What a difference.....a year makes

We've clearly had an early spring this year, but after an unseasonably warm blast in March, things did cool off during most of April.  I decided to take a look back at photos from this time last year, to see what a difference a year makes.  Check out the results below:

May 8, 2011: Not much in bloom yet.  Daffodils and forget-me-knots haven't opened up yet.

May 6, 2012: Quite a bit more growth evident on the boxwoods, and daffodils and forget-me-knots are in full force. 

 I did finally also get two of the espalier apple trees that I started off last year in the ground at last.  I have set some metal t-bar tree stakes in cement which is curing as we speak, and I'll run wires between these to support the trees as they are trained.

Listening to extracts from Semele on 96.3 FM....here's a soundbite for you - Where'er you walk two ways (and they couldn't be more different!).   Rich, resonant and stately, by Ms. Kathleen Ferrier, or bright, youthful and sweet, by Ms. Julie Andrews!

Espalier update

It's been two months since I obtained three heritage apple varieties, with the intent of training them as espaliers.  I planted them up in some large pots, cut them back to about 15 inches high, after having determined that the cut would leave 3 appropriately oriented buds to form the branches that will become the skeleton of my espaliers.  Things have generally gone well so far.  Some of my buds were a little sluggish to get going at the beginning, but they did all eventually sprout as desired.  There have been some minor infestations, which I managed to control with a bit of insecticidal soap, and now I have lots of ladybird larvae around the pots, so they should do a good job of keeping things clean.  The new branches are now about 8-12 inches long, so I have made a training framework in each pot from bamboo canes, and tied the main leaders in.  The side branches are being adjusted to control the growth of the tips to try to keep each side even.  Allowing the branch to grow in a more upright position accelerates growth, and pulling them down to a more horizontal position retards growth.  By playing with this balance I should be able to keep them more or less even on each side.  They still look a bit puny and pathetic, but I'm excited to see things moving in the right direction.

Three branches only, oriented like a cross, waiting to be tied in to a frame

A little caterpillar chomped through the growing tip of this branch.  Thankfully another new bud is coming in just close to the growing tip, so I think all will be well.

Here's one of the trees tied to the frame.  Still a little immature, but I guess it's technically an espalier now.

The training begins

Yesterday's trip to Siloam Orchards was very successful, and I was able to leave with three distinct variety, all with quite different characteristics.

Duchess of Oldenburg - www.orangepippintrees.com

My first selection, the Duchess of Oldenburg, is an old Russian variety, originating in the 18th Century, and the Google tells me it was imported to Virginia in the 1830s.  The Duchess is apparently a bit of an old tart, intended for cooking to mellow her acid temperament, and I chose her because as a child, we always had specific cooking apples for use in sauce or pies, and "cookers" are available in the UK as a standard supermarket variety, a distinction I've never observed in Canada, where apples for sale seem always intended to eat raw by first intent.

Pomme Gris - from The Apple Lover's Cookbook by Amy Traverso

My second selection is Pomme Gris, which has been around in some form since the 16th century, and sounds like a very classic russet, and I'm looking forward to that nutty undertone and slightly different texture that russets display, in a few years.

Tolman Sweet - photo Russell Stafford

My third and final selection is Tolman Sweet, which seems to have a rather unknown history, but has been documented since at least 1822, and seems to make an excellent baked apple, as well as being good for pickling and canning, which might be a boon for those who know my appetite for chutney!




The trees were at exactly the stage needed, one year old whips, grafted on to appropriate rootstock, provided as bare root specimens ready for immediate planting.  Since I have yet to build the framework on which I'll be training the espaliers, I've potted them up for now, and have made a first pruning cut to a height of 18 inches.  In a few days, this should induce buds to start to break and I'll select the 6 topmost buds to keep and rub off all others.  Of these, I'll select the most vertical to form "the leader" which will be the main upright of the tree, and the two most suitable for training as the horizontal branches of my first tier, after which I'll remove any remaining sprouts.  The process of creating the framework of a 4 or 5 tier will take 4 or 5 years to complete, so plenty of patience will be required along the way.

This is what my starting point looks like:

And here is the kind of form I hope to achieve over the course of a few years:

image: www.colonialsense.com

When a whim becomes a reality (or the quest for maidens with whips in hand)

It has been several weeks since I wrote a post on this blog, much to my chagrin.  But an extended respiratory infection, business travel and other sundry activities and commitments somehow got in the way and conspired to keep me from getting started.  There is also the fact that we've had a cool start to the spring, and given that my primary purpose for this blog was to document activities in my garden to help me remember from year to year what is and is not working, there has been little activity as yet to sink my teeth into.  Having said that, at least the big early project I planned for this year (removal of the increasingly domineering locust tree from the front yard) has been accomplished, opening up the garden to much more light and sunshine, and in turn opening up some new possibilities for re-organizing and replanting what had increasingly become a sun-starved spot in recent years.  In my last post, I mused about replacing that sprawling arboreal mass with a more dimensionally appropriate espalier apple, providing much needed form to my tiny garden, along with the functionality of fruit production.  That little whim has become a veritable bee in my bonnet, and much Googling has ensued, to learn more about the techniques involved, and the history and aesthetics of this centuries-old form.  The Googling, as well as several trips all over Toronto to find suitable starting materials (one year old maidens), has revealed that the generalist fruit tree purchasing public has little interest in such early saplings (who wants to wait for years for a fruit?), or even for more interesting varieties.  The common or garden suppliers seem stuck with little more than Macintosh Red and Golden Delicious, or else nifty, space efficient, multigrafted specimens with 5 different varieties on a single plant.  Highly productive, and an excellent idea for a small space like mine, but unsuitable for re-engineering into the highly trained forms I have in mind.

