It has been a whirlwind summer. The garden went in, with many lessons learned through the whole season. In early July, we got enough of the fencing done to put goats in. In mid July, we purchased 8 Boer does and brought them home. We learned about goat bloat, parasites, deworming, and stress induced illness pretty early on. As well…
Back in 2008, in my very first garden blog post, I said that I hated weeding. And that was true for a lot of years. Weeding is not easy on the body, for all the tools available, it requires hard work on the part of your back, shoulders, elbows, hands, knees…. usually all of the above. It’s also often tedious,…
Today was lovely with a thin cloud cover keeping the sun from baking everything, so after work I hit the garden for an hour before dinner. I couldn’t tell if we had seedlings with all the grass and oats coming up! For lack of another option (other than a rototiller, and I haven’t decided exactly which one I want yet),…
Less work = more posting. More work = less posting. Funny how that works. I prefer more frequently posting little bits of news, it’s easier to look back on and see a better timeline of what’s happened, but I can’t complain. I’m finally getting to do all the things I’ve been dreaming about! It’s sitting at a toasty 31c/88f so…
Up here in central-western Alberta, summer is often just a suggestion and more accurately called “mud and construction season”, and spring and fall are unofficially known as “late winter” and “early winter.” To add insult to injury, our soil consists of an inch or so of decent top soil and then concrete. Well, not literal concrete, but it’s such compacted…
Last year we put in the new compost bin that we picked up at Costco. It’s made in Canada from recycled plastic and not very pretty to look at, but that’s ok. Functional is good enough, pretty is just a bonus. I left it alone for a full year, only adding material. It has been nearing full, so it was…
I didn’t have time yesterday to do anything more than turn on and back off the “greenhouse” lights. Maybe I should call them “greenshelves” instead. ……I don’t think that will become a thing. Anyway, this morning all my babies got checked on and watered. The herbs were lovely to see – 2 days ago, there was only 2 bits of…
Here’s a clue (less of a clue and more an obvious answer, thanks to some paperwork being finalized) where I’m going to be gardening at next spring: http://www.plantmaps.com/interactive-alberta-plant-zone-hardiness-map.php But according to this, I’ll be in zone 3b to 4a, where the official Canada hardiness map indicates 1b to 2a: http://atlas.agr.gc.ca/agmaf/index_eng.html#context=phz-zrp_en (yeah Alberta is a big province, a more narrowed down…