A photo update for June

 Early one morning, before the "usualy" wake-up time I could hear our son rustling around on his room. He was humming a happy tune, so I wasn't too concerned that he was doing something that needed my immediate attention. (it was also before 6:00am.... so I stayed in bed for obvious reasons!)
After about an hour or so (I wasn't too aware of the time to be honest), he came out, dressed for school and asked if we could "sort out my treasures today"?

ORGANIZE!!!! REALLY!? OF COURSE! He IS my son! It was a proud mamma moment.

Despite his excitement (and mine) it was time to start our school day, so I promised that we'd do so after school. When I got home from driving him to school, this is what I found:

 He got a cigar box from the Doctor that Peter works with in Grimsby. Its been hosting his treasures for about 3 years. Stephen carefully laid out all of his precious things, waiting.

Making Kelp Fertilizer

We took this photo out at St. John's Conservation Centre here in Niagara.
Our son asked is the moss was "old seaweed". 

The boys and I (Meap and SK) started some lovely sea kelp fertilizer. It would be ready in about a week or so, and we'll introduce it to a few experimental plants (to make sure its good) and then... I will report here how it's g(row)oing! I anticipate that the valuable minerals and nutrients will be a yummy treat to our babies.

I would encourage you to do your own research and see what you come up with. All I know is, commercial liquid kelp fertilizer is EXPENSIVE!

NOTE: *** I was hoping to find Canadian Kelp, sold here in Niagara but there is none to buy when I called around to the 4 health-food stores... so I spent the $1.99 at the local Asian Grocery Store, and the product I found was harvested in China. It hurt me to compromise my usual "buy local" "buy Canadian" philosophy... but this was an exceptional experiment, and not a "typical" purchase pattern of our household. ***

Rather than making a blog entry, I used my YouTube account this time, and you can view the video here.

Making Kelp Fertilizer for Seedlings <--- click here for the youtube video.

Enjoy and let me know what you use for your seedlings to give them a boost of nutrients!

Growing Seedlings

Upon the request of a few friends and blog-buddies from twitter, here is the system we use here at home for growing our seedlings. The lights belong to Julia and we share a garden (as explained in previous posts)

Ideally, I would love to one day have a hoop house, warmed by solar power heaters, and a potting shed... but that's a goal/dream in the future. For now, I am TOTALLY loving the freedom of growing the little babies in my home. It should be noted that I have an amazing husband and son who let me kinda totally let me get away with A LOT with it comes to gardening. They are helpful, curious, willing to lend a hand, and listen when I yammer-on about the latest thing I learned from so-and-so. I love so and so.

OK! On to business... I edited the photos with descriptions to tell the story. If you have any further questions, please comment below or email me and I can lend any experience! jkaranfilis @ gmail . com <--- no spaces

I raised the light up this particular morning because the sunshine was beautiful and the plants told me to.......
what? they did ;)

ps! Julia found my camera cord last night! It was on the couch... apparently I don't sit down enough to find things on my couch.