Our 2021 garden: February seed tray prep

/ Re-Farmer / 7 Comments

For our Zone 3 area, quite a lot of things will need to be started indoors. While most things won’t need to be started until April, onion seeds are supposed to be started up to 10 weeks before the last frost date. For us, that means late March.

However, all the experienced Zone 3 gardeners that grow onion from seed have been saying onion seeds MUST be started much earlier. They started theirs in January!

Do I go by the seed packet, or by these gardeners?

I have decided to listen to the gardeners, at least as much as I can.

The problem is we don’t really have supplies, and with the polar vortex we’re under right now, I do not consider it safe to drive. I just don’t trust that our van, or even my mother’s car, can handle it. In these temperatures, breaking down on the road is life threatening.

So, I can only start with what I have.

We have two seed starting trays that fit the Jiffy Pellets. We found a box of Jiffy Pellets while cleaning up the house. Unfortunately, there were enough pellets to fill only half of one tray.

K-cups to the rescue!

We used to have a Keurig, but when it finally died, we found ourselves left with boxes of product that expired. Rather than throw them all out, I emptied the contents into the compost and kept the cups, specifically to use them for starting seeds. :-)

Their bottoms fit in the trays, but the flared tops needed more space, so I put the pellets in alternating spaces, then punched drainage holes in all the K-cups with an awl.

We’ve still got peat from last year, so that was used to fill the cups.

They fit rather well, this way.

I have enough K-cups to fill another half tray, with a few left over, but no more peat pellets to fill the spaces in between.

We’ll figure it out.

The tray went into a shallow storage bin, where I filled the bottom of the tray with water. Then, to keep it safe from cats, I put both the dome and the other tray, upside down, over it, then put more stuff on and around it. The cats really wanted to get at that peat!

Remembering how difficult it was to fully dampen loose peat last year, I added more water to the top, the left it sit for a while. I used that time to cut label markers out of a 500g size plastic container.

We have three different types of seeds; bulb and bunching onions, and shallots. I can only start one variety right now, so I decided on the bulb onions. The shallots will be next, and I figure the bunching onions can wait until we can figure things out and maybe get more supplies.

The tray got checked several times, more water was sprayed onto the top, and I finally ended up leaving it overnight. The above photo was after soaking for several hours, and I’d just sprayed more water to the top.

This morning, I took a skewer and checked the status.

The centres of the K-Cups were still dry!

I ended up using the skewer to make holes in the peat of each cup, then used the stream setting on my spray bottle to direct water directly into each hole.

Before anyone suggests that I should be using a potting mix, or a seed starter mix, there are two reason why I’m using straight peat. One: one of my information sources is a soil scientist living in the same zone was we are, and she recently did a video on exactly this. Since every seed has all the nutrition it needs to support itself until the true leaf stage, sterile peat and water are all they need. I would have preferred coconut coir over peat, but we don’t have any. Two: we don’t have any seed starter mixes, nor the supplies to make our own. Some stores are starting to have them in stock, however many of these places do not accept medical exemptions to mask wearing, so I am essentially banned from them. Of those that don’t discriminate against people with medical mask exemptions, they’re a long drive away and I won’t be going to any of them until this polar vortex passes and it isn’t so dangerous to go out. Even curbside pickup is not an option; I’ve already heard from many people who can’t wear masks and have tried to do curbside pick up, only to be refused service because the staff refused to bring their orders to them, outside, unless they wore a mask. Not even shields are being accepted. As for ordering online, shipping costs rule out that option, as well as the current delays in shipping. They’d never get to us in time to use them, assuming they even find us. Which reminds me. We never did get my husband’s FedEx delivery (for something he ordered online in November). As far as we know, the package is still somewhere in the city. We can’t get it ourselves, and they won’t deliver it to us, even with detailed instructions on how to find us. So… yeah. Ordering online is not an option, either.

So we make do with what we have. It will work out.

At this point, I’m just hoping to be able to get the one variety of seeds in today!

The Re-Farmer

Hearing

/ Re-Farmer / 7 Comments

Well, it’s done. I had my teleconference court date this morning.

What a waste of time.

I figured we would have one of two results. Either the judge would look at our vandal’s claims against me and my defense, and throw the whole thing out, or we would get another court date.

I don’t think a judge was even on the call. Just a moderator, going through the docket. She first went through those files that had lawyers, then the employer related ones, then finally the rest. Our vandal’s suit against us was top of the third list, so we were done relatively quickly.

