By Star Staff

Copyright thestar

We asked gardeners in Ontario about the best thing they grew this year. Here’s what they said.

I wanted to write about my sweetpeas

I wanted to write about my sweetpeas, grown from seed and started indoors in February, planted to climb up a section of fence and present a wall of colour and scent — a scent so strong that it has the power of music to knock human thought off its axis.

But the incessant heat and drought this summer scorched the sweetpeas into silence.

There is a lot of magical thinking in my gardening efforts, a lot of hopeful planting. And often when the dream abuts the reality of our increasingly hot world, the dream falters, and what does thrive are the plants that can meet the overheated conditions. This year what did well were the more Mediterranean plants — lavender, rosemary, a scrawny olive tree that has grown six inches since June.

I can take no pride in any of that because it feels almost accidental. But one place where the dream met reality and both succeeded was in the row of grasses planted next to the dying sweetpeas.

My back garden is very small, more of a courtyard than a garden, so I try and create some height to make it feel bigger. The drought tolerant reed grasses were meant to form a wall of swaying green in the breeze, giving the illusion of both space and wildness. The grasses have now grown taller than the fence itself, their tops turning from green to bronze as autumn approaches, bending and rising together in the light evening air, more beautiful than anything I could have imagined.

-Helen Humphreys

My prize-winning squash

Here’s to Mother Hubbard!

Thanks to the torrid weather, it was a great year for squash. Lots of big, beautiful butternuts (my fave kind) showed off their shapely curves in my vegetable plot.

But the real star of the show was a monster called Hubbard. People passing by on the street kept spotting this extraordinary-looking squash and asking, awe in their voices: “What the heck is THAT?”

What indeed. Hubbard squash (Curcurbita maxima) has been around for a very long time — since the early 1800s — and is believed to have originated in the Caribbean or South America. It travelled northwards via “a very worthy lady” in Ohio (probably an adventurous gardener) called Elizabeth Hubbard, who gave the variety its name. Its chief virtue is that it keeps for months. But not many people grow this solid performer now because the warty skin is difficult to peel and the flesh is not particularly flavourful. Also, Hubbards can grow so hard and humungous, you need a machete to chop them up.

Mother Hubbard sure does raise eyebrows, though. My specimen (planted just for fun because I like to grow something different every year) was the biggest, most eye-catching squash I’ve ever grown. Quite a conversation piece, in fact.

And it’s just won first prize at the Fergus Fall Fair.

Scallions from seed

In November, there were still a few scallions left over in my back deck planter box from the previous season. They’d grown into two-foot tall spikes, topped with a faded allium flower. I snipped the huge, seed-filled blossom and put it in a small paper lunch bag to dry out. Every once in a while I’d shake the bag, encouraging the seeds to fall out.

There were dozens of them.

Come April, I sowed some of them directly into the soil, supplemented with sheep poop compost and triple mix. In a few weeks, little spikes of green pushed up through the soil.

We spent the summer using those scallions — there’s nothing as delightful as opening the back door and picking something fresh to eat, snipping parsley and basil and rosemary and, yes, thyme, along with callaloo and leaf lettuce.

But the scallions were special: I’d harvested the seeds, dried them, planted them, nurtured them and eaten them, the entire cycle of a gardener’s life.

In August, my salads became more robust as the tomatoes started to ripen — cherry tomatoes and “Big Beef” varieties; there’s nothing more divine than the still-warm fruit mixed with olive oil, onion and fresh basil.

Turns out, the raccoons like them, too. The other day, I went outside to pick a few of the scallions for dinner; right on top was a big plop of poop, speckled with partially digested tomatoes.

Ah well. There’s always next year.

-Deborah Dundas

I filled my condo balcony with colour

I couldn’t tell you what’s growing on my balcony. The flowers were chosen based largely on vibes. But that is exactly why I love them and why they give me so much joy. I’m typically a vegetable man. I love tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and herbs, even if they don’t always love me back. But after last summerv—va terrible summer — I made the calculated decision to take a year off. I had just upgraded from a small, shady apartment balcony to a sunny condo terrace and thought I knew what to expect. A lot more watering. Maybe some more wind. What I didn’t expect were pests and pestilence to follow me eight stories up: cucumber beetles and kale-munching aphids and weird tomato fungi galore.

So this year I bought flowers, a reluctant, inedible retreat. But — surprise! — I’ve actually enjoyed the change of pace. I water them every few days, and mostly leave them alone. And in return, I get the most beautiful bouquets of magenta and yellow, the aptly-named million bells; spiky green sentinels, the tropical cordyline, its leaves like waxy swords; and my favourite, the bee blossom, with its tiny, delicate chest-high flowers that grow on slender stems. When viewed from the sidewalk, in just the right light, they glow a dazzling pink. Maybe I’m not the vegetable man I thought I was.

-Matthew Braga