Planning, planting, and growing time

April 17th snow

This is what I woke up to yesterday morning. It made me laugh. Of course, the snow didn't last. 

Spring is here, I keep telling myself, but like any Canadian spring, it's variable until suddenly it feels like we're in full summer mode. With things as dry as they are, we're keeping our fingers crossed for more moisture, and white stuff like this is welcome!

Those big pine structures are Lee's latest project. The original raised bed garden boxes are falling apart after nine years. We cobbled them together with stakes for the last few years to buy ourselves a bit more time, and now Lee is working on replacing them. He built fourteen of them in a day, plastered them with two coats of linseed oil last weekend, and dug two in while I was at work on Monday, though he was still digging through a bit of frost. He's a hard worker, and takes extra pleasure in his efforts when we eat food we've grown ourselves.

Our old raised bed boxes have meant that our soil generally thaws quicker in the spring, holds moisture better, and they keep the soil from compacting because we only walk the paths around them. Weeding smaller raised sections works well for me, too, and I plant the boxes quite densely so we end up with more produce than I ever did planting straight rows in more compacted soil. 

Unfortunately, the wooden 2x2s we used to hold the corners of our boxes together back in 2015 were the first part to rot out, so this time, Lee is using metal brackets to hold the corners together, and hopefully these boxes will last another ten years (with reusable brackets). Or maybe we'll just go back to planting in mounds again, if we're still gardening. 

It's hard to imagine what the future holds because of climate change and drought. I find myself wondering about planting a garden at all when our wildfire season started in February this year because we've had so little moisture over the winter. But I'm trying to be optimistic, and evidence of optimism can be seen in our greenhouse:

A few of my 64 tomato plants
(some to be given to friends and family)

Peppers and marigolds

Geraniums and nicotiana

For the last few years, I've enjoyed the challenge of growing my own bedding plants -- going through the garden catalog, picking a colour scheme, ordering seeds, and starting them early. When it comes to my tomatoes and peppers, whose seeds I save from year to year, I may have planted a bit too soon, but I was in the groove and couldn't help myself. Every year the tomato plants are a bit spindly by the May full moon planting time (my birthday this year) and I feel a bit embarrassed about giving them away to friends, but they've learned to dig them deep so that they build better root systems, and they usually do really well for all of us.

I guess we'll see what kind of growing conditions the Master Gardener Creator gives us this year. For now, I'm just enjoying this planning, planting, and growing time.

A full greenhouse

Here's what my greenhouse looks like on this rainy Monday afternoon. I've run out of space to plant anything else indoors, so I'm glad that it will soon be time to move all these plants outside...

Once again, I have more tomato plants than I can grow.

Want some?

Dahlias are up in the pots against the window,

and squashes that I might get to plant in my friend Lidia's garden.

The peppers started blooming this weekend! 

Tomatoes won't be far behind.

And the petunias are ready for flower beds.

Lavatera, marigolds, clarkia and snapdragons are up, too.

But what makes me happiest is how the garden has reacted

to the 3 cm of rain we received in the last 24 hours.

My strawberry plants are looking much happier

than when I transplanted them last week!

(And I'm so glad I got to spread the straw 

before it rained so the mud stays put!)

Our tank was empty yesterday.

It's a million dollar rain, in my books.

Watching things grow is my favourite 

antidote to coronavirus worries.

And the pear tree is almost ready to blossom. 

Isn't spring grand??!!

Scratching the gardening itch...

I'm a pretty happy woman these days because of many things growing all around me. Call it garden gratitude.

One day back in February, when it was miserably cold, I just couldn't take it any more. I shovelled my way to the greenhouse door, chipped away enough ice that I could actually get it open, and hauled in a frozen bag of potting soil that we purchased last fall. While it took two days to thaw, My wonderful husband set up some grow lights in our dining room (yes, that's the pink glow when you walk past our house in the evenings, and no, we're not growing cannabis!) and I've been watching seedlings sprout every since.

Some seeds I probably should have started earlier than I did (only planted my annuals last week) and some, I probably should have waited to plant (I can only imagine how leggy some of my tomato plants will get before they can go outside), but it's all good. I've been enjoying scratching the gardening itch, at least a little. So if you need a bit of green in your day, here's a little visit with our present greenhouse inhabitants. Once the annuals are up, they'll go out there, too.

A fairly happy bunch

Volunteer pansies from last fall's pots that I transplanted into trays.

Onions and leeks that I wish I'd started a bit sooner.

Three happy pepper plants (germination rate wasn't great this year).

That wasn't the case with baby tomato plants --

I think every single seed has showed up.

If you want a tomato plant, let me know!

I'm hoping for a June tomato crop for our eldest daughter's wedding --

I've got a few new heirloom varieties, including one called "42 days."

I bought a bag of 9 dahlia bulbs at Costco for $14. 

Thus far, five are viable. Considering that single bulbs

cost $7 at Canadian Tire, I seem to be coming out ahead.

We've been enjoying a few simple salads, too. 

Next week I'm going to plant more lettuce in our cold frame --

can't quite get rid of that gardening itch

even with so much already growing!

