Happy Sunday 🌱
As I talked about in my previous post I’m growing living greens (microgreens) and was starting a new endeavour. Well, I’m bringing my living greens and herbs to our local markets and my first market was last weekend. My greens and herbs were very well received and I am so excited to bring a little green to our otherwise very white area. As you may know I live in northern BC 🇨🇦 And sometimes throughout the winter months it can very be difficult to get fresh greens here.
What I’m hoping to accomplish by providing living greens is that their shelf life is longer then when you buy sprouts or microgreens from the grocery store. My greens are still alive and growing when you receive them and have all their nutritients ready to devour when you cut and wash them. They will easily live happily for a week (or 2) on your counter or table with a little bit of water, but don’t worry about taking care of a houseplant, that’s not what these greens are intended for.
“Cut and eat often” is what these babies are good for, I have three varieties going on my counter at any given time and they are perfect to snip and add to soups, sandwiches, wraps, pizza, salads, nachos or pretty much anything!
I have another market this coming Saturday and am super excited to be bringing more living greens and herbs!
Have a wonderful week 👩🏼🌾
Hi everyone!
Wow, it’s been a few years since I wrote anything here. With Facebook, Instagram and Twitter I have forgotten to come here and collect my thoughts, life also seemed to have sped up these last few years. I do really enjoy writing however so I thought I would come back and see if I can keep writing over the winter months, that is if I have actually that much to say. Wait, who am I kidding, I always have that much to say 😜
So.. living greens you might ask, yes I started growing microgreens (or living greens as I like to call them) about 3 years ago. What are microgreens (living greens)? Well they are the first little plants that emerge when growing vegetables or flowers, for example kale, radish, Bok Choy, sunflowers, peas, arugula and many more can be grown as microgreens. You eat these tiny plants (much like sprouts but without the seeds) when their first set of true leaves are visible and they can be put on or in pretty much anything. However, if you are like my husband, he just grabs a pack of pea shoots and munches on them as a snack. They are also extremely flavourful, taste just like their adult version and are also up to 6 times more nutrient dense than their adult counterpart😳.
I love having fresh microgreens (living greens) in my kitchen to add to any dish I’m preparing. I’m also starting a new endeavour with my greens and if you follow me on social media you already know, but stay tuned and I will write about how my launch goes.
Have a wonderful weekend my gradening friends!
Petunias everywhere!!!
So I thought my petunias did great last year, but they are nothing compared to this year. I did a couple of things differently and I think it was for the best.
First, I didn't use cow or coconut husk pots. I know it's not environmentally friendly but I used plastic insert trays this year, however I fully intend to use them again.
Secondly I have been fertilizing them steadily with liquid seaweed fertilizer and Gaia Green all purpose 4-4-4. They seem to really love it and so do my tomatoes.
Third, I've been transplanting them regularly.
I find that using the plastic inserts and pots, the plants do not dry out nearly as quickly and they do fit in my light garden much better which means more plants! Yeah me! All my plants seem to be doing better this year with regular fertilizing (not just adding it to the soil) they really do like to feed a lot. I never realized just how much.
I also started my petunias two months later than last year, I found that by the time I planted them in pots and brought them outside they were a little stunted. This year I'm hoping to eliminate that problem. I bought seeds rather then keep last years crop, a gardener at a local nursery told me that because most petunias are hybrids and bred to look the way they do that the more times you sow the seeds you keep the less pretty the petunias become. And he was right, my white petunias started getting pink and stringy, so for petunias I will buy my seeds. Marigolds however I will still collect :) and pansies too.
I'm really happy with how things turned out in my light garden this year and I'm thinking that this is the way to go for years to come. Now just to figure out my raised garden beds, lol. I'm getting there and improving every year, here is a picture of last year (left corner) and this years petunias. Threw a tomatoe pic in there just cause ;)
Happy gardening!
It's been two months since my last post!!!
Well I do have a good reason, I was in school for 6 weeks for work. I'm doing an apprenticeship for gas fitting, I know I know, what am I doing being a gas fitter and trying to be a gardener? Well a girls gotta eat and I can only grow food for about 4 months out of the year here :) and as much as I wished that organic gardening would pay the bills, it doesn't.
