The challenges of 2011.

We have been experiencing some great growing conditions and some not so great issues this growing season.  The pea harvest has been fantastic, along with the Saskatoon berries, raspberries and onions.  Disappointed in the bean production, not as plentiful as in past years.  The tomatoes look good so far, but we are experiencing problems with early blight.  It looks like we may lose our entire crop of  Zinnias, due to the blight.  The sunflower leaves are showing signs of it as well, but I think all should be fine with the flowers.  The sweet peas are growing with great vigor along with the Dahlia's. We also have a larger population of aphids this year than any other year previous and a much smaller population of lady bugs.  In fact, I have not seen a lady bug for a least three weeks now.
We will be attending the Saskatoon Farmer's market this weekend with our vegetables, flowers and plants.  The special of the week is a succulent called Large Red Carpet Stonecrop (Crassula radicans) priced at 3.00, regular 5.00 in a 3" pot.  This is a succulent plant similar to the jade family.  Likes the summer sunshine but needs to be brought indoors in the fall before frost.

Large Red Carpet Stonecrop

 The vegetables available this week are, potatoes, beets, green onions, & carrots along with raspberries.  The flowers are plentiful and vibrant.  Sweet peas, lilies, monskhood, calendula, cosmos, sea holly, dahlia, zinnia's and more.

Happy Mother's day.

Things are really starting to pick up around here.  All the perennials are starting to send out shoots, the birds are busy going about their mating rituals.  The weather is warming nicely and we had a little bit of rain last night and this morning.  We had a few spots in some of the gardens where the soil had warmed considerably, so we planted radish, onions, potatoes, beets, kohlrabi and lettuce.  The rain will aid them along in germination as long as it warms back up again tomorrow.

The greenhouses are bursting.  The tomatoes and peppers were transplanted a few days ago and we will start on the flowers next week.  The perennials have been moved outdoors to the cold frames to make room for the tomatoes.  They are all adjusting to the sunshine and cooler evening temperatures.
We are back to the Saskatoon Farmer's Market this weekend, Sat May 7th in our permanent location for the summer season.  This weekend we will have a very large selection of Hypertufa planters potted with succulents for Mother's Day gift giving.  We will also be offering our Pick a Pot, Pick a Plant, whereby you pick out an empty hypertufa of your choice, in size and shape and the plants you would like to plant in the planter and we pot them up for you while you shop at the market.  This way you can create something unique to your specific needs.
We will also have a large selection of perennials available.  Some of the plants we will have are a Rhubarb plant called Canada Red, a new variety of Daylily - Lavender Blue Baby, Echium amoenum - Red Feathers, Iris Germanica - Avalon Sunset, Brunnera Mac. - Jack Frost, Campunala Glom Freya, Asclepias Tuberosa - Butterfly flower, Ligularia Przewalski and Sedum Caut. Lidacense.
We will feature two of the new perennials in this post, the Echium and the Iris.
Iris Germanica Avalon Sunset is a bearded iris with bright eye catching vibrant orange flowers with tangerine beards.  They have strong stems, and bloom mid-late season.  Prefer full sun, good for cutflowers and attract hummingbirds.  Plants prefer slightly alkaline soil.  Hardy to zone 3-9.  

Fully open.

They are almost completely open in the greenhouse.

The other perennial  is Echium amoenum - Red Feathers.  Red Feather forms very low growing mounds of narrow dark green foliage, feathery flowering spikes arising in spring with a multitude of russet-red florets.  They bloom for long periods of time and if deadheaded will rebloom and can be cut for vases.  Very drought tolerant once established and grows well in poorer soils.  Prefers full sun with a well draining soil, excellent addition to the rock garden.  Hardy to zone 3-9.

Starting to show colour on the flower spikes.

Butterfly Flower.

We will continue writing plant profiles of the plants we will have available to purchase in May. Today we are profiling "Asclepias tuberosa". A prized perennial hardy to Zone 3-9 with vibrant orange flowers which are long lasting, blooming early to mid summer. Does best in full sun, growing from 1-3 feet. Prefers drier and well drained soil and is a magnet for butterflies. The seed pods that develop can be dried and used in floral arrangements. They should be picked and dried while still green. Very late to come up in Spring, and the plants once established, do not like to be transplanted and should be allowed to naturalize.
This plant is the primary food source of the adult and juvenile Monarch butterfly, and is often included in butterfly gardens.
During our travels this winter we visited an area in California called Pismo Beach along the central coast, where thousands of Monarch butterflies spend their winters among the eucalyptus trees. We have included a couple of photos. The first photo shows them hanging with their wings folded, like clusters of grapes.

Bell's of Ireland, Frosted Explosion and Buplerum.

