It’s been an early spring here this year, and I think overall a fairly mild winter. We looked across a week ago and saw spashes of colour from last years vegetable garden. We were happy to discover that most of the pansies we planted last year made it through the winter and were flowering already. We also have more pansies growing in other places that have self seeded themselves from last year.

We grew the pansies to use as garnish on our plates at the Yellow Canoe Cafe. I picked the second batch this morning and here they are ready for use today:

Spring Pansies ready for Garnish at the Yellow Canoe Cafe

Daffodils are Susan’s favourite flowers. We’ve planted quite a few about the farm in the past few years and need to put in more. I noticed this morning that they’re blooming.

Spring Daffodils

This year we’re going to try growing a lot more of the produce that we use at the cafe (www.YellowCanoeCafe.ca). I’m trying to aim smaller if anything so things don’t get away from us. The primary crops will be mixed salad greens, tomatoes, beans, and herbs. We’re also putting in pie pumpkins, cukes, eggplant, corn, and more.

I got a good start in mid April tilling up the plots.

First till of the vegetable garden beds

The tractor mounted tiller makes quick work of producing a nice looking bed. The near end of this bed is destined to be covered with our 24×48 foot greenhouse which I’m planning on using as a field-house to extend the growing season. It’s taking longer to get the foundation up, so it’s looking like we’ll be testing extending things in the fall more.

I paid for not getting the field-house up last night when there was a surprise frost warning. We have about 40 tomatoes, a dozen brussels sprouts, and a few cukes in so I was scrambling to come up with row covers. I ended up using a combination of floating row cover I got at Lee Valley Tools, and a bunch of recycled lumber tarps.

Plants covered up for frost protection

As it turned out I don’t think we got a frost, although it was close. Here’s a picture from inside the “caged garden” after I got the covers off.

The view from inside the "Caged Garden"

I used this configuration last year and had no problems with the deer. In a few weeks I’ll plant the beans around the outside to climb up the fences. It was one of those “blinding flashes of the obvious” when I realized that the beans didn’t need to be in rows and I could use these fence panels to provide crop protection too.

More info as things progress, I’d better get back to welding up the last section of the field-house base.