On the calendar spring is only a few days away, but in my neck of the woods we'll still have snow till mid to end of April.  Mother Nature always has that last good-by winter storm in April!  Still, just the thought of Spring coming makes me smile and warms me up.  Local stores have their patio furniture, camping gear and Spring/Summer clothes out.  Local nurseries started putting out the seed displays and Spring displays... I love this time of year.

The nice days are starting to outnumber the cold dreary ones now.  Here are a few pictures from last week during March break where my son got a nice white blanket of fresh snow to go sliding ;o)

It was pretty nasty but now the snow is melting and Spring is in the air (hopefully).  In the picture of the back yard the garden is buried under the snow between the patio and my son's play cabin.  It was bare just a few days ago.. ah well ;o)

Over the weekend Seb (my son) and I started a few seeds.  We started a few tomato, cabbage and asparagus peas.  It's still a bit early but I had the itch and hope I can keep them to transplant to a cold frame to get an early start.  We'll start staggering seedlings in the next few weeks.  I can't wait to be able to invest in a good greenhouse!  But the new baby on the way will take care of that money.. haha.  It will be a busy busy summer with a new black lab puppy, Sookie,  as an addition to our 3yr old black lab Maddy and then the new baby (to be named) due Aug. 27th.

Whoa just starting to sink in with all the fun work ahead... good start to 2010!!  Ok back to reading planning the garden... ;o)

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!!).

So the plan is to study, finalize selection of seeds, start seedlings indoors and complete the plan for the new raised garden beds, almost in that order.  I'll be pricing out the Hemlock that I'll use for the beds once I calculate how much I need.  Also have to start looking for my options on materials to create my own versions of Mels's Mix.  I won't have enough compost to do all the beds so have to find some alternatives.  I can get loam and peat moss perlite at good prices, but good compost in bulk might be hard to come by in the quantities I'll need to kick off all these beds at once.  Still researching at this point. 

So as this is posted it's another snow day here (30cm of the white stuff) and seems like Spring will never come, but it will and I can't wait!!

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. 

The first picture is from the landing looking to my left where we stack our wood.  On the right is a stack of shelves we built using strapping and old closet doors.  Have a better view of those in the after pictures.  These are great and sturdy shelves deep enough to store our camping gear, coolers, suite cases and even our rotational pantry.  It's amazing how neat everything is when packed properly on the shelves!

Basement After

Once I got started it wasn't so bad. Even my son pitched in and made a bag of toy donations, even though he played with them in the basement more then clean ;o)  It feels so good now to go downstairs and there is a place for the wood, recycled bottles and cans, tools, pantry is packed away, camping gear is packed away, Halloween and Christmas decorations packed away... just neat.

The lessons learned from this was one, we hold on to too much stuff and two, we have too much stuff.  What's hard is deciding what to part with and what to keep.  I'm one of those "I'm sure I could use that someday" guys and need to change that and stick to the necessities. 

We have some plans for the basement and the first step was to

Basement After2

declutter.  This summer we plan on putting in an egress window or a storm door so it's easier to bring in the wood in the fall.  I also have an ambitious plan of building a corner of the basement in to a root cellar so we have a good cold space for preserves and root crops.

In the last picture you can see a better picture of the closet door shelves.  Behind the wall on the right is another closed off section of the basement that was used as a wood working shop by the previous owner.  I didn't take any pictures of that room yet.  I just need to get my own tools to fill it up I guess ;o)

On to the next project for now...

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:

Dogs: We have a 3 year old and an 8mth old pair of black labs.  They are great but the little one is a digger and chewer, so this is one of the main reasons for the change.  She already chewed up my raspberry bushes planted last year, which was my fault for putting her out where she could reach them, what was I thinking??  More on my remedies for this later.

Square Foot Gardening: The last few years we basically bought our seeds on a whim without much planning.  This worked out OK, but we didn't space our our plantings and ended up with too much lettuce or cherry tomatoes all at once, not enough potatoes, beans or carrots to carry us into winter, etc...  This year we are going to plan for preserves and follow intensive square foot gardening practices to increase our yields and maximize the space we have.  Also want to try companion planting of mutual beneficial vegetables and flowers.

Extending Growing Season: I've seen a few articles on using 8' pvc pipe and cover to create nice row covers to extend the growing season here in our Great White North when frost comes earlier then we want, so want to test it this year along with possibly experimenting on a few removable "Cold Frame" cover for the beds.

Ease of Management:I've never worked with raised beds before, but from I've read and feedback I've received from others, they are easier to keep up and work on.  Ours will be hemlock, which will match our fence when it goes up.  Everything is at an arms length away and the paths in between give you ample room to move about, also important for the dogs and kids ;o)

Esthetics's:I honestly find raised beds more neat and esthetically pleasing to the eye.  Since my wife is a photographer, we have a few other backyard projects to create good photo ops, which will tie into the beds as well.

I'm still playing with the design and layout, but we can easily go with eight 4' x 12' raised beds in the main area and another two 4' x 8' in the back.  This year we're going to test growing potatoes in a "potato stack" so that will be in addition to the raised beds and another post all together.

Putting money away for this project already and will purchase the hemlock for the raised beds in end of April or start of May depending on how the thaw goes... can't wait and will do a follow up post including pictures ;o)

Sometimes I feel like I have A.D.D.  When I start researching a topic through books and/or online, one thing leads to another, then to another, and before you know it I have 10 new projects on my to-do list.  I always have a notebook with me to try and keep my overzealous  plans in order and in check. 

I am doing research on winter gardening in my climate for next year.  We live in Eastern Canada just north of Maine, so we get cold snaps and lots of snow.  I got started reading a couple books that touch on the subject: "Intensive Gardening Round the Year" and "Solar Gardening", that I picked up from the Library.  I've done research on Cold Frame Gardening which was the route I was going before I stumbled on a few very inspiring YouTube videos about Dome Greenhouses and people actually using them to grow during the winter months in Northern climates and in the mountains.

One of the sites I'm checking out is Growing Spaces.  There are a few kits out there, but I like theirs so far and they have a lot of information available.  Here is their introduction YouTube video:

Here is another great video by PeakMoment that goes through a large 52ft year round growing dome project 6000 ft above sea level in Colorado.  Pretty sweet, but a bit large for my backyard ;o)

I am building or buying a greenhouse this year for sure, and was leaning towards traditional passive solar ones, but now I'm really liking the dome design.  It has a fluid nature to it and the dome design is perfect for our windy winters and snow loads.  I would love to buy a DIY kit, but cost is an issue and shipping is $$.  If I can find a design to piece it together and find some place local to purchase and cut polycarbonate panels, it is doable... dream dream dream ;o)

If anyone is currently winter gardening in a similar climate I would love to see and hear your experiences.