Garden Update: A Baby Zebra and Some Eager Potatoes

It's time for another garden update, or an abbreviated one at least! I'm not getting into all the garden areas as it's been a while since I've taken photos of some (and I still need to weed and don't want to embarrass myself too much).

First off, I've officially had my first couple harvests of basil. I made classic pesto with the first batch, and have frozen the rest for now as I need more recipes that use basil. It's interesting that my basil is doing so ridiculously well, as last year I killed my lone basil plant.  It's been five days since I last cut it, and I almost need to do it again! My only guess as far as its happiness is that it has its own dedicated pot, and a couple "friends" to keep it company (I have three basil plants in one large pot).

I had a "YAY!" moment last week when my puny (but healthy) bleeding heart plant produced a lone flower. I didn't fully expect the plants to bloom this year since we just put them in this spring, but was pleasantly surprised when I discovered one flower had popped out. It has since started to wilt, but here's to more flowers as the summer goes on!

R is currently away on a house boating trip for a bachelor party, but on Tuesday I checked out the garden and his potatoes had had a major growth spurt. I'm talking a "double in size in the last week" growth spurt. He really needs to get on hilling his babies!

And I saved the most exciting thing for last. My Black Krum tomato plant had popped out a tomato the other week, but it wasn't nearly as exciting as finding this little gem - a baby zebra tomato! It's such a neat pattern on it, I can't wait until it's ripe and I can slice it up! Funny thing is, I don't even really like tomatoes...but I'm willing to make an exception for these guys. ;)

That's all for this update...perhaps if I get my butt in gear weeding over the weekend, I'll take some more pictures and will be able to show you how well the peas, beans and zucchini are coming along - they actually look like real plants now! :)

Garden Update: Beans, Beans, the Magical Fruit

...and that sentence will not finish with "the more you eat, the more you toot". At least not in this instance!

I neglected weeding the garden this weekend in favor of other, more enjoyable activities, but still took some photos showing the main garden's progress as far as my (new) seed babies are concerned. It's been just over two weeks since we put the garden in, and most everything is starting to sprout!

The peas (on the left, on either side of the wire fencing) are popping up in nice neat little rows. Can't wait until they're tall enough to start climbing! The beans (right) are also doing really well...for some reason the left row came in faster, but even the "bald" spots in the right row have areas where the dirt is being pushed aside to make for bean plants. I'm sure I'll have a nice crop of beans this year!

The cauliflower (left) is up as well, as far as I can tell. The seedlings are kind of mixed in with the weeds and plant debris (which is a result of rototilling a garden that hasn't been maintained in two years - it should be better next year), and the zucchini is coming in quite nicely, and large like the bean plants.

For the four rows of carrots (left, noted by the white row markers), I can't tell if they've decided to make an appearance yet, as carrot seedlings are so tiny. At this point, I'm just going to let them grow amongst the weeds, and once everything's a bit bigger, I'll try and differentiate. Don't worry, I plan on weeding the rest of the garden soon! And last but not least, the potatoes - R's babies are up! They're not big or bushy yet either, but I definitely think they have the potential to be!

I can't tell if the cilantro and garlic chives are up, so I didn't take a picture of those.

And some bonus, non-veggie garden pics for you - my bleeding hearts (left) are doing quite well, this one is bushing up more and more, so hopefully I'll get to see some blooms this year! The hostas (right) are all getting big, too, but the exciting thing is that the other three plants in the top left corner of the front flower bed (all bulbs) have popped out! They were a little slow on the pick-up, but they're here now!

I can't wait until I have some blooms happening!

Garden Update: The Hostas are Rising

I figured since the last pictures I posted of the potted plants were from a week or two ago, it would be prudent to post some more recent photos of some of the growth we've had in both the flower beds and the pots. The peppers and tomatoes are doing nicely, and the hostas are coming up in full force in the front flower bed. Some of the other perennials that we planted are taking a bit longer to get growing, but that's to be expected, since some of them were bulbs and not active roots.

As you can see, there's a random lily growing in there as well (photo on the left). I'm not sure what kind it is, but it'll be a nice surprise once it blooms. The other existing plant is what my mom and I figure is columbine (the bushy plants in the photo on the right)...again, I have no idea what color it'll be, but I'm sure it'll look good.

