Winter clean up

A window box that looks abandoned, but really I got lazy and didn't clean up

My little balcony garden needs some tidying up

A dried up red bell pepper that I forgot about!

The view from my balcony, suburbs and snow – most of the snow melted away though

My chives, there's a little bit of green growing out there, I wonder if it'll come back this summer.

Spring, where are you?

It's nearly the end of February and I'm itching to sow some seeds. To be honest I'm so excited about planting things that I just seem to want to plant everything in my garden. I should stop being so overambitious because I need to remind myself that I don't have a lot of space.

In order to satiate my gardening appetite, I've been washing out some pots with warm soapy water (I use dish washing liquid), and a little scrub of a water and hydrogen peroxide mixture. I wash extremely well with some steel wool and I let it dry. Most of my terracotta pots are washed and dried and ready to go. Now, you may be wondering... why make all the effort of washing pots when I'm just going to fill it up with dirt anyway? It seems counterproductive yes, but it's really not. A plants can carry a disease, or a fungus  and the pot can have residue of said disease/fungus. Rather than risk potential infection on a new plant, it's better to wash everything out. I had powdery mildew on my zucchini/courgette plant that just refused to go away, so it makes a lot of sense for me to wash the container that plant lived in. I just don't want to take risks when it comes to these things.

I've also been doing a lot of garden clean up, however, it's been mostly pots. The winter took a toll on my balcony, there's snow and ice, and my window boxes are filled with frozen soil and plants. Pictures to come later.

So spring, please come now. I want to grow stuff outside.

Picture Spam

My collection of seeds so far.

                                         

Herb seeds in little tins

                                         
                                        

Parsley sprouts by my windowsill.

                                          

Wild Lupin, I fell in love with the flowers when I went to Prince Edward Island. The flowers grew everywhere, there were splashes of pinks and purples in every field. I got the seeds from a store in Charlottetown.

                                    

My love affair with plants

I've always loved flowers and plants ever since I was little. It has grown from a little fascination to almost an obsession, I love plants they are simply amazing things. Why did I bother making this blog? Well even though there's a plethora of blogs out there based on gardening made by more experienced people, I thought I'd simply give it a go. I love gardening and I'm always out there trying to find likeminded individuals that share my passion, as well as my lack of space. There are certain people in the blogosphere that I truly admire, one mainly being You Grow Girl, she's truly been an inspiration to me and revived my somewhat dormant love affair with plants.

I'll be honest with you gentle reader, my lack of land extremely discouraged me from doing anything with the limited space I did have, but her Gayla Trail's (You Grow Girl) books have encouraged me to try again. For that I'm grateful, I decided to try again last year and I never looked back. I've successfully managed to grow some great vegetables and herbs for me and my family. Though the yields wouldn't be the same as the yield one would get in a backyard, it was still pretty awesome and a wonderful accomplishment to know you've grown  your own produce. Now that the love affair is back, I've sown some seeds, ordered some and I'm excited for the snow to thaw and for me to start taking my little seedlings out!

There's nothing like seeing a little seedling poking out of the ground pot, is there?