If your lettuces are starting or look like this picture they are bolting or going to seed. This means that time has come to remove them from the garden. If you try the lettuce your will notice at it has a bitter flavour, the season for lettuce is over! You have lots of other greens in your garden, you can make salads with kale, Swiss chard, beet greens.

With all this summer heat it is more important than ever to make sure that your are watering. You may have to water twice. The best way to know if your are watering sufficiently is by sticking your finger in the soil and making sure that it is nice and wet below the surface.

Keep an eye out for peas and beans. If is best to pick beans early and often. They are best eaten when they are young and tender. The more you harvest the more your vines will produce.

The cucumber beetle (left hand picture) have been spotted in the garden. Check your plants and destroy. You can also cover plant with a floating row to keep beetles out but make sure your have killed all beetles before covering them. Yellow sticky traps also work well on cucumber beetles.

The Japanese beetle is also out (right hand picture). This beetle has no predator and mutiplies quickly. The best way to remedy its presence in the garden, is by going out with a yogourt container with water and little bit of soap. Luckily this beetle is slow, just shake the branch over the bucket.

The tomatoes are growing. Make sure to wrap the tip of the tomato into the trellis every week. Watch my video to learn how. 

With sufficient water your garden will explode with this heat! Happy gardening!

What a beautiful time of year! Everything is growing well and the gardens are looking fantastic. It is very important to water and weed well at the beginning of the season so that your vegetables can grow well. Remember to weed your herb and edible flower garden bed. Weeding while weeds are small is much easier!

It’s already time to start harvesting! Harvest the leafy-greens, so lettuce, arugula, kale, chard and tatsoi by removing the large outer leaves and letting the small inner leaves grow. Do not remove more than 30% of the leaves from each plant. They’ll go to seed soon, so enjoy them while they’re still delicious. If your arugula has gone to seed, remove the entire flowering-stem to encourage other leaves to grow.

Going to seed is also called bolting! What is bolting? Bolting is when a tall spike starts to form at the centre of your lettuce, spinach, bok choy or tatsoi. Read more about bolting in this helpful article. 

Radishes and bok choy are ready, so remove the whole plant and enjoy! To harvest the basil, remove all the small sections at the top. See the video for more details!

If you have not yet remember to thin your carrots and beets. You must to do now. Learn more about how to thin. 

Your tomato-tops need to be attached to their trellis or stake every week. Gently weave the the end of your tomato into the trellis. It is also necessary to remove the suckers – vine which grows between the stem and the leaves so that the plant does not overflow everywhere on the garden!

This is the best time of year for salads! Don’t forget to sprinkle some of those edible flowers in your salad for a sprinkle of colour!

Now that the summer is in full swing, there are some pests showing up in the garden.

If you have lots of little holes in the leaves of your leaf-greens – those are flea beetles! If you look closely you will see the tiny black beetles in your plants. Leaf miners (video)are laying their eggs on the underside of your beet and Swiss chard and the larvae create burned-looking patches on your leaves. Those cute looking white butterflies hanging around the garden are Cabbage moths, and are laying eggs on the underside of kale, bok choy, broccoli and cabbage leaves.

Fortunately, treating all of these problems is fairly easy. A close inspection of each plant to remove the pests with a strong jet of water, and treatment with neem oil or black soap if the problem is more severe plus covering the affected crops with a floating row cover for the next few weeks. Your  presence in the garden is always your garden’s best protection.  Carefully inspect the underside of vulnerable plant leaves and scraping off the eggs, and remove any damaged leaves from the plant.

In the early season it is essential to weed and water daily! Once your plants are fully established, you won’t need to weed very much, but now while your vegetable seedlings are small it is super important! Water deeply, ideally first thing in the morning on days that it will not be raining. For a 30 square foot garden you should be watering about 20 minutes, and using a nozzle to on ‘shower’ setting.

If you have an early-spring planted garden, you can start harvesting! Remove larger outer leaves of leafy greens for a continual harvest and pull radishes after 25ish days! Investigate with your finger to see if roots are big enough to your liking. Remember that all of your plants need their space! If your beets or carrots are all in a clump you can gently transplant them as per this handy video.

For the gardeners that started their vegetable gardens super early, by planting cold hardy vegetables, you can now replant with the summer seedlings! The concept goes like this: You can plant cold-hardy veggies like leafy greens and root vegetables in early-May.

To maximize small spaces we have a special planting technique as illustrated in our handy video. Remove one out of the four leafy-greens and replace it by a pepper or eggplant. While the summer seedling is small, it can share the square with spring seedlings. Harvest a portion of the radishes to replace with cucumbers etc. Make sure to follow your plant and most importantly: Don’t leave those spring seedlings in the garden for more than a couple of weeks! You summer seedlings will need the complete square to grow properly!

Replanting in this way is optional! If you just planted your garden, don’t feel like you are missing out. We will be planting summer vegetables until the end of June, so late-planted spring gardens still have plenty of time to grow.

We’ve been planting leafy greens and other cold hardy vegetables for 3 weeks now in Montreal – and now the official planting weekend is here! It’s time to add your tomato, pepper and eggplant seedlings. Cucumbers and beans can be planted from seed. We usually want to wait for consistent night time temperatures of 10 degrees before planting cold-sensitive plants outside – and it looks like a low of 7 next Wednesday 🙁 We can get our missing 3 or 4 degrees by keeping the garden covered with a floating row cover or old sheet on those cold nights.

Waiting another week works too! Planting a vegetable garden in early-June still gives you plenty of time to harvest great veggies from your yard. For help planting your garden, check out our Help! (How to Garden) section of our website for how-to instructions or come to our Vegetable Gardening in the City workshop today at 11AM – only 10$!

Root vegetables need to be planted from seed directly in the garden. Radish seeds sprout in just a couple of days, so if you have an early-planted garden, you will need to thin your radishes soon. Carrots and beets take a bit more time to germinate, but will need thinning too. Each plant needs enough space to grow!

The weather at this time of year is very variable! You should keep your floating row cover on the garden for cool days, and cool nights (under 5 degrees). It is best to remove the cover for watering, and for hot sunny days. With the warm weather we’ve been having, make sure you keep on top of watering! Your seeds and seedlings need lots of water to grow.

Do you have a Japanese beetle or white grub problem? Nematodes are a great, organic preventative measure. These microscopic worms penetrate deep into the earth with a heavy watering and attack the white grubs before they become beetles. Order now for your spring treatment.

Starting your seedlings

Montreal has a short growing season, so you may want to start your seeds indoors. This also ensures good germination and can help protect your seeds from prey. Some vegetables, such as radishes, carrots, cucumbers, and squash, can be challenging to transplant, so it is important to know your vegetables – we suggest trying to seed start all your vegetables so that you can develop your techniques and see what works for you.

Read more about how to your seedlings.