More April Seeding - Carrots, Beets & Swiss Chard

Work on the compost bin proceeds and my husband may even have it finished today.  Really good news for all the compost currently sitting on the ground!

Today it was time to seed some more vegetables.  First up were carrots.  I seeded these at the end of the garlic bed.  Four varieties were chosen - Scarlet Nantes, Royal Chantenay, Little Fingers and Jeanette.  I seed my carrots in wide bands.

Carrot seeds

I try to space the seeds out, but they're small and finicky.  And since they're small, I cover them with with a seeding mixture.  This shows up well with a lighter colour so I know that what comes up here should be carrot seeds.  A dear friend thins her carrots by transplanting the tiny seedlings that are too thick, and I will probably do this once they're up.  Root vegetables don't like being transplanted and I know it will set them back, but my friend has had great success doing this, and I hate to waste seedlings!

Covered with seeding mixture

Once the seeds were covered, they got a good watering and were left to germinate.  Carrots take a good while to germinate - as much as 2 to 3 weeks - so patience is needed.

Next up are beets and Swiss chard.  Seeds from these plants are actually clusters of 2 or more seeds, so once they sprout, they'll require thinning.  Since the seeds are large, it's easy to space them out.  Swiss chard transplants well, but beets not so much.  I may give it a try though!  I only grow a small row of beets as I'm the only one in the house who likes them.  These will be destined to be pickled beets - which I love!

I seeded these in the bed that will eventually have some beans.  Currently it has 3 Lacinato kale plants at one end and lettuces at the other. The row of Swiss chard is sideways in the photo above as the beans will be planted at the side against the bean support structure.  Again, I covered the seeds with seeding mixture.  These larger seeds don't really need it, but it nicely marks out where the vegetables should be coming up.

We have a couple of cool, showery days ahead and then warm, sunny weather.  Perfect timing for planting.

Garlic Planting 2015

I started this blog in September 2012 with planting garlic.  The purpose of the blog was to provide myself with a diary of work in my garden.  I had tried many methods of keeping track and all had failed.  This was my last resort to log garden activities - successes and failures - and I started with garlic.  Three years and one month later, I'm planting garlic again.  I'll save the retrospective for another post and just get on with the garlic!

This year, the garlic is being planted in the bed that previously was home to onions - NOT an ideal decision on my part, but this bed was good and rich.  The onion crop was outstanding.  This bed is the only one that is totally free of planting and was going to be topped with good old SeaSoil, so we'll just see how we get along!

First the bed was turned over and raked.  I got the bulbs ready having saved the best bulbs from this year's harvest.

I set the bulbs beside where their rows would be.  This year I planned to have double rows of each variety and since I don't think I really grew enough last year, I have 8 bulbs to plant.  Hopefully that will be enough. In the picture above, from the top are Leningrad, Czech, Spanish Roja, Porcelain and an unknown variety I've been growing for years.

I carefully peeled back the papers and gently pried out the cloves, setting them in place and then pushing them into the ground just up to the top of the clove.

Finally, a wheelbarrow load of SeaSoil was raked over the top and the whole planting left to soak up the winter rain.  Garlic doesn't like competition from weeds so it's important to give it a good mulch.  This year's planting takes up just over half of one concrete raised bed.  In a few weeks I may find the first brave green spikes thrusting up through the mulch.

A few cloves were determinedly stuck together and these were brought into the house for consumption.  In spite of the poor garlic year in which many people bemoaned the poor garlic harvest, Leningrad and Porcelain have produced magnificent cloves.

Garlic taken care of, a quick look around the garden showed that the Brussels Sprouts are finally starting to form.  Whether or not they'll be ready in time for Christmas - who knows!

Bright Lights Swiss Chard is delighted that the cooler weather is here and looks just as beautiful as it tastes.

The heritage Italian beans had been harvested and brought into the potting shed to start drying.  Today I brought them into the house to finish.  It won't take long to complete the dehydration and then I'll shell them and store them away for planting next year.

Oh The Work To Do!

