More seeds, More snow......and a Raised Bed

After all of my excitement last week, it snowed!  Woke up to find not 1-2 inch as predicted, but a good 4-5 inches of snow.  First thoughts went to the seeds I had already planted outside, in all my "spring has sprung" excitement.  Garlic got covered again in mulch, but nothing much could be done to the other seeds that were planted.  Keep my fingers crossed and hope that they will sprout, once the snow melts!  The back up plan is to seed them again.

Here's my backyard  - covered in snow..... again!

In the other news, I found this packet at Walmart today!  A red onion seed packet for $1!  I went online to read about it and found that this was a good variety to plant in our region.  So I promptly planted 144 seeds(2 each in 72 seed starting trays).  I think I was a bit late, planting on March 23, but these packets were not available, the last time I was there.  So I will see how they do this year!

I also bought 200 red onion bulbs and 10 garlic bulbs, each for $3.  I read about garlic bulbs and found out that they should be planted in fall rather than spring.  I will be returning the garlic bulbs back to walmart.  Not sure why they would sell them in spring rather than in the fall.  I couldn't find garlic bulbs anywhere last fall.  I finally bought one bulb from farmer's market.

I've also planted a whole bunch of other seeds, mostly different kinds of flowers - dahlia, zinnia, marigolds, red hot pokers, calendula, daisy, lupines, forget me not etc., a week ago.  I thought it was a bit early to start the flower seeds, but my son has been bugging me to plant his flower seeds and since I got my hands dirty, I figured, I might as well plant them all. 

They've started to sprout here and there.  I'm not sure I have the space for them in our yard, but we will cross that bridge when we get to it.  For now, I am happy that my seeds are sprouting!

Since we were snowed in, my dear hubby decided to assemble the raised bed in the basement from all the lumber we had purchased last month.  One raised bed is now ready to be transported to the outdoors!



More seeds sown........Spring has sprung!

On March 14th, I got around to seeding tomatoes, peppers and a whole bunch of other stuff.  This is what was seeded indoors.

Tomatoes:
Early Girl - 5
Homestead- 3
Red Brandywine - 4
Rutgers -3
Bestboy - 3
Beefsteak - 3
Roma -3

Peppers:
Green Bell Pepper -12
Red Bell Pepper- 12
Sweet Banana Pepper -10
Thai Dragon Chili - 10
Cayenne Chili -10
Kung Pao - 10
Jalapeno - 3

Melons:
Sweet 'n Early -7
Sugar Baby -7

Other:
Butternut Squash - 5
Dahlia -5
Hollyhock -5
Green cabbage-6
French Dwarf Marigold -6
Rosemary -6
Lupine -6

Seed starting trays

Surprise! Surprise!  I already see tiny eggplants coming up and also marigolds, cabbages and lupines.  It is so exciting to see the new growth. 

Eggplant sprouts

Cabbage,Lupine and Marigold sprouts

In the other news, we had beautiful weather yesterday  - St. Patrick's Day!  It was in the 50s.  Almost all of the snow has melted. 

This is the backyard now. Almost all the snow is gone!

I went outside and seeded whatever cool weather loving seeds - I could find from my collection of seed packets.  So this is what was planted outdoors yesterday-

Spinach - Bloomsdale longstanding
Peas - Burpeeana Early
Green onions - Lisbon bunching
Baby Bok choy
Swiss chard - Bright lights
Cabbage - Orient Express
Four types of lettuce, two varieties of radish, brocolli.

My main kitchen garden - Peas planted around the inverted tomato cages.

Spinach overwintered

My garlic plants survived under the straw mulch.  This is how they looked.

Garlic plants -12

Seeds planted....First of the season!

I finally planted some seeds for the 2011 season!  Bitter gourd seeds(that I saved from the ones bought last year from grocery store) was the first to be planted on March 1st.  All 27 of them.  No germination yet!  I did soak them for 2 days before planting(I read that it improves the chances of their germination).  Ofcourse, bitter gourds(or any asian gourds for that matter, are notoriously slow to germinate with very low germination rates)  I will wait another two weeks before giving up on them.  Atleast I didn't pay an arm and a leg to get these seeds :)

The other vegetable that got planted on March 4th was Eggplant.  Three different pkts of eggplant!  These are also very slow to germinate, so I decided that they get seeded next.  Fairy Tale egpplant(6 seeds) is new this year with 55 days to harvest (the earliest of all eggplants).  I couldn't find them anywhere in local stores(I called all the garden centres around) and finally bought them online.  The other variety is Long Purple eggplant(6 seeds) which was from last year's leftovers.  The third pkt is a mixed variety called Burpee's Garden blend and has 4 varieties - Applegreen, Rosa Bianca, Millionaire Hybrid and Snowy Hybrid in equal proportion.  6 of them got planted( I wonder which ones got planted- will have to wait and see!).  No germination yet.

Bitter Gourd and Eggplant seeds in trays.

I keep my seed starting trays by the south facing windows.  No lights or any other accessories.  Last year, I was successful with this method, but then last year, in March the temps were 40-50s.  This year, it has yet to reach 40s and sunshine is quite rare too.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed!