Visit to a Neighbours Garden

A visit to a neighbours garden reminded me, one of the wonderful things about being a gardener, is other gardeners. Gardeners like to share information, tips and plants. Whether you live on the East Coast or the West Coast or, like me, in the Sudbury area the attitude of gardeners is for the most part the same, we share. Information is readily available on the internet from coast to coast to coast to border but getting together with neighbouring or local gardeners creates a special moment. Being a northern gardener I am able to find local information on plant success and, being newer to Northern Ontario, I can gain the history of the area from those who know, the gardeners who live here.

Last month I had the pleasure of visiting the garden of my neighbour, Orest. We share a beginning in Southern Ontario but he has been gardening here for about 20 years now. Orest knows his garden well and spends a lot of time working his garden, weeding, planning different layouts and trellis systems and best of all relaxing in the beauty of his talent.

Gardeners are avid recyclers as they have the ability to reuse many items from barrels and containers for rain water, composting and container growing. I reused an old wire fence that was at the point of take it down or it will do so on its own, for a trellis. The fencing was rolled and fastened into cylinders then placed into the garden for tomatoes, beans, peas and cucumbers (pictured at top) to grow up and through, the openings in the wire fencing was large enough for me to reach through so I could easily pick the harvest tucked inside. At the end of the season they go back into the shed for next year.

In Orest’s garden he utilizes window boxes and an assortment of pails and bucket type containers to start his seeds and he tends to the plants until they are ready, and the weather is ready, for transplanting into the garden.

Some of the seedlings are also kept in a container garden. Even with a garden in place containers can still be used to grow a plant you only want a little of, or one you have in the garden but also in a container to extend the season. Orest has lettuce and peppers both in his garden and in containers, at anytime there is a frost warning the containers can simply be moved to a shed or other frost free location. Great to extend the season for fresh produce towards the end of the year or to protect against those surprise frosty early summer nights. Containers can also be moved into the sun or shade for plants that like the sun but a hot summer day may be just too much.

Orest garden is also a mixed garden. I love a mixed garden where vegetables and berries are grown along with flowers for a lovely restful space at anytime of the year. A border of common evening primrose and ribbon grass is a great structure for young plants. Plants that require partial sun are planted closer to the perennials and those sun lovers are placed in the open spaces.

Growing perennials in the same garden is perfect for small spaces where some think they have to choose between vegetables and flowers. Last year Orest grew an 9’ sunflower with a head that was about 18” across, it was beautiful, he has planted more this year again. I did not have the success with sunflowers that Orest did, mine tended to be about 2’ tall and 6-8” across.

As I said at the beginning, gardeners like to share and I was delighted to bring home a lovely basket of sunflowers and a bean plant. They were all successfully planted and doing well even with this wet and now dry summer. I am hoping Orest’s success with his sunflowers will rub off on me this year.

Meteors and Fireballs!

The Perdeids meteor shower peaks tonight, so, just after dusk gather the lawn chairs and head out for the yearly show. 80 to 100 meteors per hour is the expected peak for any year, but this year we have an added treat. A really interesting time will be about 4am when we slam through a really dense cloud at 150,000 km per hr bringing a spectacular burst of about 200 shooting stars per hour. The shooting stars we see are from a cloud of dust sized particles, a wonderful display from something so small. The dense cloud will also bring fireballs, baseball to basketball sized space rocks entering the atmosphere that can even leave a smoke trail in the clear night sky.
Last night about 2:30am looking out the window I saw a fireball that lasted for about 5 seconds even though the moon was bright enough to walk around the pond without a flashlight. When the moon rises, turn your back to it to block the effect and get ready for a really great night.
Lately it has been cloudy, hazy, humid, and so just in case you do not have a clear view to see the meteor showers, how about listening to them? The USAF Space Surveillance Radar scans the Texas skies, yes, from Roswell, and if you want to LISTEN just click this link.
Whether you watch or listen, tonight will be impressive.