so you wannabee a Domestik Goddess?

As those of you following the Canadian news (or my other River/Road post) may gather… we’ve had a spot of flooding, here in the St. John River valley of New Brunswick. And as I said yesterday,

When Nature gets nasty, know what we do around here?
We rush out and take pictures, of course.

Especially those of us who live up on high ground.

Here are the flood photos that He Who Hogs The Power Tools took yesterday and this afternoon, while I wandered about with the dog and chatted with other flood watchers:
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So, we’re watching the river rise in the St. John River valley… feeling grateful for living up on very high ground… and the radio says this could be the worst flood in 35 years. Everyone’s talking about The Big One back in 1973 and wondering what will happen overnight.

When Nature gets nasty, know what we do around here? We rush out and take pictures, of course. And gather at the Department of Highways barricades to chat with neighbours and feel sorry for our friends and family who built their homes on the flood plain. Maybe bring a thermos of coffee and the dog… All of which is to say, I’m planning to go out and do just that, right now — to return later with a few scenic shots (low light levels permitting) of the soon-to-be famous Flood of 2008. Meanwhile, CTV News is doing a pretty good job with the video coverage at www.ctvnewsnet.com.

So my veggie garden is still under four feet of snow — does that stop a keen gardener from planning for a new planting season? Heck, no!

One of the first plantings that will go in (when Spring eventually arrives in Atlantic Canada) will be the salad garden of mixed mesclun greens and spinach and lettuce, not to mention some tasty lovely snow peas. These are all vegetable crops that prefer cooler air and soil temperatures, and will quickly fade when summer sun grows warm.

Stretch the Summer Salad Days

Did you know that you can grow salad greens in containers, if you don’t have a patch of earth for a garden? They look quite lush and lovely growing in pots, too.

Keep the harvest going by snipping off just the outside leaves, rather than the entire head of your lettuce plants. The plants will keep producing from the centre, and you get super-fresh salad for days and days on end!

Lettuce and spinach and other greens are easy to grow from seed. So easy, in fact, that I never seem to learn to scatter the seeds thinly enough — I’m always making allowances for seeds that might not germinate, and I end up with a crowded planting of tiny plants struggling against each other for light. Not so good for the air circulation, either, and some of my lettuce can end up composting itself if we get a few days of rain.

No big deal, though: just get in there with the scissors and thin it out. Cut off some of those tiny lettuce plants right at soil level when they’re just a few inches high, and start the salad season early. Thinning out will let the remaining plants grow better and avoid those nasty damp-related problems.

Slugs and Snails, Oh My!

Slugs and snails are the biggest threat to a nice salad garden, and you’ll have to be on your toes to keep ahead of them — they sneak out at dusk and can eat their way through a great deal of salad in one night, leaving silvery slimy trails all over the ragged green leaves, while you’re sleeping peacefully and all unawares… Unpleasant!
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