Rhubarb is up!

The rhubarb is up, beginning the push upward around May 5 for 2011. For comparison, previous years as follows:

2010: April 16
2009: April 25
2008: April 15

Definitely a late start this year.

Last fall I pulled out the low producing strawberries (originally transplanted from neighbour). The berries were very small (a few mm at most) and sparse. Today I transplanted some larger/higher producing strawberries from another neighbour. Nice rains this evening to help them establish. Now to figure out what all to plant this year...!

Rhubarb is Up!

I use the rhubarb as an informal gauge as to whether spring is progressing quickly, slowly, or average.

In previous years the rhubarb has started it's rebirth on April 15 (2008) and April 25 (2009). With only a three-year track record, it's hard to say if it's early or average timing, but most likely average since spring 2009 was generally on the late side.

It's located on the north facing side of the garage so somewhat less affected by early Chinooks (shaded soil there taking longer to warm up than soil in the sun). With today's high reaching around +18 C after a cold week, the temperature in combination with daylight hours seems to have convinced it to wake up.

Heat Wave

With south and west winds blowing all week, the leaves and flowers have come out in full force (+20 C highs, +10 C lows on average). The rain barrels have run dry. So this week required City water as backup for germinating seedlings sown directly in the garden. This is a new experiment with a lot more direct seeding this year than previous years. The heat may have scorched some, and the previous cold weather rotted others, as the germination in general is poor. Next year the plan is to start more inside and transplant as this has proven to be more successful for most plants.

Most of the Green Arrow Peas planted directly in the garden April 11 have not come up. This is not surprising as this was an early planting and warm weather was delayed this spring. They likely rotted before the soil warmed up enough. Three of the four Dwarf Green Curled Kale planted directly in the garden April 11 came up but one has been mowed down by some hungry critter (cabbage butterflies?). The other two are about 1 cm tall with some munching on those as well. Kale definitely seems to do better as a transplant (or perhaps planting directly in garden at a later date?).

The California Poppies (above) thrive in the warm weather.

Fordhook Giant Swiss Chard (above) planted May 2 makes progress, currently at the four-leaf stage. It has had the best germination of all seeds planted directly in the garden this year. Peas are seen behind the Swiss Chard in the photo.

Tomatoes up to about 5 cm diameter! This is the one plant that flowered inside from which the flowers were not plucked off.

Oregano transplanted this week from inside. Planted indoors March 7.

Strawberries growing strong, transplanted from neighbours patch May 2.

Raspberries transplanted from aunt & uncle's garden May 24 with Violet tagging along on the journey.

Cherry Belle Radish (above) planted directly in garden April 11. About 70% germination overall, 20% mowed down, 50% remaining. Sparse seed spacing so didn't need much thinning (but also some gaps in rows).

Rhubarb thrives in the warm weather with no care needed. Raspberry (bottom left of above photo) transplanted May 24 growing strong. Two of the five raspberry transplants are wilting, likely did not get enough of the roots.

Agroclimatology - Growing-Degree Days

Today brings rain and sleet, with temperatures hovering around +1 °C. Rhubarb and other plant growth will be more or less paused for today.

Minimum temperature for plant growth is generally between 0 to 10 °C, depending on the plant. Some examples of minimum threshold temperatures for growth of some plants and insects (from here) include:

• 2.2 Spinach
• 4.4 Lettuce
• 5.0 General plant growth
• 6.0 Cabbage maggot
• 7.0 Potatoes
• 7.0 Variegated cutworm
• 10.0 Corn and beans
• 10.0 Grasshoppers, corn borers
• 15.0 General insect development

The minimum threshold temperature is used as the base temperature to calculate Growing-Degree Days. The Middle Earth Garden has about 1200 to 1350 total degree days above 5°C based on data recorded from 1971 to 2000 (see map below).

If anyone has more information on Growing-Degree Days (GDD) or related topics please feel free to share. I'm trying to find a chart of GDD for different vegetables but as yet unable to find anything.
The Lovage (above) came up after I dug the entire garden lightly with a shovel. I didn't realize it was perennial. Now I know! It came up shifted over somewhat from its former resting place, fortunately surviving the shovel abuse. Apparently Lovage is a good companion plant to almost all plants and considered a "magic bullet" of companion planting.

The rain barrels were drained dry after a temporary heat wave last Saturday and Sunday (+20 °C), watering freshly planted seeds including bush beans and spinach. The heat wave was caused by the locally well known chinook wind or less locally but more internationally well known föhn/foehn wind to be more meteorologically correct.

