Garden Binder: Resources

In early June last year, I was well into the planting season. Unfortunately, this year I have given up my little community plot in favour of bigger and better future gardens in Manitoba. I probably won't have much by way of garden this season but I do hope to plant a few kale plants.

I have been keeping a fairly detailed garden binder over the last few years and have found the information collected to be invaluable for future planning as well as memory keeping about gardens past.

General Notes
The first section of my garden binder is lined paper where I write general dated notes that include everything such as work done, seeds planted, watering dates, emerging problems and when plants first emerge. This section sees the most action during the height of the summer.

Garden Planning
The season's pre-planning occurs in this section through the use of detailed seasonal to-do lists, an outline of the garden layout on graph paper, as well as a paper copy of West Coast Seeds Vegetable Planting chart. Last year I included a detailed planting chart to help me sort out specific details for various indoor sowing and direct sowing dates for various types of plants.

Harvest
This section includes a Harvest Tracker, a chart of first and last kale harvests throughout my gardening history, and an Individual Seed/Plant informational sheet.

Projects
This section consists of printed information for various garden projects, recipes to try this season, and building projects.

Seed Lists
I maintain three separate seed lists. One is a wish list for future gardening years where I note new and interesting plants as well as unique varietals I want to try. I also maintain a list of seeds purchased this year to note company and price. The third list is a seed inventory list that includes leftover purchased seeds, trades, as well as saved seeds.

Garbage Garden

I have become obsessed with planting literal garbage.

Sprouting garlic? Planted.
Sprouting onions? Planted!
Carrot tops? Hand me the soil!

While the seeds planted for the garden, get the benefit of grow lights this 'garbage garden' has to make due with the little natural sunlight that Yellowknife in March affords but, all things considered, they are doing pretty well.

I've taken to planting #garbage #onion #garlic #carrottops #spring #waiting

A post shared by Sarah (@sarahehoffman) on Mar 14, 2017 at 9:40am PDT

The end of my coffee table - the closest flat surface to the window - quickly became full of recycled milk containers and DIY newspaper pots filled with plants. I decided to double down on the 'garbage' in the 'garbage garden' and made a quick drip tray of reclaimed pallet wood lined with dog food bags!

My #garbage #garden got a #facelift by way of a #diy #recycled #dog #food #bag #drip #tray. #recycled #upcycle #stillgarbage #lolz

A post shared by Sarah (@sarahehoffman) on Mar 22, 2017 at 11:21am PDT

While not the most beautiful thing I've ever constructed, looking at my 'garbage garden' makes me very happy!

Why plant garbage?
I planted the garlic to eat garlic scapes.
I dream of collecting seeds from the onion bulbs.
The carrot tops make for a beautiful natural dye.

Almanac 84 Mini Zine

It's been about a year since we closed on our 84 acres of land in Manitoba. I have spent a lot of time over the last year developing skill-sets and researching with specific land projects in mind. I managed to put together a mini zine round-up of those skills along with a few short essays.

This small zine is available as freebie if you order Plot 13. 

Or contact me (wingedsnail99@hotmail.ca) if you would like to trade! 

DIY Flower Press

I have been kind of obsessed with flowers lately (Exhibit A) so I decided to spend the afternoon making a flower press. I had one as a kid and always loved the idea behind them - preserving a bit of summer's beauty into the white winter.

Flower presses are nothing more than a bit of wood, a few bolts, and few pieces of cardboard so it did not take me long to finish this project. I enjoy every second of using my manual hand drill so a small project that required me to use boring drill bits was a bit of extra pleasure. I did use my electric sander to do the bulk of the sanding but found the noise distracting so I finished the project by hand sanding it. A project this small would not take very long to sand entirely by hand anyways so in the future I will forgo the use of the electric sander for small projects.  

#manualdrill #handdrill #woodworking #making #diy #fun #afternoonproject #thingstodo #done

A post shared by Sarah (@sarahehoffman) on Mar 7, 2017 at 4:39pm PST

The completion of this project reminds me how quickly farm related skills develop. Just a few months ago the construction of a bench was arduous and overwhelming but now I can complete a simple project in a few short hours and be relatively stress free while doing it!

And now to we wait until flowers bloom.