Mad Dogs and English [Wo]men

Megan, Ann and I arrived at the old house Saturday at noon. 

We were greeted by the first bloom of the season.

We got to work right away. It took a lot of effort but we weeded the garden leaving only some garlic, onions, flowers, and what I'm pretty sure is zucchini but might be cucumber. John showed up shortly thereafter and cut the small patch of grass out back with the push mower that decided to work now that there wasn't a front lawn to cut. We threw out all the things that needed throwing out, and cleaned the whole house.

Results of the tidied-up back yard.

Final Harvest

I got sun sick and had to take some Tylenol and nap with an ice cold beanbag to get rid of the headache that was bad enough to make me queezy... but I'm glad it's done.

Getting up to Date

So last you heard, it was March and I was setting up for a work from home job. It looked like my long stint of under-employment was finally coming to an end. Unfortunately it turned out that "work as many hours as you want" REALLY meant "grab whatever hours you can AFTER the top performers get first pick of their preferred shifts, then sit by the computer every minute of every day in case someone decides to drop and hour or two so you can grab it before the other new people". 

After a week of that I decided to continue the active job hunting. After a few weeks of doing neither very well I told them that I had to quit to focus on finding stable employment. Then there were months of unemployment, and it was summer before I found my current job through a friend of a friend. Happily, I've been content here ever since. :)

During these past few years I've been living with my long-term girlfriend Megan and our housemate John. This is the first house I've lived in for more than a year, in the past 10 years. I love the feeling of stability, but this house just isn't suited to what I want out of my life. I want a farm. I want land I can call my own. I want to stop paying other peoples mortgages in the form of rent. I want to live somewhere I can plant a peach tree and enjoy the fruits of that labour.(pun intended)

It's kind of hard to describe what I want and what I plan, so I'm going to do the next post as a Q&A to get it all sorted out.

The cats are happy and, other than Willow needing some dental work this past winter, both are in good health.

A New Year; A New Beginging

Soooo... It's been almost a year.

It's been so long in fact that I considered creating a new blog for this new chapter of my life. I've decided against that idea because I don't want the past efforts lost to time. I want to bring with me the memories and lessons of these past few years.

That being said, there is so much we have to catch up on before I can even start telling you about now, let alone the future. But there's time for that. I'm not leaving the city for at least two more years so we have all the time we need.

For now however, it's past 1 am and I should be asleep. Goodnight.

Front Garden

Remember how I said the last one was a rough draft... well I meant it.

Here's the latest version and I think this is the one that will stick.

 Re-do of front yard plan with list of herbs for spiral and raspberries along fence.

Here's what that means:

This is Awesome!

Page views from this past month or so. Wow, you guys rock! 

Now leave some comments already.   :)

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..

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.

Updates from December / January

• Started a paper route with the intention of earning extra money during this slow period at work.
• The compost pile actually got warm enough one day to melt the snow off it(kinda impressive for something that size). We're working on building it properly so when spring comes there will be a good pile ready for the worms and microbes to do their stuff.
• I got to visit with my mom & lil sis for a week and get mom's opinion on what to plant in the canning bed(since she's getting half). Turns out peas don't can well so there was some rearranging done.
• The sprouts in the containers are gone They didn't wilt or wither away... they just disappeared. I'm blaming the cats.
• The big tree branch that was blocking a lot of sun and tugging on the phone lines has been professionally removed. We now have a whole lot of wood for summer fires that needs to be cleared off the garden before any amendments or planting can be done.
• I quit the paper route because it was way too much work for the money offered.
• The seeds were bought with one minor change. We hadn't actually tried Swiss chard yet so we swapped it out for jalapeno peppers with the agreement that we'd get some chard soon and if it was liked, order the seeds later.
• We're changing our eating habits to focus more on real food like meat, veg, and homemade baking instead of prepackaged convenience "food"s

Buying Seeds This Weekend

Found a great supplier at WestCoastSeeds.com

Here's what our cart looks like (click to embigen):

I've been tweaking it for weeks and I think it's just right now. I've given you the list in this way so you can look up the codes to see the varieties selected (and so I can do the same next year if I need to).

Keep in mind each packet contains at least 20 seeds, some(like the lettuces) contain hundreds. These are all the smallest packets available there, but the seeds will last us years (even if we don't put away any from our produce).

