I can dig the night shift

I took advantage of my unusually high energy level tonight and double-dug the rest of my fourth raised bed. I can no longer enjoy that kind of work during the day now due to the permasmog conditions of summertime (and it's technically not even summer yet!). It went well. I look forward to planting a lot of flax and oats. Probably peppers, more tomatoes, and more lettuce, too.

First harvest: radishes

I was away from home for the last few days, performing at a barn-raiser and spending time with family in Cobourg. I got a chance to see my cousin Elizabeth's gardens on my grandma's acreage. It was bliss to be out in the country again. The sights, smells, and sounds (and especially lack of sounds) of the countryside are unequaled here in the city. The notion of escaping smogville became doubly attractive for me. If every inch of unused land in Toronto were to be gardened intensively, however, I think I could find summertime breathing to be infinitely more enjoyable.

I came back from my weekend in the country to a tiny patch of now overcrowded radishes, and it finally looked time to celebrate my first harvest:

I picked the biggest ones and ended up with 450 g of radishes (about 2 bunches). I'm banking on the rest of the radishes to increase in size after this thinning.

Seedlings & sowings

I just realized that what I thought were weeds, might actually be the groundcherries! They look like weeds, perhaps because they are, in fact, considered weeds by many. And if I recall correctly, groundcherry was growing rampantly out on Plan B farm when I was visiting last year. Also, groundcherry is closely related to the tomatillo, which I remember at Everdale confusing with pigweed (before closer inspection). So I may have inadvertantly weeded out some of my groundcherries, but I've saved what I think are two tiny seedlings. The only thing that made these seedlings stand out to me from the other weed seedlings were their fuzzy stems, which I know tomatoes have as well.

Yesterday I began double-digging my fourth raised bed. It's the biggest one so far, and I only got about a third of it fully loosened. That was enough for the time being; I really just had to get two large tomato plants (one Sweetie and one Scotch Bonnet) and several oversized Simpson lettuce seedlings into the ground. Between the two I transplanted a bunch of white globe onion seedlings, which are a companion to both tomatoes and lettuce.

Today I sowed cucumbers, pumpkins, butternut squash, sweet dumpling squash, Pride of Wisconsin melon, and butterfly milkweed. I'm bringing the cucumbers and pumpkins inside during the night since it sounds like they require higher soil temperatures for germination than the other squash (according to the not-so-informative seed packets).

I tried to pick up a rain barrel today from a nearby Freecycler. Unfortunately, it was about 4 inches too wide for my bike trailer, so I had to leave it there. It was big and beautiful – a real functioning rain barrel, not just any old barrel – and it would have worked amazingly. Alas, I just don't have a big enough wagon, and I don't yet know of a local fossil fuel-free wagon producer. ;-)

I was working outside virtually all day today, and that was a mistake. I didn't realize today was a smog day in Toronto. I should have taken a clue from the characteristically orange-tinted sunlight, but I just wasn't thinking. As a result, I've felt a little sick all evening, especially after mowing the front lawn with garden shears. This is the first time I've ever noticed the effects of smog on my health so acutely.