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.

Spawning Season

Love is in the air... well... at least mating pheromones are in the air. The squirrels are chattering away claiming territory, and even the fish are getting in the swing of things.

I know the glare makes it really hard to see but if you zoom in...

there's a gazillion fish!

We haven't really had a proper winter this year so I'm a bit concerned the critters may be getting a bit of a head start. Hopefully this unseasonable season doesn't throw off too much.

SEEDS ARRIVED!

Except the two packets on back order... but YAY!

Pics and such to follow.

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.