Category Archives: garden seasons

joy in every season

months 01-03: winter, months 04-06: spring, months 07-09: summer, projects

The Promise of Apples in 5 Steps

07/03/2013 svseekins Leave a comment

This year C wants a good crop of apples, so we’re trying to do everything right.

spraying the Sparten apple tree in February — photo by SVSeekins

STEP 1. – SPRAY
In February C mists the 2 apple trees with dormant spray in hopes of warding off the regular infestation of those tiny green worms. You know the ones: they float down from the Garry Oak & go crazy on the tasty apple leaves, before they burrow into the little apples.

It’s not easy to find a dry day in our West Coast winter for getting that job done. It’s even tougher to follow with a few dry days that allow the sulphur/oil to do its magic before the rains rinse it off .

STEP 2 – PARTNERS
The next challenge is pollination in spring. If it’s too windy, the blooms blow away. If it’s too rainy, the bees can’t get to the flowers to pollinate them… There’s not much we can do except cross our fingers for sunshine again.

Sparten & Gravenstein bloom overlapping is rare — photo by SVSeekins

And there’s also that concern over different apple varieties blooming at different times.

A Gravenstein blossom won’t turn into an apple unless it receives pollen from some other tree. Strange, eh? And Gravensteins are early bloomers – – hardly anything else is blooming then, so we rarely get much of a crop.

This year the weather was odd enough that the Gravenstein bloom was later & actually overlapped with the McIntosh bloom for a couple of days. Woo Hoo!

after the Gravenstein leaf feast — photo by SVSeekins

STEP 3 – PROTECT
By June the leaves fill in. I was disappointed to see signs they’d been feasted upon.

tent caterpillars in a Russian Laurel — photo by SVSeekins

Sometimes we find tent caterpillars up in the branches. As a kid I thought fuzzy caterpillars were cute. Once I saw a whole mass of them coming out of their tent I was grossed out.

By this stage the fruit is starting to form, so we’re not willing to do any additional spraying. I prune the tent out of the tree, and seal the escape artists into a ziploc bag. How much energy can a tree put into apple production when its main energy collection system is under such attack? Bummer.

gravenstein apple in spring - mcu — photo by SVSeekins

STEP 4 – THIN
When I first heard of thinning apples in spring, it sounded crazy! I’m always so excited to see all the new apples. Doesn’t it make sense to just let them ALL grow? But, especially after a successful pollination, even nature will cull a heavy load. Now I think about how many apples the tree can support…
and do we want many little apples?…
or a few really big apples?

This year I can already spot a few Gravenstein apples hiding in the foliage. The McIntosh are easier to spot. Before the summer solstice arrived, C cut out about 1/3 of the crop from the McIntosh. There’s so many up there, he figures he might just take 1/2 the crop to give the rest a chance to mature.

A couple of years ago I had culled 10 gallons of golf-ball-sized apples from the McIntosh. It wasn’t enough. By August we worried the limbs might break from the increasing weight. We used stakes to help support the branches!

STEP 5 – ENJOY
Now that summer is here, the chores get simpler:
Wait… and water.

If the summer continues with the lovely heat & sunshine of last weekend, I’m planning to put a lounge chair under the tree & enjoy the mist while the sprinklers do the work. 🙂

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© SVSeekins and Garden Variety Life, 2013

months 04-06: spring, months 07-09: summer, perrennials, urban deer

Let there be Day Lilies

06/18/2013 svseekins Leave a comment

spring blooming Daylily — photo by SVSeekins

Day Lilies are easy to grow & are dependable spring & summer bloomers. They’re also edible. I’ve heard that the chefs at Sooke Harbour House like to stuff the blossoms & serve them at dinner.

Well, that might be interesting & all, but I still have a hard time even picking the flowers in our garden. They’re just so decorative as they are!

Most often the choice is not mine.

sharing our garden with deer — photo by SVSeekins

For several years I’ve watched the lilies develop promise. The bud just starts to turn colour, & I think, “Tomorrow it will open into a beautiful flower.”

It turns out that the deer think, “‘Today it’s at its peak tastiness.”

the Daylily bud has been harvested — photo by SVSeekins

Midnight snack.

This year it’s different. This might not look spectacular as a botanical garden display bed of day lily, but in a yard that’s shared with deer, I’m pretty excited to see so many blossoms at one time.

spring blooming Daylilies ws — photo by SVSeekins

So what’s the deal? I’m not really sure. I haven’t sprayed any stinky deterrent around the place. Perhaps the lowly day lily is just out of fashion for deer this year?

Yeah baby 🙂

One thing I have noticed that’s also unusual, is that the lupins have been nibbled instead… OK…

the fresh tasty top of the lupin is harvested — photo by SVSeekins

Lupins are easy to grow & are dependable spring bloomers. Fair enough. This year I’ll enjoy day lily blooms & consider it a fair trade-off.

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© SVSeekins and Garden Variety Life, 2013

bulbs, drought tolerant, garden visits, months 04-06: spring, urban deer

Meadow Blooms 5 – Camas

05/13/2013 svseekins 4 Comments

The camas meadow swaying in the spring breeze is like no other. Suddenly I’m walking in a fairytale instead of strolling in a Victoria park. Has my mind gone wild? Could I ever have come up with a dream so lovely? No. It must be real.

No gardener created this scene, either. This is Nature’s beauty.

Camas Meadow - Beacon Hill Park 3 — photo by SVSeekins

camas at Mt. Tolmie Park 2 — photo by SVSeekins

Camas meadows have flourished on South Vancouver Island longer than memory reaches into the past. The southern slope of Beacon Hill has been a camas meadow for centuries. It’s probably one of the key reasons it’s preserved as a park today. The same goes for the Garry oak meadows of Mt. Tolmie Park. At this time of year, they’re magical places.

Early peoples saw more than beauty in the camas; they saw food. I wonder who it was to first realize the bulbs are delicious?

Camas at Mt. Tolmie Park 1 — photo by SVSeekins

Perhaps she had gardening tendencies like mine; seeing a lovely flower automatically triggers an urge to have that flower in my own garden. (I’m known to dig up plants from roadsides.)

Before we moved from the Cedar Hill property to the Richmond house, I dug up as many camas as possible. The Garry oak meadow in the backyard was a great natural source for them, but the digging wasn’t so easy.

When I was able to dig deep enough, I often found the bulb tucked securely in a tight rocky crevice. Un-obtainable! I did manage to get a good number of bulbs (perhaps 2 dozen), but there was no risk of over-harvesting that hillside.

There was certainly more risk of starvation if camas had been my only sustenance. A good deal of effort for a very small reward. That gardener from long ago must’ve had more ingenuity than I have.

Apparently, she figured out a method that includes burning the meadow first. (?!?!…) Perhaps that was a way of cooking the camas in the process? By the time she got one out of the ground, it was already transformed into a sweet treat? I just can’t figure it….

Happily, after all my sweat equity, I now enjoy blooming borders.

snowdrops in January…
crocus in February…
daffodils in March…
hyacinth in April…
and camas in May…

It times out nicely. When the foliage of the spring bulb dies back, the daylily takes over for the summer. And from all that bounty, it’s only the latter that the deer like to feast on. 🙂

a bit of history on camas
a camas recipe
growing camas