The Craftiest Workshop

It is coming to the end of our growing season and I wanted to share some before and after photos of the areas we planted this year. We got down to 4° the other night so the first frost is not too far in our future.

If you recall, we planted our bare root trees and berry stalks in May during a torrential rain.

This was a Hazelbert plant that we planted.

Here are two of them now in the deer fence enclosure.

The Black Walnut trees took awhile to take off. We had them in the ground for only one night without fencing, but we still lost the top of one to a passing curious deer. Here is the healthiest tree of the six. Hard to imagine that these trees might get to be 30m(100ft) eventually have a canopy of 10m (30ft)!!

The apple, plum and chokecherry trees have done really well. The area where we planted them stays wet after a heavy rain and we’ve had a few good storms this summer.

We had planted raspberry canes and Haskap bushes as well. While they grew ok, with one or two of the plants maybe dying (we will know in the spring), I would look for both at one of the local greenhouses if we decide to add more. We found Haskaps at Canadian Tire for less money and larger than those that we got in the mail. Raspberry canes are also easy to find in the area as well and cost less.

I am most happy with the wildflower/butterfly garden. If you have a space to do one, I highly recommend it. Every day, since mid July, I have gone out and seen a new type of flower emerging and some of them last a long time.
We bought just two packets of mixed flower seeds from Lee Valley, sprinkled them and let them grow.

Here is the before and after photos.

Anyone know the names of any of these flowers??
Some of my favourites.

The best part of having a wild flower garden is that everything reseeds itself. I do have to look for weeds and try to pull them. My brother Doug and sister in-law Malisa helped me pull the weeds early on in the season so next year I will know what to watch out for.

The sunflowers in the flower garden have not yet opened. The tallest, at about 8 ft, has formed the head so it should open in the next week as some hotter weather is returning for a few days.

I also planted a mini sunflower patch but the location is not sunny enough.

Although only one sunflower has emerged, I do see heads forming on a few others.

The bee hasn’t left the flower since it opened. Yesterday it was joined by a ?grasshopper?

The two garden boxes Chris made for the ground have done well. The pea plants grew to about 7ft and bent over the short trellis so next year we will build an “A” frame trellis so they don’t fall over. I also learned that cilantro is easy to grow (behind the peas) and smells really strong. The wax beans bushes stayed fairly small but produced a good amount of beans; only one time flowering unlike Ontario, where I would get two.

My brother Russell and his wife Heather are staying with us until their new home is ready in High River. The four of us dismantled the shed that was only being used for wood storage.

We plan to repurpose the wood to build a greenhouse on the south facing side of the garage. It will be to the right of short side of the garden boxes that currently have the peas and beans.

Chris will work on what he wants it to look like and we might get to work on it while we have the extra help. The greenhouse will allow me to start plants earlier and keep some growing later into the fall.

As we add these different gardens, it changes the landscape of our property to a more homey feel and makes it our own. We had more insects and birds this year than last summer so we know they also like what we are doing with the place.