Gardening: week 6

26 May:

Zucchini flowers!

 

Litchi tomato flower buds:

 30 May:

Baby bunny is back!  Watch him eat a dandelion!

   

Radishes: they're getting big!  I planted more where the previous seeds failed to germinate.  I also sowed the rest of the carrots.  I'm not sure what I was thinking when I left those carrot spaces empty...

Broccoli from Canadian Tire:

Carrots and radishes:

 

I brought all my plants outside for some fresh air and fading sunlight.  Hopefully they'll be ok overnight.  I put up a net to keep birds out; hope it works!

Zucchini blossoms:

 

Litchi tomato blossom, almost ready to open:

Left:  Purple coneflower seedling.
Right:  Mom likes to take gai lan (Chinese broccoli) stems and soak them in water.  They make flowers, which produce seed--though I don't think we've ever tried collecting and growing those seeds.  Maybe that'll be a future project!  I think the flowers are gorgeous.  Can you believe those are vegetables?

 

Salad boxes germinating:

I think this viola is so sweet:

Happy gardening!

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Gardening: week 5

We had a slightly wet weekend and start to the week.  But the radishes sure enjoyed it!  

Below right:  Carrot seed leaves poking out!  Finally!!

 

Below:  Radish squares 1, 2 and 3.

Below:  Radish square 3 was the planted most recently, with Sparkler radishes (white tip).  I saw the seed packs for 33 cents, and had to try it!

Below:  My peas have survived!  I'm so happy with the bird-scaring sparkly!!
Below right:  This was direct-seeded maybe two weeks ago; it finally came up!

 

Below:  Every week, I have to remove more prickly weeds!  Where are these brutes coming from?!

Below left:  Black Krim tomato seedling outgrowing its peat pot.  I especially like that root coming over the lip of the pot, sneaky and rather creepy!
Below right:  Ginger Mint, purchased from Canadian Tire.  I cut a sprig off for myself, and it looks alive again!

 

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Seedlings: week 5 - zucchini trouble

So last week, I documented some strange discolouration on a few of two zucchini plants' leaves.  It hasn't gotten better; in fact, more leaves now have this.  So I decided to cut the affected leaves off--but not before taking copious amounts of photos.

 

Below:  You can see an eerie discolouration all around the edges of the these leaves: yellow on the left picture and a sickly grey on the right picture. These may be from different causes, but it seems a bit too coincidental that the only plants who were potted in the new soil suffered...

  

Below:  The tip of this leaf is rotting away!

Below:  Some unsightly mouldy-looking grey-white spots...

Below: the poor plants after their trimming.

I've put the trimmings into a metal coffee can, and hope to burn them at my earliest convenience.  But I've never burned yard waste before...  I wonder if I can just drop a match into the coffee can once the leaves are dry enough...

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Broccoli

Because my seed-sown broccoli have been suffering from what appears to be damping off, I caved in and bought a 6-pack of broccoli seedlings from Canadian Tire, and put them in the ground this past Sunday 20 May.  I also transplanted my snow pea seedlings into the 3x16 bed and repositioned the sparklies closer to them.  We'll see how that goes.

  

To prevent birds from getting to the broccoli, I placed some 4L milk jugs, bottoms removed, over top.  Actually, my folks decided to use one of my jugs for their own plants, so one has an opened plastic produce box (I think it used to hold strawberries) sitting over top.  The picture below shows the sizes of the seedlings compared to the milk jugs.  I think it's a decent fit--and the price was right!  Who needs to buy specialty cloches when these ones came with milk inside?

I forgot to take a picture, but I also stretched some netting over the whole bed.  Oh well, picture next time.

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Cinnamon Buns

I made cinnamon buns!  It's been a while since I last made them.  They're the soft, sticky kind.  However, this isn't a recipe I'm ready to share yet, sorry!  When I've perfected it, then I'll be able to share it, but I've got to tweak a few things first.

For one, the caramel in the bottom of the pan needs to be thinned out, but I'm not sure how much water it would take.  Also, while pecans are fantastic with cinnamon buns, I think they need to go inside the rolls, not on top!

Below:  Rolls on their second rising.  Maybe I'll only make nine rolls next time...

Below:  Rolls, after baking.

 

I really like this cream cheese frosting I threw together.  I used a whole container of spreadable cream cheese (I didn't think I would use the whole container, and didn't want leftover non-spreadable cream cheese), maybe 2 teaspoons of cultured butter (mmmm!) and maybe half a cup of powdered sugar.  I didn't really measure these, I just added what I felt was needed until I was satisfied with the results.

The frosting is more tangy than sweet, which I really like!

 

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