Right in My Own Backyard A Cornwall gardening experience: Right in My Own Backyard

Holy Hannah, two posts in and I'm already procrastinating. I've got some video that I shot yesterday along with some new pics. Every time I get the camera out, I say to myself that I'm going to get the blog post done while it's all fresh. The thing is, the darn videos take soooo long to upload to Youtube. It’s thinking about that that really puts me off working on the blog. But, I’ve come across a new software that supposedly cuts the time down to minutes what had previously taken a couple of hours or more; and I’m talking for a 4 minute video imagine the ones that are close to 10.

The weather was looking a little dicey and if I didn’t know better, I would think we were moving backward. We had quite a nice little snowfall in the morning which had faded to rain by the afternoon. Then, just about supper time, we had another snowfall. It was a lot heavier than it was earlier in the morning, but that didn’t last very long before turning to rain again. The yard is green again now, but I expect we’ll have at least another snowfall before March leaves us.

I have to say, the speed at which everything is growing caught me by surprise. I actually thought I was a little late starting them because the seed packets said to start them eight weeks before the last frost. I’ve since learned that for my area, the last frost should be around May 6, so I was actually a couple of days early. The only plants that are going the way I expected are the peppers. I’ve never seen a pepper plant grow fast. Last year my red peppers were only big enough to pick and still green at the end of the season. And they were flowering plants when I put them in.

So, to replant my broccoli I just spooned a little potting soil into a peat pot and then literally scooped out each plant, soil and all and put it into the pot. I only had five pots and plants in nine egg carton sections, so I had to make them share pot space. I actually have several plants in each egg section, so I should end up with quite a few plants at the end of it all. I Learned from the Square Foot Gardening Forum how to harden off my seedlings, so I guess I’ll be trying that in a few weeks.

Click to enlarge

1t potting soil

Lift seedling with
soil intact

Add to pot

Fill with potting soil

Add seedlings
from a 2nd section

Okay so it turns out I didn’t need the new video software after all. I just needed to learn how to use the media browser properly for my video camera to convert my videos to the right format for uploading. I uploaded my 6 minute video to Youtube in 9 minutes; not too shabby, eh? Winking smile