Springing Sprout

Some of my seeds have sprouted! The broccolinis are doing extremely well; almost every one sprouted up, although a few did not survive. I also have a couple of tomato and pepper sprouts, although I may have crushed one of the tomato when I accidentally dropped the curtain on it.

I also decided to seed some greens in my little garden plot today. I sowed some Catalina Spinach, Buttercrunch Lettuce and a couple of Chinese cabbages, Bak Choi and Choi Sum. Afterwards, I realized that the Buttercrunch and Chinese cabbages were in the same spot in the plot as last year. Too late -- I'd forgotten to plan ahead and rotate! I'm hoping it won't matter since the cabbages failed last year anyway. Last but not least, I planted some Red Butterworth lettuce and more spinach in some containers outside on the deck. I'm curious to see if they will grow better and faster in the theoretically warmer container soil.

Coming up, beans and cucumbers! I just bought the seeds about a week ago, on the advice that they're rewarding and easy to grow. This will be a nice challenge for my brown thumb.

Cold Cry Mates

I ran a bunch of errands today and bought a nice warm pair of black yoga pants for myself. The strange thing was that, in the front of the shop, there was a large rack of bathing suits. Mental check. Swimsuits? In the winter? It just snowed a few days ago and shops are selling swimsuits already!

Maybe this means it's about time to sow the seeds in the garden. Do I sow because we're coming on to mid-April and I won't have my harvest unless I start soon? Or do I hold off because it still snows and I'm supposed to wait until "all danger of frost is past"? Maybe the snow doesn't count, as long as I don't actually see any frost. Damn, I wish it were warmer.

While I cry to myself about the injustice of the local climate and its consequences on my agricultural instincts, I'll share a scan of my favourite sticker in the whole wide world.

Seeders

I'm starting seeds for my garden. Today I did some broccoli and tomato seeding in some peat pots and egg cartons, and last week I did some bell pepper and zucchini in peat pots. I'm hoping this will extend my season enough so that I can finally get some fresh ripe tomatoes from my garden! That's still my goal... third year's a charm, I hope.

Last year I found that seeding in the peat pots made it near impossible to control the moisture, so I've planted the seeds in the pots individually, then planted the pots into a compost/soil mix. This worked fairly well last year, almost a 100% success rate, so here's hoping for the same. I'm actually being reasonable this year and trying not to overseed since it breaks my heart when I have to kill the excess sprouts so young. I hope this is not too few: 9 broccoli seeds (one fell out into the big pot), 6 tomato, 2 zucchini, and a bunch of pepper seeds since they don't do as well.

Spring forth and prosper, little ones!