Yummy salad!

I planted lettuce at the end of February. The first picture was taken March 2 and the second picture was taken March 26. I cut the lettuce on March 27 and we enjoyed a fresh salad for supper that night. I should've taken a picture of it but didn't want anyone to drool too much. :p I'm looking forward to having a real garden outside.

Miss Spring is playing havoc with our emotions. The snow was a bit of a surprise this morning. Even my kids were booing it. They're tired of winter and snow too. Fortunately it's always springy in the greenhouses.

Tomorrow is our last day of scheduled walking. We welcome walkers from the beginning of January until the end of March figuring that the weather should be nice enough by then to get outside and walk! Not sure about that this week by the way Miss Spring is - fickle, can't make up her mind what she wants.

I think there must be a new batch of kittens somewhere. Princess was big and round one day, skinny and droopy the next. Soon we'll be hearing the soft little mews coming from somewhere. She likes to hide them for awhile but we usually find them once they get a little older and louder.

Today one planting crew is planting hanging baskets with various, beautiful, flowering plants and the other crew is finishing planting various odds and ends and then they will move onto peppers. On Friday, they planted geraniums all day. The early tomato plants are about 2" high awaiting much warmer weather. They don't like the cold one little bit!

In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds

of weather inside of four and twenty hours. Mark Twain

Flowers galore

English Daisy that we forced for an early plant crop.

Pansies and Violas in various containers - hangning baskets, ovals, squares, rounds, bowls, and little pots.

These little plants are tough and will withstand slightly freezing temps. I've been experimenting at my house with a few different plants but they didn't fare so good

in the -8 C temperatures that we had a few nights ago. I think this was just a little too cold. :/ I planted pansies which will be ok when it warms up a bit, rannunculus which are stilll flowering amazingly! I also planted an english daisy, bacopa, lamium and osteospermum. It was too cold for all of these except the lamium, it's still as perky as a daisy!

This amazing flower is called a Clivia. It's a native to forest floors in southern Africa. It is a member of the amaryllis family and is one tough plant! It can be bone dry, tucked away in a corner and suddenly we'll spot a stalk peeking up through the leaves. When it flowers, it is glorious as you can see! To encourage flowers, these plants actually need to be dry and in a cool spot.

For more info, go to www.gardenline.usask.ca/yards/clivia/html

These colourful plants are rannunculus and primula. Our little metal angel is holding them.

Plants cry their gratitude for the sun in green joy.

Astrid Alauda

Going Green

This year we are making even more effort to produce less waste and have more products that are biodegradable yet affordable. These are peat pots that Ramblin' Petunias have been planted in. They will grow in these pots until pot and all, they are ready to be planted into planters and hanging baskets. The peat will decompose, actually enriching the soil.

A new product we're trying this year is the JP Peat Pot. They're made in Quebec and are completely biodegradable including the plastic!

All our vegetables and herbs are to be planted in them this year and if successful, we plan to use them to replace most of our 4" plastic pots.

Don't these strawberries look delicious? I can't wait until June when we can eat fresh berries! Yum! We've planted some Honeoye Strawberries in peat pots and hanging baskets. The peat pot plants can be planted in the ground, pot and all or you can enjoy a hanging basket of fruit if you don't have room on the ground.

These are the baskets, they just have to get the hangers put on and hung up.

Filling Flats

Here we are filling flats. On a rainy Saturday, 3 of us filled 600 flats which were used the following week to plants pansies in. We will be doing this a few times over the next month. It makes it so much easier when planting time comes. We just move the skid to where the little plants are and grab the flats that are filled from the skid and start planting. The plants are labeled and placed on a conveyor belt to be taken to the spot where they are placed on the ground or a bench. Every year we are trying to improve on efficiency and productivity. Impatiens growing as far as you can see. These will be planted into the 1204 flats (12x4 plants) we filled, in about a month.

A million cactus

Kevin is starting some cactus from seed. It's just a variety pack that he sprinkles onto some very sandy

soil, watered well and wrapped in a plastic bag to create a desert effect. Within a week or so we began to see the cactus popping up. These pictures are progressive beginning about 2 months ago.

The cactus are the little greenish-brown dots on the surface and in the cracks of the soil.

These are the cactus today. They are the greenish-brown dots with tufts of white on top. Still very tiny - probably about 1/2 to 1 cm tall. Eventually we will transplant them to other pots and they can continue to grow on their own. As everyone know, cacti are very slow growing so it will be awhile before they are ready. On Saturday night I saw the one my aunt has. She said it's over 20 years old and it's approximately 3 1/2 ft. high.

