Tiling the soil- Frost free date-..

Well, today's the day- NOT!

According to the farmers almanac, today is the day of last frost for TO.

But I am taking some neighborly italian advice- wait a week.

And from the results I've seen in an "old italian guy" s downtown yard yields, I'm not arguing. (I'll post a pic if someone really wants to see what I mean, which includes a pc. of the Bruno D. : )

Besides- it's soil time!

I was looking around for a bucket (insert standard walrus buket internet joke here) and I really didn't want to dump out my winter sweaters, so I dumped the laundry basket instead.

Works great.

In batches.

I seriously had no idea that all those containers would equal the volume it did-so I only did some tiling ( I hear you- stop spelling tilling wrong- well- that's what I used to turn it with- a piece of tile from a previous project-gone wrong= so. tiling. it is..)

I mixed it in with a bag of this stuff- at a ratio of about 1 (new dirt):4 (old stuff) to 1:2.

As I was doing so I really, really missed worms. Somebody get me some, ok?

I also repotted some of the organic babies- and you don't want to know what happend to the rest- I can't talk about it- yet. I'm too upset. So that's why you have no seedling update as promised, btw. The good thing is for the organics, I may have more than I need, so keep an eye on TBF here & perhaps you can get a jump on some trades/give aways.

Containers, containers, containers!

I've been reading lots of posts regarding containers lately. "what can I use?"

Well, when you're gardening, and you have more plants than you likely need, everything starts to look like a container in your eyes, much like everything looks like food to Warner Bros's Tazmainian Devil.

In this pic I present to you a few of my containers to give you some ideas:

• Old faux snakeskin platform boots (I mean really, really old, having seen many dancefloors, and alas the local cobbler cannot put them together again..)
• Sawed off veg. oil jug
  
• Coffee containers - plastic & tin
  
• Clemintine wood boxes to keep containers off the ground & for visual height display (secret old food cashier presentation trick)
  
• Someones old cooking pot (Sorry Mom!)
  
• aaand the bag lady's ever-present friend, LCBO bags ( but not the old good ones- I've got those stashed like any good pack rat)

But what about holes for drainage, I hear you say? Well I generally go au natural. That is to say I am lazy, and what works, works. Unless it something really fussy, the tomates & peppers don't see to mind holding as much water as possible. And depending on where your balcony faces (mine faces due west=hot hot hot!) this is important.

But I do put broken styrofoam (easier to come by than than rocks in the city..) and old oyster shells in the bottoms. I'm going to try some egg shells this year for added calcium.

Which leads us to soil- but that's another story..

(coming next- soil, seedling updates, and local plant retailers!)