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.