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| 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:
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| 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:
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| 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.
