Bye Bye April!

It's the last day of April and it's still so darn cold out.  This year we had a Winter that just won't go away, and now a Spring that feels like it hasn't actually arrived.  So far we've only had one slightly milder weekend,  just enough for me to spend the weekend cleaning the yard up and began to get the soil in the planters ready for seed sowing.

The Spring bulbs are starting to peak out of the ground and so far only these red tulips have bloomed.  I thought the Crocuses would come out first but I barely see any of them... maybe the squirrels ate them?  I'm guessing in another two weeks or so, more of the bulbs will start to bloom...  can't wait!

This year I decided to direct sow a bunch of cool weather vegetable seeds outside right into the planter.  I realized that I actually don't have enough space indoors to start seedlings for things like lettuce and radish.  Plus, I find the indoor-start lettuce and radish seedlings be on the weak/lanky side (due to the lack of daylight) so it'll be interesting to see if the direct sow method will yield better and strong crop.

With that in mind, this season I've focused most of my indoor seed starting energy to things like tomatoes (4 kinds!), herbs, snow peas, and cucumbers (and that's cat grass you see there in the center).  I probably will have to transplant some of the seedlings to bigger planters soon to encourage more growth.

Meanwhile, patience, patience, patience......

And let's see in 20 days if the first batch of "4 seasons lettuce" I directly sowed outside will be ready for harvest or not :)

~ Rebecca 

First day of Spring

It's officially the first day of Spring, but it's far from feeling like Spring.  We did have a few days of "warm up", and by warm up I mean just barely above zero.  Because it's been so cold for so long this Winter, even a degree of two above freezing actually feels "warm" in comparison.  I think we may have reached 4-degree Celsius yesterday and I was walking around without gloves and a winter hat!

Seedlings are coming along - more than half of the seeds have sprouted and I have transferred them to small containers of dirt.  Due to space constraints, I ended up putting two seedlings per pot, so when they get bigger in a month or so I will probably have to do another split and transfer.

The square planters I saved up from the annuals I bought last year actually comes in quite handy and they line up nicely in the cardboard box.  In the photo above, we have several kinds of tomatoes, along with some curly parsley and cilantro.

Last night I transferred a few more tomato seedlings to the circular pots.  Because we only have one South-facing window, I'm need to maximize the seedling placements as much as I can.  Here I'm trying out two-tiered placement (essentially taken over a good corner and door of our kitchen), hopefully the plants will like it.  I still have a few more seedlings to go (golden bell pepper and eggplants, those seeds takes soooo long to sprout!) so I'm going to have to work my magic and find a few more places to put those!

Happy Spring!    

~ Rebecca

Seedlings transferred to soil

Seedling updates!  The seeds I started with the wet paper towel method have been transferred to soil and containers (all indoor still).  They are adapting to the soil quite well and are growing quickly, reaching for the sun!

As I mentioned before, this year I'm trying to be organized, so I've put together a nice little chart for what I've planted in each of these little containers: 

Keeping my fingers crossed that these will survive through the next few weeks! 

Seedlings growing up!

 

With an early start on the seeds, the vegetable plants are really starting to come along, in particular the cherry tomato plants and some of the herbs (cilantro and dill).  I think in a week or so I'm going to have to start planting some of the tomatoes in the big planters outside as they are getting quite tall and needs to be staked soon.  

Unfortunately some of the seedlings didn't make it .  The good news is, it's still April and I still have plenty of time to do round 2 of seed starting :)  So here are a few things that are in the works for Round 2:

- Basil

- Ciapoli onion

- Chives

- Sunflower (round 1 for this)

- Yellow bell pepper (round 1 for this)

I'm also going to start some Cayenne pepper seeds, and perhaps some lettuce?  

Updates

 

The weather in Toronto has been back to the normal range for this time of the year.  Althogh many of the bulbs in the neighborhoods are alreayd blooming, probably 1-2 week ahead of their typical schedule.  The vegetable seedlings are doing well, especially the ones in the kitchen window sill.  The Cherry Tomatos are growing nicely, with nice little leaves and not too stringy...

The Cilantro is coming along as well.  I think I might have threw in more seeds in one pot than I was supposed to, but oh well, more Cilantro for me! :)