I'm super excited about how my basil is doing (left), as it has practically doubled in size since we moved it into the big pot it's in now. Basil can apparently be pretty picky, so it's nice to see that it's not drowning or dying of thirst. The Thai chilis are starting to come in now, too (right), and it'll be fun to eventually make some Thai curry or something using those.

Last but not least are the serranos (left) and Sweet Heat chilis (right). This is only one of the five serrano plants, but it's pretty indicative of how all five are doing - the peppers are getting quite large, and there are more growing all the time. The Sweet Heat chilis are getting quite large, too, but I think I'll wait to harvest them until they're ripe/red.

Not too much action on any of the tomatoes yet, but a couple of the plants have flowers on them already, so I anticipate that there will soon be fruit forming on those.

The vegetable garden hasn't sprouted anything yet, but it has only been about a week since it was planted, and seed germination times are usually around ten to 15 days. Perhaps there'll be something by next weekend!

Garden Update: The Garden Is In!

I kind of dropped the ball on updating about my plant babies, didn't I? There's a good reason for that, however: they're all dead. The weekend before May Long, I transplanted the babies into bigger pots and started bringing them outside for increasing periods of time (or at least that was the plan). Unfortunately, it either rained too much or the babies just weren't ready for that yet, and they all died. So I decided to go with Plan B and ended up purchasing any of the plants I want to grow this year.

I'll give you a run-down of what I've been up to garden-wise since my little seedlings bit the dust...

Weekend of May 17 to 19 (the May Long Weekend)

R was away bear hunting for this particular weekend, so I took the liberty of vacating my dead seedlings from all my pots and decided that I'd purchase some flowering annuals for them, to add a bit of prettiness to the backyard. 

I found a great deal on geraniums from Costco (six 3" pots of them for $10) and also grabbed a planter already filled with gorgeous dark purple daisy-like flowers for another $17. There wasn't anything else I liked at Costco, so I went to Canadian Tire for the rest of what I had decided I needed. The Canadian Tire in my little suburb is actually a really good store, as opposed to so many others I've visited before (hometown Crappy Tire, I'm looking at you!) and I managed to get the rest of the flowers I needed for about $30.

I planted all my flowers into their corresponding pots, and they ended up looking great! Yay for flowers!

Weekend of May 24 to 25

I did a lot of garden stuff this particular weekend, and R was around to help this time. We first went to a local greenhouse that specializes in tomatoes and hot peppers to pick up some serrano peppers and maybe tomatoes to put in the extra pots I had. There ended up being a deal on the tomato and pepper plants - buy 12 for $3.50 each, otherwise they were $4 each. So I purchased seven hot pepper plants (five serranos, one Thai hot pepper and one Sweet Heat) and five tomato plants (Roma, Zebra, Black Krump, Pineapple, and I forget the last one). I also got three basil plants (to eventually make home made pesto!) so the total bill came out to $56. Not bad, considering these plants were mostly six inches or taller. Anyways, we planted all these plants into pots (easily movable if the weather goes crappy) after I bought more pots and dirt from Canadian Tire.

We also cleaned up both the side and front flower beds, and planted the perennials I had previously ordered from Costco online (seriously great deal on hostas and a mixed perennial "set"). This took a couple hours, but it was worth it because everything looked so much better when we were done, even though none of the plants had come up yet.

Weekend of May 31 to June 1

This was the most recent and most time- and labor-intensive gardening weekend to date. We rented a small rototiller to clean up the back vegetable garden, which had been neglected for a couple of years. Man, was it a mess! Took way longer to get all cleaned up than I wanted it to, and there's still lots of crab grass and dandelion roots in the soil, but hopefully those will disappear and/or die. We also put up a fence around the garden since the dog likes to eat veggies and dig, and S and K are getting a puppy right away, so we don't want it in the garden, either. Finally, we planted! Ross put in his potatoes, and I put in peas, tendergreen beans, zucchini, purple cauliflower, red and purple carrots, and some garlic chives and cilantro. Hopefully it'll all grow!

And now, to share some pictures...

 

As you can see, the plants are significantly larger than my pathetic seedlings would have been, so I think this might be the way to go for plants next year, as well. Especially since the greenhouse I got the tomatoes/peppers at also normally grows tomatillos, he was just out. Perhaps I can request he grow a certain number of plants just for me! :)

I'll post more about the garden when I can, as these pictures are now from about a week ago.

Plant Babies: Progress Report #1

It's been about a week and a half since I planted the seeds I wanted to start indoors, and for the longest time there was no sign of anything popping up above the dirt. Starting on Sunday, though, my little sprouts started making an appearance!

