Well, I haven’t been doing much cooking lately as I’ve been a bit under the weather and just haven’t had the energy. But I did dabble a wee bit in the “garden” today. Well, mostly at the gardening stores. First, I went to Home Depot and picked up some more seeds (chili pepper, corn, and snow pea) and some bulbs (garlic and yellow onion), along with 2 cheap wooden trellises for the Rubbermaid Tomato and Pepper gardens. Oh, and a book on growing organic veggies/fruit/flowers. I also got a few small things like labels and tomato ties. Then I went to Canadian Tire and got 2 Topsy Turvy Strawberry Planters (anybody familiar with these? Are they any good?), a big bag of compost soil, some anti-weed felt or whatever it’s called (to be the base of my vegetable garden bed), and some peat pots. I’m going to build my own raised vegetable garden on the terrace using the weed felt, some wood (or perhaps some cement mason bricks), and soil. I’m not that handy but surely I could nail/screw 4 planks of wood together or stick some bricks in a square and fill it with soil.

I just planted the onion and garlic bulbs in my 2 cedar planters (rectangular, narrow-ish planters with a plastic liner filled with potting mix). I also pulled out the onions and romaine lettuce from my aerogarden; putting onions in there was a stupid idea to begin with (what was I thinking?) and the romaine was getting big enough to transplant to a larger container, so I just stuck it in a styrofoam cup (we already had them so I was repurposing them) and filled it with some vermiculite and inserted the grow pod (sans plastic). As long as it survives that, I’ll transplant it outside at a later date (probably will move it over to a peat pot first). My cucumber plant is doing really, really well in the AG. It’s grown 1 big true leaf and the second one is rapidly growing. Eventually, I plan on transplanting it outdoors as well but I’m not in a rush to kick that one out of the nest quite yet Unfortunately, my second Ruby Heirloom Tomato kit isn’t really doing anything (yet) but hopefully those seeds will germinate soon *fingers crossed* My next new obsession is canning and preserving food but that can wait until I actually have something to preserve. And yes, I still want chickens dammit. I was looking at suburban farm land in Ontario on the MLS site for fun. If you go north enough (an hour or two outside Toronto), you can get some huge acreage and a decent house with a barn for cheap (less than a shitty, leaky condo costs here in Victoria). It’s a fun little pipe dream. I’m also really enjoying reading the blog at www.urbanhomestead.org. They really seem to be making it work on less than 1/4 acre of land in California! Very cool. Oh, and here are a couple really neat blogs/sites on canning and food preserving:

Food in Jars

Canning Across America

Consider the Pantry

And a really great YouTube account: Wolfcrik (by “Granny Miller”)

EDIT: I’m also going to start adding my veggie gardening/homesteading/etc. links here:

In My Kitchen Garden

5 Acres and a Dream (sounds like my dream!)

Suburban Homesteading

Enjoy!