CANADIAN REGION: What are you doing July, August, September

Over half of 2020 gone and what a year it has become.

For myself I am downsizing as I will be moving  sometime and I will have to leave it all behind.  I have been trying to take care of the lawn that with all the rain we have had gets out of my control at times. I swear it grows an inch a day and is so hard to keep looking nice.  With all this growth, when we do get sunshine it takes ages to be dry enough to cut.  I did that over two days with the blades set high, and today I had hoped to lower the cut and have it a bit easier to push the mower.

I am having a nice crop of sugar snap peas, had strawberries, lettuce and radishes and there is plenty of garlic.  A few cherries on the trees due to lack of pollination in the spring   and I can only see two apples on my tree, whereas last year I was overwhelmed with them and spent many hours dehydrating them. I also expect a nice harvest of blueberries as the bushes are loaded with them.

I have never seen my garden so green as this year with all the rain in the summer.
Right now the rain has arrived and I was going to do so much in the garden today but it is not to be.  Yesterday the temp got to 84F by the time I had finished mowing the grass and laid out the the grass to dry before it went mushy.

Ah hah, so that's where the rain is! Well, we're slated for random thunderstorms in the next 4 or 5 days, so maybe our brown grass will green up? Actually just northeast of us in Toronto, they got a whole lot of rain a few days ago that totaled all the rain they got in June, but in one day - yep, there was flooding. We got none of that. It hasn't rained more than 1/4" this month.

My garden, well, the cucumbers and beans exploded. I've never seen bush beans that big, they're all falling over and are more suitable to 1 per foot rather than the 4 I think I put per sq. foot. Similarly, my cuke plants are huge, maybe normal for some, but nothing I'm used to. Consequently I've been visited, for the first time by cucumber beetles that are busily eating all those bushy cucumber leaves and visiting other plants too. I did thin out the cucumbers to allow air and beneficial insects to get in, and also dusted with DE a bit.

Tomato and cucumber trellises that hubby built for me:


Huge bean leaf:


Another view of cucumber trellis, before they got really big and cucumber beetles found them:


Linda

You are getting results, Linda. do you preserve any food that you grow? I can or dehydrate apples, cherries, beans and anything else I can so that I have fruits and vegetables for the winter.

I saw on TV  the floods in Toronto, something like 63mm in one go.  We have lots of floods in British Columbia and it seems to affect low lying trailer parks as they often seem to be  near watersheds that flood in the spring with rain and snow melt.

In Surrey where there are many agricultural fields there that  the Fraser River floods them at time.  So many streams,  rivers small and large drain into that watershed and it can take five days and you know the rivers are going to rise and there i little that can be done.

Yesterday I was able to cut my lawn again but them I ran out of steam and decided to finish it today, but the weather is chilly and windy so thee are other things I can do in comfort. The weather forecast keeps telling us that tomorrow will be warm, dry and sunny, but tomorrow seldom comes.   Right now the wind is kicking up and clouds are scudding across the sky. Our 40% chance of rain will soon be here.

I tend to freeze veggies, but I will see, I have a larger dehydrator now, so will dehydrate. I haven't harvested any cucumbers, but they will be coming soon, no zucchini yet - I may have to cut off some of the leaves to let the pollinators in or hand pollinate, but I'm not worried yet. The beans are just starting to set. I'll freeze them. Hubby can't eat them, but I love them.

We should get a bumper crop of apples - good idea to dehydrate, I may do that.

It's so hot here...33 or 34C. I think the thunderstorm watch is over for the day, lol... I'll water tonight. My fruit trees have some curled leaves. My tomatoes did until I started watering, only have cherry tomatoes setting right now. I'll get tomatoes in August and September and will make tomato powder - that is yummy.

If my kale ever gets going, I can make green powder.

The winter sowing I did was a real fail this year, so next year I'll be starting most seeds indoors, still better than buying nursery starts, which I ended up doing for my tomatoes and a pepper. Actually I did start some tomatoes on June 1 and they are starting to grow, so I'll get tomatoes from those, just later.

I can sit one of my compost in place containers beside a tomato plant and really see a difference in growth, so cool!

Linda

KJ are you ok?  Have not heard from you for some time.

It's been a month since we have heard from you, KJ. Please let us know if you are okay.

sanderson wrote:It's been a month since we have heard from you, KJ.  Please let us know if you are okay.

I just sent her an email. Hopefully she will get back.

trolleydriver wrote:

sanderson wrote:It's been a month since we have heard from you, KJ.  Please let us know if you are okay.

