Birches and our garden

Birches are turning green. The ultimate sign of spring for me! Some are already very green, other types of birches are only getting there, some aren't even remotely green yet. The birches in our neighbor's yard are of the first type, those two latter ones can be found in our yard. 

In our yard, the flowers continue to bloom, tulips are the size of tea cups, and the apple trees are pushing out green and the surprise-berry-bushes have leaves. I found a ladybug snuggled in the nook of a twig on the other tree. A couple of pheasants came for a visit.

Our little starts of a garden have started to sprout, at least some of the stuff we planted. Broccoli, sunflowers, radishes, a cucumber or two, marigolds, chives at least. The nights have still been too cold for basil, parsley, dill, peppers et al.

We live inside the city limits of Helsinki, but we really don't live IN the CITY. I'm loving it!

Wood anemonies

Today was an absolutely lovely warm sunny day and we were out most of the day, washing cars, cooking, and sowing a whole lot of different seeds in small pots. We now have basil, oregano, dill, parsley, radishes, aubergines, peppers, cucumbers, zucchinis, coriander, sun flowers, marigolds and lavender in the pots. At least. I might have frogotten something.

Our yard has all sorts of flowers blooming now. I was totally surprised when I noticed the patch of wood anemonies on our yard. They are way ahead of their normal schedule! 

Doing some planting

Inspired and encouraged by the early spring, we started planting our herb garden last week. We planted som dill, basil, courgette and cucumber seeds. Also, we got some thyme, mint, rosemary and chives in pots and transferred them into bigger pots and placed them all in out mud room, our cold foyer.

Then we got hit by winter again. The pots with seeds are still in the mud room, but the potted plants we needed to take inside. So now our shower room is hosting our herbs until spring comes back. I guess this is just how it always goes in Finland. The dance of prince winter and the spring fairies. We've even got songs about it.

Zucchini flowers

Koriander, spinach, dill etc. have leaves turning red, like autumn foliage. Even zucchinis, that usually are rather good growers even in our colder climate, have really not been growing their leaves. A couple of them have started pushing out flowers, though. Salad is doing good, even now.

 

Garden work

Finally we got around to do some garden work. We planted basil, zucchini, aubergines, dill, parsley, beans, rucola, salad and spinach seeds in boxes. A whole lot of herbs, tomato and chili plants etc. are on the shopping list, probably getting some plants instead of seeds again later on. And we were thinking of getting some flower seeds this year too.

 

 

Chives are already growing nicely by the sunny wall, but I cleaned the pot and added some new seeds there today. I also cleaned and turned the dirt in the bean pots, and planted those beans where they were growing last summer too. Otherwise the sunny wall is still all old pots waiting to be cleaned out and re-planted. And the bunnies are waiting for some of those flower seeds ;)

 

Spring onions will be ready for harvest here soon!

 

Winter came

The weather started freezing a bit over a week ago, during the weekend. When I went to the hospital last Wednesday morning, it was cold but there was no snow. Today, I came back home, and the snow had come while I'd been gone, and the weather had warmed a bit. Still below zero's but not -20C anymore, more like -6C or so. The rosemary and thyme on our porch still seem to be alive, though. The bonsai has dropped its leaves.

 

Oregano hung up to dry

Four bunches of oregano hung up to dry. What a nice smell they brought to our home!

 

Autumn yard

Different plants react to the cooling of the weather so differently. Our tomatoes died long ago, and the pepper plants have wilted recetly. The chilis are still going strong, though, and the bell peppers have started to change color, despite being soft and wrinkled, probably due to the frost.

 

Basil has wilted (ok, we have neglected the watering too, and it has been a rather dry autumn), but oregano is doing good. Probably finally this weekend we'll get around to drying it. Parsley has gone into a new growth spurt, alongside with the chives. Thyme and rosemary are doing good too; actually, the rosemary never looked all summer long as good as it does now! Red salad has grown into 40-50 cm tall flowering salad towers.

 

The neighbors' cherry tree has become quite beautiful, with green, yellow and red leaves, all at the same time.

 

Garden in late August

Even though most days still are quite warm - after that autumn spell a week ago - the nights have turned quite cold. Cold enought to put the tomatoes into a non-productive safe-mode and most of the other plants into slower motion as well. There were still three cucumbers, fully grown, that I picked today, as well as a zucchini in the zucchini plant, which actually has still put out a couple new flowers!