We have a hearing date in July, in person.

Well, at least they think we won’t be locked down anymore by next summer, but who knows if that will change before then.

Among the things the moderator told counsel for the previous files, that applied to everyone else as well, was instructions on what to bring for the in person court dates. This included all documentation, including printed out photographs (no bringing a laptop for a photographic slide show), in triplicate – one copy each for themselves, the judge and the opposing party. Which means nothing gets filed in advance, as would normally be the case. Which means no one gets to see the documentation in advance and respond, or prepare, appropriately. Even the judge will be seeing this documentation for the first time, in session. For those with audio or visual presentations, they were asked to bring the equipment necessary to play or display the files.

As for the hearing date, our vandal was asked if he would have witnesses, and he said he would have two. ??? When I was asked, I said I had no idea that was an option, but that I could bring up to two witnesses. I probably could bring three, but that would include my mother, and it would be just too much for her.

And that was it. Our part of the call was done.

Once I finished with the call, typed up my notes and printed them off for my files, I sent an email to update my siblings, then phoned my mother to update her. She was frustrated, too. She also asked if she could be there in July. !!! I told her that yes, she could be present as an observer if she wanted, but that would depend on what restrictions are still in place. It would also depend on her own health and mobility, and if she physically feels up to making the trip, but she acknowledged that from the start.

Then I made a call to my LegalShield office and am expecting a return call from my lawyer either today or tomorrow. Unfortunately, the office is not in this province. If I did want to have a lawyer representing me in court, they would find a local one for me, but we don’t have the money for a lawyer. All of our “un-allocated funds” in our budget has been going into improving things around here (including trying to set aside funds for a new roof), or fixing vehicles!

It blows me away that our vandal is going through with this, and has found people willing to go along with it. I can make a pretty good guess as to who his witnesses are, and I am guessing that it has to do with my defense that included a list of all the things we know (or that my brother could remember) he’s taken from the farm, totaling over $45,000 in estimated value. Which is fine. I’m not counter suing him, since he didn’t take those from me. He took them from my mother. If he wants to waste his time trying to prove any of it belonged to him, all that does is bolster my own defense. Which, simply put, is that I don’t own, nor claim to own, anything here, and that I had already told him that he could take what was his, if he could prove ownership. Of the stuff he listed that he claims are his, which he thinks is worth $13,000, he’s claiming things that aren’t his, and of the stuff that he actually does have some claim to was abandoned here so long ago, they have rotted away to the point that they’re barely worth anything even as scrap metal. Especially right now, when the scrap metal prices are so horrible. Other things he’s claiming are his (they aren’t) are just plain petty squabbling. He was also claiming things that he’d never claimed were his until I saw them on his list.

All this because I filed a restraining order against him after catching him trying to break the gate again.

I look forward to any advice my lawyer gives me.

With the cold we’ve been having, I have been negligent in switching out the memory cards on the trail cams, but after this call, I figured it needed to be done.

Though it was later than usual, it was still about -32C with a wind chill of about -42C (-25.6F/-43.6F).

The heated water bowl had a thick layer of frost and ice on top!

The kitties were out and about, including Creamsicle Jr., but I was unable to get a look at his face to see how his eye was doing.

I very quickly realized that, in my rush to get outside, I forgot to wear two pairs of pants. There wasn’t much of a wind, but at these temperatures, it was still brutal!

I brought the cameras inside, one at a time, to change out their batteries and switch the memory cards. I knew the old camera’s batteries were already getting low, so they were due. The status bar on the new camera had showed full, the last time I switched out the memory cards and had to use my hands to warm it up so I could see the screen inside. With this cold, however, I decided to switch the batteries, anyhow, and just hang on to the used ones to switch back again the next time I have to do this.

Even with being able to warm up by bringing each camera inside, by the time I finished putting the new camera back up, the cold was really hitting me! Butterscotch had joined me while I was putting the new camera back, and was just begging to be picked up! I carried her back to the house and she was just rubbing her face all over my chin, loving the ride! The poor things are so chilled – and yet, they’re still going out in the cold, and not just for food and water!

Though the temperatures are still expected to be extremely cold for a few more days, after the call this morning, I would not be surprised if our vandal still decided to show up and cause problems, so I felt it was really important to have the cameras in good working order.

