite delicacy of early summer. I cook it alone like asparagus or add it to anything that is good with garlic. Please share what you do with yours! :) C.
Great tour. I can’t BELIEVE you got peas already! envious.
Man, ain’t gardens purty. Even the veggie ones.
And what, have you not been reading all my garlic scape recipes? Why not? Garlic butter (world’s best garlic bread and stir-fried garlic butter veggies. Stir-fried garlic scapes with snow peas. Roasted garlic scapes. Garlic scape pesto. (Okay, I don’t have a recipe for that one, but it’s because everyone else on the internet has one. Get with the program here!)
What is bloddy dock?
I have garlic chives – but they are different that yours. What kind of garlic is that?
The apricot photo didn’t come up. Is it a tree?
And, lastly – you have red and black currants, too. How do you care for yours? Have you had worms or bugs or leaf issues? Do the strands rippen at the same time?
:)
Valerie – bloody dock is related to sorrel, but is far showier. I use it in salads a lot in the spring. It’s perennial too, which is lovely.
I have wild chives and nodding onion [a wild onion]. Garlic type = no idea. Seed gifted from a friend. It’s purply skinned, but not super pungent.
The apricot is a bushy tree, yes. It’s about 4 feet tall in its 2nd year in my garden.
My currants are only starting to bear fruit, so I can’t speak to bug problems yet. Leaf issues, no. Ripeness timing – no idea.
Hi, your blog is rather amazing! Great shots! About your red and black currant shrubs, do they get ugly in winter like getting all bald and woody? Do you prune them a lot? I just bought one black and one white currant shrubs in pots. Intending to plant in front of my house but wondering if they will cause an ugly sight one year later…Would appreciate your advice on this. Thanks!
I’m not sure where you’re at, but here, our currants will be covered in 2 feet+ of snow and join everything else in being bald and scraggly in winter. Right now, they still have their fall colors on them [one of the reasons I love fruit shrubs – colorful in spring AND fall + food]. I don’t find them particularly un-eye-appealing, but I’m also going for my front yard being largely naturalized, ie, looking like a chunk of bush that just happens to have all edible species. That’s my goal.
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