A few of my favourite things

These are a few of my favourite signs of spring. I would've put a picture of a robin here to but Princess the cat come out with me for my walk so the birds quickly disappeared. She will have to be my wildlife for this time. She was quite cute rolling around in the leaves....it was like she was saying "Spring is here at last! I'm so happy I'll just roll around on this wonderful ground without snow!" The first day of spring is good but the first spring day is better. Miss Princess the cat I was on my walk this morning to the back greenhouses and suddenly heard the peeping of swans! I took off running for the door, turning on my camera as I ran! This was the best shot I could get but it was pretty exciting! (I find simple things in life exciting) :p

Potunias

Something new this year is the "Potunia". We saw these plants this past summer at a show we were at in Ohio. We were impressed and decided to give them a try this year. They come in several colours: pinks ,salmon, purple and red. Here is what the breeders have to say about this plant. *blooms profusely all summer long *Perfect in containers, hanging baskets and landscapes *Intense, vibrant colours *They bounce back quickly after a rain shower *compared to other petunias, Potunias require less water, saving you energy, time and worry while you're away on vacation! Here they are in a landscaped area. Beautiful! http://www.potunias.com/

Pansies are growing!

Good Morning! What a windy day! I'm hoping the recycling stays in its containers at the end of the laneway and not in the neighbour's field!

We are planting more pansies! This skid is stacked with 1204 flats which means there are 12 boxes of 4 plants per flat. These are the flats that other bedding plants such as impatiens, marigolds, petunias and snapdragons are sold in. We will be planting the pansies from the second picture into these flats and they will be ready for you by mid April. If you would like some colour before that, we have pansy bowls that will be ready in a couple of weeks. The bottom picture was taken at the end of last week and there were other buds just about to pop! It's so interesting to keep an eye on the plants. It seems that we should be able to sit and watch them grow but for some reason, this miracle of new growth eludes us.

Enjoy your day and keep thinking spring, garden and sunshine!

All through the long winter, I dream of my garden. On the first day of spring, I dig my fingers deep into the soft earth. I can feel it's energy, and my spirits soar.

Helen Hays

Looking through our window

Here is a sample of the flowers growing, getting ready to be planted into baskets, planters or pots.

Potunias (not a typo but a new type of petunia)

Bidens - Yellow Empire Scaveola - Blue Ice

Lobelia - Anabelle Blue Oxalis - in the shamrock family. Gets delicate looking lilac coloured flower but is used mostly for its foliage. I perhaps owe becoming a painter to flowers. Claude Monet

Vegetable garden workshops

Dave and Carol will be hosting some how- to -workshops on vegetable gardening this spring. If you are someone who desires to grow your own veggies but you'd like some information, this is for you. Dave and Carol have had many years of experience in market gardening before adding on the flower business. They will discuss 2 methods of gardening; a more traditional method using a garden plot with rows and the second method being container gardening. The latter is good for anyone who doesn't have a large growing space or doesn't want the maintenance that a bigger garden takes. I'll post more details later once we have dates set. If you are interested, please email Carol @ info@huronridge.ca

I've had a garden box for years that's approximately 4 x 16 x 3 ft. high. It's wonderful for planting early seeds, bunnies can't get to it and I don't have to bend over to weed! I arrange my plants in a careful way, similiar to companion planting (planting plants together that benefit each other) and it makes for a full garden with not alot of weeding.

About a week and a half ago, I planted some Mesclun Mix (a variety of salad greens) in this container in the greenhouse. We've been watching it and couldn't believe how fast it grew once it started poking up through the ground! Pretty soon, I'll be eating fresh greens!

Oh how they're growing up!

These are some of the pansies just after being planted middle of January. They've had sun, fertilizer, room to grow and water and here they are today! (bottom picture) I found about 5 or 6 blooms and with this sun, they'll keep growing and bursting forth with colour!

Look! A flower! Spring must be on the way!

"But each spring....a gardening instinct, sure as the sap rising in the trees, stirs within us. We look about and decide to tame another little bit of ground."

Lewis Gantt

Spring cleaning done yet?

What a cold morning! It is beautiful and sunny though which I know makes us happy here in the greenhouses. It makes such a difference when the sun is shining brightly....we can feel it's getting stronger despite the frigid temps out there today. Here's a quote I read that you may have heard.... God made rainy/snowy/cold days so gardeners could get their housework done. Anonymous I took the liberty of adding snowy and cold. :) It's time to organize closets, clean out cupboards,wash walls and wipe trim. If we get all that done, it leaves lots of time once warm weather comes to be outside and not have to think about spring cleaning because you already did it! It's a win win situation! Check out our poll on the right hand of this page. Take a second to vote. Thanks!