Also, we're starting an herb garden from scratch so about $20 in seed is going just to that and we'll be buying some plants from a nursery if we can't find someone willing to share their Thyme (and Rosemary). Garlic and the sweetpotato slips will be started here from farmers market stock, and we may choose to buy onion sets for this year as we grow our own for the next.


Garden layout still hasn't been scanned so I don't have a digital copy yet but you'll see it soon.

Made Some Changes; Added Some Pages

I'm still tweaking the layout of this blog in order to get it to look just right. :) I probably will be for a while yet.

I've also added a couple more info pages to the tabs along the top of the page. Check them out and let me know what you think.

As Tigger says, TTFN.

See All the Green?

Yay! Except... no, not really.

All those tall grass looking things are rye. Apparently when I scooped dirt from the garden I brought in some rye seeds too. The teeny-tiny sprouts are what I planted, and the one lettuce has yet to sprout at all. The tall "sprout-looking" sprouts(aka "hairy roots") I assume are the radishes because they're the fastest growing thing I planted.

The poor mint hasn't shown any spouts either (I planted a few seeds dead center). Looks like maybe they were too old. I've snipped at the soil every sprout that I'm over 95% sure is rye. In a  few days we'll see how the rest are doing.

Early to Bed and Early to Rise.

Found a calendar calculator on-line and I'm using it to calculate when to start seeds and set out transplants based on our average frost date (May 1).

It's looking like a longer season then I originally thought. First harvest of broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage should be ready on or around May 29th.  Wow! I know folks who don't even bother turning over their soil til the May-two-four weekend.

**happy dance**

Edging Complete!

Beautiful border around the garden. 

 There's a weird little corner here, but I 

finished what I started two weeks ago.

Figure I'll mark off all the beds tomorrow, put down walk ways, and get some of the garlic in for an early start.

Sprout pics

Hairy roots. Dunno what it is yet.

Tiny still but things are sprouting!

Wishin' and hopin' and thinkin' and prayin', plannin' and dreaming

Planning what goes where is harder then I thought... and apparently we have a TON of room.

Hopefully this is true and I'll have a chance to finish the edging before it rains again.

Small Packages

Soon to be a spearmint plant.

Buckets have been seeded. Now we wait.

The coffee tub may get a makeover with labels to cover the branding but it will be the permanent indoor home of the Spearmint plant. Mints are awesome, but unfortunately opportunistic. One mint plant can take over your garden without strict containment.

Buckets A, B, and C (labeled on the handle) contain the following:
A- a central bunch of loose leaf lettuce, surrounded by green onions
B- a central head of boston type lettuce, surrounded by radishes and narrow type carrots(will probably add more radishes when the carrots are pulled)
C- a central bunch of loose leaf lettuce, surrounded by thick type carrots

The buckets will probably get a some mulch and a makeover like the coffee tub. I'm certain the neighbours might still be wondering why we have litter tubs in the window but at least they won't be ugly litter tubs. :)

Form or Function?

Good morning all!

Got busy messing with the blog design last night and ran out of time to post the pics I took. I have to go to bed at 10 because I'm getting up at 5 for work; I can't focus otherwise.

As you can see now, you can still look up past posts by date, but now you can also view posts by topic. I got it working fairly quickly(thank you Blogger) but it took forever to get it to look anything like the other menu (thanks a lot Blogger).

Anyway, I promised you pics!

DollarStore seeds leftover from 2009.

Buckets of dirt with some gravel in the bottom.

The plan is to put one and two together, put them in the window and see if anything happens.  Wish me luck?

The Plan Looked Wrong, So I Fixed It

Final draft... I hope.

Now there's easier access to the compost, #8 has got itself vertical space and the yard should look nicer without paths that just go straight through the garden and smack into the fence. Also, when checking out the shadows in the yard yesterday John and I determined it's Bed #7, not #9 that should be the "hot house" bed. #9 is actually shaded by the houses most of the day this late in the year which means it will be in early spring too. #7 is the first to get sun and keeps it til late.

Also, some of the measurements on the west side were off. That's also been fixed.

Ran Out of Light, and Now Rain.

Yesterday I woke to find:

Friday night we had visitors.

And the neighbours had visitors of the human kind.

I reburied the scraps. Everything they've pulled out has been from when I cleaned the slimy stuff out of the fridge and I haven't seen any bite marks. I'm hoping that finding inedible stuff is teaching the critters to leave the pile be... if not it's a squirrel buffet and as long as they don't spread it too far I don't care. :)