The start of garden season

It started on about February 7th, as you can see. I planted geraniums, peppers, lobelia, basil, rosemary, and onion seeds, and three-and-a-half weeks'-worth of little plants are growing in my kitchen. In the next week or two I'll open our insulated greenhouse, set up a small thermostat-controlled heater, and move them out. But for now, they're thriving where they are, and I'm happy to watch them grow.

Simple Suggestion #273... Start a seed

It's the most wonderful time of the year! Well, almost. Spring starts early when you're a gardener, and after a long winter, getting my hands back into dirt is always wonderful!

By the end of harvest in autumn, I'm always too tuckered to tidy up the greenhouse, even. So it sits, a jumble of pots and dead plants, until the sun gets higher, the days get longer, and the hothouse gets hotter -- it reached 35 degrees earlier this week. That's a clear sign that it's time to get on with things.

Now the pots are sorted, the shelves are cleaned, the floor is swept, the thermostat/heater and seedling heat mats are re-installed, and planting begins.

On the left are 40 tomato plants for me (and a few extras for my mom and friends), and on the right, three large pots of lettuce and some small planters for perennials. I brought in a few pails of snow because ordinary precipitation is better for these future babies than ordinary tap water.

Indoors, my little windowsill herb garden is growing quite happily, including one marigold seed that I found on my desk back in January! It seems to be doing better than the oregano that is also growing in that pot (probably stealing all the soil nutrients). And there are a few peppers slowly coming up -- they need more consistent heat than the greenhouse provides (on sunless days it sits between 7 and 16 degrees, colder than peppers like) so I'll keep them indoors for a little longer.

In a world where we are so often separated from the sources of our food and walled off from nature, it's really important for me -- for all of us, though not all of us know it -- to find a way back to seeds, soil, and green growing things, even if it's just a little jam jar on a windowsill. We all need some connection to the mysterious Source of Life somehow -- I'm sure our souls are healthier for it!

So today's Simple Suggestion is to start a seed. Any seed. Watch it grow, and feel your soul expand with it!

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.

Gettin' the itch

This weekend, my wonderful husband and I spent some Valentine's time together working on our greenhouse construction. We managed to get the north side's plywood walls mostly finished to protect its R-40 insulation:

(Lest you think we have no romantic bones in our bodies, 

we also managed to attend a Valentine's Dinner and Dance on Saturday night!)

It was wonderfully warm in our special sun room yesterday. 

I've spent a little time online trying to determine what colour to paint

those plywood walls. I guess it should be a full-spectrum white, somehow.

Time in the greenhouse gave me the itch to get my fingers into some dirt,

so in the afternoon, I decided to start my peppers, and a few heirloom tomatoes.

Yes, it's a bit early, but I always find that it takes forever for pepper seeds

to germinate, and hopefully we'll be able to use the above space soon...

but for now, they'll be waiting and warming on the window sill.

I received my order from Heritage Harvest Seeds last week, 

and couldn't wait to plant Ukrainian Pear, Martino Roma and Black Prince

heirloom tomatoes, as well as my usual Jalapeno and Blushing Beauty peppers.

It was a balmy 3 degrees celcius outside (37F) when I was planting. 

I have dirt under my nails, and I know spring is coming.

Feels good after all the cold winter weather we've had!

It's that time again!

A couple of years ago, my hubby built me a little "green room" in the hobby shack in our back yard. The original owner was a carpenter and built the little house as his workshop (it has eleven electrical outlets!), but it's our garden shed now.

The greenroom is painted green inside and out except for the sliding door, is well insulated so it holds heat (it's 26 degrees Celcius in there right now -- that's 79 Fahrenheit), and is a lovely little space for starting seedlings when the warm March sun comes in the low south window.

Our dream is to convert the shack into a three-season greenhouse complete with clear roof and heat retaining back wall, but for now, it's sufficing as our early planting space.

The blue bin below is planted with early lettuce and chicory for salad, and a few Brandywine heirloom tomato seedlings should come up, too.

Leeks are on the windowsill, 

and tomatoes are in the 4x4 pots. Italians, Oxhearts, Li'l Rubes, bush beefsteak, and my favourite heirloom varieties -- Golden Russian, Moscow and Golden cherries. I also planted a few Blushing beauty peppers, and some jalapenos. 

The sun gets warmer by the day, and it will soon be time to plant outdoors. But please, God, we could use a little more moisture first! It's been a dry winter, and the little snow we had is almost gone already. The kids have their bikes and skateboards out, and the gardening season will soon be upon us -- I'll plant some lettuce in the cold frame against our shack in a couple of weeks. And then it will be tulip time -- can't wait! Happiness is dreaming about gardening, at least for me!

If you're a gardener type in Edmonton, don't forget Seedy Sunday is this Sunday, March 18th, from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at Alberta Avenue Community Hall, 9210 118 Avenue. I wish I didn't have to sing at noon Mass that day -- the speakers they've lined up sound absolutely great! See http://www.edmontonseedysunday.com/speakers.html. And have a good weekend!