tardis gardens in 2018

January is not good gardening time here in Edmonton, Alberta. Too cold and snowy outside, and too early to start up the grow op. So it's all seed catalogues and house plants for me. I've got one orchid in bloom, several more orchids and a kalanchoe that are getting ready to bloom, and I'm putting in seed orders.

So far, I've ordered or purchased locally:
Cucumber Bush Slicer
Cucumber Lemon
Lettuce Flashy Butter Gem
Marigold Orange Gem
Nasturtium Dwarf Jewel Mixed
Pepper, Hot Criolla Sella Hot
Pepper, Sweet Round of Hungary
Radish Rat-Tailed
Tomato Absinthe
Tomato Black Cherry
Tomato Black Prince
Tomato Cosmic Eclipse
Tomato Fuzzy Wuzzy
Tomato House Tomato
Tomato Igleheart Yellow Cherry
Tomato Lemon Ice Dwarf
Tomato Nyagous
Tomato Pine Fog
Tomato Pollock
Tomato Tasmanian Chocloate
Tomato Ukrainian Purple
Tomato Wapsipinicon Peach
Tomato Wentzell
Tomato Whippersnapper
Watermelon Cream of Saskatchewan
Zaatar Lebanese Zaatar

I'm a bit prone to ordering things because I like the name. Tomato 'Nyagous,' for example, sounds like something out of HP Lovecraft. It also sounds delicious, which is even more important :)

>1 tardis: Oh, my, this is my favorite sign that Spring may come. Everyone gets restless, and starts planning for better weather.

We're getting snow! It's beautiful, and the insulation it provides will help protect the perennials (although those may already be goners, due to previous extreme cold/low snow cover), not to mention the soil moisture in the spring. It is chilly, though. Here's a little house finch stoking up at my feeder:

>3 tardis: beautiful!

>1 tardis: catalogs are the best part of winter!

>3 tardis: nice photo. We get a lot of House finches at the feeders, they love those black oil sunflower seeds.

I have been mostly absent from this thread because I have been spending about 80% of my awake time gardening. My garden is on this year's Horticultural Society Garden Tour, which is happening tomorrow (Saturday) and Sunday.

And of course it's raining tonight so I can't finish off the last few things I wanted to do, which means I'll be getting up earlier than usual tomorrow to do it then. If it's dry enough. Probably these last few items are things that only I will care about, but I still want to do them :)

A few pictures for now - I'll try to post more later.

A detail of one of the front perennial beds.


Looking through the gate at the veg garden


Another view of the front garden. You can see how weedy the grass is, but I've decided not to care. Monocultures are bad, right?

>6 tardis: Who cares about stupid grass, anyway? The garden is absolutely lovely.

Those are lush beds for July; especially this year, which has been brutal. Your efforts show! So nice!

>6 tardis: I love your beds, and the basin atop the tree stump...is it attached?

>9 fuzzi: It is not attached, which I'm a bit uncomfortable about, since it is in the front yard. It's stone, and fairly heavy, but not impossible to take, and I've already lost another garden ornament :(

>10 tardis: superglue...

A friend of mine had a dry stacked wall (no mortar) built but way concerned about his 5 year old grandaughter grtting hurt. The contractor used gorilla glue! Not sure you can find it where you are. Just a suggestion.

A few pics from today. The garden is mostly ready for the winter - I have a few more minor jobs, but if it snowed tomorrow it would be okay.

Ivan's Beauty Russian Mountain Ash


My stone basin, now glued to the log it sits on.


The main veg garden, ready for winter except for the leeks, which were pathetic so I left them. Maybe by next year they'll be worth harvesting. Also the parsley is still there as it's still good.

>13 tardis: lovely photos.

We've not yet had our first frost, but I've already started getting things ready for winter. On Sunday afternoon I cleaned out the feral cats' shelters, putting lots of clean straw in the boxes and using last year's straw as mulch around a Gardenia.

I'll probably bring in my houseplants next week.

Yes, I too was struck by the beauty of those first two pictures. Nicely done!