Planting and a Greenhouse Update

We're finally getting down and dirty *grin*.
My oldest and I shoveled all of the rows in the vegetable garden and hauled in manure to dress the beds with. I've been working this spot for nearly 10 years now and the soil is really starting to look super healthy. It was terribly poor sandy soil when we started and everything refused to grow in it but as we turned the soil this year it was loaded with big fat earth worms, was darker and it just looks better so I can't wait to see how everything grows!



I'm trying something new this year and using floating row covers over the newly planted seeds. Last year the birds took a lot of the seed right out of the ground as soon as we planted and I even had my first crop of broccoli stripped of every green leaf and had to start over. So this should keep everything safe!

You should have seen the robins sitting on the fence posts watching us as we put the beans in. You just knew that as soon as you turned your back they were going to swoop in but we quickly covered the bush and pole beans with the cover and foiled their plans *grin*. It's actually keeping the little seedlings warmer to! It's been only two days and they are already starting to sprout and they never germinate that fast.

Oh and check out my greenhouse!!
This is the back wall and it has two giant windows and just a foot and a half of solid wall at the bottom maximizing the early morning sun that comes over the mountain first thing in the morning...

and here is one of the side walls with another big window that will go in. I just love the smell of the cedar and the chunky size of the hand milled lumber that my dad milled :)

Only one more wall to go up in the front which will have two more giant windows and I have an old solid glass door for the front so it is going to be awesome! Oh my I can't wait. It is smoking hot out here all summer so it's going to be perfect :)

It's taking a little longer than I had planned for it to be completed as Hubby comes and goes between work but I've waited years for this to happen and even if I don't get to utilize the full summer growing season I'm going to do some winter crops in it this fall and next spring it'll be ready to go right away. Yay, I can't wait *grin*.

How's your week going? I hope you all are enjoying some sunshine, time outdoors and maybe even some time getting your hands really dirty in the dirt :)

Hugs,
Rosina

Garden Update

We are finally seeing some rewards from all of the gardening we have been doing :)

Our broccoli has just exploded this last week with the few days of hot weather we finally got and of course the whole lot of them just happens to be ready at the same time *grin*.

So we've cut all of the larger crowns off and left the side shoots on so that they can grow and provide us with many more harvests throughout the summer.

My peas are not doing to bad but still no flowers. I hope that they will perk up!

It's actually not un-seasonally cool here this June but my beans are definitely not liking all of the wind and rain :) Can you believe that most days we are still running around in our heavy winter coats?!

I'm very excited about my leeks! They are doing really well after being transplanted and I can't wait till they grow big enough to try a few :)

My tomatoes are doing fantastic in their hanging planter bags!! This one is my 'Window Box Roma' and it is covered in lots of little baby romas.

Here's another one of my hanging tomatoes, this one is 'Rocket' and it to is just loaded with little tomatoes :) So far my cabbage isn't forming any heads yet and I'm really not sure what happened to my beets and carrots but it looks like I'm going to have to do some replaning :( The birds have been particularly bad this year eating all the seeds and green shoots so most have been lost. Oh well, I must look on the bright side and be very happy with what is coming *grin*.

How does your garden grow? I'd love to know *grin*.

~ Rosina

Triple Protection Weed Barrier

After spending days ripping knee high grass, thistles and salmon berry bushes out that had taken over my pathway behind my bean netting I decided that I would never do it again! It was time to take action and bar those weeds from ever returning *grin*.

I knew my obsession with reading tons of newspapers would come in handy one day! LOL. Armed with a wheelbarrow full of them we headed out to the garden to get started. Newsprint makes an excellent weed barrier as it smothers anything that is trying to grow up from underneath and over the years it biodegrades and turns to mulch for the soil.

Just make sure that you use only the newsprint and not any of the glossy and shiny flyers. They're an entirely different breed of paper and aren't good for this sort of project :) We layered the papers over top of each other multiple times all the way down the path creating a thick cushion of newsprint over the soil.

I'm not taking any chances though with rogue weeds popping up through any cracks in the paper so I'm upping my efforts in weed control and putting down a layer of landscaping felt on top of the papers to *grin*. We have scads of left over fencing wire from the last time we fenced so I got hubby to snip off short lengths of it that I could fashion it into staples for holding down the landscaping felt :)

You can see above how I bent the wire into a U shape and then we poked it through the landscaping felt and into the soil so that it securely holds the felt in place and now it won't slip around on the newspaper. It's also great for getting the felt nice and taut for a smooth surface :)

Now I know you probably thought I was done after laying down 2 layers of newspaper and felt, but heck no I'm going for more protection yet! LOL. We hitched on the horse trailer and headed off to grab some bark mulch. Off we go with the trailer in tow *grin*.

