Happy Holidays

Best wishes to you and yours during these festive days and throughout the comming year.

Took Willow to the Vet Today

I've been neglecting my blog because of a few things, one of which being Willow was ill.(the other reasons include scheduling tree pruning, and getting ready for the holidays)

Willow's vet appointment was today and it turns out her on-again/off-again chronic goopy eye and cough were caused by herpes(the cat variety). So now she's got four different medications to help her get through this flare up and might have to go on a long-term preventative medication but is otherwise okay.

Immune booster, antibiotics, eye drops, and airway clearer.

I'm very relieved it's not something life-threatening, or even life-changing. Mixing some meds into her morning wet food is a pittance of change when you think of all the things that could have been wrong. Thanks for understanding and we should be back to our regular programming in a few days.

Saw This In A Window Today

Internet Explorer Hates Beauty

Just realised all my modifications look like crud on IE.

Use Firefox people. IE hates beauty.

/grump

Is it just me, or is this taking forever?

Tub A - Lettuce & Green Onion

Tub B - Lettuce, Radishes & Carrots

Tub C - Lettuce and Carrots

Mint. If you look REALLY close you can see tiny sprouts.

Leek. Growing new roots and more leaf.

Maybe it's just me but I kinda figured the sprouts would have stopped looking like sprouts and started looking like plants by now.

About the new addition, I was chopping some leeks to put in an omelet and I left a nice big chunk with the root end to see if I could sprout some new roots. Since the mint didn't seem to be sprouting I figured I'd just plant it in that tub... well now the mint's showing activity and I don't want to disturb it so... I need to find another tub I guess. :)

Silica, Seeds, and Snow

Ran a few errands yesterday; one of which was buying Silica Gel to dehumidify my seed tub.

Only $19.20 after tax at Michael's

When the blue bits go pink it's time to re-dry it.

Instead of making packets or jars, I dumped it all in the tub.

The cardboard box of seeds fits nicely on top.

This snow has stuck around a full 24 hrs... and there's an icicle on my window. I now have to admit it's winter.

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.

OMG YAY!

Omg I won! Thank you so very much!
I never win anything! This is so exciting!

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.

Local Weather Update

Some more snow this morning. It's been melting by afternoon.

River's going down(you can tell by the wet mark) but all this precipitation has it up over the graffiti.

Sprout pics

Hairy roots. Dunno what it is yet.

Tiny still but things are sprouting!

Natures a Fickle Lady

Left home for work this morning and found this. Hopes of edging the garden shattered.

The river's so high my favourite walking path is flooded so I had to go the long way around.

Of course, 2 1/2 hours later, walking home was another story.

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. :)

New look, same great taste

With the help of the lovely Megan and the lovely new computer Megan gave me for Christmas, I have prettied up the CSS of the blog a bit. There is much garden news to share but it's past my usual bedtime so it'll have to wait til tomorrow. 

Sweet dreams.

Pray I Don't Alter it Further

While deciding what plants go in which beds I realized I didn't have access to the east side of the east beds. My arms cannot comfortably stretch across four feet of garden to tend/harvest so I've altered the arrangement of the backyard beds.

All beds 4ft by 4ft and numbered for easy ID. All paths 2ft wide.

Bed #9 will probably be our hothouse bed. We can build it up a bit, put vertical supports along the east fence and hot house it with clear plastic to get things started early. It gets the most sun for the longest time so this should work well.

New Page!

Put up an About/FAQ page. It will be added to over the next little while.

Would you please comment here with any questions you'd like to see answered?

Thanks. :)

Wow were we way off. Almost a full two feet off.

We have an optical illusion yard. Even with this knowledge I can't see the angle out there.

So this is the new plan with  much more accurate measurements. Had to give up one foot of width on one path but gained a vertical space so I say it's a win. We considered digging up to the gate but it's not a patio stone like the rest; it's actually poured concrete so that'll be staying put.

Busy, Busy Friday

This morning has been fairly full of ideas, plans, purchases, revelations, etc.

When I was scooping the kitty-litter this morning(it's the very first thing I do every morning, even before putting the kettle on) I topped of the box with the last of the litter from the container and realized.... the empty containers would be perfect for indoor planters.

