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:

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.