The Square Foot Garden May 7, 2010

At last I guess I'm over the cold that I've had since I got back home and I feel like working in the gardens again. I got a fair amount done today. First I prepared another of my square foot raised beds by marking it off into square foot cells. Once that was done I prepared three of the cells for tomato seedlings that I picked up in St. Stephen yesterday, mine are just starting to get their second set of leaves and are too small to transplant. I bought one each of three different varieties just to try something different. In preparing the cells I added a good amount of Seafood Compost and some organic fertilizer to each. The compost is very important with tomato plants as it contains a lot of calcium which helps to prevent blossom end rot in tomatoes. I planting these tomatoes in my garden several weeks before our last official frost date. Once they were planted I put my pop-up greenhouse over them. I bought this last year from a company in England and it was just large enough to cover the three plants, I nailed it down to the wood on two sides and secured it with tent pegs on the other sides so hopefully it won't get blown away.

That little job done I planted one cell of Radish a variety called French Breakfast. I have bought this variety in France but I don't know where it gets it's name, I have never seen anyone in France eating Radish for breakfast.

I have searched for years to find a Canada Lilly and last summer I mentioned this to one of my Internet friends a young man from New Brunswick who used to run a very successful garden center in northern NB. He sold the business a few years ago and has been traveling the world ever since working in gardens both private and public in Australia, New Zeland France, Spain and currently he is working at Kew Gardens in London. He said I should be able to get it in Quebec from Horticlub a mail order company run by one of his friends. Sure enough they had it in stock and I would be sent one this spring. The timing was perfect it was delivered to me yesterday just as I was starting to plant the Lavender that I planned to grow in the same bed with the Lilly. A good healthy looking plant. My original plan had been to plant it in one of my fields in the landscape since it is a native Canadian wildflower but my friend said there would only be one problem with that, it would not stay wherever I plant it. Most Lilly grow next years bulb directly below this years but not the Canada Lilly it moves a few feet sideways to grow next years bulb. So I decided to plant it in a large , eight foot square, raised bed. It should be fun watching Lilly fuse-ball as it bounces around inside the bed from year to year. The lavender is still small but should grow nicely in this bed. I mulched everything with red cedar bark mulch and I think the end result isn't half bad.