What's under your hat?

Yesterday I'm walking between our greenhouses (water water water) and some bug flies into my glasses, with a thump that makes me think whatever it was must have been pretty big. About 10 minutes later I either I look up, or take off my hat, and you can see from the photo what had taken a ride under the brim of my hat, just a hair's breath from my forehead. To give you an idea of it's size, the thread lines of my brim are a 1/4 inch apart, making this fellow about 1.5 inches long! Yikes! At least he was a good sport and stayed on my hat long enough to get his picture taken!

My entomological sources tell me:
"It is definitely a Buprestid Beetle - Metallic wood boring beetle. 
Which species I am not sure although from the look and size  it could be
a Flat-headed Pine Heartwood Borer (_Chalcophora virginiensis)_ which is
one of the biggest at 25-30mm."

The first red strawberry

This should have been posted three days ago, forgive me, it's either do a blog entry or water our flowers.

This is the first ripe strawberry of the year, the variety is 'Pikan'.
Pikan is an ornamental strawberry, grown in our greenhouse, and it's the only strawberry I know which has pink flowers. It's a great trailing plant for mixed containers -trails lots, has a nice colour bloom, the foliage is a beautiful deep shiny green, and you get a little treat every few days all summer long! Yummy.

The first field berries will be ripe soon, btw

Greenhouse Visitors

This morning during my daily tour of inspection, I discovered a swallowtail butterfly on the geraniums. Luck was with me, for I had my camera, and was able get this picture. He (or she?) was almost upside down, so this shot is of the underbelly. Obviously she had no experience as a model, or maybe she was camera shy.

Does anyone know exactly what type of swallowtail this is? I got out our butterfly book and tried to identify it, but failed miserably.

Smooch

The sun came out today for about twenty minutes, which was just enough time to snap a picture of this new gazania (gazania blooms close at night, and when it's cloudy). This is 'Big Kiss Yellow Flame' one of two new gazanias for 2010, the other is 'Big Kiss White Flame'. The 'Big Kiss' series is slightly bigger than the regular 'Kiss' gazanias which we have grown for many years. Gazanias have a mounded habit (10 - 12" round), and are great for that hot dry spot in your garden. They look great, we think it's neat that they open and close, the only drawback to them is that unless it is sunny, you can't see them! Click on the image for a great looking full sized pic.

Just add sugar

In spite of the stinking cold weather of recent days, we are now harvesting our first field crop of the season. Just look at those glorious red stalks of rhubarb, makes your mouth water doesn't it! I must confess, rhubarb is not my favourite _______, hmmm, it must be a vegetable I suppose, definitely not a fruit, although it is best eaten as a fruit crisp....actually, I think you could argue that rhubarb is a herb! Why do I say this? Hang onto your seat belts, this blog entry is about to change into a philosophical question about the difference between a herb and a vegetable. Go ahead check out your dictionaries and Wikipaedia, but I think a herb is something you add in small quantities to your dish for flavour, and a vegetable is the non-seed or non-fruit part of a plant, and you can eat it on it's own. I don't think you can eat rhubarb on it's own. I think Rhubarb is a herb, that you add in small quantities to sugar!  
Asparagus (definitely a veggie) in a few days, if we ever get some heat!

In the Newspaper

Kathy Renwald wrote a great article today about our farm, specifically about Rafael Gonzalez, one of our Mexican workers. Everyone is talking about it, and it's well worth reading. Kathy writes a weekly column in the Hamilton Spectator, and you'll find the article on Rafael in the Thursday May 6th edition (GO section, pg 10), or you can download the PDF version here: Field of Dreams. Thanks Kathy!

Bring your own boxes

Is it safe to plant now? It sure felt like summer yesterday and again today, and with the trees in full bloom, the freshly mowed lawn, it even smells like summer. But what about that old rule of thumb: wait until the May 24th weekend before it is safe to plant? That's three weeks away! Hmmm. Now I'm not going to stick my head out and say it is safe to plant, but the 14 day 'forecast' looks mighty good :-)

• And we're off...
  It's official, we're open for another season! We're now opening at 9:00 in the morning (actually 8:53, when Alexander gets on the school bus). We're open every day, even Mondays until the second Monday in August (guess what day I'm looking forward to). Wendy and I were wondering if there would be any interest in us staying open late for flower sales. We were thinking just a couple of Friday evenings. Let us know, and if there is sufficient interest we can stay open, and as I said to Wendy, "I'm bribable!"
  
  
• And the winner is... Remember our speculations in the last newsletter concerning the first flower to sell out? Would it be Pretty Much Picasso? Calliope Dark Red? Or my guess of Raspberry Blast? Well, it was a geranium called 'Rocky Mountain Orange'. Not my pick, in fact none of us picked it to be the first one to go. Lots of Raspberry Blast Supertunias still available, btw.
  
  
• Farmers Market... Just a quick reminder, Wed May 5th is the first day of the Burlington Mall Farmers' Market. Gillian and Mike will have our truck filled to bursting with our flowers, so please drop by and say hello. Be gentle with Mike, he's still recovering from his first year at U of T.
  
  
• Flower Trays  In our last newsletter I talked about the surprisingly high cost of empty flower trays, and you had a chance to vote on our blog poll: Should we hide the cost of our flower trays, or price them separately? The results were overwhelming, you want the trays priced separately. So, the price for our 4½" pots (geraniums and everything else) will be $38/doz.
  I have good news and bad news. The good news: this price includes $4.37 in taxes. The bad news: this price does not include the price of our trays (they're $2.00 each). I have more good news: you don't have to buy our trays, in fact we don't want you to. Please bring your own boxes, bins, etc, or skip the boxes altogether, and gently lay your plants down in your car. Extra boxes? Leave them here, they'll get used!
  

It has been a busy couple of weeks in the greenhouses, and I can't believe I actually found the time to write this, but this newsletter is done! Hope to see you up at our greenhouses soon, they are bursting with colour, and the selection is outstanding (except for Rocky Mountain Orange). You'll probably find me at the end of a hose.

Bye for now,
David


P.S. The photo, taken this afternoon, features our 12" mixed hanging baskets: Bordeaux Supertunias, Gulliver White Bacopa, and Deep Purple Lanai Verbena. A beautiful combo we call 'Grape Expectations'.

Seascape Strawberries

We're just too busy in the greenhouses these days to do much blogging, but here's an entry on a new strawberry for us. We'll be growing them in the field this year (and we have a few extras left over that we've potted up to sell with our flowers).

Ahhh, strawberries all summer long! You can have your cake and eat it too with these Seascape berries. Introduced in 1988, this UC Davis berry has Californian size and appearance, with Ontario's sweet delicious flavour. Once it starts bearing fruit this July, it will keep producing until it gets cool in autumn.

Garden Performance: Great for containers or in the ground. Clipping off the first set of blooms, and any runners, will promote a more vigorous plant, and higher (but later) yield.