The Rain – The Importance of Being A Patient Gardener

Not having to water manually is nice and all, but this amount of rain? It’s not ideal. The plants are not appreciative and the slug population is, which is bad for us. We have to go out to remove slugs every day now and it is not the most rewarding task to engage in.

Annuals

I lost a few tomato plants that were only little ones. Quite a few garlic cloves that were beginning to germinate rotted instead since the rain kept on coming. From what I could tell, I have about thirty garlic plants that are growing and may be ready around midsummer. That’s great and I am grateful, but given how many cloves I planted, I expected to grow at least a hundred garlic plants, preferably around 150. Of course, I can’t rule out that there are more or even many more plants underneath the surface of the soil, so let’s hope for that.

Last week I separated the beetroot seedlings and sadly, many of them do not appear to have survived the rain. It worries me. The rain wrecked a lot of potatoes last year, and I have at least 20 containers with potatoes growing. I need them to produce a substantial amount of potatoes each, so I hope we’ll have a lot of sun after all this rain. And going forward, I would really like it if the weather was more balanced. However, given the state of the environment, I fear that would be hoping for too much.

The tomatillo and physalis plants are doing well. As are the black kale plants. The herbs are growing almost too well, as the mint is trying to take over. I will need to do another massive harvest this week. The winter thyme is doing rather well in the vertical system. The spinach plants are doing well in their vertical system as well.

My concern

What concerns me is that it is June and I have lost several plants to the weather, a few to the magpies and even a few to the neighbour’s young cat. I had expected to be able to harvest squash and at least baby tomatoes by now, but we really are about three weeks behind this year. I know it has little to do with my seedlings and much to do with the weather and the environment. But that doesn’t make it easier.

It’s the same every year. May and June is mostly about patience. Sure, there’s some prep and maintenance gardening involved, but mostly it’s a waiting game. Every year you go, “What if they won’t grow? What if I won’t get anything to harvest?”. Apart from taking good care of the garden, the rest is out of our hands.

We can’t control the weather, as much as we hope we could. We can discourage pests from going near our plants, but we certainly can’t control them. And most of all, we cannot control when our plants will grow, when they will bloom or when they will bear fruit. All we can do is create beneficial growing environments and look out for them.

Perennials

I have harvested some honey berries, but most of them aren’t ripe yet. I have harvested rhubarb and asparagus a few times this year. No massive harvests, but they were all replanted last year, and I think they’re focusing a bit extra on spreading their roots rather than produce large harvests at this time.

The apples are growing well, even if some have fallen off due to the strong wind that accompanied the rain.

The sunchokes are finally forming stalks that will hopefully grow majestically tall this year as well.

Berries

A few more weeks and the rest of the berries should have started ripening.

I will have to do some more research, but I think the Saskatoon berries will ripen around the same time that the blueberries, strawberries, black currant, red currant and gooseberries start to ripen.

There are also quite a few strawberries forming. However, grass has begun to grow in the strawberry tower. Or rather, it begun last year, but the plants were young and separating them would’ve been more risky. So after this season, I will need to remove about a third of the tower, gently separate the grass from the strawberry plants, and then replant the strawberry plants in the tower with compost, soil and saw dust. But not until the end of the season. Right now they need to focus on ripening their berries.

I will also need to embroider the names of the plants or at least the variety onto the grow bags. Last year I finished doing so for the rhubarb, the strawberry tower, the wild strawberry tower, the asparagus plants and the sunchokes. I still have to do the same for the berry bushes and the fruit trees.

“Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.” 

—Hal Borland.