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…

Stop & Go...

Today was a stop and go kind of day for the projects...  While Friday's sunny day did allow me to get a lot done, there was still a lot to be done before the weekend finished... and yesterday it rained all day... so I got a lot of the indoors chores completed and didn't have to feel guilty for spending much of today completing the rest of the outside list.

The first part of today's project work consisted of assembly of the AWESOME work bench my brother, his wife and my nephew gave me for Christmas...

Work Bench

In pieces... Hmmm...

Assembly took me about 45 minutes.
Funny story? Assembled and expanded
it doesn't fit through the door...

Good thing it folds back down to a
fabulous compacted size!

Assembled and working!

The one challenge I experienced today was showers...  Since I needed to cut things and screw together other things, I did have to play tag with the rain...

Rain break... I went inside and watched an old episode of Castle while waiting for it to clear up...

Once the rain cleared up I assembled the final raised bed and put it in place.  Then I put together my Pea Trellis using that green plastic lattice sheet lying on the ground beside the work bench. Once I had it built, I dug some holes & installed the trellis and reinforced it by using some re-bar and zap straps. I then laid out a layer of newspaper to suppress weeds and dumped in the additional soil I bought to fill the box.

Raspberry and Blueberry beds...

A lovely line of raspberry canes.

One of two baby blueberry bushes

New Pea Trellis beside moved Clematis Trellis
The bed is already planted with
snow peas and spinach!

Home of this summer's squash experiment
- stay tuned!

All in all, a good weekend's worth of efforts!

With love across the waters...

Defiant Acts

"Gardening is the most therapeutic and defiant act you can do.  Plus you get strawberries:" ~ Ron Finley

I love the feel behind this statement - well, both of these statements, really... Though I won't necessarily get strawberries (I don't plan to plant any, but just because it isn't part of the plan today doesn't mean I won't find somewhere to put some eventually..) I am, though, most defiantly acting in favour of spring!

To go back a few months, my yard had a hard winter - loads of deep and long lasting heavy snow, along with a February snow accumulation that meant that even as late as the beginning of this week there was snow in my back yard (though today all gone) and there is still a little in the front yard...

Taken about 4 weeks ago...

Last weekend I spent some of my Sunday on poo patrol as the snow was melting, I also pruned my apple, pear and plum trees...  There's a small pile of branches I need to dispose of, but nothing really huge to worry about there.  The trees were still lying fallow last weekend, but today when i was out I noticed that the plum tree is budding out all over - so last weekend was the absolute last minute I would have been able to do the pruning safely.

Today's project work was the back yard.  I made a trip to Art Knapp and then over to Slegg Lumber before heading home... While at Art Knapp, I picked up six raspberry plants, two blueberry bushes, a bag of peat moss and a bag of container potting soil.  At Slegg Lumber I picked up two cedar trellises and four . ten-foot long 1" x 2"s.

So here's this weekend's outdoors project list:

• move the upper long bed box to a new location along the side fence
• build a pea trellis using the old green lattice screen that was acting as a barrier to hide the old oil tank (thus the 1" x 2"s) and make a new bed to plant the pea trellis in
• ready the garden beds for planting
• plant peas, spinach, raspberries and blueberries
• tidy up the garden shed
• rake up the back yard (basically make it pretty) and make another poo-clearing pass over everything.

Once back from the shopping excursion, I realized there is more I will need, so I'll be out again tomorrow morning to collect the missing bits, but today I was able to accomplish a fair amount.

First item on the list had to be poo patrol. That done, I opened up the shed and pulled out my bistro set and got the concrete patio spring-friendly.  

By the end of the daylight hours today I had moved the long bed, dug out and readied the other beds, planted the raspberry and blueberry plants, and set up the trellises for their jobs... Tomorrow (after the Slegg Lumber run) I will set up one final small raised bed, build and install the pea trellis, plant the peas and spinach seeds and tidy the garden shed a little. If I have enough time, I'll also rake up the back yard & get the lawn ready for spring and over-seed with grass seed where there has been winter damages.

Once I finish off all of tomorrow's bits, I'll snap some pictures and show you where I am at this point in readiness for sunshine and warmth...

Next weekend I'm going to be putting out my drip lines and then I'll see about getting in there to tackle the front yard projects...

With love across the waters...

Holy Crap - Where Did November Go??

I am dismayed that November is almost gone!

I've been playing catch-up with yard work and winter home and garden prep projects (and some visiting, truth be told) and November has breezed past me in a flash!

The bathroom renovation project is very nearly done... most of the floor mouldings are installed, most of the corner trim is also in - the few pieces that aren't now in are waiting until the bathroom window has been replaced - which (aside from the door) will, for me, anyhow, signal the end of the bathroom project.  I still have a little patching, painting and staining to do, bot those things I will take on as winter progresses and I am not feeling the mad push out be outside doing outside things while the weather still holds.

We have been having an utterly GLORIOUS autumn here.  Clear and sunny days (though the chill is now officially upon us) with cold and clear nights - leaving heavy frost on trees and leaves (and car wind shields) but the dry and the cold has also kept the streets (where I am walking Jasmine in the wee early hours of the morning) relatively ice free and so our walks are being accomplished in relative ease.

The yard has undergone (most of) its autumnal leaf denuding and I have raked said leaves up and placed them into my raised garden boxes for composting down and lovely rotting into the soil over winter. I have moved the bean trellis to a new location in preparation for spring planting, planted my garlic in a new spot this year (where my spinach was last year) and have had the winter tires put onto my car.

With the exception of having all of my winter wood burning supply in hand, I have been doing fairly well.

The wood started arriving yesterday (delivery was either two or three truck loads and I am anticipating five or six in total. I spent last night splitting a fair portion of the first chunk of wood delivered into halves and then this morning I stacked the halves into space between the two posts of my "car port" to allow for smarter wood stacking when the rest arrives, gets split (when I get to it) and stacked (again, when I get to it.) I have also split all but about 14 of the rounds that arrived yesterday and have started stacking it in my "wood area" to fully dry out so it can be burned when I am out of my current dry supply.

I put in about 3 hours of stacking and then splitting and stacking this morning.  My back started to protest (loudly) and I elected to take a break and come inside.  Good thing too - it was after 12:30 and I needed to deal with some laundry and also start the fixings for some meals that I am cooking today.

I am also starting a new job tomorrow - well, not a new job exactly, but the same job in a different branch - I was asked (by the regional VP) if I would cover someones maternity leave in a different branch.  There are all sorts of things happening in this area right now (and not all of them good) so thinking that this might be "writing on the wall" if you know what I mean, I agreed - with the request of a letter "guaranteeing" (inasmuch as a guarantee can be given or had) that I will have a job in this area at the end of this year.

This means that instead of a normal weekend, I have only today off and then start back to work tomorrow - so there is LOADS to get done today!

I have been taking a lot of pictures lately and will upload and show off some of the projects under way (and those nearly complete) soon.

In the mean time, 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,