Recent Activities

First off I have put the harvest widget up on my side bar. I did end up getting my harvest widget back after the html editor crashed with all my files disappearing. I reinstalled the program and my files were still gone and today they are back, no idea what happened there. I still think it's windows vista's fault and I am sticking to it. I will have a tomato harvest widget coming as well once I start harvesting tomatoes, hopefully near the end of May.

Now about the weather, it has been pretty erratic lately. Saturday was about 25c(77f) followed by thunderstorms with rain all evening and night. Then Sunday was a chilly 16c(61f) with a cool breeze and today is 28c (82f) feeling like 31c(89f) with the humidex.

Some real technology at work here, It is so hot
it took three stones to vent the frame on Monday.

I have some updates on the poly tunnel that I have posted about here and here. I have started to work on it again after it has sat in the office being neglected for a while. Last week I cut all the poly to fit and stapled the two end pieces on. This past weekend my Mom graciously sewed the velcro on the top piece of poly for me so I can easily raise & lower the poly. I am hoping to complete the poly tunnel this week and do a post about its construction.

Sewing at the speed of light.

This past weekend I also spent a lot of time in the garden doing various things. I planted out many seedlings that have been in the cold frame. They include the broad beans(fava's), broccoli, shell peas & snap peas. I still need to plant the seeded yellow onions & shallots, tatsoi, chard & some lettuces. Here are some photos of the planting:

The broad beans from Down on the Allotment. They really
didn't like the heat last weekend in the frame so I planted them
out fast. The have cool little black spots on them. Maybe this
means flowers are coming?

The broccoli, I planted out 16 altogether. There is radish &
onion sets interplanted with them. Now I have to start
planning when t0 start the second crop of broccoli.

The shell peas, Green Arrow. They were grown from seed from
last year and are very tasty. I planted out 20 peat plugs, some
with 2 plants and some with one plant.

The snap peas, Sugar Snap in their terracotta pot. I planted
out 6 into the container due to poor germination. The seed was
purchased this year.

I also dug out two of the new raised beds leaving just the top one that will be dug out very soon. I need to get going on refilling them so I can get planting. Once I finish digging the last one I will do a post on the additions and also include the square footage of the whole veggie patch. I have never calculated the square footage so it will be interesting to know.

Lastly I am going to start doing a weekly photography post and a garden meal post. Hopefully it goes well as I am horrible at keeping a schedule. The photography post will be on Tuesdays starting this week and will consist of a few nice photos of the garden I took during the previous week. The garden meal post will be on Thursdays and will not start until the garden is in full swing. In addition to regularly eating veg from the garden I want to start cooking one meal a week that is predominantly from the garden. For this meal I will allow the use of oils, pasta, grains(flour, rice, breads etc), dairy & eggs but I will try to mostly avoid meat and no bought produce expect maybe mushrooms. It should be fun.