First Seeds in the Garden

The lighter spots are vermiculite in the seed holes to maintain a nice moisture level.

It's still technically winter.

Getting Tested

The testing kit finally came in. It covers all the basics ten times for $25. (much cheaper than a lab)

I've been waiting for this kit to come in for 2 weeks now. (They had the $200 electronic testers but I'm not running a hydroponic grow-op here). Using this type of test is easy. You just mix dirt with water and the powder out of the matching little pill, give it a minute and check the colour. I used dirt that had not been mixed with compost to see what our baseline looks like. Our Potassium(K) is "sufficient" and our pH is about 7 (it's hard to tell with the greens so maybe 6.5 or 7.5 but either way we're good).

Unfortunately the Phosphate and Nitrogen were "deficient" and "depleted" respectively. The compost should correct this and I'll run another test with the mixed up soil/compost in the beds this weekend just to verify there's no more tweaking needed..

Miner Disturbance

Some critters decided to dig up whatever I planted. Well sucks to be them, nothing's planted yet. **insert evil laugh**

Weather Watch Wednesday

wunderground.com

Bulbs Front and Center

Seems the front garden's doing well with me ignoring it.

Happy Pi Day!

3.14159

Beds Ready, and I'm Ready for Bed

Dug in the alfalfa / rye and covered with compost. Squares will be marked and compost dug in when it's planting time.

Also did the seeds. Glad I did them first cause I'm wiped.

Crappy Weather

This is what thirty 28lb bags of composts looks like when piled in front of a Lada Niva

So now I'm the proud owner of over 800lbs of composted manure, shrimp shells and peat moss. At a rate of about 3 1/3 bags per 4X4 bed, we should get about 6" of compost mixed into the top 12" of dirt. This blend seemed ideal for our current situation seeing as peat moss that had not yet been composted (the common big bales turned in in the fall) would leach nitrogen away from the plants for a few months as it broke down.

I was going to start tonight but as you can see, it was raining. Tomorrow should be interesting as it should be warm enough, and dry enough to start mixing this stuff in... and I just remembered that I was going to do the seeds on Sundays... Too late. I'm going to bed. Five am comes WAY too early so they'll be planted tomorrow.

G-nite folks!

Geting Things Done?

This is how today feels.

I got to the garden center and bought thirty bags of peat/shrimp/manure compost (6th bag free so only paid for 25!) and it'll all be delivered Monday. I wanted it this weekend but I obviously wasn't proactive enough.

Had lunch out with Meg and John then came home with the intention of bundling sticks til dark and moving bedroom furniture to preferred arrangement after dark.... Got home and had a nap til 5pm instead. At that point I decided against bothering for the last hour of daylight and for doing it tomorrow.

I hope to one day change which graph represents me best.

Bundles of Fun

I was making bundles of sticks when the wind kicked it up a notch and snow started to blow in my eyes. That on top of oncoming night made me decide to call it a day.I managed to get six bundles done but there's still about 2/3 of the pile left... It's going to be a long weekend.

I'm really hoping the forecast is correct this time.

I've finally located a garden center that carries the amendments I want to buy (Canadian Tire thinks it's too early to bother with that stuff yet) and I'm going to go get them tomorrow. They don't have a website but the lady on the phone was super helpful in getting me pricing info. We're looking at $100-$150 worth of soil amendments, but we need it considering the current state of the dirt out back.

Procrastination and Progress

As  you can see from the Garden Planner page... I'm tending to drift. :)

The day's I've been planting the seeds were supposed to be exactly a week apart (every Tuesday) I just got this Tuesday's batch planted today (Friday). I think I'm going to start planting the Sunday before because I'm just to lazy after work.

Even though I've been a bit lax in my discipline, the sprouts seem to be doing mostly well.

The first Seedling pack is doing very well. (Broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower)

I've even up-potted some broccoli that were getting too big for those little slots.

In this pack left & center column parsley, right column top to bottom: lavender, echinacea, lavender. I think the top left and bottom right seeds rotted instead of sprouting. :(

And last but not least, This pack has a cabbage sprout and the four seeds from today.

Last weekend, John and I got the wood from the tree cutting out of the garden and all the small stuff cut to bundle length. We forgot to get twine so it's been sitting on the patio all week waiting to get bundled up.(Planning to get that done tomorrow)

From this...

To this!

The beds have been roughly marked out by the carpet paths we lay down last weekend. Each bed will get turned over, sifted and mixed with manure etc this weekend.

Since the ground never really had a chance to freeze deep this winter, the soil's been loose and dig-able every time the temps go up to 10°C so the high of 15° on Sunday should be perfect.