The onions are up! Early March
We sprung the clocks forward an hour early this morning. I woke up to a beautiful spring like day, the sun was shining, the grass was brown with puddles, it really felt like a March. I thought, maybe, I would do a Woman’s day run. Well running against the North wind made me reconsider. I ran about 1. 5 km and decided to walk home as the clouds rolled it. Snowflakes started to fall and they continued to fall all day. This is March in Calgary.
My free trial is over. I put some money down on this blog. So here it goes.
The community garden seed swap last weekend brought out a small but cheerful crowd. It was nice to see many new faces. Matt from the Braeside/Southwest Calgary seed library brought many seeds to give away and I sent him with all our extras for another seed give away in April. Our community garden west coast seed fundraiser has wrapped up. It is an easy fundraiser and it went pretty well. I‘ll need to set a deadline for renewals, probably the end of March, so I can figure out what beds to assign people and if we need to start a wait list. I‘ll also need to figure out what we want to do for the plant sale in May. In the past we have started seedlings to sell as a fundraiser for the garden, but that is a lot of work and indoor space. Another option is to rent tables out to garden related vendors. I am leaning towards just having a plant swap, perennials and any extra seedlings.
My plans for the season are to focus on certain varieties and do my best to save the seeds from the. On February 14th I started about 150 Ailsa Craig onions in the mini soil blocks from West Coast Seeds, a couple year old seed but they germinated quite well — about 75%. I also started some Brilliant Celeric from West Coast Seeds that has just germinated. This is my first time trying Celeric, I‘m not sure it grows here, but we will see what we get. A week later, Feb 21st, I started 60 Early Yellow Globe onions I had ordered this year from Wild Rose Heritage Seed. About 50% have germinated so far.
I put quite a few native plants from Wild About Flowers and ALCLA in the fridge to stratify Feb 14th. I had put the seeds in damp paper towels and labelled plastic bags. Today I started Bunch Berry and Golden Sedge seeds in styrofoam trays. I’ll keep them inside for 2 weeks and then move them outside on the north side to stratify. These seeds are a couple of years old but the process of germinating them was so daunting I kept putting it off. Hopefully, I’ll get something this year. Finally I started some Rosemary and Basil seeds.
Today I moved my set up around so the onions are in the north bay window. Next week I’ll be setting up the larger rack in the south bay window with heat mats and grow lights to get ready for starting the nightshades; peppers, ground cherries, and tomatoes.
The Calgary Seedy Saturday event is this year on March 21st. As usual, I’m looking forward to it.
