Second Sowing of the Season

Tonight I sowed 32 lettuce seeds, and 32 arugula seeds. Not a great deal to report, I guess, but this is pretty early to be sowing these seeds, even indoors.

I calculate that I am currently seven weeks from my last frost date ( around April 15th), so these seeds will be grown indoors until around 4 weeks from that date, when I will then transplant them outdoors and cover them with my polytunnel. When they are planted I will also start sowing lettuce seeds outdoors to get a continuous stream of salad leaves for at least the early part of the season (or at least until it gets too hot). It will also enable me to use up the space around my vegetable bed around areas of slower growing plants like tomatoes and maximize space (I have less than I did back in Port Coquitlam).

Seedling Progress

On Sunday I moved my seeds from the basement to my bedroom in the top floor of my house. Though I had a heating mat, I felt that it was too cold down there for the seeds to germinate. Now I don’t know whether or not it was fortuitous timing or not, but by Monday morning a whole raft of seedlings had appeared, mainly for the chard, but some of the cherry tomatoes were also beginning to appear.

On Wednesday (10 days after the sowing) seedlings have appeared for all three of the vegetables planted, and I rigged up a lighting system so that they won’t get too leggy. Today also saw quite the snowfall in Victoria, so getting sunny windowsill has proven to be a little tricky. I am told that my garlic should survive the onslaught.

Seedy Saturday

The above picture was taken at Seedy Saturday, a gardening event that took place last Saturday. The clue to the type of event it was is in the name, in that there were a lot of local distributors of seeds, vegetables and flowers, as well as a couple of gardening stores, and other related stalls including, oddly enough, a local seafood company.

I picked up quite a few seeds from Seed Savers Exchange which enables you to donate seeds, as well as purchase seeds on the cheap. I will keep an eye on how well they germinate, which will let me know whether or not they were value for money after all.

2011–Starting Place

Whilst the tomato and chard seeds are (hopefully germinating), I thought it’d be almost interesting to show the state of the garden as it is at the start of the growing season, and it can be compared with a previous post with similar imagery.

To start with, this is a close-up of my garlic bed. The cloves of garlic were planted in mid-late November, which is a bit later than I would have liked, but they look like they are progressing well.

This is the renovated garden shed. Julita and her Dad renovated it last Summer, putting cedar shingles over the walls, and painting the windows and trim. I put the roof on, if that counts for anything. Behind the garlic, where the plastic row cover is now, potatoes will be planted.

This is where the ‘magic’ will happen. It is my first vegetable bed, built by Bryan Stevenson, and provides a square-footage of approx. 63. Oh boy, that’s a whole lot of space to cover. The original plan was to have four of these bad boys, but I was persuaded to try one first to see how it works out. Back in Port Coquitlam I had a total of 96 square foot, so it is a little bit of a come-down, but I like a challenge. Oh wait….

First Sowings of the 2011 Season

Ok, so it is clear by now that my record-keeping skills are not exactly meticulous as I look upon my last entry on February 2010. Anyway, a lot has happened in the interim with the birth of my daughter, Tess, in June 2010. This event brought to home some of the reasons for the home vegetable growing in the first place, so I’m hoping updates will be more regular. Also, I now have a vegetable bed (pictures coming soon), and so I at least have somewhere to put the plants, which helps.

Anyway, today I sowed 24 seeds of Galina, which is a yellow cherry tomato, 16 seeds of Silverbeet, which is a chard, and 24 seeds of a yellow tomato called Yellow Perfection. All seeds are from Seeds of Victoria.