Today this gardener has retreated inside while the rain barrels refresh ready for the next change of winds.

Rhubarb is up!

Quick report that the rhubarb is just starting to come up (i.e. a few mm so far), in spite of snow and - 8 C lows and +2 C highs the past few days! This is about 10 days later than it came up last year.

Another "first" report, a bee nearly nailed me in the head a few days ago during the chinook (+15 C), but since then I have not seen any more. Must have been an early scout, who told the others to hold off, not worth getting out of bed yet.

April Update

Spring is late, as we all know. My garden journal from last year records the rhubarb coming up by April 15. No sign of it yet this year. I'm guessing it may not come up until the end of April or early May. Last weekend was nice and warm, so I planted (outside in the garden) some Green Arrow Peas, Dwarf Green Curled Kale, and Cherry Belle Radish. Hopefully they'll come up sometime before July! With the cool spring there is risk they may rot before coming up, but I couldn't resist the urge to give them a chance to try. My seed stock has grown too big anyway, so may as well use them up.

Below is an update on the indoor plants:

Prairie Pride Tomatoes & Southport White Globe Onions, early April.

"Salad Bowl" Lettuce, slowing down but still growing.

Plumeria showing some growth at top. It really perked up when I put it outside in the sun last weekend.


Tomatoes & Onions, mid-April. I'm thinking I may have to transplant the tomatoes to 4L pails before transplanting outside!


Oregano (planted around February, I think). Growing slow and steady.


Southport White Globe Onions. Flimsy but alive. Not sure if I should eventually harvest them or transplant outside. We'll see if they can wait that long.


Cilantro at flowering stage (planted end of December '08). I'll harvest the seeds (Coriander), dry them and grind them for the spice rack along with the plant leaves that remain. They seem to dry well in a paper bag in the cupboard (out of the light).

Early July 2008

The June rainy season winds down and with more sun the plants begin to grow noticeably more. All have been well taken care of while on vacation by neighbours and friends.

Kale, broccoli, cauliflower, volunteer sunflowers from birdseed (not sure what kind yet. Any guesses?).


Norland Potatoes.


Volunteer sunflowers in compost pile.

Tomatoes, peas, carrots, swiss chard.

Rhubard showing some hail damage. Several hail storms with pea-sized hail this year, but most plants survived and recovered. Also purple beans (Royal Burgundy) around rhubard, snow peas and broccoli.

Spring is sprung - May

Broccoli, Cauliflower, Peas, Swiss Chard, Carrots, Radishes

Plant's eye view (L to R: Peas, swiss chard, carrots)

Rhubarb, broccoli

Mystery compost plants (squash??)

2007 in Review - July

The following posts are a true "blog" in the sense that they are a "web-log" of the past year of gardening (i.e. electronic garden journal), mostly for my personal reference since I forget easily what we planted in previous years and for any others who may be interested. 2007 was our second year at the house, we didn't take many photos in 2006 since we didn't have much garden space at that time.

Spaghetti Squash (Cucurbita pepo) which grew out of the compost from seeds of the discarded innards of a Spaghetti Squash which we bought from Co-op that we ate during winter (ate the squash, composted the innards, not vice versa). The squash's parent was grown in Mexico, so we were surprised to see it grow here! The flowers made great salad or stir fry additions. For the latter you can batter and fry. It did grow some squash, though they were mostly small and did not ripen completely before the first major frosts at the end of August and early September, but we still ate them anyway. In the end we harvested more flowers than squash! The flowers kept popping up every couple of days all summer.

Smooth Brome (Bromus ramosus ssp. racemosus) in the back alley. We are thinking to try planting some raspberries here.

Unknown Mystery Flower that came with the property. Any guesses?

Potatoes (store-bought from Co-op), we didn't eat them in time so into the garden they went. A struggling paper birch (Betula papyrifera) behind dying a slow death due to my destruction of it's roots in the above garden expansion.


Mystery flowers, peppers, and spaghetti squash attacking the baby stroller.


Spinach (left), rhubarb and snow peas climbing in the back.


New garden expansion, ready for next year.

Front flower bed with several donations from family.

Left to right:

"Silver King Sage" or Artemesia ludoviciana

Common Yarrow or Achillea millefolium (native to Alberta)
"The Pearl" or Achillea ptarmica (aka Sneezewort)

The Purple one is "Clustered Bellflower" or Calmpanula glomerata

I'd like to plant more plants native to the Alberta prairies, so far only Common Yarrow is native, though even that is likely a hybrid subspecies derivation from the actual native Yarrow. For now we are planting veggies in the back and flowers and shrubs in the front.