Back to gardening though, I've been really busy. I started even more of my own flowers this year starting with petunias (of course), marigolds, snapdragons, dichondra, wishbone, alyssum, lobelia, coleus, violas and pansies just to name a few. I transplanted today, I have really been missing playing in the dirt.
I also transplanted tomatoes today, I really don't know what I am doing wrong with them though. I know that they don't like to have their roots played with but when I was done with them they looked so unhappy I'm sure I'm going to loose a few of them. I tried to take as much dirt as possible so I didn't disturb the roots to much but still all the leaves crinkled and the plants are really droopy. I don't remeber having this much trouble with them last year.
I got my greenhouse this year! I'm so excited, we put it up yesterday on my deck. I posted pictures on my facebook page, and today we had 70km/hr winds and it stood up nicely. I can't wait to start putting things in it! I got it from Veseys, they were the cheapest and I got it within two weeks from across the country. I have to say I've really enjoyed dealing with them, they have always been very helpful and both my light garden and greenhouse arrived in great shape, and you gotta love the 5 month interest free payment plan!
My tulips and crocuses are up, the crocuses have already bloomed and my tulips by the house will hopefully bloom in the next couple of weeks. All my trees and shrubs look good and my raspberries are doing well too. I'm so ready for spring!
Ok, that's enough for now :) will try to keep up with my blogging now that things are settling down a bit (I hope) lol. Happy Sunday, and happy gardening.
It's blooming!!
Its only taken two years but my Phal has finally re-bloomed, I had actually forgotten what color it was. Now I remember why I bought it, she's pretty!
I don't use grow lights for my orchids, or I haven't yet anyway. I tend to just move them around my living room throughout the seasons to make sure they don't get to much direct sunlight during the day. Not really a problem right now because we only get about 6-7 hours of daylight, however I have noticed that the days are starting to get longer again.. Yeah!!
I did have to say goodbye to one of my favorite orchids today. My dendrobium was full of tiny green bugs, I noticed them a few months ago and I have been babying it ever since. I couldn't get them under control however and finally gave up the battle today. I'm going away to school for 6 weeks and didn't want to leave the problem with my husband.
I tried everything from washing it, rubbing off the bugs on a daily basis and I even dunked it under soapy water and washing each leaf by hand. They always returned and now the poor thing looked so sad and defeated that I finally also gave up. Which really sucks because I hate giving up on plants. Especially my favorite dendrobium. If anyone has any suggestions for the future please let me know, the bugs haven't touched any of my other orchids so I'm very thankful for that.
Back to my blooming beauty, It was the last of my orchids to re-bloom. I'm also happy to report that my baby is ready to re-bloom as well. This time I think it will have a least three flowers, the first time it bloomed it only had one big beautiful flower. Still can't believe I grew a baby orchid.
Well I'm off to enjoy a walk at our indoor park because it's cold outside, although the sunshine is very inviting.
Happy indoor gardening!
It's been a little while since I wrote an update on my Bonsai, it's actually doing really well. I did however loose the little cedar tree I had growing with it.
I'm not quite sure what happened to it but it started to slowly dye and then it just lost all its needles. I thought maybe I had let it dry out to much but the lemon tree was thriving.
I did find some spider mites in my lemon tree so I'm not sure if that had something to do with it. Because of the spider mites I did have to give the lemon tree a huge haircut and I really cut the bulk of it out.
You know what they say is true about confidence when you are pruning a tree, you really do just need to go for it. So I did.
I'm liking the shape much better now and hoping for new growth, I think the topmost branch is almost long enough so I can trim it off. I'm not quite sure about the lowest branch but for now I'm going to keep it where it is.
I like how quickly the lemon tree grows so if you make a mistake it's not really that bad and will just grow back. I think it's a great beginner plant for anyone who would like to get into the art of Bonsai.
I'm a total newb and I enjoy working with the lemon tree, also it doesn't hurt that the tree didn't cost me anything because I started it from a grocery store seed.
It will never produce fruit (I don't think anyway) but it's still pretty and a good way to learn. All the branches are now wired except for one on the back of the tree, it was just to small for the wire at the time. I will wire it soon however or cut it off, I haven't decided yet.
On a side not, all my spring catalogs have been coming in and I'm drooling and really ready for spring. Especially with this unusually warm weather we have been having, but I know the worst is yet to come because it always does :)
Happy indoor gardening!
