Economy of rain-barrel

I've wondered about the economy of rain-barrel. Utility Kingston is selling a 200L rain-barrel for $30. However, the water-rate for Kingston is about $0.6546/m^3. So a simple math ($30/$.6546*5) shows that I need to fill up the rain-barrel about 230 times in order to recover the cost of the rain-barrel. It certainly doesn't rain 230 days in a year in Kingston. And I have to cut the downspout.

However, it is the right/green thing to do. I'll probably do it.

just my 2-cents.

Peony

Mom said that the flowers are Peony (芍药), which is different from 牡丹. Overnight we got a lot more flowers due to the warm weather. Amazing.

Flowers

The warm weather has triggered some blossom. Here is a picture of the flowers in my yard. Please let me know if you know the names of the flowers, I'd appreciate it.

Tomatoes and Pears

We built a small bamboo pergola for our opo gourd to climb now. With all our tomatoes, egg plants, and other vegetables, the vegetable bed looks packed and we don't have room for anything else. The list of tomatoes we are growing are:

1. New Big Dwarf: released in 1915 as a cross between Ponderosa and Dwarf Champion. Compact plant, large pink beefsteak with rugose leaves. 90-days,
2. Golden Dwarf Champion: compact plant with rugose leaves. Medium round butter-yellow fruit. 83 days.
3. Lime Green Salad: Beautiful compact plant. The fruit is bright green ripening to a yellow green. 58-85 days.
4. Black Zebra: Beautiful deep green and brown stripe. 1.5" fruit with complex sweet and smokey flavours. Indeterminate. 80-85 days.
5. Tigerella: Huge crops of red fruit with orange stripes. When under ripe, they are light green with dark geen stripe. Indeterminate. 55-75 days.
6. Japanese Trifele Black: blemish free and are not subject to cracking. One of the very darkest black tomato varieties available. Determinate. 80 days.
7. Black Pear: Grey brown fruit with brown shoulders. Very productive and full of flavour. Indeterminate. 75-82 day.
8. Yellow Pear: Bears high yields of yellow, pear-shaped 2" fruits all summer long. 75 days.

The combo pears bears 5 different kinds of fruits: Bosc pear, Comice pear, Seckel pear, Bartlett pear, Anjou pear. We haven't decided where to plant it yet.

We also laid in some bricks for our flower bed. Pictures will be available soon.

more tomatoes

Spent most of today doing garden-improvements. First, we bought 3 more varieties of tomato, making it a total of 8. I'll try to find description for each of them and post them on the web.

Second, we bought a "combo" pear tree from HomeDepot for $30. It is a pear tree with 5 different kinds of pear branches grafted onto 1 tree, so it will fruit 5 different kinds of pears. Too bad it may take several years for it to grow any pear, and we may not be in Kingston when it happens. Oh, and we already have argument about where we should plant the pear tree. I want it to be beside the vegetable bed (and behind the shed), and she wants it to be in the middle of the yard. Go figure.

Lastly, we bought more herbs: garlic chives (韭菜) and Chinese parsley (香菜).

I'll be spending tomorrow building a bamboo pergola for the opo gourd to grow on. Pictures will be uploaded when it is done.

my raised-bed vegetable garden

For the past several weeks I have been busy building a raised-bed vegetable garden. Yes, I feel old; when I was younger I thought only old people (i.e. my parent's generation) are interested in gardening. I guess I'm one of them now.

The dimension of the garden is 4'x8'x16". I was afraid that the 1" ceder board wouldn't hold the weight of the soil on the long side so we (Burton and I) put some reinforcements. The total costs for building it (hinges + ceder + soil + peat moss) was about CDN$200.

Currently we have 5 different varieties of tomatoes, 2 pots of opo gourd (瓠瓜), 4 pots of eggplants (茄子), 1 pot of chili pepper (辣椒), 4 pots of Thai Basil (九層塔), 1 pot of rosemary (迷迭香), some bokchoi (上海白菜), chives (蝦夷蔥), and green onions. We'll see how well it grows.