Each non-rainy day I can spend a bit of time getting the garden ready for planting.  Yesterday I managed 2 small beds.  Today so far it's just one big bed.  It's not just turning over the soil.  I have to check for root invasion and pull out any trespassers.  Then the soil must be turned over and broken up.  It'll be turned over again before planting, compost will be added and the bed raked smooth.  But this initial turning over of the soil is important.  It allows me to check for cedar roots as well as monitoring the soil quality.

Newly turned over beds

One of the newly-created beds years ago needed filling with soil we didn't have so we tried out a local supplier.  The day we went to get the soil, the skies opened up and we just had the soil loaded and left without giving it a good once over.  When we got home we discovered the soil was almost all clay!  It only half-filled the bed, but what water landed on it didn't drain at all!  Fortunately we had a good sand pile at the time and I added almost the same amount of sand as there was clay and dug it in well, topping it off with lots of compost.  Initially that bed was a dead loss, but has since turned out to be an excellent growing spot.  I still come across pockets of clay or sand when I turn it over, but each year it's better and better.

Yesterday when I turned over one of the 4x4 beds which had contained Pacific Russet potatoes, I discovered that we hadn't cleaned the bed out as we'd thought we had!  Right in the centre were 6 good-sized potatoes, all with healthy sprouts on them.  I re-planted the spuds in the other available 4x4 bed.  I'll need 3 more potatoes for that bed, but was delighted with the find.

Clump of Bright Lights Swiss Chard complete with fir cones!

One of the things I have to do before preparing a bed for turning over is take off all the fir cones.  An enormous Douglas fir tree stands above the garden.  Decades ago its top was broken off and so it looks like a giant bonsai.  The squirrels pull off the cones and drop them below, so the beds are covered with fir cones.

Squirrel cone processing locations

And walking around the garden today, I discovered lots of places that the squirrels process their cones.  We are fortunate to still have our native red squirrels.  They're much smaller than the invasive grey squirrels which have chased away the natives elsewhere.  Our little island has provided a haven for more than one endangered animal!  I'm happy to share my garden with our little red squirrels.

There's so much work to do that it's a little overwhelming.  I only tackle a bit each day so that it doesn't seem so onerous.  Some time in the near future, the pond needs seeing to.  I never got around to cleaning away the dying vegetation and it certainly doesn't look very inviting!  Ah well - another day!

Looking Back - 2014

Now that the main gardening season is coming to a close, it's time to take a look back at what worked, what didn't and how things can be improved.

SUCCESSES

Onions - the best crop ever!  Huge onions and only 2 transplants failed.  In view of what I discovered when I turned over this bed after harvest, I'm not sure why the onions were so successful.  The bed was full of cedar roots!  Perhaps it was the soil itself.  Last year this bed held tomatoes.  The tomatoes themselves weren't that successful mainly due to the fact that the varieties I chose weren't what I really wanted.  A lot of tomatoes fell and were turned into the soil.  So perhaps this bed got some extra nutrients other beds didn't.  Likewise, the shallots and multiplier onions were also good crops.  I have a nice basket of fat shallot bulbs and lots of multiplier onions to start next year's crop.  In addition, I planted 5 multiplier bulbs in the winter bed as an experiment.

Tomatoes - again, the best crop ever.  This time, I'm crediting the success to the varieties I grew.  Principe Borghese always gives me lots of little tomatoes for dehydrating.  Classica turned out to be a good producer as well.  The star of the tomato bed was Health Kick.  I have lots of packages of roasted tomato sauce in the freezer, 2 batches of salsa tucked away in my canning shelves and plenty of dried tomatoes in the pantry.  I'll be growing more Health Kick plants next year - not so much for myself, but because those I gave plants to had similar successes and would like more plants.

Squash - 4 Waltham Butternut plants gave me an abundance of squashes - 20 to be exact and 2 more that may yet ripen before frost.  Next year I might grow squash in the compost bin as I'm going to stop the Three Sisters experiment - more on that later.  Although my husband is not crazy about squash, I love it.  The squashes I have will keep nicely and at Thanksgiving, I'll be using at least one to make butternut squash pie which beats pumpkin pie hands down.  Recipe at a later date!

