This year, I was away from Canada from the end of March to the beginning of June.
I normally don’t want to leave Canada at that time of the year as it is a good time to do some initial gardening preparation, but this year, it was the first time since the pandemic that I was able to return to Japan. I was rather excited to leave Canada.
We came back to Canada in June
I left Canada at the end of March when we still had lots of snow on the ground. I stayed for 5 weeks in England and then 4 weeks in Japan. I came back to Canada on the 4th of June and everything was completely green! And then, I started gardening.
Canada, it’s a big country, but in Quebec, where we live, there is a danger of frost until the end of May. So June is the right time to start gardening.
Sowing seeds directly in the ground
This year, we had to directly sow all of our vegetable seeds. In previous years, I sowed seeds indoors to grow seedlings from March. Then we transplanted them into the field after the last frost.
But this year it was not possible because I was away for the whole of April and May. The only we could do was buy vegetable seeds before we left Canada.
We didn’t have enough time to grow seedlings indoors this time and the ground is already warm enough to sow seeds outdoors. So we decided to sow them directly in the garden.
Something has grown in our garden
By the way, when we got back to Canada, there were a few things that had grown in the vegetable garden. One of them was the rocket.
At the end of the season last year, we left for the UK in October, so we were not able to tidy up the garden properly. Then the leftover rocket from last year had grown when we came back to Canada in June, which made us happy.
It is a variety called “Wild Rocket”. It had grown into quite large plants, so it was a little bitter, but we enjoyed adding it to salads.
Adding compost
Last year we bought compost and added it to the field, and we did the same this year. I returned to Quebec on the evening of the 4th of June and started farming immediately the next day.
After turning over the earth in the garden, we added compost there, which my husband, who had returned to Canada 4 days earlier than me, had bought for us.
After several years of vegetable gardening, I realised that the soil is critical for growing vegetables. We also make our compost at home, but it is not enough. So we buy compost through an outside supplier.
The vegetables we sowed
The day after I came back home, I did only a moderate amount of work, but the next day which is yesterday, we worked harder!
The weather forecast said that it would rain all day the next day, so we thought that it would be best if we could sow as many seeds as possible in the garden. This means that we didn’t have to water the seeds after sowing, as the rain will naturally water them.
We did our best and sowed many of the seeds we wanted to sow.
- Rocket
- Several kinds of lettuces – at least 6
- Several types of mustard greens
- Peas
- Cucumbers
- Courgette
- Pumpkin
- Shiso
- Basil
- Edamame (green soybeans)
- Beans
- Coriander
- Dill
- Amaranth (edible leaves)
- Radish
- Turnips
- Komatsuna (Japanese mustard spinach)
- Bok choy
It’s quite a lot, isn’t it?
I was really tired after we sowed all of the seeds.
Planting chili seedlings
I said that we were going to sow all the seeds directly in the ground this year, but there is one exception. It’s chilis.
We grow chilis every year.
As I mentioned earlier, this year we also bought chili seeds before we left Canada. But growing chilis from seeds takes a lot of time, so we bought seedlings from a gardening centre.
The rest of the field has just been seeded and has not germinated, so only the chili seedlings are poking out of the field.
I wanted to do some weeding in the flower beds, but I was really tired, so I decided not to do it yesterday. It’s supposed to rain today, so I might not be able to work on it, but we always have the next day.
