One of my favourite jobs here on the farmlet is starting seeds for our gardens. Now that spring is here, we want to grow all kinds of seedlings to fill the garden beds. Every morning, I rush out to see whether any more seedlings are pushing their heads out of the soil. We are hardly planting any seeds directly into our garden, because the mulch we are using is too coarse to be good for starting seeds in. Starting the seeds inside also prevents the loss of seeds and very young seedlings to birds, slugs and other hungry critters.
The sunny window in our living room has turned into a seed-raising area. It’s become so full that I decided to build a cold frame to start more seeds in. I constructed the cold frame out of an old window, some scraps of wood, and a bit of black polythene. All the materials were scavenged from our various debris piles, except for the nails, so this project was not too damaging for our wallets or for our earth! I’m not much of a builder. Any self-respecting carpenter would cringe at the bent nails and crooked corners that comprise the cold frame. . . but it’s functional enough, and the plants don’t seem to mind the odd bent nail here and there.
We have had a lot of fun in previous months choosing seed out of several different seed catalogues. We have selected heirloom seeds, and hope to save seed for future crops, as far as we are able. Since this is our first year, we’ll be watching carefully to see which varieties grow and produce well in our garden.
Today I planted three kinds of cherry tomato (yellow, red, and orange), greenfeast peas, essene flax, leeks, green onions, strawberry spinach, pepinos, sweet basil, zucchini, zinnias, borage, and radishes. I wonder who thought up such a delicious name as “greenfeast pea.” We are both hoping that they will taste as good as they sound.
What else have we been up to today?
Well, we chatted for quite a while with a kind neighbour who brought over some seed potatoes for us to plant. It was certainly nice to be able to give him a big bag of avocados to take home.
In town yesterday we had stocked up on meat. We bought a bulk pack from the butcher, so today I re-organised our little freezer, dividing the meat up into usable portions, labelling it, and adding it to our cache of frozen goodies. We are very happy with the fridge-freezer we inherited when my parents moved recently. As well as including a small freezer, this fridge has a “five star” energy rating, which means it’s much more energy-efficient than the fridge we had before.
We had run out of bread yesterday, so today it was time to bake again. We now have a nice big loaf of sourdough bread in the cupboard.