Closing down the greenhouse

It's time. The greenhouse requires a running heater to keep our last few fruiting tomato plants from freezing at nights and on cloudy days, so we've finally closed it down and brought the freeze-ables indoors. And I have to say I kinda like having them in our dining room window. Green foliage on grey days gives me a lift. But at the same time, I'm looking forward to February and the greenhouse re-opening!

On the 107th of January

It's official. This is the longest winter on record in Edmonton, by a few days already. We're on our 171st day of sub-zero temps, but hopefully Spring won't delay much longer. Yes, we're getting more snowflakes today, and the kids down the block have built a brand new snow fort (in the park, to the right of the trellis). Last night I made my own snowman-sized snowballs just pushing a shovel.

But we're making the most of these extra winter days. We've been busy with minor home renos that take a major amount of effort. 7 hours of painting our hallway on Saturday; yesterday, today and possibly the rest of the week, the living room. Shadow has been rather confused by all the furniture in strange places, and I was going to bake bread today, only to discover that my bread book is in a cupboard covered over in newspapers!

In spite of this long run of snow and cold, there's always hope for Spring. It will arrive any minute, say my little baby tomatoes. Spring, and salad, coming soon!

Returning to winter

When I was in Taizé, my hubby texted me 

on October 2nd and told me that it was snowing. 

So I wasn't exactly surprised to return to this on Saturday morning:

 

All this snow so early doesn't make me very happy

because there are still things I needed to do in the garden.

But what can I do about it? Laugh and shake my head.

Especially since Suzanna did a wonderful job of keeping 

the tomatoes in the greenhouse happy.

Lee and Suzanna also did a wonderful job of digging 120 lbs of carrots

in a Friday night snowstorm, and everyone worked together to wash 

and bag them on Saturday. A million thanks to my family for all their effort!

I'm hoping that it will warm up enough for me to clean out

the raised beds this week and finish up the compost pile for winter, 

but if not, there's always next spring, sigh. 

It seems so far away, but time passes quickly

(though this might be a long winter...)

In the meantime, we'll enjoy our carrots!

Gifts from the compost heap part II -- Christmas tomatoes

(To see Gifts from the compost heap part I, click here.)

Here's a wee gardening update about our "experimental tomatoes" that came from the compost heap back in September -- about three weeks ago, we decided that it was costing too much energy to keep our greenhouse warm for four tomato plants (one of which never did set fruit -- I think it was a Brandywine variety that needs more sunlight and heat). So I closed the greenhouse, brought our 3 cherry tomato plants into the dining room, we did battle with any number of fruit flies that came with them (organically -- cider vinegar is irresistible to fruit flies), and waited. And voila, we have some gorgeous little red tomatoes for Christmas.

Lee has been researching ways to store heat with phase-change materials so that the greenhouse won't dip below zero without a heater. It's almost managing to do that already, as we've got two big covered barrels of water which moderate the temperature fairly well (the temp this morning is +1 C (30 F) -- when the temp was -20 C (-4 F) or colder in the last weeks, the coldest it got was -8.3 C (17 F) overnight). Once we have the heating issue solved, the next trick will be to get our light figured out -- I'm suspecting our fourth tomato plant didn't fruit because the sun isn't strong enough -- and likely won't be until March, when I start seedlings all over again. As for these plants, while they're flowering like mad, and I'm finger-pollinating, the blossoms aren't turning into any sort of fruit -- again because our light is low, and the dining room window isn't a good place to set up full-spectrum grow-lights. They'll just have to do the best they can without.

Anyway, we're delighted to be eating our own tasty, organic, non-GMO cherry tomatoes this time of year. I'm so glad I decided to pot those little seedlings from the compost heap; these gorgeous little 'experimental' mouthfuls were definitely worth the effort. Maybe we'll decorate the plants with Christmas ornaments, too... though that might take the attention away from these natural, pretty red and green globes...

My happy place

It's a late Spring this year (my girlfriend tells me the tulips are late at Butchart Gardens, too), and a glorious day here; the sun is shining and the air is fresh but not overly so, and the potential of a new growing season is visible everywhere -- tulips poking out of the ground, buds finally starting to appear on the lilac outside my window, and jackrabbits chasing each other through the park. I felt like I could have walked all day when the dog and I went out this morning, but we had other fish to fry (our basement shower is being replaced and I had to be home to let the workman in at 8 a.m.).

So I'm enjoying my day, but in a different way. I enjoy moodling here (it's one of my favourite creative outlets) and I love gardening. I think I'll go out and knock down all the old perennial stalks so that new ones can take their places soon, and maybe later I'll post a few pictures of the shoots of spring that are poking through my leaf mulched front gardens.

But for the moment, I'll leave you with some pictures of potential -- our back garden, waiting to be planted, and the little greenhouse that Lee and I have been working on since the beginning of August, with its first crop of happy tomato plants.

Last August

This morning

There are also three pepper plants, a few leeks, and some cucumbers... and yesterday I planted some herbs and zinnias. I've run out of little pots for the moment, or I'd be starting more seeds today.

Oh well. Frankly, I feel a little spoiled! And very grateful to my hubby, Lee, for making my greenhouse dream come true!
It's nice to get a jump on gardening season, and to sit in a lawn chair among the happy little plants in the warm sunny room.

My happy place.