Seed Sprouting

Today is the first Saturday in March 2015 – daylight savings time kicks in this weekend and I am looking forward to a sunshine-filled weekend!

Yesterday my latest purchase from Lee Valley Tools arrived – sprouting boxes for seedlings, the size of which will fit beautifully into my kitchen window. I spent a little time last night getting them all put together and later this morning (after the guys came to investigate and discuss the work that will be needed to deal with the challenge that the last window to be installed presented – more on that in another blog post to follow) I went and purchased a couple of bags of sea soil (to amend my vegetable beds) and a bag of potting soil to get my spring veggies started indoors.

They are made of some sort Styrofoam and weren’t difficult to put together – pretty interesting construction, to be honest! 

The idea is that instead of having to worry about direct watering while the seeds are getting going, under the soil plugs there is a water leaching mat that will draw water up from a reservoir base.  There are even little gauges with which to measure how much water is in the base!  Clear plastic caps cover and heat the apparatus like a greenhouse would.

With the new Garden Window in the kitchen, my plan is to get things started indoors now and then, in late April when all possible frost is done, to move everything outside into the raised beds.

So… now I have to figure out what I want to plant!!

With love across the waters…

The Gift of Organization

Comfortable life in a small home requires organization and creative storage space.

My home, a small, 1896 bungalow (for now), was initially built as rental housing for miners (Cumberland being initially established as a coal mining town) but the then local undertakers team.

In around 1945 the kitchen was added on and, at some point between then and when I bought the house in 2011, it was mounted on proper foundations and the electrical wiring was updated from the original knob and tube wiring to current standards.

As I peel back the layers and make changes to the house, I find interesting things that constantly force me to think outside the box for the changes I would like to make.

The kitchen is one such place in the house. The cupboards are spacious and deep – but as they were when I moved in, not entirely practical for storage of dishes, utensils and so on.  The first modification I made happened after my Sister in Law made an Ikea trip and picked up some shelving inserts that made my cupboards MUCH more user-friendly.

Christmas this year saw me as the happy recipient of a couple of gift cards from Lee Valley Tools – which I promptly went on line and spent on some cupboard organizing magic.  The parcel arrived yesterday and this afternoon I installed the inserts and voila – organization under the kitchen sink is MINE!

The parts - sliders, basket and screws...

The project space - under the sink.
A pretty common under-the-sink view.

One installed

Both sides installed.  SO easy...
I should have bought a third one for under
the bathroom sink!

SO much more organized - and all the same stuff!!!

Left over parts - they hang on the sides and are for
holding cookie sheets

Good thing I have a space for cookie sheets!

The racks aren't fixed to the wall or to the cedar, but they
seem to balance OK and the cookie sheets fir perfectly.  

I think I will have to go on-line next time they (Lee Valley) have another free shipping event and order more magical organizing stuff!

With love across the waters…

A Raised Bed and a Surprise!

In July of this year, after the bulk of the back fence project was done, I decided it was finally time to start putting in raised garden beds. I have a fair amount of yard space that can be given over to planting vegetables and fruits, but in the interests of keeping Jasmine (not to mention Missy) out of my food supply, I determined that putting in raised beds would be a Very Good Idea.

I picked up four 12’ rough cut cedar planks (I went with 1”x8” but in retrospect I should have gone with 2”x8” instead) and once home set up my portable saw horses and got to work.

The spot where the new bed would go

Portable saw-horse reporting for duty - and behind it
is the pile of dirt left over from digging post holes

Boards cut and ready to assemble

I decided that the bed I was putting in should be two foot deep by 10 foot long and so measured and cut my boards to suit this.  A number of years ago now Mum & Dad started replacing their raised beds (that were made with wood) with concrete poured raised beds – where they are they have to combat the roots of cedar trees and so concrete is a better fit for them. To that end, they gave me the corner connectors that they had bought from Lee Valley Tools (the BEST store on earth ha ha ha) and I took out 8 of them (and the screws) because this particular bed was going to end up being 2 feet wide by 10 feet long by 16 inches deep. Boards cut I got things into place and connected all of the pieces and then stacked the two “boxes” to make one very deep one. This should end up being PLENTY of space to grow whatever I end up planting in there (on purpose) in.

MORE than deep enough!

Bed in place, I next took on the compost bin move project. Before re-claiming all of the compost material, I lined the very bottom of the new garden bed with newspaper.  This will eventually help keep down any serious weeds that may be already in the ground… Next up I took apart the two-bin compost I built at the beginning of last summer and moved all of the material in that over into the bottom of the new raised bed.  On top of that I put another thick layer of newspaper and then on the very top I put the soil that had been initially displaced when Dad and Rob (my brother) dug out the fence post holes.

New bed in, filled with compost material
and left-over post hole dirt

I will need to top dress the bed with sea soil and more potting soil, and I’ll need to over seed that through the winter with something like fall rye (which can be dug under in the spring and rots down into a lovely green manure) but for now… It’ll do just fine!

About a week after I got the new bed in place and all the dirt moved in I noticed a plant… kind of a large leaf plant – that had self-started in the new bed.  I know it is a member of the squash family – I have checked the leaves and now that it is flowering, looked at the flowers and have confirmed it is definitely a member of the squash family.

Volunteer...

Here’s the thing though, I don’t know exactly WHAT it really is.  It might be a pumpkin – I did try to sprout some Crown Prince pumpkin, but thought that all of the seeds were not viable and so gave up on them and chucked them into the compost bin. It may also be a butternut squash… or a regular orange pumpkin – I have had a number of those throughout the year and when I was preparing them I just threw all of the seeds and guts into my compost without thinking.

Female flower

Male flowers

Whatever it is, it may not have enough time to ripen before the frosts come.  I actually hope it does though – I’m curious to see what it is, and I would LOVE to have some of my own squash or pumpkin for winter consumption!

With love across the waters,