Getting to Gardening

Hopefully the last of the frost warnings will let us keep all of these growing plants outside.

I made a little shelf to keep some herbs on:

Free Compost Week

I picked up 2 free bags of compost this morning from Pictou County Solid Waste. Thank you waste management, they will do nicely in our budding veggie garden.

Spring Clean Up: Garden Edition

I spent some time on the weekend to clean up the garden and pull some weeds. It's looking pretty orderly now:

I still have a hard time determining a weed from a plant that should be in the garden, so I'm working on it and will learn as they come up!

Visit to Deer Lake

**click the photo on the left for more photos**

Last week I spent a few days visiting my grandmother and uncle in Deer Lake, the weather was lovely and I came home very well fed.

I took a stroll around town and found an excellent chip truck...well chip, fish, wings and poutine? The Strawberry Festival was taking place on the weekend so I wandered down to where the festivities were taking place to check it out.

My uncle has one fine little veggie garden growing in the backyard, we actually ate some of the greens in a salad for dinner one evening and they were delicious! Next year lettuce and spinach might be on our to grow list. My grandmother has stuck to growing flowers, and they are as beautiful as ever this year.

I spent quite a bit of time on Friday morning at the Deer Lake Library. It really doesn't look like much from the outside, but it's bright and cozy on the inside. On Thursday we went to Corner Brook, and while the second picture has a snippet of a parking lot in it, there are some lovely low mountains beyond it:

While I've eaten (and blogged) about fish and brewis before I took the time to learn how to make it and took detailed notes! From left to right: onions, cooked fat back (scrunchins), uncooked fat back, nan stirring up the onions, cooked potatoes, the finished product. And I know, it doesn't look like much but it's SOOOO tasty!

Vegetable Garden Update

Moderate amounts of success! The potatoes we planted have come up in full force and are growing leaves like crazy. This evening Greg "hilled" them which means piling dirt around the plants until the bottom leaves are covered. We will find out in due time if this was done correctly. In the meantime we have some decent looking greenery!

And for awhile there our tomato and cucumber plants looked like goners. After bringing them in the house for a weekend (the weather was much too cold it turns out) they are bouncing back. Two tomato plants are looking really strong and healthy, the third is coming along.  We are working on the cucumber plants, one died and the other two look better than before but it's still up in the air whether or not they will end up making cucumbers.

Thankfully no wildlife has really gotten into the plants. There have been a few paw prints in the containers this past week but I think they were more investigative rather than destructive. I'm keeping my fingers crossed it stays that way!

Toughen Up!

Perhaps we are late on this but Greg and I are starting to toughen up our vegetable plants by putting them outside while we're at work. Despite the wind yesterday they fared well...just really thirsty since yesterday was a hot day. You can see how much they vary in size, some have definitely done better than others so far. Also, the onion plants (look like strings) are awkward to work with, they always look ill!

Things Are Growing!

When Greg and I came back to New Glasgow on Monday we were happily surprise to see that the seeds we planted had spouted!

The cucumbers were the first to come out and then the onion and now we are just waiting for the tomatoes (for the most part).

I took a picture before I went to work this morning and then later on in the evening, there's a difference in even that amount of time:

Before I went to school this morning

Around 7PM this evening

Other than the addition of the tomato plant (marked by the red tipped stick) the plants are in the same positions they were in the morning photo. I'm pretty impressed!

Getting Things Growing!

Greg and I are trying our hand at growing vegetables this year. I was marking up a storm this past week so this is Greg's hard work and photo skills:

He needed to wet the soil before putting it into the little cups, apparently that's all of the water that seedlings need.

All filled with seedling soil

We picked 4 different types of vegetables to grow this year, three are from seed and the other we are trying is potatoes so those will come later (from the eye of potatoes).

All marked and ready to grow. 

The tray is now sitting on top of our fridge, apparently that's a good spot to start seedlings since it's warm.

I'll keep you posted about the progress!