Feeling more like spring every day

It was a beautiful weekend with lots of sun, but still a bit cool, especially in the shade.

Onions are coming up.

Pea fence and peas (well, haven't sprouted yet, but they are planted). Also some kale that survived and one broccoli plant. We had some of the kale on homemade pizza last week and it was very good. 

And raspberries are already leafing out!

I transplanted some strawberry plants into these leftover planters and hung them off my grape arbor. Hanging the strawberries up off the ground should:

1. keep the slugs from eating them
2. control how much water they get
3. make them easier to pick

I saw this on a farm tour last summer (except they had planted the strawberry plants in large diameter PVC pipe). Below and in front of these planters is the strawberry bed - we had so many berries last year that we still have some frozen that we are eating now with our breakfast cereal.

 
 Now for some flowers of spring. The first crocuses:

They are even in the front lawn (well, we planted them there actually)! See if you can find the lone purple one.

This is as far as I can tell a Siberian Iris that blooms in early spring - please correct me if I am wrong.

Mulch that we created last weekend from all the pruning we did. It's so handy to have your own shredder even though it is a lot of hard, dusty, noisy work. And amazing how a huge pile of branches shreds down to just this much mulch.

Finally a quick shot of our pond being deconstructed yet again. This is a photo from last Sunday when I had started to remove all the edging stones and empty the pond of water. This weekend we further emptied out the pond of water and lots of small stones that the racoons knocked off the shelves into the pond. We also removed the pump and collapsed the whole liner into the middle and started working on flattening out one shelf to make the pond deeper all the way across. Very heavy clay soil, so we gave up after a few hours of shovelling - there's always next weekend to continue this project!

I still have to dormant spray my fruit trees - really hard to plan for that without having an accurate weather forecast you can rely on. Hopefully we'll have a few days without rain, wind or freezing temperatures soon!

Peas and shredding

A quick post - sorry for the brevity and lack of photos.

Saturday ended up becoming a wet day - I finished trimming the bushes on the south side of the veggie gardens and we managed to get an hour or so of shredding done in the morning before it started pouring down. With an electric shredder we didn't think it was a good idea to continue!

Sunday was much better - in the morning I setup my pea fence, planted peas and checked the progress of my other seeds - no sprouting yet. Our homestay student was quite interested in what I was doing and watched with great interest.

And then my wife and I spent the rest of the day finishing the shredding. Lots of mulch for the flower beds!

Seeding and Pruning Day

Lucked out with the weather on Saturday and the threatened rain did not appear. So in the garden to do some seeding!

Garden looks a bit sad right now with not much greenery, other than the lawn (which is in sad shape right now) and forget-me-nots. However the columbine is come back and there are lots of buds on plants just waiting for a few warm days to start sprouting.

Main task today is seeding. I already had prepared my seeding flats (4" square plastic pots) with a prepared mix of 1 part each of finely screen homemade compost, coir (coconut fibre) and perlite (from Carolyn Herriot's "The Zero-Mile Diet" book I got from Christmas from my wife). I gave it a water so the soil is moist. Why the kettle? The water I have in my rain barrels is very cold so I heated up a kettle of water to mix with cold water so I had moderately warm water.

After seeding and putting in my cold frame - Celery (Tall Utah), Onion (Stuttgart - sounds German?), Green Onion (Kincho, a Japanese variety), Sweet Peas (Watermelon and Spring Pastels)

 Cold frame next to the greenhouse closed to keep seeds warm, dry and happy. Orange cord on right is for the heating cable on the bottom of the box to provide some bottom warmth. Here's hoping for happy plants in a few weeks.

Also did some direct seeding in one of the raised beds - I used the same seeding mix as a top dressing over the compost I put in the beds last month. Red Komatsuna (a Japanse mustard) and Pac Choi. You can see the 1 foot squares (hence Square Foot gardening) that have been divided with string and nails and planted. Yoghurt container for beer is for the slugs. Don't worry, no expensive micro-brewery beer was used - cheap non-alcoholic Molson's. The slugs don't seem to be picky!

Here are the three beds: first bed still has leeks in it that we'll need to eat soon, second bed is the one from above and third bed still has some kale and swiss chard, which isn't looking too good anymore. Far right is where the asparagus bed is and behind that the compost. The green sewer pipe sections are for the diakon (one needs to be moved to the right location). All beds are covered in cloches, although I need to renew the cloche on the first bed and remove the one on the asparagus bed (I realize now that I don't really need it there). The cloches really help in early spring to warm up the soil earlier plus work as frost protection for the more tender winter veggies (if I remember to close them after airing out the beds during the day!)

Raspberry patch on the south side of the garage. A few weekends ago I redid the supports and string to keep the canes neat and tidy. Water barrel on the left that waters the bed with a soaker hose.

Buds are forming! And it's only the beginning of February still.

Garlic is coming up too - I should have planted more. BTW, no need to buy seed garlic. I just bought regular organic garlic and planted that.

Lettuce in the greenhouse in a pot.

Covered up to keep in the moisture and hopefully keep them just a bit warmer for better growth.

Afternoon was spent cleaning up bushes to the south of the garden beds so we get more sunshine on the beds. Got a bit carried away, but these bushes grow so quickly once the warm weather hits. Also found two bushes that had died, hence the hole in the middle. The neighbour and I will likely put a fence up this year, as right now it's just poultry wire on some rebar posts.

Lots of shredding to do to create our own mulch. Not going to be done today (Sunday) as it now is raining.

And that's it for this weekend. Next weekend we'll be creating a pea fence and planted peas. Hopefully do some shredding too, WP (Weather Permitting) so we can move around the garden.