My herbs are doing great, I have three batches on the go all about a month apart.
One batch is in my kitchen window, one batch is in my Aqua Farm and my last batch is in my light garden downstairs.
I think I may have to seed them a little thicker next time, I'm not sure why but I tend to spread out the seeds to much. I'm kinda following the sowing instructions on the package but because they are not going into the garden and I will be harvesting them fairly young I think I can sow them a lot closer together.
The only one that's not doing fantastic is my parsley, it's in the light garden and it seems a little sad. I started fertilizing it a bit and it was suggested to me that it might be to warm in there for it so I may move it into a window.
I can't wait to start eating my own herbs again. I'm already just itching for spring, unfortunately I have another 4 months to wait but I'm hanging in there. I think it's time to take my weekly trip with my friend to the local nursery again soon!
Happy indoor gardening!
As I've said before I really love the Aqua Farm, so I thought I would give you an update on how things were going.
So far so good, Perseus is happy and the water is very clean. I haven't cleaned the tank yet and the plants are doing well except that I didn't have enough light for the herbs.
They became very leggy as you can see in the picture. So I added a little light over top of the tank to hopefully help with that problem.
My wheat grass is also looking a little sparse but that's because my cat Zeus (yes I have a thing for Greek gods, lol ) helped himself to it and ate most of it.
I have noticed that since I put the light up the plants have straightened out.
I have planted some strawberry seeds, we will see if they make an appearance :)
I also have been oogling over all the new seed catalogues! I CAN'T WAIT FOR SPRING!!!
Happy indoor gardening!
Happy 2015 everyone!
I hope you all had a wonderful Holiday Season! Mine was very relaxing and I actually found time to play in my light garden a bit.
I transplanted my baby tomato plants that I started from seed at the end of November yesterday. For my soil mix I used organic potting soil, perlite, sand and worm castings. I'm trying this mixture because I have found that in the past my soil for my plants in the light garden has been a little dense so I'm hoping this will lighten it up a bit and provide good drainage. Because we all know that tomatoes hate wet feet :)
I also bought some organic seaweed liquid fetilizer because I found that after a month or so my plants in the light garden seem to get a little stunted, so I'm hoping this will help. It's a very light fertilizer that can be used every time you water, 5-1-1 I believe. I still haven't perfected my lightgarden growing technique so if anyone has any suggestions I would love to hear them.
I really just would love to grow food all year around and not just in our short summer growing season.
Happy gardening!
Feeling a little under the weather today, so what to do?
Write a blog post of course.
With all the hustle and bustle of the holiday season it's hard to take time for yourself and make sure that you're rested and well taken care of. I think I got a little run down and behold, a cold.
But then again it's a small price to pay for what I got to do this holiday season. Through my family and my co-workers we adopted two families for Christmas this year, which means we help to make their Christmas a little brighter. We all know that hard times can fall onto anyone and at any time. My husband and I don't have any children of our own so it was pretty fun to go shopping for all these little people, 7 of them in total ranging from 4 to 13. I do have a question though, what's with the monster high dolls???? They're kinda creepy, lol. But that's all the kids want these days.
One of the best things about adopting these families has been spending time with our own family. Going shopping together and having a wrapping party to wrap all the presents, which to me is what Christmas is all about. Spending time with family and friends.
So to all of you, have a very safe, healthy and happy holiday season and may the New Year bring much more love, health and happiness!
And on a side note my Amaryllis has started to open up!!
I am so happy with my Aqua Farm! Everything is working excactly as stated, and Perseus (the fish) is doing great.
As you can see I have nice growth on my wheat grass and my lettuce, cilantro and basil are coming up too. My dill is a little behind but I can start to see the seeds split as well. I love this little fish tank.
Perseus is quite the little show off, he loves to flash his gorgeous fins at you when you walk by. I'm thinking of maybe adding a little snail at some point, but for now quite content just watching Perseus swim around!
Happy Sunday everyone!
I finally got my tree, and she is a beauty! I love having a real tree, I almost broke down and got a fake tree but just couldn't do it.
I just love the smell of a real tree! Luckily my husband agrees and said if we are going to have a tree we're going to have a real one.
We picked up our Fraser Fir yesterday and let it thaw out in the garage, it smelled so good when we got home today, I couldn't wait to set it up.
