SPRING Kept Me Busy In The Garden

 

Days are too short in Spring!  Between the day job, meal prepping and the daily tasks, there's not much time left for everything that needs to be done before the gardening season officially kicks off.  Amending the beds, taking care of the seedlings, dividing and transplanting perennials, pruning and treating fruit trees, the projects...I would litterally need 36h in a day to make it all happen.

Anyhow, Spring kept me busy in the garden!

MARCH : AMENDING THE SOIL AND BUILDING A NEW RAISED BED
As soon as the snow had melted, I started to clean up the backyard.  We amended all of our garden beds with shrimp compost that I got delivered by the yard.  This meant carrying buckets and buckets of compost.  Good cardio/arm workout!! 


We also used that precious time between winter and the official gardening season to build a new raised bed.  We still had a bunch of pallet wood from building our raised garden bed last year, so we designed this project knowing we would be using repurpose materials.  The idea behind this construction is to place it close to the gazebo frame and trellis beans all over one side and the entire roof of the gazebo.  Stay tuned for all the details about this project!!


MARCH AND APRIL : STARTING SEEDS INDOORS
Every week of March and April, I started some seeds indoors for my spring and my summer gardens.  I used this calendar, from Les jardins de l'écoumène, to help me figure out what to start when.  The calendar I use is for zone 5-6, but Les jardins de l'écoumène also published a version for those of you in zone 3-4.  It is a great tool to help you plan your garden.  Plus, it's FREE!!

Youtube : STARTING SEEDS ZONE 5B


APRIL 11TH : DIRECT SOWING SPRING CROPS BEGINS
Radishes, spinach, mustard, turnips and bok choy seeds were directly sown in both my raised beds and my kiddy pool garden.  I organised our seed sowing to get some succession harvests.  Although we had a couple of radish harvests, we didn't get to enjoy anything else.  Temperatures plummeted mid may and almost everything went to seed.  The bok choy survived the first heat wave, but I decided to harvest it before the second one, which means maybe one week too early for them to get to their full mature size.



MAY : REPOTING, TAKING CARE AND HARDENING OFF MY INDOOR SEEDLINGS
Was I busy in May or was I busy?!  It was a good idea to start 240 tomato seedlings, until I had to transplant them in solo cups.  First, I had trouble getting my hand on solo cups because of the sanitary restrictions that were going on at that time in my hometown.  We had to order them from Amazon...not ideal when you need them RIGHT NOW!!!

Once I had the solo cups in hands, I had to make holes in all of them - #timeconsuming - and then, transplant 240 tomato seedlings and identifying each and every one of them with a tag. 😅  Seemed like a  never ending task! It litterally took me 8 hours. 

The rest of the month, I spent about an hour each day taking the seedlings in and out of the house to harden them off.  Of course, my husband was there to help me - don't mind the fact that he complained every day about how many plants Ihad and how time consuming this was. 😂



MAY : BUYING MORE SOIL
We were far than done carrying 5 gallon buckets of soil to fill are new raised beds and ALLLLLLL the containers for my garden.  We bought 2 yards of soil and got to work.  Now all the interlock portion of the backyard is a container garden!  Welcome to the jungle my friends!!!


JUNE : CHOOSING TOMATO SEEDLINGS FROM MY OWN NURSERY
I felt lucky when came the time to choose tomato plants for my garden and I had the most amazing selection of 14 varieties of absolutely beautiful tomato plants to choose from! 😀  I chose the best looking ones of course.  38 plants in total.  Now, they are all happy in their 5 gallon buckets and I can't wait to have a tomato sandwich!  Who else?


JUNE : FIRST TOMATO SEEDLING SALE EXPERIENCE
The reason I started this many tomato seedlings was to try and sale 200 to pay for our 2021 gardening expenses.  I learned SO MUCH doing this.  I plan on writing a whole blog about my experience, what I've learned, what worked, what I would do differently, etc...But let's just say I still have more than 160 plants left to sale 😳


As hectic as my Spring was, I'm in full on gardening mode at this point.  Watering my garden and removing tomato suckers are now apart of my everyday morning routine.  Sunscreen is my new day cream and my water bottle follows me everywhere.  I'm also ready, both mentally and physically, to start battling pests.  YIKES!!!

Stay tuned for a FULL garden tour this weekend!!


Happy gardening!
Mel :-)



Comments

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