Swiss Chard - I grew about 5 each of Bright Lights and Silverado.  The Bright Lights plants have huge, colourful leaves, much bigger than the Silverado, so the production is much better on the Bright Lights.  I'll be keeping the plants through the winter.  These 10 plants have given us lots of meals and bunches to give away as well.

Strawberries - This is the first year I can really count strawberries as a success.  This was mainly due to the fact that the raccoons didn't discover them and we netted them against the birds.  We had many lovely desserts of strawberries and ice cream!  The variety is Totem and they are in one of the 4x4 beds.  This fall, I'll have my husband weed-eat the leaves off them, give them a good drink of fish fertilizer and the last of the SeaSoil so that we can have a good crop of strawberries next year.

Grapes - again, this is due to the fact that we beat out the raccoons.  This is only the third time we've done it and I can't hazard a guess as to whether next year we get a crop.  I have one quart jar full of raisins in the pantry and 6 trays in the dehydrator.  And there are lots more waiting their turn!

DISAPPOINTMENTS

Potato Grow Bags - I went into the experiment with high hopes, but this hasn't worked out.  I think growing the plants so close together doesn't give them enough nutrients.  Also, it was difficult to keep sufficient moisture on them.  I will grow potatoes again, but I'll grow in them in the raised beds instead.  We particularly liked Pacific Russet (for baked and mashed potatoes) and Seiglinde (wonderful for potato salads) and were disappointed in German Butter but perhaps that's because they were grown in the bags.

Beets - not sure why they didn't turn out the way I'd hoped.  A friend tells me her beets were disappointing, too.  Perhaps the soil wasn't rich enough.  The beets were small and didn't grow well at all.  I'll prepare the soil better next time.

Parsnips - the germination rate was very poor.  I was using year old seed and perhaps parsnip seeds don't keep well.  I'll buy new seeds for next year.

Herb Pots - another experiment that didn't turn out as I'd hoped.  It seemed like such a good idea to grow these closer to the kitchen, but I think they'd all be better for being in the ground.  I think that our deck didn't receive enough sunshine for the plants.  I'll stick to flowers on the deck in future!

Three Sisters - another experiment that I thought was working out well, but in retrospect have decided that the three plants are better off on their own.  The corn did okay except that because I was growing it with other plants, I didn't seed as much as I would have liked to.  The squash was very happy.   The beans were disappointing.  I hardly got any for picking as they were too hard to find in the foliage.  I think that next year I'll use half a bed for corn and grow a few beans in amongst them just for the stability they provide.  Squash will grow elsewhere.

VEGGIES THAT NEED IMPROVEMENT

Asparagus - my plants are nearing the end of their productive lives.  I have 2 beds a couple of years apart in age, the oldest of which is probably about 16 years old now.  We'll pull up them and replant with new stock after enriching the bed.  Then next year, we'll change the other bed.

Beans - while the beans were productive, my bean rack is too tall for me to reach them.  I'd like to set up some kind of arbour for the beans to grow on so that it will be easier to pick them.

Peppers - the main problem here was the soil in the pots.  One pot had some of the soil I used to fill the potato grow bags.  This plant (a cayenne) grew well and produced lots of attractive red peppers.  The other pots had a different brand of soil and you can really see the difference in the health of the plants.  The plants that were in the raised beds grew well.  Next year I might set aside half a bed for peppers and create some kind of plastic tunnel over them to give them more heat so they produce earlier and last longer.

The Winter Bed

This has been an awkward year for the garden.  Just when it was starting to kick into high gear, life got in the way.  What with one thing or another, there just hasn't been the time to devote to the garden.  And this year, the name Messy Gardener really applies!  The vegetable beds have not been weeded properly and I haven't been able to take full advantage of the produce.

