My northern city garden

[svalli]

I played first time with the slideshow feature of Photobucket.
If you click the picture you should see a slideshow of our new house and my city garden.

[Sherry_AK]

Very nice pictures. Your house and gardens are beautiful.

Sherry

[levad]

very nice!

are there many like it at your latitude? if i remember right you are over 60 degrees N...

dave

[akgardengirl]

I could live there! I like the style of your home--modern architecture with bricks. The tomatoes look the way I grow them here...in containers. I have some good cooler weather tomato seeds that you may want to try. PM me if interested.
Sue

[svalli]

Thank you all! The architecture of our house is not really typical in Finland. It was built 20 years ago and in my opinion it looks much better than the houses they build here now. We bought the house from the original owner who has lived only part time in the house during last ten years. His wife had passed away suddenly and after that he had not taken care of the house or the yard. The small yard is growing wild blueberries and lingon berries and there are many mature pines and spruces. We cut down most of the spruces and now we have one corner of the yard which has a lot of big rocks and tree stumps. We should get that area level, so we can build my greenhouse there. House was built on the bedrock, which is also exposed on the surface on couple of spots of the yard. The solid rock will create some challenges for gardening, but it is also a good spot to put potted plants on and there is less mowing. Because of all the evergreens the soil is quite acidic. I planted summer squashes in soil, which looked rich, but it is close to the spot where we cut down a big spruce. I noticed that the squashes do not grow at all. Finally two weeks ago I moved couple of them to a flower bench and they started growing. If the weather does not get cold too soon I may still get some squashes. I should have noticed already in July that there is something wrong, if even weeds do not grow in that spot. The yard will take a lot of work, but we will not rush with it. We need to have a good plan before we start hauling dirt and planting any perennial plants.

I do not know anyone else here who is growing tomatoes without a greenhouse. If I do not get ripe fruits before the frost hits, I may not do this in future; at least not so many and maybe some really early varieties. I just did not remember how the summers here on 63°N are.

[shelleybean]

Great slide show! Thanks for sharing with us!

[garnetmoth]

gorgeous house, awesome garden!

[Andrey_BY]

Great pictures! I think most of Russian tomato varieties bred in and for St. Peterburg climate will perform very good in Finland

And there is your Finnish sauna?