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:

Neighbourly

Our lovely neighbour Carmen not only gifted us with a sturdy trellis to use for the squash, but later this evening we had a knock at our door... It was Carmen returning with a few gifts from her garden.

Full sized chives with flower buds in a bread bag.

A grocery bag of rhubarb.

I love this neighbourhood.

Patchwork Garden

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Okay I admit this looks a bit off, but hear me out.

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John took all these pretty pictures today and I just had to use them to show you how the garden's growing.

Warm & Wet

There was a thunderstorm last night. Filled the rain barrel with overflow so everything should start sprouting if this weekend is as warm as they say.

Kinda cloudy and drizly today.

Behind the Broccoli, the peas are doing well.

The trellis mesh will have to go on the bars this weekend so the peas have something to climb.

I am hoping this is kale. Won't know for sure til it's bigger.

These are parsnips or carrots.

These are the baby salad greens,

and these are the chives, finally sprouted.

What's started in your garden?

Damned Cold Night

It dropped below zero last night and I'm happy to say the plants are still in good spirits. :)

The oldest broccoli is looking awesome.

The others are still puny but not wilted or frost-nipped.

The parsley's not growing quickly but it'still looks healthy.

Getting into the Swing of Spring

I got plenty of weeds pulled this weekend and a bunch more seeds started. (see calendar for details)

Tree sprouts from a neighbor's box elder.

Don't know what these are but I didn't plant them.

Spring Has Sprung (pic-splosion)

Neighbor's Crocuses

Someone's Daffodils

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.

Bulbs Front and Center

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

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.

First Planting of the Season

First seeds of the season planted and in the windowsill.

For info on what's being planted when, check out the handy-dandy planner I've set up here.

The trays and vermiculite are from Ontario Growers Supply. The potting soil I mixed with the vermiculite was from an old planter that's been sitting in our carport all fall/winter. (Don't worry, no car exhaust to be absorbed.) I mixed the vermiculite with the old soil about 50/50 to get a nice light seed starting medium... and noticed something:

Seed mix compared to back yard dirt.

Our back yard is going to need a lot more help than I thought. That is one of the buckets I had used to sprout the dollarstore seeds. No wonder the poor things never got established. We won't be fixing it yet because the back yard still looks like this:

Free firewood anyone?

My main thoughts are to box off the beds and dig in topsoil, manure, and vermiculite to give the garden a fighting chance. That may be too expensive and we'll wind up going the topsoil & manure only route with no bed edging. I wouldn't have thought covering the ground with plastic for a few years would result in such anemic dirt... but here's the proof. We won't have our own compost to add til Autumn 2013 so this is going to be interesting.

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.

Sprout pics

Hairy roots. Dunno what it is yet.

Tiny still but things are sprouting!

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. :)

Things Are Growing!

Remember how just yesterday I said I hoped the garlic was growing roots? Well...

The Garlic is Levitating

Well, for lack of a better term. What would you call garlic rising out of it's bed?

I knew I should have had it exorcised first.

I'm gonna get some more soil and top it off so the poor cloves don't catch cold... but I hope this means they're growing roots. :)

My Empire of Dirt Begins!

Without proper seed starting medium (or seeds for that mater) I still wanted to plant SOMETHING... but what could I do that wouldn't get dug under when we set up the beds in the spring... then I thought GARLIC!

There's cloves of garlic in there waiting to sprout, I swear it.

So the idea is I'll get them to sprout then move them out to the front garden(where we're gonna do flowers & herbs anyway) to winter in the ground so they can grow early and well next spring.

Do any of you over-winter anything?

Seeds and Transplants

My shoulder's acting up again so I woke to ow-ow-ow-ow-ow at 6:30am. Figured since I'm up with Advil in my belly and Arnica jell on my shoulder, I've got the time to post.

Here's the list of plants we're planning to have:

Front garden weeded

Before (roses trimmed back, no weeding done)