 Hello and welcome to Little Garden on the Prairies. So today is April 8th on the Saskatchewan Prairies and as you can see we still have a whole pile of snow. I'm just out in my garden here and checking things out. These containers here I think there's about ten of them and as you can see they're still buried under the snow. So today it's actually above freezing finally and things are starting to melt and they are predicting some double digit temperatures coming up in the next few days. It's going to be plus 8, plus 10 and then up close to plus 20 degrees Celsius over the next week. So things are going to be melting fast and I think it's time to get planting. So today we're going to be doing some direct winter sowing using these garden cloches that I picked up at the dollar store. I'm going to try planting some kale and spinach and maybe a few other vegetables. So I'm going to be following kind of the basic process of winter sowing like you see me do in milk jugs and other containers where I plant up a variety of different seeds into milk jugs and we tape them up with some duct tape. We put them out in the snow, leave it in there until they thaw and germinate and grow inside that little mini greenhouse until it's time to harden them off and put them into the garden. So this method here that I'm trying today, the direct winter sowing method I call it, is kind of skipping that one step where we don't have to transplant into the garden. So my hope is that I can get germination right here underneath these domes. The weather is going to be warming up in the next few weeks so I think the soil will warm up these cold tolerant plants that I'm going to be growing will germinate and grow right in their direct container without having to be transplanted. So I have quite a few of these cloches here and I got all sorts of containers that are going to slowly be revealed as the snow melts so I think we can get a whole batch of different greens going today. I'm going to be starting some kale and some spinach in this video so let's get started. So the soil in these containers of course is, well it's not that frozen, it's actually quite loose but I'm going to add a little bit of some potting soil just to the surface here just so it has some good nutrients to get growing in. And the first thing I'm going to try out here is some dinosaur kale. So kale is a pretty cold tolerant vegetable that should be able to germinate and take off. It's kind of windy today so I'm going to try to spread this out as good as I can without too much blowing away on me. Keeping in mind the size of my cloche that I'm going to be putting on top of this. So then after that I'm just going to cover it up with a little bit of more soil here. So the wind has already blown this away on me so you can see that's always going to be a battle. But the great thing about these ones from the Dollar Ram is they have little holes in them and I picked up these little garden spikes as well. So they will help secure this into the dirt. For now I'm just going to leave the vent on this close so that it warms up in there really well. Hopefully these spikes will keep it secure and then once the temperature start warming up and you need to maybe even water it you can just open this up in the daytime let some of that hot air out. But for now we want to create a nice warm greenhouse here. So I'm also in my containers with some wood chips and leaves last fall. I'm just going to pull some of that back right now just to try to expose some of the dirt. So this is quite frozen right now and in this spot here we're going to do some spinach. This is a baby spinach variety called colibri probably putting a few more seeds in than I need to but nice little batch going there. So there you have it the first planting in my garden on April 8th 2023. I think this is probably the earliest I have directly planted anything into my garden. So I think over the next few days as the snow starts to melt I will keep direct sowing some of more of my cool tolerant vegetables into my container garden. So it is now Friday April 14th and the kale and spinach was planted on April 8th six days ago. I'm just having a peek here at the spinach. There is some little green sprouting happening so that's a very exciting. So tonight they are forecasting minus six degrees Celsius overnight. So that's pretty cool and the long-range forecast shows you know a little bit warmer nighttime temperatures minus two minus three. So hoping that it will keep moving in that direction where we have warm evenings. I'm going to give this a little watering. So I'm going to close up these vents for the day here so that these little domes keep as much heat inside and hopefully tonight when it reaches that minus six degree low these will stay nice and cozy. So I just want to give you a quick update on where my winter sowing jugs are situated now that the weather is warming up and I want them to be getting lots of sunshine and any precipitation snow or rain that comes along we'll be able to keep these hydrated and ready to start sprouting. So I've got them in a old wagon here that's in the back of my garden it works great to keep them from blowing away in the wind. I've made them a little nest in the straw here that hopefully will give them some insulation and keep them from drying out too fast. So stay tuned for future updates on my winter sowing jugs. So if you're excited to get out in the garden and start planting it's not too early even if your last frost date is still a few weeks away like mine is you can get out here with some of these very affordable garden cloches and start some of your more cool tolerant plants. As you can see here I've got a few more containers ready to go. I'm going to run to the house see what other seeds I can stick into these pots and get these things growing. And then it's time to get the garden ready and as you can see over here I'm already kind of spacing out my irrigation system that I have in the work. So stay tuned for future videos on how that goes and hopefully I will have a great setup here to keep things well watered through the hot summer days. So thank you for watching and happy gardening.