Garden 2026 Update #2 Fruit Trees, Spring Projects & Painting the Garden

My latest garden update for 2026 here in zone 6a in southwestern Ontario Canada.

Year #3 with blossoms but no fruit visible at all for Harry, my Italian Plum Tree. 

Maybe next year is the year everyone's hoping for!

The Honey Crisp apple blossoms look promising. 

I did a pretty hard prune last season with all fruit trees and berry bushes 

so we'll just have to wait & see how well they bounce back this year. 

 Potted Bleeding Hearts at the back garden pond. 

Beautiful pansies that self-seeded and survived the harsh Southern Ontario winter. 

Beautiful Forget Me Nots are all over my yard. In Pink, blue and white. 

Lovely spring strawberry blossoms throughout the strawberry beds. 

Felix & Oscar, the Odd Musical Tin Rooster Duo standing guard over Victoria, the rhubarb that over-wintered in the massive compost bin after I pulled her and tossed her out. Victoria has been re-homed back into the garden between grape vines, and next to the strawberries. 

I've finally repainted my DIY raised metal bed (it's 2 window wells I bought on FB marketplace years ago) with the same paint I re-painted the garden cottage. I think it's called Misty Green. Somehow, the camera at this angle picks up some sort of muted yellow? 😄 In any case, it's a fresh new upgrade from the battleship gray the metal bed used to be. 

This might be the worst "before/after" image ever 😂 but it's only because the camera really didn't capture the HUGE difference in color. On the left the metal bed is classic gray. On the right, it's a soft green.  In real life, it's a 10 million percent improvement in how the garden looks. Also, the bright green and purple pots seen here have been part of a project to "Paint the Garden", to beautify the space, and add a wonderful pop of color to every area of the growing spaces. 

We inherited my father in law's park bench after he passed away in 2020, and it's been in need of some real TLC for a long time. That happened recently, with a quick pressure wash.  

Thanks for stopping by.  I hope you've enjoyed what you've read here, and if you have any thoughts or questions please feel welcome to leave a comment. 😊

Garden 2025 Update #5: Pictorial Garden Tour and a Triple Garden Mystery!

Welcome to my fun pictorial garden tour. 🌿I hope this blesses, inspires and encourages you in some wonderful way. 😊

The best of the garden from April 14th through May 20th.  This is spring in southern Ontario, zone 6a: 

Both of these guys think they're my garden assistants. 

Noobies on the left, and Ed on the right.

Both of them follow me around while I work in the garden.  😍

Early spring solar lighting accents in the very empty garden. 

Ed in complete control of the garlic/pepper bed. 

Hardneck garlic on the edge of the pepper bed. 

Mama Robin moved 3 of these eggs and left the fourth one. 😢

While I began the hardening off process for my tomatoes and peppers, my foyer almost looked like walking into an indoor nursery. 😄

Plsease allow me to introduce you to Thinking Harry. My youngest daughter found him and immediately decided he needed a home in our garden. Harry will live in the blackberry bed for now.

The lovely bloom of the Italian Prune tree.  💖

Beautiful welded dragonflies by my youngest in her last year of high school shop class. 💖

 

Three different colors of Forget Me Nots, all in one lovely bunch. These volunteer all over my back garden just about everywhere you look. 💖

Mr. Possum tried sneaking out early but I saw him & he slowly waddled back under the deck.  

My first strawberry bloom 

Seeing all the new growth on the grapevines just makes me so happy 😍

The chamomile I winter sowed and it's doing just fantastic. 

I find these little metallic stars in random places in my yard. Some gold, some silver. It's wild!

The view from the lawn swing. I love my tiny little garden. 

First sauce tomato of 2025

All the peppers are doing fantastic

The view from the deck May 16th

Help me solve a TRIPLE garden mystery 🌿🔎

What kind of bug is this on the peppermint?

Likewise... what kind of bug is this, on another peppermint plant?

What kind of plant is this? This is a volunteer & I've never seen it before. 

Thanks for stopping by.  I hope you're encouraged by what you've read here, and if you have any thoughts or suggestions please feel welcome to leave a comment. 😊

Garden 2025 Update #4: Oh Hello, Fake Spring

Right on cue for "Fake Spring" the weather here runs the gamut from frozen wasteland to mild & sunny and then back again... then it starts all over again for the next 6 weeks or so. 😁 This is our normal. 

Thankfully, Fake Spring includes a few days here and there to really spend a good part of the day working outside to get the garden ready so I've been taking advantage of it as much as possible! Here's the run down of how it's looking this first week of April:

OUTSIDE update: Showing beautiful signs of life so far this spring is my garlic, lemon balm, rhubarb, strawberries & tons of new of elderberry buds on my two bushes.  

My last surviving apple tree (Honey) and prune tree (Harry) both got a wee wine goblet shaped prune just to remove any inward or crossing branches & to give the new growth this year plenty of room for proper growth & air circulation. 