I just sent her an email. Hopefully she will get back.

I really did not realise how quickly time flies even in spite of being isolated at home although allowed out now with the new way of living.
It humbles me that I am missed and I really appreciated this SFG forum, one of the best that can be in this world.

As I said over a month ago, I am downsizing my home in preparation for returning to England. I never, ever realised how much STUFF I have in my house and I have promised myself that it will never get like like that any more.

My garden:  have not done much but did have a wonderful crop of sugar-snap peas, plus garlic and blueberries.  From my two trees I have had cherries and apples, but not the amount I had last year.  The grass as usual has been hard to keep up with having to mow in the hot weather we have been having.

Last year when returning from England it took weeks to tame the overgrown garden so was not able to prepare much for the spring. 

I will be leaving sometime to go and live in England but I will still keep in touch with this most wonderful forum and will be part of SFG for the rest of my life. While I am here I will do my best to keep the Canadian Forum up to date.

By the way, I have two pieces of planting equipment to give away; they are seed blocks. One large and one small,  Let me know; just the cost of mailing.

Thanks for updating us KJ and thank you for your contribution to the forum. I hope the Covid pandemic does not delay your plans for too long. So exciting for you to be making such a big move to the UK. I was hoping to visit my UK family (found two years ago) but the pandemic plus my health situation messed up those plans.

Yes, TD, we both had connections to family two years ago.  This Covid has delayed my departure but the crux of the matter is getting the property found and bought and signed added to the time it is taking to downsize. I am finding that as I get older I cannot do so much in one day.  I start good in the morning then gradually taper off until I fall asleep in this very hot weather we are having.

Once the family property is secured and brought up to scratch then everything will be fine.  But I really must be ready to move as soon as that happens. 

If my family were in Canada then I would be delighted, but it is a choice between location and family, and I need to be with family as there is no one this side of the Pond.  

In my garden I am growing a nice crop of potatoes and beans around the compost heap.  All self-sown and I am looking forward to new potatoes very shortly. the self sown runner beans around the compost are always better than the ones I grew in the beds.

KJ, Thank you for updating us on your situation.

A little over 4:00am here in British Columbia in the Southern Interior and alrady it is 20c but surprisingly it is only set to rise to 27c this afternoon.  almost comfortable.

This is when I notice the daylights hours getting fewer as it is completely dark .

My garden this year is at a standstill, but I am now gathering the apples, especially the windfalls to discourage the bears that are now around our area.

It has been far too hot for my liking but this week the temperatures are getting lower and I will be active again.

Under another thread about feeding worms I have said I am waiting for my allocation of two bags of city compost that normally we collect ourselves. this year they are being delivered providing a square of cloth, canvas, plastic etc. is laid out in front so that the compost can be placed there. In our subdivison, they have been in place for several days and I am sure the all the grass verges, which belong to the city, are going to have patches of dead grass there.

It's hot here too - thankfully no bears though, just squirrels, mice, rabbits etc... but you have those too, right?
I'm getting lots of windfall apples too - I'm thinking it's still a bit early for the apples, but I do have a multi variety apple tree - just to make things confusing, however I am pretty sure I have NO granny smith apples this year, I did have them once, just the granny smiths that year tho', lol.
Just picked what I'm pretty sure is the last peach today - I got most of them yesterday after a number of days of picking them off the ground - they are much softer than apples! I learned that you do NOT twist of peaches, you gently rock them off...after 40 or 50 peaches, that is pretty obvious!

I took all the diseased leaves off my cucumbers - leaving them very naked looking, but not yet dead...sigh..I hate to kill any plant. My green beans are looking more diseased but still producing beans every other day.

Funny story - I covered my kale with tulle to protect from the horrid white cabbage moth. Well, that worked, but I wondered why my kale was not growing - checked the leaves and they were covered with, I think, aphids - little white looking eggs?

Good thing I planted 4 sweet million cherry tomato plants and only killed one of them - they are producing very well and I am having to give them away. For regular tomatoes, the ones I broke down and bought from WalMart - Early girl and Better Boy - are ripening first, the heritage tomatoes are doing fairly poorly, just not a great year for them, oh well, there's always next year!

Linda
ps started 4 Tiny Tims in June and planted 2 in my raised bed that had no tomatoes - oh my gosh, so cute and very short, like 6" and each has like 5 or so cherry tomatoes growing on them