The first plants to sprout were my tumbler tomatoes, and they had made quite a bit of headway by day seven. The zucchini also started to poke its head out of the dirt a bit, which you can see in the bottom left corner of the picture.

Spindly little tomato seedlings

Zucchini! Can you see it?

By Monday morning (day eight), the one zuccchini seedling had managed to grow about half an inch and was kind of goofy looking with its seed still on it.

On day nine, the tomatillos joined the party and the serrano peppers were just starting to show (but not enough to see in the picture). The zucchini plant had also grown a fair amount again, and other zucchini seedlings had started to show up.

And now, on day ten (this morning!) I couldn't resist seeing what was happening before I headed to work. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the tomatillos are growing happily, and the serrano peppers are almost to the point where you can see them in the picture (you might be able to if you look really close). I had to take the lid off of the growing set-up since the tomatoes are getting too tall and spindly to stay in there any more, so now the plant markers are being put to good use.

Overall, I'm really excited with how things are going so far! Now I just need to get the grow light installed so that these babies can have enough light!

Plant Babies

On Sunday, I finally got my butt in gear and planted the seeds that I need to start prior to Alberta's growing season. It's a pretty standard practice when it's usually not frost-free until after the May long weekend (usually the third week of May). This is what my plant babies looked like a couple of days ago (which unfortunately isn't much):

The lid on the planter helps keep moisture and warmth in, since seeds need a certain atmosphere to start. Unfortunately, the seed markers I found were a bit too tall to fit under the lid, so for now, I scribbled directly on it to identify which is which.

I only started four kinds of seeds this time around, since a lot of the other stuff I want to plant (peas, beans, cilantro, potatoes, etc.) work fine seeded directly into the garden once the frost season has passed. I did two "cells" each of the following (from top to bottom): tomatillos, serrano peppers (or chiles de serrano), zucchini and tumbler tomatoes (which will be grown in my upside-down tumbler tomato planter - apparently they do really well this way!)

This year is my first year gardening. I've watched my mom garden since I was just a wee little thing, so I know a bit about it, but my mom is still my go-to expert for all things plant-related. After reading my seed packets, I saw that the serranos and tomatillos need 14 to 16 hours of sunlight a day to thrive once they've sprouted, so this weekend I'll be heading to Home Depot for a fluorescent light housing and some bulbs for it. Mom suggested that I get one "cool white" and one "warm white" bulb to cover the full spectrum, instead of spending significantly more money on the actual grow bulbs.

I'll be sure to post more once my plant babies sprout!

El Principio

I'm no stranger to blogging, but it's always interesting writing the first post in a new blog. I never quite know where to start or what to say. One thing I do know, however, is that I do miss having a space on the internet to call my own, that isn't Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. So here I am once again, ready to start anew, with no intentions to put pressure on myself to post on any regular basis (which is what turned me off blogging the last few times). This is, pure and simple, for me!

It's me! At Capilano Suspension Bridge Park last summer.

I suppose I should start by telling you a bit about myself...my name is Shayla and as of this post, I'm in my late twenties. I have many interests and hobbies, but some of the more prevalent ones lately include:

• motorcycling
• Warhammer (if you don't know what this is, check out this website)
• baking
• cooking (especially Mexican)
• makeup artistry (beauty makeup and special effects)
• television
• target shooting
• traveling
• exercise/health

My motorcycle, Excalibur. It's a 2006 Yamaha FZ6.

Shooting my boyfriend's 10/22 at the range last summer.

I've had a lot of great life experiences that have made me who I am. I'm university educated, have lived abroad (I spent a year in Mexico in high school between grades 11 and 12) and am fiercely independent. I enjoy challenging myself and learning new things, especially languages - in addition to English, I speak French and Spanish, and a wee bit of Italian. 

I currently live in one of the larger cities in Alberta, and will be moving to a smaller suburb at the end of April. Most people think it's kind of an odd move, but I'm moving in with my boyfriend, so it's a good thing in that respect, and makes sense for me/us at this point. Besides the obvious, I'm hoping that once I'm settled and not bouncing back and forth between his place and mine, I'll be able to focus more on my hobbies (notably the exercise/health part of things). Which is where the blogging thing comes into play...

So that's the long and short of it. Hopefully, it tickles your fancy, and you'll stick around to hear about some of my adventures!