May has been a tumultuous month for our poor fledgling garden. We've had snow, frost, and freezing rain in between bouts of sunny and warm weather. We've also had incursions from our hungry neighbourhood racoon. All in all, gardening really has been an adventure this month with both trial and error, success and failure.
Our cherry tree bloomed in early May and it was beautiful. It's now working on approximately a bazillion cherries. I'm making sure to water it every watering day, despite all the storms. Travis wants to buy a rubber snake to keep in the tree to keep away birds (thank you google) but we haven't gotten around to that yet.
We filled out our hanging shoe organizer garden with various herbs and flowers. The basil did not like the frost unfortunately, and we had to replace it later. Everything is really growing well now, and the herbs are large enough that I've been able to pick them as needed to cook with!
We decided to rip out the partially dead green shrub in the front and put in tulips, irises, and roses. Unfortunately, the first roses we put in were one of the failures and completely died. We replaced them with healthier, Ontario grown roses, and they are thriving now.
First attempt at roses. The tulips are in full bloom, the irises are just bulbs in the ground at this point.
Second try at roses, no flowers yet, but several flower buds are showing. Tulips have died down for the season and the irises are just peeking up out of the mulch.
In the back yard we planted tomatoes, onions, peas, beans, carrots, lettuce, broccoli, pumpkins, watermelons, and cantaloupe. And peppers of course. The peas have almost all been dug up by the racoon living next door, but everything else is doing well. Travis googled racoon control and decided to brew up a hot pepper concoction that we've been spraying on the garden, and I sprinkled cayenne pepper all over the garden beds. So far, we've only had one further incursion where the racoon dug up some of my watermelon plants.
Early May
End of May
Lettuce, Broccoli
Beans, Peas
Pumpkins, Pumpkins, Cantaloupe, Watermelon
Tomatoes, Green Onions, Red Onions, Sweet Onions
Our friendly hungry neighbourhood raccoon
We've completely overhauled the front yard as well. The backyard is essentially a utility garden. Useful, hopefully tasty, but not so pretty. I craved flowers! A different kind of payoff from the garden. This meshed well with Travis' desire to please gawd make the dandelions go away! We have a slight weed problem, where a larger percentage of our lawn was weed than was actual grass. Add that to the limitations on dandelion killing chemicals in Waterloo and we had a problem. Luckily, it's been solved in a way that we both love!
Our front yard, before we did anything to it:
Current photos of our new front yard:
My first rose! This is in the garden in the front yard, it's not a traditional rose bush but something called a "carpet rose". It's a shrub rose bush which currently has one flower and over twenty flower buds ready to bloom! I have two other shrub roses in the garden, one a pink variety and the other a cream – orange colour. I can't wait to see them flower!
We also put in a lilac tree beside the front porch, and a hydrangea in the very front yard closest to the road.
Lilac
Hydrangea and some annuals to fill in the space until the hydrangea grows out.
That's all our garden exploits for now. Hopefully June is kinder, weather-wise.
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