Today, however, it was time to start thinking ahead.  Time to get the winter garden in gear!  The bed that had the onions has been designated as the winter bed.  After the onions were harvested, I turned over the bed - and discovered that the cedar trees around my garden have managed not only to find a way in, but have widened those cracks and taken full advantage of the lovely soil in the bed!  It took a lot of hard work to cut the roots away and pull them from the soil, but it was finally done.  The combination of a very dry summer and cedar roots had left the soil very dry, so I've been watering this bed to prepare it for the plants to I'd planned to install in it.  A lazy woman's purchase 6 Red Russian Kale and 6 Red Sails Lettuce were bedded in as well as multiplier onions from this year's crop.

Kale and lettuce plants for winter use

This bed was also designated for garlic.  I went in with my daughter to buy fresh garlic bulbs to augment three of the best bulbs from this year's harvest.  First the soil was prepared - a good litre of my homemade fertilizer was worked into the soil.  Then the cloves were planted with the new varieties - Spanish Roja, Leningrad and Czech - being labeled for future reference.  There are now 52 potential garlic bulbs nestled down in the soil.  Then the whole bed was mulched with what is left of the SeaSoil and watered well.

Bright Lights Swiss Chard

In spite of my neglect, a number of things are doing well.  This has been a good year for the Swiss Chard.  From only about a dozen Bright Lights and Silverado, we've had lots of meals and it should do well through the winter as well.

Cantaloupe

There's one enormous cantaloupe and a number of smaller ones.  I won't be growing them again, but we'll enjoy what we have for this year.  I'm not sure what I'll grow in the compost bin next year - perhaps squash.  The Waltham Butternut has been excellent this year and if it gets the benefit of a compost bin next year, it should be even better.

Liberty Apple

Now that we're in September, the apples are coming ripe.  Our favourite has always been the little Liberty tree.  Beautiful crisp, tart little apples with brilliant red skins.  This tree was originally nearer the house.  Overshadowed by big trees and well nibbled by deer, when my husband suggested moving it, I didn't give it much hope.  It's thrived, however, and every year is so loaded with apples that the branches touch the ground, even after rigorous thinning in the spring.

And finally, on the flower side, the autumn crocuses are in full bloom.  They are always such a surprise!

I'm hoping that next year's garden with be able to benefit from more care than this year's garden got.  And with gardening it's always, "Next year, I plan to......"  With a garden, there's alway hope.

It's All About The Food

I have to start with a small back-story.  Many, many years ago I attended a friend's "kitchen-themed" shower.  I’d spent a lot of time over my present, picking out a collection of things I knew a new housewife would need – seasonings, baking powder, baking soda – things in that vein.  When she opened my present, the bride-to-be glanced at me with a smile on her face and said fondly, “Ah, practical Pat!”  At the time I was a bit insulted, but now I know that’s exactly me.

Concrete raised beds can grow a lot of food

When we first bought this property and started landscaping the grounds, it was esthetics I was concerned about.  My husband and I were both working and with the travelling time, there wasn’t much left for gardening.  I planted perennials and shrubbery.  Eventually we began thinking more about providing some of our own food and quickly learned that our rocky property wasn’t ideal for vegetable gardening.  Concrete raised beds became our way to get around the negatives of our property and the multitude of cedar trees in the forests surrounding us.  Lots of information on how we built these beds can be found on this blog. 

Some of our own potatoes - German Butter and Pacific Russet

As time has gone by, growing our own food has become the focus of our gardening.  We are fortunate to have access to lots of irrigation water – an extremely precious commodity on the Gulf Islands – but it has made clearer where our priorities lie.  Landscaping has shrunk to what shrubbery can survive without watering.  The majority of our efforts have gone into practicality – what we can eat.

Today’s climate situation has made that even more important.  British Columbia, Canada has come to rely too much on other areas of the continent to provide our food.  Now that those areas are experiencing weather hardships – drought, unseasonable cold, unseasonable hot and floods – it’s more than ever vital that we get back to supporting ourselves.  Unfortunately, a lot of extremely valuable farmland has been turned into housing and has now vanished.  At one time, British Columbians produced the vast majority of what they needed.  Now only a tiny portion comes from home with the rest being imported from the United States.  How are we ever to get back to being self-supporting?