I got all my decorations out and went nuts, listening to Christmas music and dancing in my living room. Great fun!!
Hopefully this year my tree lasts longer, we got a grand fir last year and it started dying very quickly. A couple of years ago a got the Fraser fir and it lasted all season, hoping this one will do the same. They drink a lot in the first couple of days so I have to make sure it always has water.
I had a lot of fun decorating this year and I think it worked out pretty good!
Hope you have a very wonderful and safe holiday season!
I picked up my very own Aqua Farm today!!!
I've been looking at this thing for at least a year now, I saw it once on a twitter or FB post and thought it was one of the coolest things ever!
I had been keeping my eyes on it and couldn't wait until it was available in Canada, and now it is. You can get them on amazon.ca or at Pet Valu stores, I got mine at Pet Valu today.
Here is the link for Amazon.
http://www.amazon.ca/Back-Roots-Aqua-Farm-3600gm/dp/B00CN52TRM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417401832&sr=8-1&keywords=aquafarm
Or here is the Pet Valu Website
http://www.petvalu.com/
I've had a couple of Beta fish in my life but never have I been able to grow food at the same time, this thing is so awesome. I love the idea of this little ecosystem, and growing food at the same time as raising a little fish is so amazing to me. The tank is a nice size for a beta and the growing trays on top are well laid out. I love the entire design, my only tiny complaint (and I wouldn't even call it a complaint) is that the top is white. There might be a purpose as to why it's white, but when dealing with plants or anything really I'm not a fan of white. There is no dirt however so the white might not even be an issue in the end :)
There is no light that comes with it but that lets you decide how you want to light it, I bought a string of battery powered lights and taped them to the back of the tank for in the evening. Turned out pretty cool if I do say so myself.
Perseus (the fish) is doing well in his new home and I can't wait to see what starts growing. I planted the organic basil and wheat grass that comes with the tank and also added dill, cilantro and lettuce. I'm so excited to finally have this thing in my house! It's so perfect for those winter blues! If you want to know more about the Aqua Farm here is the Back to Roots link.
https://www.backtotheroots.com/
Good night everyone and happy indoor gardening!!
I planted some more herbs this week, it's amazing how quickly you miss gardening when the snow starts to fly.
I really want to have my own fresh herbs for the winter, I know I'm a little late starting them now but better late then never :)
I have to get into the habit of starting herbs continueously so that I always have a fresh crop, so far I haven't done that. I will grow a batch feel very proud of myself, eat it and then I'm like "now what?" Then I have to wait another 60-70 days before the next harvest is ready.
Most things I've read suggest two week intervals so hopefully I'm going to give that a try, I'm thinking even if I can start a batch once every month that would be sufficient.
So I started from seed, basil, parsley, fern dill, cilantro, oregano, tiny tim tomato and transplanted thyme and rosemary.
I'm excited to see what happens, instead of starting them in starter mix and transplanting I decided to just grow them in potting soil and leave them in those pots until a eat it. Only the tomatoes I will transplant.
I'm going to fertilize regularly this year with organic fertilizer, I haven't in the past when I started thing indoors and I do believe my plants suffered for it. I will still add the epson salts, worm castings and egg shells but will also fertilize when watering every two weeks or so. Hopefully that will help.
Well time to listen to a little Christmas music and get some house cleaning done :)
Happy indoor gardening!
It was a beautiful day today, and my husband bought me a gorgeous Christmas cactus. I've always wanted one and when I saw this beauty in the local nursery today he picked it up for me.
I'm feeling better about the winter for now, lol. I know that it has just begun but I've set up my light garden for my transplants and with this gorgeous cactus blooming I don't feel so bad.
My amaryllis starting to grow as well so I'm super excited about that, it's also my first one.
Anyway to the kitty proofing. My cat LOVES plants (what cat doesn't) and he loves to pull them out of their pots, especially new baby plants. Twice now he has yanked out my thyme transplants, grrrr. Luckily I've only lost two, but still it drives me crazy. Last year he mowed down all my baby petunias, well this year I wasn't going to let that happen. Oh and BTW it doesn't matter if I planted him his own cat grass, he still yanks out my light garden plants.
So I brought my little greenhouse I bought last year into the house, set it up in my basement and placed my light garden inside, which works out perfect because I can close the door and it keeps him out and the moisture in.
