From darkness comes growth

Happy Sunday folks! I hope today finds you well enough. I’m pretty thrilled because I got to go have a spa appointment by myself without kids, and then I got my evening primrose seeds!! :) I don't know why I love evening primrose so much honestly... it mostly looks like a weed till half way through the summer, and then after that it only has 2-4 flowers at a time. then those ones die, and new ones bloom above the old ones the next day... and on and on it goes, blooming and dieing till it's taller than I am by the end of the summer, building it's own little sky scraper out of life and death... ok, so I like it for it's metaphors!

As you can see, Levi was also thrilled that I found them... (also, I went into Dollar Tree and ONLY BOUGHT THESE SEEDS!! PAT ME ON THE BACK PEOPLE!).

To top off my day, curtis took charge of making a video for Josiah’s birthday party so I didn’t have to do it! He’s going to have a Dino detective birthday where his friends have to solve the mystery of the missing dinosaur bones! It’ll be a whole big thing with crepe-paper lazer beams, dusting for prints, invisible ink... it’ll be a fun time! So curtis managed to convince his buddies to play the villain and head detective for a few key videos throughout the party. I’m pretty excited! It was even better that I didn't actually have to film any of it!

THIS WEEK'S UPDATE:

Anyways! On to some updates! The flowers I planted last week are all up! It only took them about 3 days really and they are now doing quite well! I may need to transplant them within a week yet! Craziness! Some of them are already starting to get their first set of true leaves. Once again, let me preach it from the mountain tops, dollar tree plant seeds are amazing quality and bargain.

Even some of the hot peppers sprouted this week! None of the sweet peppers yet though... I’m so anxious to start other things but I know I need to hold off a while yet... might get another tray of flowers underway soon though. not sure I can hold myself back ;)

The seeds I ordered on amazon from Ukraine have finally arrived. I’m very pleasantly surprised that they are in proper seed packages and not just someone’s seed-saved seeds! The only problem is I can’t read the packages!! Haha! And yes Josiah is in Ukrainian English program at school but alas, only grade one, so he can’t read them yet... I probably have an uncle who could help out if needed, but I think I’ll just use my intuition and gut instincts and roll with the punches! I’m really excited about those striped snapdragons though! If they actually look like that, it’s gonna be epic!

VALENTINES DAY IDEAS:
 

The other thing I’ve been up to this week is Valentine’s Day prep! With two of my sons' birthdays being Jan 21 & 27’th, we have birthday parties to occupy my time for the next few weeks! So I was very happy to find a Dollarama that was actually stocking it’s gardening shelves this early!  My older two boys are getting their own little gardening kits for Valentine’s Day. :) I’m looking forward to sharing the joy and green thumbs. 

 Each of them is getting the little kit (which contains a tray and clear plastic greenhouse lid, small jiffy's and large jiffy's, small and large plant tags, and a few seed sewing tools),  a very nice looking metal watering can, 5 packets of seeds (peas, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, morning glories and watermelons), and a red lolly pop! It works out to about $10 per kid basically, not including dirt. The watering can was $4, the seeds were 4/$1.25, the greenhouse kit was $4 and the suckers were 2/$1! Budget-wise this also encompasses what I would have spent on an Easter basket... Since both of our families celebrate Easter, we are going to forego our smaller family Easter baskets... there will be enough chocolate to go around I think!

I also updated the seed packages using Microsoft paint and stolen imagery off the inter-web ;) I like how they turned out! I started with a random seed envalope template off google images, and added in a cartoon veggie, did my write ups, and voila! I also did write-ups on the back that my 7 year old can read all by himself. They say something interesting about the plant variety, when to start them, when to put them outside, and how long till we can eat them! I know for sure my oldest son will love it... Not sure on the middle child, he's been a bit of a wild card these days... but I'm hoping he'll  be into it too! If they get very enthusiastic about it, I'll be trying to convince my husband to build a little flower bed along our dog pen that they could use for their plants this year. It's closer to the house so they would take more ownership of it, than they would if it's simply part of a row in my veggie garden.


A LITTLE LESSON TO LIVE BY:

Anyways, I should try and explain my title for this post I guess eh? Well, let me start with the analogy/plant lesson...
Did you know its possible to give a plant too much light? Yup, they actually NEED darkness.

Did you know that it’s the dark side of a plants stem that grows? When you see a sun flower always bending toward the sun, did you ever wonder why?

It’s because the giant head shades it’s own stem from the sun... the parts that are darker, grow faster than the parts where the sun is shining. Therefore the stem is longer on one end then the other, which causes it to bend, subsequently leaning the entire flower head toward the sun. Day after day, slowly getting taller one shadow at a time.... it’s the same reason that a house plant will start “reaching” for your sunny window, because it’s dark side is growing faster than its light side.

Here's the scientifically worded version for you nerds out there, from this source.
"The sunflower plant contains hormones called auxins. These hormones are sensitive to sunlight and do everything they can to seek shade! Therefore, they migrate from the part of the plant bathed in sunlight to the shaded region in the stem. Once there, the auxins (which are essentially growth hormones) stimulate the growth of cells. This causes the stem to become bulkier in the shaded region, so the flower ends up bending in the opposite direction – towards the Sun!"

Darkness has its place in horticulture, just as it does in life. Even my little seedlings all appear to be reaching for the light bulbs, as their own darkness encourages their growth.

This is a tough time of year for many people... and this year particularly so it seems. I know too many people dealing with illness, relationship issues, health problems, tragedy etc... it seems so bleak sometimes.... and I don’t have all the answers, but I do have this one take-away from God’s creation. And that is that darkness can create growth and maturity in us... we can’t always see why or how at the time, but usually in hindsight we can see it pretty clearly!