Also, yes, I've named my fruit trees. 🍎 It made more sense a few years ago when I had many fruit trees but it was a fun habit that just stuck.  I hope to have many more fruit trees in the future so I'll just keep naming them. My Italian Prune tree is named after my grandfather Harry, because he had one he planted in his back garden that we all enjoyed for many, many years. 

My last surviving apple tree is Honey, just because it's a Honey Crisp apple. Honey produced quite well last year but Harry hasn't yet, so I'm hoping this is a good year for them both. I'm very much looking forward to sweet, deep purple Italian prunes this year.  

INDOOR seedling update: onions, peppers, tomatoes and ground cherries. This is my 2nd year of attempting ground cherry seedlings indoors and sadly my 2nd year of 100% failure. 

My onions, peppers and tomatoes have done above and beyond my expectations.  Ground cherries were sadly a 100% germination fail so... I won't be attempting them indoors again but I will attempt an outdoor sow this spring and hope for the best! 

One new seedling this year that's really made an impression is the sturdiness of the stalks of the Tomato plant Tiny Tim.  I'm already very impressed with how well it's doing. Instead of being thin and leggy (the usual process for me with indoor seedlings) this one is far more thick and stout. I grow all my cherry tomatoes in 10-12" pots on the deck, so I'll be eager to see how it does up-planted come time to move it outside. 

Speaking of up-planting, I've already had to do that with one Roma tomato plant and have at least two more that will require it before they're ready to be planted outside. The growing conditions in my laundry room-turned-grow room are so good, my seedlings just tend to grow like mad. Not a problem I'm complaining about at all. I'm incredibly thankful for it and keep trying to plan my seedling starts around it. 

WINTER SOWING UPDATE:  a process that was brand new to me this year. I'm not sure how I'd never heard about it, but once I did I knew it was something I needed to at least try, for my very short growing season. 

I sowed Purple Coneflower (Echinacea), Chamomile, Milkweed, Sunflowers & Yarrow back in January and by the end of the first week of  April what's germinated and come up is Sunflower, Chamomile and a wee bit of Yarrow from last fall's saved seed.  None of the purple coneflower or milkweed. I'm not clear on why that didn't work out, so I'll just be buying some plants this year from my local nursery to make up for it and get planted in my wee garden for returning attractions year after year. 😍 

I've discovered I didn't create nearly enough holes for rain/snow to get in and/or enough holes for drainage in each container. But that aside, there are Sunflowers, Yarrow and Chamomile so I'm calling it a win, just for those! I'll fine tune all the water intake holes and water drainage holes and try this again next year for sure! This is really a wonderful type of "hands off" sowing, since the seeds just know when it's time to germinate and come forward. 

RAISED BED update:  I knew it would happen sooner or later but the first 8'x4' raised bed I ever built 3 years ago, is starting to fall apart at one of the joints. I used what I could at the time and that was untreated lumber so I'm calling it a win that it lasted 3 growing seasons before any issues came to light. I've patched the damaged area and will still use it this year but will hope to replace this bed at the end of the growing season, Lord willing. 😊

I avoided "treated lumber" on both of my current 4'x8' beds, mostly due to outdated advice at the time. I've since done some research this MicroPro Sienna treated lumber appears to be rated for safe garden beds. So I'll be using this for 2 of my 3 new raised beds for 2025.  

I've already bought some untreated lumber, so that will be my new strawberry bed for a few years, before I have to eventually replace that with the same treated lumber I'll be using for my other beds.

Thanks for stopping by.  I hope you're encouraged by what you've read here, and if you have any thoughts or suggestions please feel welcome to leave a comment. 😊

Garden 2024 Update #7

It's been rainy and windy and just overall ugly weather the last few weeks.  So much so that sadly I've lost half of my pickling cucumbers to swampy, wet soil.  I'm not clear on what's happened but the spot I've successfully grown cucumbers in for years now, has turnd into literal swampland with about an inch of standing water, when I dig down 6 inches or so. 

I've replaced the ones I've lost and planted them into 5 gallon grow bags, so we'll see how my cucumber harvest pans out this year. Garlic dills, sweet relish and bread and butter pickles are a must around here, so hopefully I can harvest enough for those 3 types.  

Some current pics of the garden:

Garlic scapes ready for harvesting, drying, and turning into garlic powder

Cherry Tomatoes

Sweet Red Roasting Peppers

The new meets the old green bean vines.  

A new variety for me this year sent to me by my sister, and they're called Scarlet Runner beans. 

Poor germination rate, and out of only 12 vines, only half have survived.  

Of those that have survived, they're doing fantastic!    

Not a view I share often, but after dark, my garden looks quite magical. 

I have a somewhat weird fascination with outdoor accent lighting 😊 

so solar lights are the way to go, if you only have one exterior outlet. 

Dutch Clover filling in nicely around all the rubber pavers.

Last year I had a grand total of 2 Honey Crisp apples on my new tree.  

This year I have a grand total of 6, so things are looking up, for sure! 

As always, I hope you're blessed and encouraged to start your own back yard food forest! 

Please feel welcome to leave a comment with any gardening questions you might have.