Lettuces and swiss chard not only taste good - they look good, too!

We think it’s important to take on some of this burden ourselves.  We need to either grow our own if possible, or support those locally who can.  On our little island, a excellent little market garden, jollity FARMS,  has been created in the last few years.  Right now they are selling subscribed boxes to locals and the excess produce at the farm a couple of days a week.  They not only sell vegetables, they also sell bread and meat that they produce as well.  If we weren’t growing our own, I would definitely be subscribing!

So how can we help ourselves? 

A cascade of Sweet Million cherry tomtoes

Start by growing what is most useful to you.  Do you eat a lot of salads?  Lettuces and green onions take up very little space and look attractive.  A small investment yields a big return.

Herbs in pots on the deck

Use up every little space.  Pots on a deck can grow vegetables and herbs.  These days, plants are developed especially for container gardening.  Tomatoes are even grown in hanging baskets! A friend sent me a picture of a square planter that had a colourful variety of lettuces in it.  Very pretty and very practical!

A variety of pepper plants

Grow what works for you.  Can’t grow spinach?  Wood bugs eat mine as soon as a seedling pokes its head out of the ground.  Try swiss chard instead.  Or start the seedlings elsewhere and transplant as soon as they can withstand the bug onslaught.

Cantaloupe!

Think outside the box.  A friend found some large rope-handled plastic tubs on sale for a terrific price.  She drilled holes in the bottom and is growing a wonderful crop of potatoes in them.  We turn half of our 2-bin compost box over to something each year.  This year it’s cantaloupe again, and we’ve used it for tomatoes and squash in the past.

Copra onions take up one full raised bed

Think about winter storage.  We grow our full year’s worth of onions in one raised bed.  Same for garlic.  Some crops can be left in the ground and harvested as you need them.  I leave my leeks out and use them until spring.  Other friends leave potatoes and carrots in the ground – which you can in our mild climate.  I imagine they probably stay in much better condition that way.  Perhaps a mulch on top would help, too.

This year's Three Sisters Garden

Remember to put back what you take out.  Intensive gardening can be hard on the soil.  You need good quality compost and organic fertilizer of some sort to replenish the nutrition.  This year I’m also applying a liquid fish fertilizer to my crops and have already noticed a difference.  My Three Sisters Garden also fulfills this as the beans put nitrogen back into the soil.  The vegetation gets chopped up and composted at the end of the season.  We also collect leaves in the fall, which are run through our shredder and then used as mulch.

I apologize for the long lecture, but this subject is very important to me.  We need to rely less on others to feed ourselves.  If we don’t, the end results could be catastrophic.

New Potatoes!

Tonight's dinner comes to us from the garden.  Even the chicken is coated with a Panko crust that includes parsley, rosemary and thyme from the herb pots on the deck.

But potatoes - I just couldn't wait any longer.  The Sieglinde potatoes have had flowers for a little while now and I noticed that some of them are starting to drop - well, almost ready to drop, anyway!  I pulled up one of the plants and was quite frankly expecting pretty small babies.  To my surprise I harvested 9 potatoes from the one plant, each between 3 and 4 inches long and nearly a pound and a half in total weight.

One of the potatoes may be the seed potato as it's a little darker than the rest, but it's still in amazingly good shape when I would expect it to be a bit wizened and mushy.  The potatoes look very healthy - no marks or scabs at all. I've been keeping the potato beds well watered so I'm sure there won't be any cavities in the middle either.

So that most of the dinner comes from the garden, I picked a bunch of swiss chard and we'll have a salad with the ranch dressing from May's blog post - "First Homegrown Salad of 2014".  We like this dressing so much that we now always have a container of buttermilk in the fridge!

With the potatoes being such a success, I'm now eyeing the rhubarb bed for the future.  The rhubarb is just not doing well at all.  This bed is in the shelter of a massive Douglas fir tree and tends to be very dry even though I always seem to be watering it.  Rhubarb needs lots of moisture so perhaps this is not the best place for it.  Maybe we'll find another spot for the rhubarb (this will be the 4th move) and plant potatoes here.  Potatoes will still need water, but perhaps not as much as rhubarb.  Given what we now know about how scary non-organic potatoes can be, we'd sure like to produce more of our own.

