First, the cuteness!

I counted 28 yard cats this morning, and Driver was really wanting attention, following me the entire time I did my rounds. I even picked him up a couple of times, though he didn’t like it much and quickly jumped back down – then demanded more pets!

Of course, I’ve been checking the garlic beds daily. I spotted what might have been our very first garlic, maybe 2 days ago, in the tiny raised bed. It’s now big enough that I can be sure that it is, indeed, a garlic sprouting. Today, I could finally see more emerging.

This one is in the long, rectangular bed closer to the house. The last garlic cloves were planted all down the middle of it. The first ones in the bed along the retaining wall are starting to show, and I think I even saw one or two in the short part of the wattle weave bed. In the long part of the bed, I’m seeing fresh green leaves from some of the strawberries we started from seed, too.

Of course, I checked on the trays and bins of transplants that spent their first night in the sun room. They are all exactly as I left them; no cats (or racoons, or skunks) have gotten into them. While the outside temperatures dropped to just below freezing, the sun room’s thermometer stayed hovering around 10C/50F. Our living room, where they were moved out from, typically stays around 15C/59F during the day, so while the overnight temperatures may be cooler in the sun room, they’re going to get a lot warmer during the day. I’ll have to remember to turn the ceiling fan on for at least a few hours.

Doing a quick look and video channels I follow while having my breakfast, I enjoyed this new one from MI Gardener, about hardening off transplants.

I’ve been doing it wrong, of course. 😄

Actually, what I’ve been doing is closer to how he describes in the video, mostly because it’s such a pain timing things to bring them in and out. The main problem I have is that the only accessible and level space we have that also allows us to keep the cats out, is right outside the sun room. Which means the transplants are getting that peak period of sunlight in the middle of the day, and are at risk of getting sunburned – something that happened to quite a few tomatoes transplants, last year. We did make use of the old market tent to keep some of them shaded at the hottest part of the day. Ideally, we’d put them on the East side of the house, but it slopes quite a bit on that side. The West side has the old kitchen garden. The North side gets no sun. So that leaves the south side.

This year, though, I might be able to set things up across the yard, so the transplants can be shaded by the willows and white lilacs during peak sunlight hours.

We’ll figure it out.

Meanwhile, I was just informed that a package is in at the post office, so I’m off to get it, before they close for a few hours at lunch time.

The Re-Farmer