Apple Journal Photo Gallery - The Smokehouse

Finally, I discovered Siloam Orchards, just north of Toronto, near Uxbridge.  They have scores of heritage and rare apples and other fruit trees available, and available as "whips", which means 1 year old, non-branched trees, which are the perfect starting material for my project.  A quick perusal of their listings reveals that they have beautiful red-fleshed apples, reinettes and pippins. There are ones which taste like pineapples or are reminiscent of bananas,  coddlings, russets of all sorts, and dozens of varieties that were popular at the time of Queen Victoria, and with names to match (the Blenheim Orange, the Smokehouse, or the Knobbed Russet).  After realizing that it's almost May 1st, and that my initial and critical first pruning steps should take place before the buds burst, I made a hasty call and discussed my plans with the kindly folks at Siloam, who have promised to set aside 5 or 6 recommended varieties for me to choose from. I'm heading up there today, and we're promised sunshine and 15 degree temperatures, so it should be a pleasant drive.  I may do a bit of sightseeing on the way, never having been to Uxbridge, and I've scoped out a couple of restaurants for lunch, so it may turn into a very pleasant day in the country, to kick-off what will undoubtedly be a longer term garden project.  Wish me luck!

On something of a setback...

With spring officially having arrived this week, and seemingly all other gardeners in the Blogosphere enjoying rising temperatures, rising sap and thrilling signs of sprouts, buds and even flowers, abounding all around, here on the shores of Lake Ontario, we've had a slight setback today.  Despite our deceptively southerly latitude (Toronto is on a parallel with Cannes), this is the scene that we were greeted with this morning.

Several inches of snow and the forecast through the weekend indicates that we won't see daytime highs rise above zero until well through next week.  Not an entirely untypical climatic event for late March, but highly regrettable seeing as I had only just watched the last of the big winter snowpile in the back yard disappearing last weekend.  Still, on the bright side, and on the condition that my crocuses haven't turned to mush under all this, it does allow just a little more time for planning some new projects for the 2011 growing season in my tiny yard.

A few weeks back, I voraciously watched all six episodes of Carol Klein's "Life in a Cottage Garden", and her infectious enthusiasm, wild hairdo and even wilder antics with the pruning shears (I was quite sure she was going to tumble to her death while clambering a rickety ladder to the top of a sizeable apple tree to remove an overgrown tangle of clematis), provided the impetus to take charge of a situation that has been hampering my gardening efforts for the last few years.

In the front yard, there's a sulking teenager of a locust tree.  It's always the last tree anywhere in the city to get out of bed in the spring and actually put forth it's buds.  When they do finally surface, the leaves are quickly pock marked by dense aphid populations, and incredible mealy bug orgies, which turn  branches and trunk alike a dusty white, much to the delight of passing sparrows, who proceed to gorge themselves silly.


 When the sparrows finish their work, the first flush of growth, tattered and torn from the feeding frenzy, finally can take it no longer, and they give up the good fight and drop off, around mid-July.  Meanwhile, the shade loving perennials (that were planted in said shade) start to complain at the lack thereof.  The ensuing midsummer Toronto combination of high heat and humidity, with little rainfall to moisten the clay, by now cracking and dehydrated, that passes as soil in my garden conspires to further stress the tender ferny fronds, and what hasn't wilted, will then succumb to a bout of powdery mildew.  Around this point of the summer, I will generally vow to chop the tree up for firewood at the earliest opportunity.  However, to add insult to injury, teenage infestations having passed, the locust tree will get a second wind by early August, and burst forth with lush and lovely frondy leaves.  My frustrations will start to melt away, even if those few sun loving plants which were planted when the tree was much smaller and didn't cast quite so much shade, will start to stretch and strain themselves upwards in a futile effort to feel the warming rays of the sun on what have now turned to insipid, pale and unusually stunted flowers.  But the optimist in me will look forward fondly to the promise of the intensely golden autumn tints normally associated with locust trees, when the days start to shorten again, and a nip is in the air.  But lo, a subtle shift from green to dull green is all that is achieved before the tree is denuded in the first storm of the autumn, somewhere about Halloween. And the cycle of frustration and resentment continues.

But that was before Carol's sage words.  She showed little mercy when she had determined that a "plant's time had come" and would as quickly haul away the unwanted carcass as knit a pair of socks at the guillotine.  Spurred on by her decisiveness, and fearful of the fact that the locust still has years of growth ahead and is already endangering the house and the electrical wires above it, I have finally made the call to an arborist, received the quote, and signed the final death warrant.

Now it's time to start thinking about the possibilities once all that lovely space and sunshine returns.....I have in mind a pair of espalier apples, which would add some wonderful architectural interest next time we have a spring snow storm, don't you think?

Something to plan this spring over hot chocolate in front of a roaring log fire.