Growing

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Seed Catalogue junkies unite!

It is the time of year that when even a slightly warm breeze passed my face I get chills and want to have my fingers flipping through a seed catalogue. The possibilities of the new season lie seductively in the pages of the 2010 seed catalogue. Interesting plants., herbs. berry bushes, and of course veggies all laid neatly out on a page with story-like descriptions and promises of a bountiful harvest. It can be addictive. Alas, this year I will be purchasing few seeds. I know it can be addictive because I bought WAY too many last year. So I need to use what I have with a select few additions. I have also decided to cut back on the types of veggies that are being grown this year. We are not going to market this year, period...at least not to sell food. This year is for us and extra for friends. I want to can, ferment, freeze, dry, and store my little heart out. So my search is for more stable and less flashy foods. Gone are the brightly coloured tomatoes in a variety of colours, and the oddly shaped squash. This year is for practicality, hardiness, taste, and if I can find a perennial in anything I will find a place for it. Season extension is going to be a large part of this year. So much so that I started last year with some lettuce. It was a complete experiment with some basic mini-greenhouses. Surprisingly It worked okay. No, nothing to eat, but the lettuce continued to grow. Last week it was taken out by -20 temperatures, but it lasted until the new year. I will have to control myself at the Guelph Organic Conference. Last year I bought so many seeds. This year I will save my pennies for a sheep shearer.

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Summertime and the Living is Busy

Our chicken coop renovation is partially finished. The set-up we had for the chickens to get in and out of the barn was a bit silly. We had to move a door and put a chiar braced with wood at the gate so the sheep couldn't get in. Mr. Tufts really liked to test the chair. there was only one way to get it to stay. This was not a good set-up if we ever wanted to have a house sitter or even our wonderful neighbour bring tha animals in. (She did understand the set-up though and bless her, she mastered it!) We neede a better door for the chickens. On Sunday we spent the day building a chicken "stoma" in the old window. It now as a door with a latch and a ladder both in and out. It was perfect...to us. getting the chickens to use it was another story. the first night they just didn't get it. the next morning I had to put everyone out the door by  hand. That night, after some modifications they actually went in it on their own, with a lot of scratch to help them along. At least we now have an easy way to let the chickens in and out. next is fixing the flor and building the nest boxes. We should start getting eggs in just over a month. We can't wait as then I can start some of the art projects I want to! Our pot potatoes are finally flowering. we have been waiting a long time for this. These are blue potatoes, blue all the way through. We saved them from last years CSA diligently as I knew we would never get around to ordering any seed potatoes. We won't be eating any this year either, these are for next years crop. How exciting though. They have beautiful flowers and do make lovely potted plants. Last year we placed the potatoes in some shallow compost and covered them with straw. Some potatoes were produced but not a pot full. This year they are covered with compost instead so we are hoping to have a better yield. Of course these plants could be moved in in the early spring or autumn. Hopefully it works, but even if we only get a decent yield it will be done again on a larger scale. They do make great, lush potted plants!

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Growing Up

It has been extremely busy around here lately. Everything is growing up. Lintilla is becoming brave and more active by the hour. We had our first cock-a-doodle-doo from the cockerel the other day and the lambs are bigger than their Mums. The garden is having the biggest change this time of year. Despite the cool weather and sporadic rain things are growing. The cucumbers are growing well and we even have some tomatoes. Many others have peas already, but ours went in late so we only have flowers. but the volunteer pumpkin has baby pumpkins and flowers on them. Even the apples are looking good. Our heritage Tennis Ball Lettuce is doing wonderfully. These little guys didn't start off too well and I didn't know what to expect. Now they are healthy and delicious! This past weekend was the final seedling planting weekend. It should have been done weeks earlier but it never became a priority. Now our sunflowers and tomato leftovers are in. The poor plants were producing flowers to try and grow and Tim just didn't have the heart to compost them. They had done so well in such poor conditions. the upside to this is that if we do get fruit we are going to save the seeds.I wonder if a new hardy tomato can be developed? It is nice to know that they are at least growing. We also managed to get some herbs in. We had bought them a couple of weekends ago but hadn't the time to plant them right away. We had really wanted to do a herb garden so it was a bit more work than five minutes. Luckily the herbs hung on and they are now happily in their herb spiral. The herbs are planted according to how dry they like it and how sunny. The chervil is on the north side lower down because this is the conditions they prefer. It isn't perfect as which herbs were bought was impulsive, not planned for a spiral. Like the rest of this place we will see what happens!