new season

This is one of my early attempts at gardening, vegetable gardening in particular. The photo was taken in London, Ontario in 1973. That's a cold frame in the foreground on the right. That's where I started some plants early. Others, such as tomato and pepper plants, were started indoors and planted out after the danger of frost was more or less gone. The latter part of May or early June was usual for that.

I got the weeds pulled early to give the plants unhindered growth potential. In July 1972 I had left the garden to be tended by my father. When I returned home in early September, I couldn't see the vegetable plants for all the weeds. I tried to pull the weeds but when I was finished, I realized it was a lost cause that year. My father was working full-time and then tending to his own garden (flowers), so with everything else time was an issue. Such is life!

Usually I was able to get a good number of carrots, green beans and onions out of the garden along with tomatoes and some peppers. Later in the 1970s I added some alpine flowers in the one corner of the plot on the same side as the cold frame but the opposite corner to attract more bees for pollination purposes.

By the 1980s I also added some grapevines. Earlier I had also added a Northern Spy apple tree in the one corner plus had started several currant bushes from cuttings since I couldn't move the mature bushes to another location. The apple tree bore some excellent fruit until the next door neighbour cut down his pear tree with which the tree had cross-pollinated. I tried a number of options as you can see.

Now living in an apartment I'm restricted to a balcony where I have some potted plants and plan to add more. I'll let you know more about my efforts soon! Currently its raining and earlier we had a bit of thunder and lightning. Have a good night guys! - V