Year Seven - 2016 - March

MARCH

It's now March 6 and has been absolutely freezing out, but on the up-side we have very little snow left. Hoping that continues to so we can plant earlier this year. 

You can see that most of the wooden raised beds are visible and some are even clear of snow. The asparagus and rhubarb beds back by the shed are both almost bare.

Tomatoes enjoying the sun in the picture window.

I re-potted the tomatoes last weekend and buried them deeper in the cups. Tomatoes and peppers will grow roots all the way up their stem if they are buried, so I plant them deeper every time I re-pot them. This results in more roots and more roots makes for a stronger plant.  I planted early this year as well so I can try a pruning method that my favorite YouTube gardener, Ray Browning uses on his peppers and tomatoes. I'll post more about how that goes down the road. Ray's channel is Praxxus55712 and it's definitely worth checking out. Over the last few years I've greatly enjoyed his gardening videos, as well as the love he has for his barnyard creatures and trusty dog Rascal, all of whom make comical appearances in his videos. One of his quotes has become my mantra in the garden as I tend to get too OCD and hyper-focused on things. At times that can really impede my progress with some tasks. Whenever I feel myself slipping into that I say "Done is better than perfect!", complete the task and move on. I say this pretty much 30 times a day to myself in 3 out of 4 seasons. It keeps me moving and keeps me on schedule instead of spending half an hour obsessed with the fact that the scallions don't line up.

Speaking of gardening OCD, I recall last year being quite thrilled with my planting perfection. Most everything was in nice, neat little rows and columns. All very orderly, just the way I like it. But it was time consuming to plant this way and as lofty as my gardening goals are becoming every year, any time saved is going to be well utilized on the other end. Again, done is better than perfect! I think this year I can have it done, perfect and completed efficiently due to my discovery and acquisition of this nifty little tool. This is a seeding square. You just lay it on the corner of your bed and use the color-coded holes to plant depending on what type of vegetable you are planting. For example, tomatoes and peppers need a whole square foot of growing space per plant, so you would plant only in the middle hole whereas with spinach you can plant 9 plants per square foot, so you would use the yellow holes. The orange item at the bottom is a removable dibber/seed spoon that appears to be held in place magnetically. For anyone who doesn't know what a dibber is, it's an implement with marks on it for seed depths so you can quickly make the appropriate holes for planting. On the back of the square is a small, removable funnel held in place in the middle circle, for use in ensuring the seeds are placed directly in the holes. So to use this you would simply lay it on the corner of your garden bed and use the dibber to make the correct depth holes, lay the funnel over each hole and use the seed spoon to scoop out some seeds and drop a couple in each hole. Then you would remove the square, cover the holes, and firm the soil. The seeding square leaves an outline so you can easily line up the next planting square. I think this is going to save me loads of time while keeping everything clean, crisp, and organized the way I like it. You can find more out about the Seeding Square at http://www.seedingsquare.com/.

My peppers are finally starting to germinate about half of them are up now. Brassicas are all up and most the herbs have germinated. No sign of petunia sprouts yet though. The ones I've planted are from harvested seed, we'll see if / how they turn out. I've given the onions, shallots and leeks their first trim back to encourage more root growth. I'll be re-potting them this weekend to give them more space as they were seeded thickly. I've decided I won't do this after this year. It is much more sensible to plant onions, leeks, and shallots in the trays with 1/2" cells next year, so I don't have to waste that time re-potting. 

I also ordered more Conservor shallots to plant as the Zebrune variety I ordered had a very low germination rate. I'm a little bummed about that because I was really looking forward to trying them. The other variety of banana shallot (Simiane) germinated fine and they're growing well, so at least we'll get to try those.

In other exciting news, I secured a domain name for our website last weekend, atlanticgardener.ca. It is currently redirecting to this blog, but someday I hope to use it for more commercial purposes, perhaps to sell vegetable and herb seed, seed garlic, sweet potato slips, products we dry and store, who knows...the possibilities seem endless, we'll see what happens. 

UPDATE: 

The first day of spring looked so promising!

The second day of spring, not so much.

It's now March 29 and most things have been planted and are well on their way. Seems like I have less seedlings this year, for some odd reason. I'll be planting the last of it this weekend and then it's just play the waiting game until this mess melts and dries up. Last week I joined ACORN (Atlantic Canadian Organic Regional Network), looking forward to ordering their Guide for Beginning Farmers and delving into that. 

After work today I checked one of the asparagus beds and clipped off all the old, dead stalks to make way for the nice, new asparagus spears. Crossing fingers all the crowns in both beds survived and we get to taste our first harvest this year.