Look at the perfection. I could fit carrots in there.

And this window is far to perfect to go to waste

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. :)

Raining

Edging garden with stones postponed on account of rain.

Managed to price the parts needed to install vertical supports in the spring though so I did get something accomplished.

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?

How to Keep Seeds Good for Years

Just posted a new info page on seed saving.

The info there will grow as I learn more of course but please have a look, and have a great night.

The "Problem" With Ordering Seeds

I've been checking out the different varieties of the foods we want to grow and I've filled my online 'cart' with a wide variety of healthy veggies for our household only to be slightly discouraged. If I wanted to fill the whole garden with one plant it would cost less than $5 but who wants 600 spinach plants? The value (as described by price/quality*quantity) is AMAZING. We'll get over five years worth of 85-95% of our veggie intake for less than $150... but really?

Why must I buy 5 years worth all at once? Who needs 3000 heads of loose lettuce (the kind you pick a few leaves each day and the plant grows for the whole season). Who needs 75 tomato plants when each one will produce pounds-on-pounds of tomatoes? And 545 big thick long carrots? It's almost enough to go through the trouble of setting up a seed share program.

I'd considered putting an ad in Kijiji asking if someone wanted to split the bill... but they'd have to want exactly what we want and then there's the trusting a stranger thing and, well, I just don't see it working. Instead, I'll just have to see this as an investment and be sure to keep those seeds safe and viable for the years to come(more on that later).

I know; look at me whine about my first-world problems. :) I promise the next post will be more upbeat.

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:

Introductions

The three of us(plus the cats) moved into a nice four bedroom house in London, Ontario about four or five months ago. We've still got a few boxes that need unpacking and some projects the landlord needs finishing but we're mostly settled into day-to-day life.

Shed Successfully Moved

The shed was hauled across the back yard this afternoon. It took all three of us but it was worth it.

Front garden weeded

Before (roses trimmed back, no weeding done)

I almost forgot.

See that cardboard box? That's the start of our very own compost pile! 

The veggies were getting gross (ick) but now they will transform into soil(yay!).

Not bad for a lazy Saturday morning

Spent about a half hour in the back yard this morning. The plan was to pull up any remaining wood along the edge of the patio and dig up the half pavers to even up the large bed.

Mission Accomplished

Turns out the dirt and gravel I thought were obscuring the view of the pavers... were actually in place of most of them. There were only three large brick type pieces separating the patio from the wood framing the garden. The rest was this:

Gravel mixed with dirt. Lovely isn't it?

So it looks like I'll be picking gravel out of my garden all next year... but hopefully it'll be all gone by the following season.

In combination with info from a Google search, I had a thought, while I was digging this morning, that should save us some money on the set up.

Design for the backyard

The dimensions of the back garden will be 24' X 10' with a "tail" of 3' X 10'. In the NW corner are the compost piles as well as room to store dry material like straw for them. The shed hides this view from the road; and John's sunflowers might hide the shed. :)

The beds have their dimensions marked on them, the main west/east path is two feet wide; the north/south paths are three feet wide and the small paths are one foot wide. This should provide enough room to tend the larger beds and somewhere to put one's foot as one tends the smaller beds.

The ==== indicates vertical supports, and the XXXX indicates where the garden path meets the patio area.

Yesterday John said, "We should have took before-and-after pictures"...

He was right of course but who ever thinks of stopping to take pictures of what-is. What-is is boring and day to day. Pictures don't even come to mind til there's a change that seems drastic enough to warrant documenting.

Pretty sure Megan didn't take any pictures, John took a couple when he was digging to show how extensive the root structure was... but I think the first picture I took was of sprouts... and now I can't seem to find that picture.

Well if if's and but's were candy and nuts we'd all have a merry Christmas, and since I don't have access to a TARDIS we'll just have to start with pics from yesterday (and maybe later we can have a "flash-back" with any pics John can dig up. :)

Lets start with the five cent tour:

North-East corner of the back yard. Dark green = grass, light green = alfalfa

North West corner of the backyard. Grey=patio stones, red=gravel.