Can the real Spring weather please show up, please show up, please show up!

Another busy week! Unfortunately there have been several losses within the families of my work community over the past week and I want to pass my condolences on to the families of those who have left us.

Between the bad weather, evening meetings and funerals, I have been kept jumping. In the meantime, my garden has continued to grow. The seedlings have shot up and the pepper plants are looking quite fantastic!

SO PRETTY!

While last week it finally looked like we had put the cold weather behind us, the weather this week has been pretty dreadful. Cold, rainy and windy, we even had snow on Wednesday afternoon and at one point on my way to Brantford, I thought I was driving in a full on blizzard. While I am exceedingly unimpressed with mother nature and her fickle ways (and the fact that our federal government is doing nothing to combat the climate change causing this weather), there was a little bit of good weather and all in all I was able to accomplish a few things both in and outside of the house.

* I finally cracked open the bottle of apple cider I have had fermenting in my bathroom. To say that it tasted like vinegar is an injustice to vinegar. I was able to buy a few carboys from a fellow brewer this past week and I am going to be restarting my brewing adventures over the upcoming weeks!*

When I wasn't busy this week, I transplanted pretty much all of my tomato plants. I have some extra pots, though, so perhaps I need to grow some more!

Ready for plants!

Planted!

Jenga!

Yesterday when it was warm I did some cleaning, both inside and outside of the house, and took my plants outside for a few hours while it was sunny, and then worked on cleaning up the back yard and my garden area. Last year I bought a greenhouse to store my plants in and I brought it back out again this year. It was super handy to put trays of plants on and the plastic covering keeps my little guys nice and warm while they still get the pleasure of basking in the sun all day.

The Greenhouse!

Peppers of the sun!

A little sunbathing al fresco!

Last year I grew all my plants in buckets and I plan on doing pretty much the same thing this year, although I am still planning on putting in a raised bed. Below is a picture of where all the growing is going to happen. Off the back of the patio where the buckets are in the grass is where I intend to put my raised bed. For the record, I owe a debt of gratitude to my girlfriend, who allowed me to take over her patio last year for my garden.

This is where the growing happens!

At this point, while I am trying to get something done every day, I am waiting for that warm weather that I know is slowly but surely coming. T-shirt and sandal season is just around the corner and me and my plants can't wait!

Seedin Ain't Easy - The Remix

I hope everyone had a great Easter weekend. Whether you celebrate Easter or not, time off from work is when we usually visit family and friends and I hope you all had a great weekend. I had a splendid time visiting my family, having an amazingly delicious dinner and, overall, it was a fantastic weekend. It also helped that Arsenal SMASHED Liverpool on Saturday morning to the tune of 4-1! All four Arsenal goals were picturesque strikes and with four different players getting on the score sheet, Arsenal are getting goals from everyone at the moment. I thought Mesut Ozil was particularly terrific. The German has been ON POINT since he came back from injury and the free kick he scored in this game was tremendous. I feel that he has received a lot of unjustified negative criticism lately. He is a special player and can change an entire game with single touch.

My Man of the Match!

Also this weekend, I decided it was time to plant the tomatoes for my garden. While I had originally planned to grow 26 kinds of tomatoes, my overzealous dogs ate some of my bags of seeds (and yes, as a good dog owner, I realize this is really my fault, as I left the seeds where they could get them). While I was able to salvage pretty much everything, I did lose my packet of Siberian Red Tomatoes and thus they were cut from the growing list this season.

Look at all those seeds!

I started out be refilling my growing tray with peat pods and by reorganizing my pepper sprouts. I knew I was going to need as much room as I could get to get all my tomato seeds planted. 

Pepper Sprouts!

My reorganized pepper sprouts!

After sorting out my pepper sprouts, I poured water over the fresh peat pods and waited for them to puff up. Once they puffed, I sorted my tomato seeds into the sauce tomatoes and eating tomatoes. I have several kinds of sauce tomato this year and I feel it will help me make a tremendous sauce! I planted the sauce tomatoes first, and once they were seeded I started into the eating tomatoes. Except for the major sauce tomatoes, I planted 3 peat pods of every kind of tomato and planted 3 seeds in every pod. For the sauce tomatoes, I planted 6 peat pods of each.

Seeded Tomatoes!

That's A LOT of tomatoes!