I know this is a little bit cliche but I hope some of you can find it encouraging the way I do.

Anyways, I’ll leave it there for this week!
Here's a couple pictures of how my avocado seed and "Penny the pointlessly protected bedding plant" from last summer. I've pruned the avocado already, removing the top two leaves and stem, so that the plant is forced to branch out instead of growing super tall without any branches. :) 

I've pruned penny a bit more, so I could stick her under a hotter bulb and give her some real light and warmth to bring her out of dormancy!

 

Have a great week folks! Until next time, KEEP YOUR THUMBS DOWN IN THE DIRT!! :) 

It’s that time of year again!!

Well, I’m back!

It’s been over a year since I have made a post on this blog, because last year I made a New Year’s resolution not to do blogging. That’s probably the only resolution I actually was able to keep ha ha! I’m back, but in a non-committal sort of way. I will post when I feel like it and not when I don’t… That sounds self-explanatory but keeping a blog updated regularly can become all encompassing, and that was my issue before. My other responsibilities would fall to the wayside because I was too focused on the blog.  So, I will do my best to keep this up to date, but my family comes first, and so does my sanity ha ha!

Speaking of family, if you are someone that I don't know in real life, and you’re just following along on this blog, our family has expanded! Last January I had a third baby boy, to complete our family. So now we have three strapping boys, for my husband’s construction crew someday ha ha!

A YEAR IN REVIEW:
Last summer I really didn’t try very hard I’ll be honest. I gardened three rows in the garden, and they did not do very well. I think it was mostly due to  the irrigation being on too long.

If you recall, it was an incredibly hot and dry summer this past year. Most people reported having poor results in their gardens even with proper effort. But with having an infant, and using the irrigation more than common sense would dictate, my garden was practically a disaster. We basically didn’t get any cucumbers, we got maybe a handful of tomatoes for fresh eating, a few carrots, no beets, nothing in the crucifers Family (broccoli, kale, cabbage, kohlrabi...), no onions, Maybe a third of the beans that I ought to have gotten… All in all a real flop!


My flowers on the other hand did really well!

 We added some soil to the front flower bed, and the perennials thanked us enthusiastically with tons of beautiful blooms!

 
  I will leave it at that for a year in review and move on to the present time!

THEN...AND NOW!:

Ah yes! It is the time of year where I get my gardening mojo going. I have decided to start my seeds EARLY again this year, as that paid off big time a couple of years ago. I haven’t done too much yet, just some peppers and flowers but it’s a start! 

Flowers seem to do good no matter when you start them, so I’m giving mine the earliest start so I can enjoy blooms earlier in the summer. All my flower seeds are from dollar tree and I paid $1.25 for 4 packages of seeds. Like I’ve said in the past, I trust these seeds a lot, and I had excellent results with them! I recommend dollar tree seeds for both flowers and vegetables.

I have about five varieties of peppers this year, I concentrated mainly on heavy producers that have a shorter growing season. I’ve never had a lot of luck with peppers, so it’s a Hail Mary effort for me to do them at all, but I do remember two years ago I started some in January and some in March, and the January ones were by far healthier bigger and better plants! 

And then I also decided to try Thyme this year, as I love using that spice all year round! Again, dollar tree for the win!

LEARN SOMETHING NEW:

I'll end off this post with a few little seed-starting tips! I bought my trays and my dirt from Canadian tire. The bags of seed starting mix are miracle gro... normally i'm all for home-made, recycle, use-your-own-dirt sort of stuff, but I lost SO MANY seedlings two years ago from "damp off" (see my earlier posts from two years ago if you want to learn more about my experiences with that). The solution is a STERILE environment! Miracle gro may not be organic, but its sterile, and it still has some sort of nutritional value for the seedlings, unlike using straight up vermiculite or peat moss.  So I really like that feature about it. Plus one 8.8 Liter bag fits one of these trays exactly when it's all wetted up (dry its much fluffier, but settled and wet, its a perfect fit).

I am taking several efforts to  combat damp-off. All my water I am using, i've pre-boiled and cooled. This sounds like a lot of work, but we have untreated well water... so it's entirely possible that some kind of bacteria in our water is what caused the damp off! So Sterilizing the water I must! :) 
Then with subsequent watering, I am going to add a little bit of peroxide to my watering can, which not only eats bacteria in the soil, it also does its' foamy reaction and adds some nice air pockets to the soil which roots love!

Here you can see i've covere my seedling trays with saran wrap (because I'm way too cheap to pay $2 for a cover i'll only be using for a week!! c'mon people! I'm still a mennonite! haha). This saran is not air-tight, it's cracked at the edges, and doesnt fully cover the opening. It's just tacked in place with some painters tape at the ends so it's not resting directly on the soil. The purpose of the cover is simply to keep the moisture in, until germination happens!

as you can see, i've labeled the different varieties along the side. What you cant really see in the photo is that I've used clear scotch tape overtop of those labels so that as I water the plants, the labels dont wear off. I've also labelled them on both sides for extra assurance.

Along the top you can see i've got some green tape and clear tape alternated with some little notches on them... This is marking my rows of seeds in this seeder tray, and each change in tape, shows where i've switched varieties of peppers/flowers. This stage, it's so important to clearly label your plants! as they grow you'll be able to tell the differences in your own plants, simply because you're watching them every step of the way. But before they sprout, no chance! :) Once they have two sets of leaves, they will get transplanted into their own containers and will each have their own label in their own pots.

And here they are! Only taking up one of my 3 rows of lights. But they will expand exponentially as they are transplanted! I plan to be very selective in my transplants too, and not save every little sprout... just the strongest ones. 

Well, that’s it for now! Just wanted to do a quick update and hello howdy to everyone, as this gardening season gets back underway!