It's a 5X5 collapsible greenhouse house and I think it will live in my house from now on. I put my African violets in there too so I can force them to bloom as well :) I think (hope) to invest in an aluminum or cedar frame greenhouse next year, fingers crossed.
Have a wonderful weekend everyone and happy indoor gardening!
My rosemary finally rooted in my window sill and I was very excited to transplant it today. Luckily I have 3 little plants to transplant.
I took my first plant out of the water and went to place it in my pot of dirt and figured because it was such a strong little plant I would just place it into the loose dirt and then pack around it.
DO NOT DO THAT!!!.
Because I didn't make a small hole to place the plant in I striped all the new roots right off the plant :( even though the roots look very strong and healthy they are still VERY fragile.
I did not make the same mistake with my other two rosemary plants. Make the hole first with your finger.
I put the rosemary plant that I striped the roots off of back into water and hopefully it will root again. I planted the other two and placed them into my light garden.
So with that, live and learn. I've transplanted a lot and I still make boo boos and will continue to make boo boos. Point is, learn from them and continue onwards.
Happy winter gardening!
I opened my mason bee house yesterday to see what was inside, I had lovely mason bee cocoons and also a little surprise.
There was a cigar like tube in a couple of the trays, and I thought "What the heck is that?!?"
So onto my trusted iPad I sent my husband and he googled "what bees use leaves for nest cells" the answer..... Leaf cutter bees!
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megachilidae
I am so excited that I have two types of solitary bee babies in my bee house.
I carefully removed all mason bee cocoons and leaf cutter tubes from the trays in my bee house. After reading online about the leaf cutter bee you do not want to get their leafy cocoons wet, so I just removed them and placed them in a cardboard box.
The mason bees however I removed all cocoons individually and placed them in cold water to wash off any mud and mites that may be on them.
I followed the instructions I received from WestCoast seeds where I purchased my first 24 mason bees early this spring.
https://www.westcoastseeds.com/productdetail/Gardening-Supplies/Pollination/Mason-Bee-Cocoons/#sthash.aERY1iCA.dpbs
After washing and drying my mason bees I placed them in a cardboard box then put them in the wooden hibernation box I painted for them along with the leaf cutter bee cocoons and put them in the fridge.
There they will hang out until spring when I will release them for pollination, with any luck I won't need to buy bees again!
I know I have some live bees because when I was washing them I accidentally squeezed one of the cocoons a little to much and it began to vibrate!
This has been one of the coolest experiences in nature I've had. So educational!
Here is a link to the pictures I took while opening and cleaning my bee house and cocoons.
http://youtu.be/4pmDUb-j5Jk
I have A LOT of new growth on my bonsai!
I came home from two days of meetings and watered and really looked at my bonsai, I hadn't really done that since I planted it. I saw amazing growth on it.
I planted it about 1 month ago and it is really doing well, especially for a project that I knew nothing about!
Now I just need to figure out what branches to keep and which ones to discard, but I will let it go awhile and see what happens!
It's very cool to see so much growth in such little time, especially for a bonsai!
I finally planted the cuttings I was rooting in my window sill, it took awhile and my rosemary is still not really rooting yet.
I think it's because the cuttings were a bit thick, otherwise everything else did pretty well.
I potted up everything (except the rosemary) in good quality potting soil and put them in the light garden, with luck I will be able to take more cuttings later and I won't need to buy any of these plants again.
I decided to wire my bonsai today, I used a 19GA black coated aluminum wire. I couldn't find the size I needed in a copper wire and online it said coated aluminum would work.
I started by wrapping the wire at a 45 degree angle on my longest branch because I wanted to bring it down a bit. I also snipped a branch off shown in picture 1.
I then wrapped a second smaller upright branch that I wanted to bring down a bit as well, shown in picture 2. Once wrapped I basically just bent the branches to whatever shape I wanted and because those branches are so young the bent very easily.
Next I wrapped a section of two branches (shown in picture 3) because I just wanted to twist them a bit.
In picture 4 you can see the before and after look of the tree, I think it opened it up quite nicely and I can't wait to see what will grow. I have two new branches starting a the very top of the tree and can't wait to see what happens with them. I will give them about 3-4 months to grow and adjust to their new shape.
BTW I have no idea what I'm doing, but it's very neat and I like it :)
