Been busy couple weeks at work and coupled with the snow I just can't wait for Spring to come around.  I'll be picking up my seeds probably next week and within the next 2 weeks, start some seedlings indoors.  Visited the local nursery and they still hadn't put out the Veseys Seedsyet, but should be out next week I'm told.  I might just order them online...

I thought I would put some of my work conference call time to good use and draft up what our new raised garden beds would look like in Excel.  It's not pretty and things will not be planted as shown in the image, but setting it up this way will allow me to easily move things around.  Still have some reading to do an beneficial/companion planting and aligning to the sun.  Looking at the image, East is the top of the beds and West is the bottom.  The right side length of the beds will face South.  I have to confirm the number of seeds per square, per vegetable type as well as I only used one reference online but it didn't seem that accurate.  Once it's all put together proper, I should be able to calculate by function the number of total plants per type and benchmark yeild, etc... ya geeky, but it's a start ;o) 

I had to buy a few more training books for work so of course bought a treat.  I figure after toasting my brain on Windows 2008 Active Directoy Configuration (yes it's as exciting as it sounds), I thought I should reward myself with some good reading so included All New Square Foot Gardening: Grow More in Less Space! in my order.   Talk about "one of these things are not like the other..." (if you ever watched Sesame Street you get that ;o)  I had the original edition from the library but had to bring it back before I was done since someone else had it on hold (good for you!!).

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Picked up the second issue, Spring 2010, of Urban Farm magazine and it is chalk full of good useful articles!  I really do hope the magazine turns into a monthly issue and they start accepting subscriptions... all in good time I guess. 

One of my favorite articles is "Cinch by the Square Foot".  This article was great timing for me since I'm actually planning on converting our conventioanl row garden to raised beds and square foot gardening practices.  The article is written by Mel Bartholomew who is the author of Square Foot Gardening, which I am also actively reading. 

Another good article is "P is for Prosper".  The article goes through urban-farming pioneer Will Allen's  north Milwaukee urban aquaponic farm, Growing Power inc." and his seven P's for success and community building.  I stumbled on to Will Allen while researching aquaponics and was immediately interested in his processes.  I love that they are growing food where it is needed.  Here's a YouTube video as an introduction:

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It would seem that after the Holidays everything just went someplace in the basement... out of sight, out of mind.  I had about a 3ft path to bring the wood and knew this was something I need to tackle, just needed the courage ;o)

I took a couple of before and after pictures so I remember never to let it get to that state again.  Although I still have a bit more to go, I ended up bringing 3 bags of books for donation to the library, donated 3 bags of winter clothing for adults and kids, 2 garbage bags of junk, a list of items to sell on eBay/kijiji and some piece of mind. 

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I had both the pleasure and disgust of watching Food Inc. this weekend and it was an eye opener.  Although I was aware of most of what the film had to say, the message was really driven home as to how far removed we are from our food in our "modern society".

Filmmaker, Robert Kenner, "lifts the veil" on the American food industry exposing the industrialization of food production and the powerful companies that control it.  And when I mean control it, I mean through brute force and intimidation, they can keep farmers under their thumb and seem to be concerned only about profit, not the product or the people for which they supply.  A few scenes that bother me are the fact that farmers seem powerless to fight the large conglomerates that run the meat industry and the fact that the US Supreme Court allowed a company to patent seeds. 

I don't want to spoil it for anyone who has not watched it yet, but it is well worth the view and I would highly recommend it.  It is a bit graphic at some points and if you are tender at heart, you might shed a few tears.  One thing is for sure, you will "Never Look At Dinner The Same Way Again".  It certainly changed my points of view and we will make more changes in our choices.

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Backyard Garden 2009

For the past 3 years we've planted a traditional type of row garden in a 14' x 40' and 20' x 6' sections of our backyard.  When we bought the house from my parents, there was a large ornamental flower bed that we slowly converted to a full vegetable garden.  Not really knowing what we were doing, we started slow, learned along the way and know there's much more to learn. 

This picture is the only one I could find that showed the entire garden.  Even though it's a bit small you can see the rows and the 2 apple trees in the back that we planed last spring.  The large tree in the top left corner will be moved as this year we want to move towards raised garden beds.  We want to go down that road for a few reasons:

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