End of May - Things Are Flourishing!

This post will be mostly pictures so that I can compare end of May progress from year to year.

In one week, the Totem strawberries are plumping out rapidly and a few are starting to take on a bit of colour.  It won't be long now!

In my Tulameen raspberry jungle, flowers are forming.  Raspberries are always later than strawberries and mine aren't in total sun, so they're probably a bit later than most peoples'.

I have moved the cherry tomatoes from the deck.  They weren't getting as much sun as I'd thought they would.  The pots have been positioned in front of the tomato bed.  I bought a small pot of basil and split it into 3 clumps.  They've been planted at the front of the tomato bed as tomatoes and basil go very well together.

Flowers on Health Kick

Flowers are open on the tomatoes in the raised bed and so far all plants are looking very healthy.

The raised bed with the beans planted at the end is progressing well.  This bed houses beans and zucchini at the far end.  Multiplier onions and shallots are at the front.  In between, I've seeded second crops of carrots, beets and parsnips.  The half barrel in the front has a Sweet Million growing in it.  To the right is a bed of leeks with swiss chard at the back of it.  You can see the grapevine scrambling over the fence at the back of the garden.

I have 2 plantings of Italian heritage beans.  Both have been placed where they can get the maximum support.  In the raised bed, they are starting to climb up the bamboo poles which were placed inside their water bottle collars.  By the time they reach the end of the bamboo supports, they'll be well able to withstand the predation of wood bugs and earwigs.

We've been eating asparagus and the dill I planted in with the asparagus has provided new plants this year.  Dill and asparagus are a good pairing as the dill protects the asparagus from beetles - not that I've had a problem with beetles, but a little prevention could be a good thing.

May is such a wonderful month for flowers!  Irises, peonies, perennial geraniums are thriving in the central bed.

A ceanothus shrub in the garden is loud with bees.  Unfortunately they are all wild bees as it's been a few years since I've seen a domestic honeybee in my garden.

Never Doubt

No seeds have thrust above the potting soil yet, but spring is definitely on the way.

Concrete he may be, but rabbit is ready to break free of the snow.

Self-seeded Bright Lights Swiss Chard makes it through the snow unscathed and ready for picking.  This vegetable has been brightening up our meals right through the winter.

Aconites and snowdrops have been blooming for some time.  Narcissus has strong buds now just waiting for warmth to make them open.

Our coral bark maple is becoming more handsome with each year that passes and really comes into its own in the early spring when the young branches live up to its name.

Several piers japonica shrubs are sporting cascades of blossoms at this time of the year.

King Edward Flowering Currant blossoms emerge to warn us that Rufous Hummingbirds will soon be here to join the stalwart Anna's Hummingbirds which have been with us all winter.   Spring is truly peeking around the corner!

The Seeds Are Here!

Seeds for the 2014 Garden

So that must mean that spring is fast approaching.  At least I'll tell myself that.  It's the end of January and there's still a lot of winter left.

I ordered seeds from T & T Seeds this year as they carry Health Kick Tomatoes.  I ordered 2 packages of them in case they're hard to find next year.  In addition, I'm trying out another paste tomato, Classica.  Just to finish off, I ordered a package of Pink Swirl Impatiens from the Super Elfin series.  Every garden needs some flowers and these will be great in pots around the pond.

