Category Archives: Garden & Animals

Chicken Coop

What a beautiful day it was yestereday and today. I have managed to set up the new pressure washer and clean the chicken coop. I didn’t manage to clean it thoroughly but I will give it another try before the chicks arrive. There is a hole in the fence around the coop that needs fixed as well. A KillDeer bird laid 4 eggs on the ground under the apple tree beside the coop. When we get close it chirps loudly to warn us getting too close but when we press on, it flees! Can’t wait until we can see the baby birds. Also, we will be getting our 4 apples and 2 pear trees this thursday from Siloam Orchard in Uxbridge. Hole digging now.

Shed

Our metal shed was finished last weekend! It took us 2 days to complete it. We bought the 300 8’x6′ Spacemaker metal shed from Canadian Tire. It is the cheapest shed we can find. Of course, the steel wall is so thin that it dents easily. But it servers our purpose for storing the garden tools, soil and snow blower. We used 12 patio slabs as the base. May be some day we can build a wood shed with windows.

Grass Seeds

Today we start to spread some grass seeds around the house. Since we have more than 1 acres of lawn we figure we just need to overseed around the house. The seedlings are doing well except the pepper. We need to start new pepper seeds because none of the ones we planted sprout, strange. Half of the garden is covered with fabric, and weeding is really not a fun thing, especially we have to do it by hands. But the girls enjoy it, plus having a tiller means extra cost and pollution. Sure we can prepare the beds in 1 day with a tiller, but it gives the whole family a project to work on.

Start Seedlings

Today the girls have planted 50 seeds in the tray. Tiffany: Pumpkin, Sweetie Cherry Tomato Odelia: Ace Tomamto and Golden Pepper Sonia: Chinese cabbage and Butternut squash Derek: Stupice Tomato, Riesentraube Tomato, Yellow Cherry Tomato and Cabbage Still some flurries today.

Landscape Fabric

We purchsed some landscape fabric from Costco at 40 for 4’x220′. I think this is the cheapest everywhere. The quality is commerical grade. We have started to clean our garden. Because there is too much weed, we are going to use the fabric to cover and kill the weed until the planting time. We also put some spoiled hay over the fabric to prevent direct sun. We will start our seedling within 2 weeks. This year we have purchased some tomato seeds from TerraEdible and some oriental seeds from Veseys. New crop we are trying this year are potatoes and strawberries (also from Veseys).