BeanDreams: Sprouting Success! And Evolving Spring

The peas have sprouted! We are officially on our way! :D





The maple trees have burst forth, and only a few weeks after popping their buds, they've set their seeds.



And the purple varieties of clover have started blooming here, with lovely shades of magenta and dark pink...



It's late spring, and definitely on the way to a lovely summer!

BeanDreams: "The Plan"

It's just too gorgeous outside today NOT to plant something! Even though it's traditional to start plants here during the May long weekend (this weekend, Victoria Day), I'll be working during the whole thing, as its very busy at work. So, I'll start a little early with my cold-loving plants.

I went this year with a combination of bag gardening and container gardening. The bag garden idea is perfectly laid out in this month's issue of Mother Earth News, which I got for my birthday: http://bit.ly/bKYUuu


They make it sound pretty easy! And if we have to move this summer (which it looks like we will), it should be a relatively movable garden, as well. (Of course, I hardly planted anything last year because we thought we'd have to move, and we're still here...so I'm not letting that stop me this year). I'm using Miracle Grow Premium Garden Soil Plus (0.15-0.05-0.10) Organic Based (nice to see the organic base in there).

I'll be growing sugar snap peas (the kind with the edible pod), bunching onions (also called green onions or scallions), both from McKenzie's seeds, available pretty much everywhere in Canada (http://www.mckenzieseeds.com). I purchased eight starter plants of "Long Red" Cayenne, that are supposed to be good for drying. Looking forward to that! I'm also repotting the sad remains of my "Sweet Million" tomato plants that I bought last year. The weather was so poor I got a total of 2 tiny tomatoes from eight plants. I did, however, manage to keep some of them alive over winter, and they've flowered several times during that period, so I'm hopeful if the weather holds, these two guys will be good producers.

Our "last frost date", always approximate, is May 6, here in the Halifax region.This coming week has good temperatures, no lower than 6 deg. C at night. Should be just right to get the peas started. The peppers I won't transplant until they're nice and hardened off, sometime in early June.

I'll keep posting updates, hoping for an early sprouting! :)

BeanDreams 2010: The Return

Regular readers will have noted that I didn't have a BeanDreams last year. That was due to a few factors, the least of which was that we thought we might have to move during the summer. However, summer came and went, and so did winter, and we are still here (although our house is up for sale by our landlord, so we will have to move at some point). But I'm not going to let that stop me this year. I've got a portable garden plan, one that can come with us should we have to leave in the middle of the growing season.

Check out previous year's BeanDreams in the sidebar nav, and watch for updates soon, when I'll share my scaled-down plans with you all!

Spring is here....I think

Well, here's hoping, anyway. Mother Nature seems to think it is, plant-wise, so fingers crossed the weather will follow suit.

The bluets are out, one of the earliest wildflowers to bloom here in Nova Scotia (after the coltsfoot and dandelions, of course. The bluets are just as big as a pinky fingernail, delicate little flowers, but so pretty.



And, a herald of things to come, the wild strawberries have started blooming! After winter, it's so nice to be reminded of the good things to come...