Do It Yourself! Plant Your Own Summer Salsa Garden

Put some sizzle in your veggie patch with the ingredients for a summer salsa – plant tomatoes, hot peppers, green onions and cilantro for a zesty harvest. This is an easy project for anyone to take on, it’s fairly inexpensive and has minimal steps. Just follow these easy steps and you’ll have a tasty salsa in no time!

Before getting started there are a few tools required for this project, you will need; a long-handled garden fork or cultivator, a garden spade, hand trowel, watering can, tomato cages, stakes or spirals. The materials required for your salsa are; a packet of coriander seeds, a cell pack of Roma type tomato seedlings, a cell pack of hot pepper plants, perfectly natural tomato fertilizer, perfectly natural garden & flower fertilizer and green onion sets.

Step 1: Prepare The Soil, in a sunny patch of the yard.

Step 2: Green Onions, or scallions, are the earliest of the ingredients to be planted. Purchase sets- young, ready-to-plant seedlings- in rows as soon as the ground is workable, spacing them 2.5-5 cm apart. Water well. Continue planting sets every few weeks for a succession of onions all summer.

Step 3: Coriander Seeds Can Be Sown, after the soil has warmed up. For a continuous harvest of tasty leaves, sow 1/3 of the seeds at a time, about every 2 weeks. Sow them in rows, about 1cm deep and 4cm apart. Water well.

Step 4: The Best Tomatoes For Salsa, are plum or paste types, which have fewer seeds and fleshier pulp than standard table tomatoes. Roma and San Marzano are readily available, but more unusual varieties such as the heirloom Amish Paste and yellow Banana Legs, which are typically available as seeds from specialty sources, can be fun to grow too. Purchase just enough for your family needs, a cell pack of six seedlings will go a long way.

Transplant seedlings into the ground once it has warmed up completely and all danger of frost is past. Remove the bottom few leaves from the stems before planting deeply into the soil. (Tomatoes grow roots along the length of their stems, so deep planting results in sturdy bushes) Space transplants between 30 to 45cm apart.

Step 5: Stake or Surround, each plant with a tomato cage. Water well.

Step 6: Young Pepper Plants, can be placed in the garden when the tomatoes go into the ground. Depending on your tastes, select hot varieties such as Cherry Bomb or milder ones like Garden Salsa. Plant them no deeper than the plants are growing in their pots. Water well.

Step 7: Water Regularly, and fertilize throughout the growing season.

There you have it! 7 easy steps and you’ve got a tasty salsa to enjoy all summer long with friends and family. It’s a fresh and inexpensive way to add something extra to those summer bbq’s! ENJOY!

Source: Home Depot Canada

June Numbers Are In…Another Record Breaking Month!!!

Just as we had expected June was yet another record breaking month for the Ottawa Real Estate Board. In June, members of the Ottawa Real Estate Board sold 1,895 residential properties which only include properties listed on the Multiple Listing Service. In June 2008 the sales in the residential property class totaled 1,685 which is an overall increase of 12.5%.

Agents are however finding that the listing inventory is at a very low level, and this means we are experiencing multiple offers and competitive bidding on many properties.

“This is the third consecutive record setting month this year and the fourth month where sales exceeded the previous year’s sales,” said Board President Rick Snell. “Year-to-date sales as of the end of June are up one per cent over the same time period in 2008. We have seen a strong recovery from the slow start to this year,” he added.

According to our board statistics, the average sale price of residential properties sold in June in the Ottawa area was $306,924, an increase of 3% over June 2008. The average sale price for a condominium-class property was $236,830, an increase of 8.3% over June 2008.

This is very exciting!!! Our Ottawa market just keeps getting better and is not showing any signs of that changing anytime soon! Now IS the time to buy or sell!

Call me if you have any questions!!

Mary-Anne

Ottawa Real Estate Doing Fabulous!

As we wait for our final statistics to our Spring Market of 2009 we are expecting another month of great record breaking sales.

In May the Ottawa Real Estate board members sold 1969 residential sales through the MLS system. This doesn’t include new home sales or sales that we represented privately. This is at an increase of almost 4% compared to last May of 2008.

An even more impressive number is that we actually have a 19% increase over the sales we produced in April. Making May a really strong spring month for our housing market in Ottawa.

“This was the best May on record for residential resale home sales in Ottawa,” said Board President Rick Snell. “Homes in every price range are selling well, from starter homes to luxury properties. Homebuyers and sellers are showing a lot of confidence in the Ottawa real estate market,” he added.

Our average sale price increased to $312,045 which is over a 5% increase from last year at the same time. Incredible increase!!!

So although the economy all over the world is being effected by change, our market is still going very strong.

Our interest rates are at an all time low and expected to go down further in August. So as rates go down and average home sale prices go up, this is a great time to be investing in the Ottawa real estate market.

Looking forward to our June numbers soon!

Your Real Estate Professional,

Mary-Anne