Things are springing up everywhere!!!

Well danged if we don’t have some seedlings growing!  Things are starting to sprout in our grow room.   All it took was planting the seeds in the sprouting soil, putting all the seedlings on a heating pad to help them germinate, firing up the grow lights – big enough that we are likely keeping the neighbours awake at night, and time. So far so good!   Now these are all the plants that need to be started indoors because it is still way too cold for putting anything in the ground outside.  So they are all toasty warm inside, and we just need to keep them happy until we can put them outside.  So far so good.

Before we put them outside, we need to do something about the local garden predators.  At this time of the year, that would be the deer.  Later, when and if there is anything growing out there, we have been told that we may need to fend off human type thieves… seriously??? Anyway, nothing can go in the garden unless we get a fence up to keep the garden safe from the deer.  Now what you may not know my dear city friends, is that deer are devious! Not any fence will do….. those garden grubbing buggers are apparently part superman!  Able to leap tall fences in a single bound.  Once again Chuck gets out his enormous measuring tape and starts pacing off the post placements for the fence.  A huge fence….. all the way around the huge garden….. and seven and a half feet tall. A day spent pounding in fence posts and rolling out fencing and voila! We have the garden fenced and ready for our lovely plants.

So just when I think I can put my feet up and wait for the sun to come out, I find out that the damn seeds have grown too big for their current pots and need to be re-potted. So the whole time consuming process of planting the seeds, watering, warming and lighting them is not enough!  Now we have to give them room to grow even bigger.  How fun! So we take all these little seedlings out of their current little homes, separate them out and put them in bigger pots with new soil that will help feed them.  Another whole day of taking little tiny seedlings out of one inch pots and planting them in four inch pots.  And yes, it is occurring to me that I will be doing this all again, when we actually get to put them in the garden. I am really starting to see the benefit of vegetables that come from the grocery store….

Anyway, back in the hot little greenhouse room with the big lights. Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and onions are happily chugging along, but what is really exciting is that we decide to get the potatoes in the newly fenced garden.  Now this is something that I can really sink my teeth into…. I LOVE potatoes, and who knew, that you can grow potatoes from other potatoes! What a concept! We spent a little time meeting up with other local farmers at the spring seed exchanges. Everyone brings seeds from plants that they grow and that like the local climate, it gets you plants that you know will work in the local area and lots of advice on how to grow things at the same time.  Anyway, we picked up some seeding potatoes of various different kinds from the locals and prepare to stick them in the ground.  Three and a half rows of potatoes later, we have said a little prayer that we have done it all right and leave them to get started.  Just so you know, it is the weekend before Easter.   We can almost hear the neighbours laughing at us.

We rise on Easter Sunday to snow….. stay on the ground and freeze the potatoes snow.  But we don’t really have time to worry about that, because that was also the day that our momma rabbit Sweetiepie gave us 6 new baby rabbits! Completely awesome sight!   They are not really rabbit like to start off with, no fur, eyes closed.  But wiggly, squirmy hot water bottles.  We put them back in their snug little nest and leave them with their momma to get big and cute.  So we are growing our little animal kingdom along with growing our gardening skills!  These will be eating rabbits, which I have chosen not to think too much about for the time being.

So just to recap, we have the garden fenced, veggies growing in Fallon and Darren’s spare room, we have baby bunnies growing, and our hatched baby chicks are growing, and we have decided that it is probably not the end of the world if the potatoes don’t grow – we will wait and see what happens. We won’t let the snow worry us… we are having too much fun!  Oh, and did I mention…. that garlic we planted last fall…. it is sprouting too!