EARLY GARDENING

The weather has been unseasonably warm the past couple of weeks so we got excited about gardening and jumped right in.  Stuart tilled the soil a couple of times and then we laid out the rows as per the plan.  While we were down south for the winter, I drew a scaled drawing of our garden area complete with rows and all the plantings that we wanted for this year.  It included adding some roses to create a rose bed in one corner and moving the clematis to a sunnier location.

Once we had the rows marked, Stuart added a new product to the soil called “Beyond Peat.”  In the past, we’ve purchased peat moss but since it is a dwindling natural resource (it takes 200+ years to develop a peat bog), we decided to try this other product.  It is made from coconut husks and is compressed into small packages for distribution.

The product works by adding water so that it expands to full size and then you add it to your soil to increase the soil’s ability to hold moisture.  It’s amazing to see how much it expands and one small package goes a long way.

After we prepared the soil and checked the long term forecast, we decided to go ahead and plant all our seeds.  We’d already planted onion sets and peas a few weeks ago and went ahead with our usual carrots, beets, green and yellow beans, lettuce, green onion, radishes and spinach.  They should germinate well in this weather and we’ll put in our bedding plants next week.  They are more susceptible to extreme temperatures and it should be more moderate next week.  We’ve grown our own cucumbers and zucchini indoors from seed and it will be interesting to see if they survive the transplant.  If not, we can get bedding plants from our favourite nursery.

We haven’t been working on any major outdoor projects yet and have been playing golf and some pickleball.  The golf course is in great shape as usual and it’s not very busy out there yet so we try to play twice a week.  We golfed in a fun tournament one Saturday and met some other snowbirds who also winter in Arizona and spend their summers at Christina Lake.  The tournament was called “Wing and String” and was an alternate shot format with husband and wife teams.  Each person played a tee shot, then hit each other’s ball for the second shot and chose which ball they wanted to use for the rest of the hole.  They continued in the alternating pattern until the ball was holed.  The “wing” part of the game was allowing each team to have 4 times during the game when they could throw the ball by hand and not count the throw as a stroke.  The “string” part was allowing each team to have 10 feet of string that they could use to measure from their ball on the putting green to the hole and not count that as a stroke.  So it was important to choose when to “wing it” and when to “string it” and try not to end the round with string in your pocket.  We did quite well with the strategy and only had a few inches of string left at the end.  It was a good time and there was a dinner and social time after the game.

We have the boat back from maintenance and the motorcycle on the road so more recreating is the plan while the weather holds.  The fence can wait for a while.