The West Coast Seeds order is, of course, the big one and they had everything I asked for:

Beets - Cylindra
Carrots - Royal Cantenay and Scarlet Nantes
Corn - Bodacious
Kale - Improved Siberian & Redbor
Leeks - Bandit
Lettuce - Drunken Woman (!), Red Sails and Simpson Elite
Onions - Copra
Peas - Oregon Sugar Pod 2
Squash - Waltham Butternut
Swiss Chard - Silverado and Bright Lights
Tomato - Principe Borghese and Sweet Million

So now the planning begins!  Today I turned over another bed and mulched the garlic which is well up.  We checked out the Three Sisters bed which is on its last legs.  We'll be able to get one more year out of it and next year it will be replaced with one long bed which will be at least 4' wide.  I also checked out the bed that has cedar roots creeping in through a crack and sure enough, there are lots!  That bed will have to be dealt with next.  Then I need to sit down and decide what will go where.  Crop rotation is important and root crops need to be followed by non-root crops.  One of the new 4x4 beds will be for potatoes - just enough to satisfy the craving for those delicious new baby potatoes!

Plans!  The bed which is growing garlic will also host some early spring planting and I'm going to try getting some lettuce going now.  I'll start it in the house and once it's up, transplant it to pots in the potting shed.  When they're strong enough, they'll be planted in the garlic bed and protected with hot caps.

In February - that's next week! - I'll start kale, leeks and onions.  Near the end of the month, I'll get the tomatoes started.  I won't grow as many as last year, but concentrate on cherries and romas.  This year I'm determined to get several batches of salsa to go with the pasta sauces.  I also want to grow some on the deck and bought some really big pots from Lee Valley last fall along with special grids to go under them to protect the deck.  They'll grow cherries tomatoes and basil.

This is the really exciting time for gardeners - planning!  Soon enough will come the hard work.

It's Spring in January

Today my mind is finally turning to the garden.  I've been studiously ignoring it all winter even though I know there are so many unfinished projects out there waiting for me.  We have had a little winter cold this year, but all in all, it's been pretty mild.  Only one snowfall which quickly disappeared.  There will be more - it's only January!  But this is what we come to expect on the West Coast - and in particular in the Gulf Islands.

Today I ordered my seeds from West Coast Seeds and T & T Seeds.  The latter was on my list because it was where I finally located Health Kick Tomato seeds.  My plea to West Coast Seeds went unrewarded!  That done, it was time to hit the garden.

I finally got the raspberries pruned and in shape.  They look very vigorous and this year I cut them about 5' tall.  Hopefully this will help to keep them in bounds.  As I headed up to the garden to dispose of the old canes I noticed that Abraham Darby (rose) is looking very fine!  He obviously is flourishing in his new home.  This rose has lost no leaves during the winter and there are even a few buds in evidence.  Then I saw how the King Edward Currant is breaking bud.  It was time to take a "spring signs tour"!

King Edward Currant buds getting ready to open

There are some plants I expect flowers from during the winter, so I grabbed my camera to take the census.

Viburnum flowers for the Anna's Hummingbirds we see in winter.

One of our viburnums (we have several varieties) starts blooming in November.  By January, it's starting to really show off its pink blossoms.

Purple Helebore

Then there's the purple hellebore that a neighbour gave me many years ago.  I planted it down below the house at the edge of the woods where it often gets forgotten.  It certainly never gets watered - or even weeded - but it seems to thrive down there and thrusts up its blossoms every year.  At this time of January, it's just getting going.

Hazelnut Catkins

We have 4 hazelnut bushes and the 2 older ones are dripping with catkins.  The 2 small ones are too young to have catkins yet, but they have a delicious secret hidden in their roots.  They've been inoculated with perigord truffle spores!  We can expect truffles in a couple of years.  When I edited the picture of the catkins (above) I notice you could make out the tiny dark pink flowers.  Look really hard - they're not easy to see!  Click on the picture to make it bigger, look where the catkin joins the branch and you'll see the flower.

Oriental Poppy

Oriental poppies are also sending up leaves at this time of the year.  This particular poppy is a pale pink one - name unknown.

Flat-leafed Italian Parsley Seedling

I've been picking herbs throughout the winter and the Italian parsley I planted a number of years ago freely sends its seeds out to create new plants.  It casts so many that I'm always pulling up plants but there are always more to help out the kitchen.

Bright Lights Swiss Chard

Tour finished, I picked a bouquet of Bright Lights Swiss Chard for tonight's dinner and headed in for a cup of tea.