After I seeded all my pods with what I needed for my garden, I had a few rows of pods left over. I seeded them with some eggplants and a few varieties of tomatoes I wanted an extra plant of. Once all the pods were seeded, I covered all the seeds with dirt and covered them to make a greenhouse.

All the seeds are covered!

In order to stay organized I made a chart to keep track of where I planted each tomato!

That's a big chart!

Extra room!

While I still have my peppers growing and coming along nicely. In fact, other than 3 peat pods, all of the seedings have come up! I am hoping that my tomatoes will sprout shortly. I know it's going to mean I have a lot of plants around the house, but planting season is just around the corner and I can't wait to get these beauties in the ground! 

DAYMAN! FIGHTER OF THE NIGHTMAN! CHAMPION OF THE SUN!

After the tragedy of Pousse's death, I was determined to ensure my remaining peppers stayed alive. It was time to get some light! It was time to be DAYMAN!

TIME TO SAVE SOME PLANTS!

I was also spurred on by the fact that while I was examining the corpse of Pousse, the rest of my pepper plants began to droop and fade. Spicy McPepperson was in real trouble. I became seriously concerned that he was going to be the next to go!

DROOPY!

I went over to Home Depot first to pick up some bio-degradable pots and seeding dirt. I was advised to only expect one pepper plant for every peat pod but since several of my pods had two or three sprouts, I decided to try and separate them. 

After a successful trip to Home Depot, I went to Frank's Magic Crop for some lights! I picked up a 4 foot light, a stand for the light and two dome greenhouse lids. In total, I got the whole kit and kaboodle for $105, including tax, which I feel is a pretty sweet deal. Also the lady who helped me was amazing. She gave me some great tips and suggestions about how to get the best out of my lights and in general was awesome!

While I usually take pictures of everything, I was so excited about the life giving light I had just bought that I totally forgot to take pictures of everything before I ripped it out of the packages and put it all together. I found the assembly was rather simple however snapping the lights into the light holder was a bit difficult. Fortunately, my girlfriend is much handier than I am and she figured it out. In the end, my light was set up and I was ready start transplanting. 

My seedlings under their new light!

The new light! Where no McPepperson has gone before!

I found a pretty cool looking bag of seedling mix when I was at Home Depot. I bought Pro-Mix Seed Starting Mix. While I talked to a Pro-Mix rep when I was there, I legitimately bought a bag because it seemed like a good soil to plant in, and has enough natural fertilizer to feed the seedlings for 90 days. When I opened the bag I looked over the mix and I like the look and texture of the soil. I guess only time will tell if it works or not.

The bag was shiny and pretty!

I separated the bio-degradable pots I had bought and filled them with the potting soil.

Ready for plants!

Looking over the sprouts there were several that had three seedlings in each and deserved to be moved into a new home. After picking out the lucky sprouts that were going to be transplanted I labelled the new plant homes and began separating the sprouts. 

Three peppers!

Only one left now!

In total I transplanted 12 pepper plants, including Spicy McPepperson, into their new pepper mansions. I actually felt this was a pretty risky maneuver on my part as the plants were already looking wilted and disturbing their roots when they're already down is probably not a good idea.

A few of the McPeppersons find a new home! 

I watered them, covered them with the new dome greenhouse lid and put them under the bright lights. The lady at Frank's told me that they should perk up with some light and water. I was a little worried that all these plants would just die, but they have all recovered wonderfully.

Starting to perk up!

After a few hours you can see the sprouts are straighter and they have already gotten a lot of colour back. 

This is a picture of what they looked lat 11:55 pm last night. I was pretty ecstatic about their turnaround.

LOOKING GOOD!

This morning they looked even better. I left the light on all night to give them a nice dose of light. Every plant stopped sagging and straightened up! While my girlfriend thinks I am full of hooey, I think they all look a lot more green. The nodes on them have perked up and I feel that the light is a game changing purchase for my little garden.

Poppy Stands on Guard for thee McPeppersons!
(Don't they look so green!)

They look so healthy!

Overall it was a tough few days for the McPeppersons. We suffered loss and heartbreak over the passing of Pousse, but emerged a stronger healthier pepper clan basking under the glow of a brand new sun. 

TACO, TACO! TACO, BURRITO!