You've just got to love this stuff! It's a by product from the peeler that works nearby so there's always tons of it and it is fabulous for pathways, mulching your garden to help it retain moisture during the dry season of summer and it's a great weed deterrent as well :)

Just make sure you don't use Cedar!! It is poisonous to many plants and you don't want to kill your pretty blooms or vegetables.

Ahh, finished. Triple protection from the weeds that should last for a couple of years before I need to top dress it again with more mulch :) Now let's get planting!

~ Rosina

Bean Netting

The sun was out today finally and with Hubby home I thought that I better grab him quick and get some of the manly jobs done around the yard *grin*.

The old bean fence in the garden is starting to fall apart and tip but I'm going to squeeze one more season out of it! So hubby braced it up and it's nice and sturdy again so I can hang some netting on it for the beans to climb on :)

We have loads of old gill net from Hubby's grandpa packed in giant sacks and when I loaded it into the kids' little red wagon he decided that he needed a lift to *grin*. The kids were up to the challenge and towed daddy around and around the yard, even up the hill in the front yard so they could run him back down at break neck speed. A couple times I thought for sure they were going to tip him right out of the seat!

I love using the gill net to grow the beans up. It's nice and light weight and anywhere there are fishermen there is bound to be some old net that is to damaged that they no longer want to repair it and will give it away :)



As we stretched it over the stand hubby staple gunned it to the posts.

I don't have a photo of it completely finished but you get the idea *grin*. Tomorrow I'm going to lay down landscaping felt on the ground behind the stand and cover it with bark mulch to keep the weeds from taking over again. I just spent the last two days ripping out the last of the salmon berry bushes, thistles and knee high grass that had taken over along the perimeter of the fence. What a nightmare! That's what happens when you neglect your weeding duties LOL.

Each day take us a little bit closer to finishing all of the weeding, prepping and planting and then it'll be on to easier tasks like just watering. For now I can only dream :)

~ Rosina

Seed Saturday Finds

Well we hit the Courtenay Seedy Saturday this weekend along with hundreds of others! I thought being about 10 minutes early would give us sufficient time to find a parking place and amble over to the line but boy was I wrong. There was already two lines stretching for a good long ways in both directions along the building and we really had to hustle to beat the crowd coming behind us *grin*.

What a success!! It was fantastic to see so many people out :) The building was jammed full of seed tables, garden products, flowers and more. My main focus was to search out the seed potatoes and do it quickly because they never seem to be around for long with that many bodies roaming around LOL. So I quickly moved from table to table searching for the little nuggets and finally found some old favorites picking up a couple packages of 'Red Chieftans' and 'Sieglinde' which is an heirloom german variety that is super delicious :)

Among the sale tables were some really great displays as well. The above table was all about Mission Hill Farm's hazelnut trees and they had this great big bowl of hazelnuts to try. Of course the children all wanted to try one.

Who wouldn't when you got to crack your nut using this fun wooden nut cracker. I bet that if there had been some of these little gems for sale they would've sold them. I know I would have bought one!

The Comox Valley Exhibition (Fall Fair) committee always has a table every year where they hand out seeds to the children and this year they got a package of red romaine lettuce that sounds like it's going to be delicious and saved me buying lettuce *grin*. I picked up some Italian pole beans that are prolific producers of tender purple pods named 'Triumfo Violetta' from the Salt Spring Seeds table, old english shelling peas from Two Wings Farm and a package of 'Fava' beans that I'm going to experiment with and grow for dried beans. Should be fun!

The perfect end to the day was surprising everyone with a trip the the movie theater to watch the new Alice in Wonderland!! My daughter had brought our new Cheshire cat along with us that Jill had sent so I thought it would be fun to take a photo of him on his way to watch the movie with us *grin*.

My oldest two children loved the movie which was a mix of animation & real people and true to Tim Burton's style, a little on the dark side. It didn't quite catch the attention of my youngest and I must say that I was a little disappointed myself. I think that I was hoping that it would follow more along the original story of Alice in Wonderland but this is of Alice as a grown woman and how she must restore the crown to the White Queen and it just didn't grab me. I have such fond memories of watching the original and all the warm & fuzzy feelings that went along with it that I'm not quite sure how I feel about this one but definitely glad we went to see it :)

Let me know what you think of it, maybe I'm the only one that is stuck in the past with the happy mad hatter's tea party *grin*.

~ Rosina