The plant profiles I am writing about today are all superb cut flowers and grow extremely well in our climate with very little care. They are all a lime green colour and used as accent flowers in arrangements. All very easy to grow in all types of soil and weather conditions.

The first one is the Bell's of Ireland or Molucella Laevis.
These are interesting plants with spikes of green bell shaped bracts, which produce a small white flower in each bract. The bract is the focal point in this plant, the flower is very inconspicuous.
It can be started from seed in the greenhouse as a bedding plant or seeded directly into the soil. Plant in full sun for best results. I have had very good luck with seeding it in the fall. Once planted allow it to self seed and you will not have to plant it again. You can move the seedlings around as long as you dig up the seedling with lots of soil around it's roots. It grows to about 2' tall and a spread of about 2' as well. The cut flowers will last about 2 weeks and will continue growing after cutting. The plant can also be dried for fall arrangements.









Buplerum or B. rotundifolium



Trendy lime-green leaves with contrasting yellow flower bracts. Plant seeds directly in fall or early Spring. Will self seed itself once established. Can grow to about 2.5', and does best in full sun. Add extra nitrogen to increase height. Flowers will last for about 1-2 weeks after being cut.

Frosted Explosion, Panuicum or P. elegans Panic Grass
Green seed heads open all around to form an airy inverted cone with red tips, like fireworks. They later mature to bronze-red. Seeds must be started in February or March and planted out in Spring once the chance of frost is over. They reach heights of 24-28" with a spread of 18". The require full sun and perform better if cut on a regular basis. Once cut they last about 1 week and add a nice touch to flower arrangements. This plant was very popular at the fresh flower sales at the Farmer's Market. We will have bedding plants available in May at the Saskatoon Farmers Market.

Tomato harvest.

Today we included a picture of the tomato harvest. As you can see the tomato's liked the moisture as they outperformed last year's harvest. We will have Roma and Beefsteak tomatoes available for sale for the next few weeks.

Yesterday we dug all the potatoes, picked all the gourdes, pumpkins, squash and corn, and harvested all the decorative wheat. We will have to hang the wheat in the greenhouse to ripen as it just didn't want to ripen in the field. It sounds like tonight we will get a pretty good frost, so I am a bit sad, but yet a bit relieved as well. No more flowers to cut. It really was a fantastic year with the amount of rain we had. Our water tanks are all full and have been that way throughout the summer. Did not need to use any of the collected water. We will have to pump the water out of the tanks before it starts getting really cold.

The picture to the right is one of the gardens.
The castor beans enclosed an area where we had planted crocosmia, statice, scabiosa, cosmos, dahlia's, lilies and sunflowers. The garden reaches all the way as far as you can see green. This garden has all the perennials as well as lots of different annuals.
We are taking this weekend off and will not be attending the Saskatoon Farmer's Market. Will be back to the market Sat Sep 25.

Brrrrrrrr feels like you know what.....

The plants are enduring the cold and wet temperatures the last few days. It doesn't seem to have an effect on the Dahlia's. They are producing lots of flowers right now and the colours are so intense and vibrant.

We have been harvesting vegetables for the past week and not nearly finished. We have the onions drying in the greenhouse, which seems to be the only place that is dry right now and the tomatoes we picked are ripening on sheets of plywood in our garage and quonset.

We have noticed in this cold and wet weather the bees are finding refuge tucked under flower petals. They do not move around at all when the weather is cold.

There have been a couple of articles written about Mistik Acres in the last couple of weeks. One was written as a vendor profile on the Saskatoon Farmers Market Newsletter by Penny McKinlay. You can subscribe to the newsletter through the market website http://www.saskatoonfarmersmarket.com/ or request a down loadable version at sfmnews@sasktel.net.

Another article was written on Penny McKinlay's blog at

http://wanderlustandwords.blogspot.com

The pictures we have posted today were taken by our daughter Mandy whom is a professional photographer. Her blog is http://www.mandyphotography.blogspot.com/ and her website http://www.memoriesbymandy.ca/.

Tiger Swallowtail.

The tiger Swallowtail butterfly is busy gathering nectar from the lilacs. They always arrive when the lilacs are in bloom. The picture is a male swallowtail, whereas the female looks totally different. We cannot say that we have ever seen the female swallowtail.
We had a very busy week weeding and mulching with old straw bales and grass clippings. We have probably completed half of the gardens and will continue next week. We completed the transplanting yesterday afternoon, just before the rain came. Any ground that is not planted at this point will be seeded with buckwheat next week as a green manure crop.
The peonies are the queen of the garden right now. My goodness we have never seen them so tall and so full of buds. We cut them in the 'marshmallow stage' and store them in the cooler out of water. When we want them to open we give them a fresh cut and put them into warm water and they keep for a week.
We will have fresh lettuce, onions, and mint this week for market along with the perennials, succulents and hypertufa's.