This whole week I have been on vacation from work. It's been a great break and I have had some pretty fantastical times. Yesterday, however, was definitely the best night of my vacation so far. I had the opportunity to meet and hang out with some fellow Hamilton bloggers to try out some restaurants and it was an amazing time. I met Chanry, Justin, Sid, Rachel, Priya, Andrea, Judy and Charaya (and, of course, my lovely girlfriend Leslie was there too). What an amazingly welcoming, intelligent and fun group of people. I was truly honoured to have the chance to meet everyone and I am already looking forward to meeting up with them for more adventures! Yesterday we all headed down to Mezcal Taco and Tequila Bar to give it a full food blogger review.

TACOS! MMMMMM!

We met up inside, ordered our drinks and the kitchen agreed to give us an assortment of tasty dishes to sample. I ordered the Deer Hunter as my drink to start and Leslie ordered the Anejo Old Fashioned. Both were tasty and delicious and I would definitely order again.

Some of the Gang!

TASTY DRINKS!

From there we moved onto a few appetizers. We had salsa and guacamole to start. The salsa and guac were pretty awesome, although I tended to prefer the guacamole for taste. The tortilla chips were AMAZING! Fresh baked and crunchy they are everything you could ever want from a tortilla chip.

GUACAMOLE! MMMMM

SALSA!

We then moved on to a Jicama Salad and Cuban Chicharrones. I thought the Jicama salad was fresh and delicious. The dressing was simple yet clean and the dried cranberries provided just enough sweetness. My winner for the night by far however were the Cuban Chicharrones. They were salty, crunchy and awesome. Mixed with some of the toppings provided which included pickles they were amazingly delicious. I could see them making an unbelievable taco.

It was so good we couldn't get a picture until it was almost gone!

The Chicharrones! In one word, DELICIOUS!

After the appetizers we received a trio of tacos. We first had the fried cauliflower. As a vegetarian option, you can't get much better to be honest and in fact many of the meatavores in our group chose the cauliflower as their favourite taco. It was light yet crunchy and had amazing texture. Our next taco was the Chorizo. I thought that it was pretty tasty and you definitely tasted the chorizo, but was my least favourite taco of the night. The final taco was the adobo and it was my favourite taco. It was smokey and a little spicy and just all around fantastic.

Cauliflower!

Chorizo!

Adobo!

For desert we tried both the chocolate cake and the rice pudding. While the chocolate cake is good, the rice pudding is far more exceptional. It tastes just like grandma used to make and really put a solid finishing touch on a great meal.

MMMMM RICE PUDDING!

At the end of the day, the drinks are the most expensive part of the meal coming out to between $12 and $15 a cocktail. But if you focus on food the cost is pretty decent actually. We left satisfied but not overly stuffed and you could spend about $40 to $50 before drinks for two people. Throw in drinks and the bill will skyrocket but it all depends on the evening you are going out for. (Full credit of this section goes to Justin for the great blogging advice)

After this we could have called it a night, but we went on another adventure. We headed over to Radius for a few cocktails and buck a shuck oysters. I had never been to Radius but I must say I was impressed with the decor and ambiance for a Thursday night. It was a pretty chill place to sit back, enjoy a few drinks and have a nice chat with some new friends. I also had never tried oysters before so it was another first for me as a I bucked up and gave it a try. I was pretty impressed with my oyster and will definitely be down for more in the future! 

The night didn't end there however as we headed over to the Owl of Minerva to finish the night off with some Korean food! I was told all about the delicious Korean BBQ Ribs and I have to say I was not let down! They were amazingly delicious and tender and they didn't last long at our table!

OH MY GOD AMAZING!

Now you're probably wondering by this time how this has anything to do with gardening. It doesn't. But it was an amazingly fun evening that I wanted to share with everyone. I made some new friends, had some great food and in general had myself a ball of a time!

In terms of my garden, nothing has happened as of yet. (Especially since I planted them only two days ago). There are some positive signs however. You can see that inside the greenhouse is getting nice and toasty as lots of condensation is happening on my greenhouse lid. This is a good thing as it helps the germination process.

It's getting hot in there!

Inside everything looks great. I like to check at least once a day to make sure that the peat pods are still moist and do not need water. As you can see everything looks pretty wet, which is a good thing as you want to make sure everything stays moist and humid.

MOIST!

Off to celebrate a friend's impending marriage tonight. March Break is slowly coming to a close, but my adventures continue!