Saturday, December 31, 2016

Ooooooooh!!!!

Lookie lookie, what a friend gave me!  And just when I had started to wonder if/what I would grow from seed this winter. Now, the possibilities are endless!

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Woot!

Monday, December 26, 2016

A dreary winter day... perfect for dreaming of a green tomorrow!

What better than a dreary winter day to start up my new garden blog!

The freezing rain out there can't dampen my dreams of next year's veggie garden!

This blog will be a place for me to keep track of when things were planted/harvested, and a place to put my garden photos and general garden ramblings.  This will be ~95% veggie-related, but maybe a wee bit about some non-edibles, too.

My yard is just a little postage stamp townhouse yard, in Ottawa, Canada, but -- even though I grow veggies in only a fraction of the yard, and it gets at most 5 or 6 hours of sun per day, it's amazing what can be grown!  This past summer my yard grew... tomatoes, potatoes, peas, peppers, butternut squash, zucchini, green onions, stevia, strawberries (ok, that one was a flop -- got maybe three berries all year!), carrots (my fave -- was still harvesting right through November!), cabbages, and cucumbers.  And, a new addition this summer -- my very own compost bin so that I can use my very own compost, woo!  And save money from not having to buy those $$$ lined paper bags for the green bin, double woo!

Feel free to follow along, or, not!

As for today, starting to think about what if anything I want to start indoors from seed this winter.

Last winter, if memory serves (and it often does not) (see, the blog would have come in handy already), I grew green peppers, watermelons, and butternut squash from seed indoors.  However, the watermelon failed to thrive and was eventually removed; the butternut squash and peppers were looking iffy by June so I bought plants from the store.  I have had success from indoor seed in past years with tomatoes, zucchinis, cucumbers, and -- can't remember what else.  I will most likely grow *something* inside, if for no other reason than who doesn't want to garden in February!

The one thing I will start inside soon is (are?) the tuberous begonias I brought in this fall for winter storage.  Don't want to talk about them much because this is 95% a vegetable blog, and those are flowers, but -- permit me, briefly.  A neighbour has a beautiful garden whose flowers I always admired.  One day a few years ago, I decided to ask him what kind of flowers they are.  "Tuberous begonias", he announced proudly.  My memory is the pits, but this I took care to imprint in my brain long enough to get home to jot it down and do some googling.  Then, last winter off I went to Ritchie's to get some tuberous begonia tubers of my own.  However, laziness took over, and I never got them started indoors.  Sure enough, just like google suggested, they took forever to poke through the soil this summer and eventually flower, and the flowers looked wimpy, far from the dazzling display in my neighbour's garden.  Then one day I ran into my neighbour again, and shyly asked him where he got his begonias from, thinking I was opening the door for him to proudly explain how he tenderly looked after them over the winter so that they could have a healthy start in the garden in the spring and soon produce those glorious blooms for all to enjoy.  Imagine my surprise when he responded, "They sell them in pots at Home Depot".  Oh!  When I saw the tubers at Ritchie's I somehow assumed that that was the only way to buy them.  I didn't even know you could buy them already pre-planted and blooming!  Tee hee!  Anyway, so here we are, and I will give my tubers a good solid chance at a better bloom next year by getting them started this winter.  At least, that is the intention, on this gloomy, freezing rain day!

Some photos to keep things colourful -- October 10th harvest!

October 10th harvest!

November 19th harvest!

November 19th harvest!