January and it's so warm

This is my opening posting, I started this because I wanted to express my love for gardening so here goes.

It's January in Southern Ontario, it's supposed to be well below zero celcius all the time and here we are finishing a weekend that has been mostly above zero. I'm even thinking that I should have left my greenhouse without 'bubblewrap' protection.

This small greenhouse enables me to keep all sorts of tender flowers, shrubs and herbs growing through the winter and enables me to give the large number of seeds that I grow a head start.

Our house has many plants in it, hibiscus, coffee, succulents, bamboo, orchids and orchid lillies. In fact we often have outbreaks of lady bugs (lady birds in UK) in January and February. These I dutifully capture and place carefully in the greenhouse where they control the pest population.

I've planted about twenty varieties of seed already, mostly grasses (and bamboo) to give them a good head start. I've also planted some Datura, Ginger (Hedychium) and Mandevilla Suaveolens (a fragrant version of the popular summer climber that I bought from Chiltern Seeds).

All of the above have germinated very quickly (10 days!) under the plant lights that I got, last year, from Canada Blooms and look to be doing well.

As we have such a short summer, this year, I would like to get a good crop of hot peppers. So I have sown some Thai Dragon, Scotch Bonnet and Tepin Atomic peppers which is a month earlier than I normally so them. They should germinate in a week or so and I'll move them to a sunny south facing window sill(until I take the bubble wrap off the greenhouse in early April).

This year I am trying to keep track of when and how I sow the approxiamately 50 varieties of seeds I ordered. This should make it easier to see what works and what does not.

I apologies for the look of the page, I'll try to workout how to make it look more pleasing.

Finally here is a picture of one of our Hibiscus that is happily flowering in the kitchen.