After some major setbacks in growing my plants from seed the planting and seeding time was finally upon us. I always get fairly jealous when I see photos coming by from people who garden in areas of the world that do not experience frost till (at least) the end of May. They show plants already big and ready to eat before we even start here in Alberta. The May long weekend (Victoria Day weekend) which is usually the last weekend in May is by many seen as THE moment to put their plants outside. I have however noticed that that is still too early. Usually one cold night will kill off all your hard work and you can start replanting or if they just made it it will take four weeks for them to recover. Also the soil can still be fairly cold so some seeds like peas, beans and carrots have a hard time germinating. Once the soil start to heat up it still takes forever for them to start growing. This year with the beautiful spring lots of people have been tempted to put plants out sooner, but it requires a lot of covering, bringing inside and love and care to keep them going.
So for the last four years or so, I get my soil ready but do not put anything in before June! This year I was also fortunate to go camping several times which left me with only a short timeframe from June 1 to June 7 in the morning to get everything ready and plant and sow my garden and the greenhouse! Not too much time especially with the added complication of extreme weather conditions. A heat wave made it impossible to plant young fragile plants and I had to wait till almost the last day to put these in the ground. Laying out my drip irrigation system was step 1. Of course for whatever reason my timer for the garden decided to not function properly anymore. So I needed to hunt down another unit. I was in luck and found one fairly quickly. This job was done during the hottest part of the day. The gardening took place early in the morning and late at night. It was quite a job but I got her done in time. Worked till June 7 at noon and all seeds and plants were in, water was running and the weather was supposed to be a bit more reasonable for the week to come. So I left with my conscience at ease. Kind of forgot about it during the trip till we were heading back. I started to get really curious about how my gardens were faring....... and I was so amazingly positively surprised. I had bean plants that were 10 cm high, potatoes that were 25 cm high and most rows were visible. That was a really impressive site that made me feel very content. Cabbages however were very fragile when they wnet in and the ones that made it are still struggling. I know however that they will be okay. I will for sure be able to harvest a good cabbage in due time. I will fill up some of the empty spaces with more kale, spinach, beans and peas. This food will all freeze vey well and can be kept for quite a while in the freezer. Please judge for yourself and see how rewarding a bit of gardening can be.
Enjoy!
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