But the tomatoes are not growing anymore, and not ripening anymore. So I picked the rest of the tomatoes to ripen in our house. Hopefully they do!

 

The bhut jolokia seems unweilding to the cool nights, is making new flowers and growing its purple chilis rapidly! Soon we can make some fiercely hot purple jolokia chili ;)

 

We pulled the rest of our red onions out of the ground; they didn't do quite as well as we had hoped, but definately we can use at least some of them, too.

 

We also trimmed the basil again, making another 1 liter batch of pesto out of it. There's still plenty left to grow, we'll see how well it does with the autumn coming on here. Oregano still awaits picking and drying.

 

Basil became pesto

I trimmed our basil "a bit" - ending up with 2,5 liters of basil leaves, which I then made into delicious pesto.

 

Going on in the garden

A lot of stuff going on. We hung the sugar peas on the wooden fence - hope their feelers find their way to the fence and grab on!

I hung a red christmas ball both on the big tomato and chili plants to keep the birda away, for they had been messing around in the plant boxes.

Oregano was transplanted in a bigger box and found its place between the basil boxes.

We got some bamboo poles and wire and built some supports for the beans that had started to fall over.

The eggplant and cherry tomatoes and other tomatoes are growing by the day. Cucumber plant has the first little starts of cucumbers now too!

That first zucchini flower is really big and growing right before our eyes. It more or less doubled its size only today! There's a whole lot of those zucchini flowers already, but that first one out is really showing the way for the others.

We also started today to build a drip irrigation system for our garden. Its somewhat complicated...

Things growing

Zucchini plants are getting bigger and bigger and have started yo grow zucchinis.

Spinach in the box is doing much better than that on the hill ever did (it started to groq flowers before there were reallyany usable leaves) and yesterday we made our first spinach salad out of our own box.

Beans and sugar peas are seemingly happy.

Basil is soon big enough to contribute to our meals.

The salad bed

The salad bed (with spring onions at the other end) started out with red clover and all sorts of other weeds taking over the whole area where we planted our rucola, salads and spring onions. While they were small, it was impossiböe to be weeding it, but a week ago I was able to do a major clean-up. The salads and onions loved that deed, and have been growing quite well since! Except for those gaps in the rows - don't know if it's been snails or birds or what, messin' up our salad bed.

 

Right side top and middle: a week ago before weeding, bottom: after. left: yesterday after second weeding

 

Rucola in a Pot

The rocket in the clay pot has sprouted nicely during these past rainy and only partly sunny days. No sign of parsley yet...

First eggplant and new herb pot

Our eggplant now has two flowers, the first one already producing fruit.

We got a new clay pot for herbs yesterday. There it sits, by our sunny wall, with some newly planted rocket and parsley seeds and transplanted oregano in it.

Our garden in early June

A heatwave has been caressing our garden these past days. Eggplant has its first flower, several tomatoes are growing, there's 14 chilis on the medina, and everything is growing right before our eyes.

Eggplant, tomatoes and the medina

Basil, oregano, spinach and dill

Zucchini, cucumber, peas and beans

Our bhut jolokia seems to be a bit tiny and is not growing taller all that fast, but it does have some flower buds already too!

Doin' some gardening

It was raining in the morning and it started raining again some time in the afternoon, but we got a good couple huors of garden work in in between. We transplanted our basils and zucchinis and green pepper, and planted some more dill and spinach - my husband finally revealed that the mystery crop there was spinach - and some beans and sweet peas.

Zucchinis with our onion bed in the background

Basil

The "mystery crop", turned out to be spinach

Herb garden is doing good

Our (herb) garden has got several additions in the past days: a pepper mint, a bhut (naga) jolokia, a patch of different salads and spring onions and garlic.

Greens are growing

It was another beautiful sunny spring day. Birds were chirping all day long, baby birds were learning to fly. Birches have tiny new leaves, grass is green. Our dill and chives are starting to sprout and salad is already growing happily.

Green on the trees

Today was so far the warmest day of this spring. I noticed small leaves starting to sprout in birches and other trees.

We planted some tomatoes, an eggplant and a medina chili plant. We also got some violets and marigilds for our patio.