I had a surprise when checking the files, in that there actually were files! :-D The old camera died after a day, which I expected, considering the batteries were already so low. Much to my shock, the new camera, which has stopped working outright in colder temperatures before, actually kept on going and even recorded files while I was carrying it to the house! All in hues of pink. When the camera gets cold, all the files are overcast in pink! :-D It even got some night shots, though with a bright red low battery warning. Stills only, no video. Which is better than nothing, that’s for sure!

So I’m increasingly happy with the new camera again. Some of the files showed an internal temperature of -25C/-11F which is well below when the camera stopped working completely, before. Interestingly, when I switched memory cards, this time it did NOT ask me to reformat the new card. Which makes me suspect that it might have nothing to do with the card needing formatting (I’ve tried using different settings when formatting the cards on the desktop, to no avail) and more to do with the cold making it harder for the camera to read the card. Once inside and starting to warm up, it could read the card fine.

We shall see how things go. Hopefully, the cold will keep our vandal indoors. I would not be surprised if he starts calling my mother and siblings again, like he did after he saw the defense I’d filed.

As my mother put it when I talked to her this morning, “we need this like a whole in a bridge” (translated from Polish). At least we could get a laugh over the Polish and English versions of conveying the same frustration!

For now, it’s time to move on to more pleasant things. Which my next post will be about!

The Re-Farmer

“Outdoor activity is potentially life threatening…”

/ Re-Farmer / 13 Comments

My older daughter were both up late again, chatting about the frigid temperatures we’ve been having. She joked about a comment she read on her phone’s weather app, so I just had to check mine.

This was screen capped at just past 1:30am. -32C wit the wind chill bringing it down to -40C.

Also known as -25.6F/-40F

My daughter had been chatting with an international group of people and the temperatures had come up. After she told them what we were at, someone from the US responded with a “oh, for a minute there, I thought you mean Fahrenheit!” They were rather shocked to find out that -40 is the same for both. :-D

That whole “potentially life threatening” warning, though. Yikes!

As I am writing this, The Weather Network app has us at -31C/-45C (-23.8F/-49F), while my Accuweather app on my phone has us warmed up to -30C/-42C (-22F/-43.6F).

Our expected high of -27C isn’t supposed to happen until late this afternoon, so it was bundle up time to do the morning rounds.

I made sure to have nice, warm water for the kitties!

I am concerned about Creamsicle Jr.

I noticed something wrong with is left eye a few days ago. He won’t let me near him, though, so zooming in with my phone’s camera is the best I can do to get a better look.

I can’t tell if it’s a scratch over his eye, or if his eye is leaking.

Unfortunately, there’s not much we can do about it. We can’t catch him to even get a closer look, never mind putting him in a carrier and driving him to a vet.

Poor thing. As if putting up with these temperatures wasn’t bad enough on its own. :-(

The Re-Farmer

I am so ready for spring

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

This has been a mild winter, overall.

Honest. It really has.

Then there are days like today.

I was once again up way too late, and took this screen shot just before 1:30am.

We had reached -27F with a wind chill of -42C.

For my visitors in the US, that’s -16.6F and -43.6F

I think this is the first time I’ve seen the “dust & dander” part not say “extreme”. LOL

Of course, before heading outside to do my rounds, I checked the temperatures again.

This was screen capped just after 8am.

“Extreme Cold Warning” Yeah. No s***, Sherlock! LOL

At -30C and a wind chill of -46C (-22F/-50.8F), I waited a couple of hours before heading out.

The windchill had dropped to -45C by then. That was it.

This was a day to layer up – and skip most of my rounds, including switching out the memory cards on the trail cams. I fed the critters and that was basically it.

When I opened the door, I found a very friendly face waiting for me!

My brother’s dog just loves these temperatures!

He was also really, really hoping the kitties would come out to play!

They did not. :-D

This old doghouse was built for dogs as big as him – and even bigger – so he could go inside, if he really wanted to. Thankfully, he’s done no more than sniff at the entry and pine over the cats through the windows, tail wagging furiously! If he tried to go in, I think the cats would explode! :-D

windchill

As I write this, we’ve “warmed up” to -29C/-44C (-20.2F/-47.2F). Our high of the day is forecast to be only a few degrees warmer.

We’re supposed to stay cold like this for about a week. Two days from now is supposed to be the coldest day before it starts warming up again, but the warm up is going to be very slow.

Polar vortexes suck.

Image source

Thankfully, we are stocked up well enough, even though we haven’t done our monthly shop. The only thing we’re going to run out of is wet cat food for the inside cats, and they can make do with dry kibble for a few days!

I have to add, I’m not really complaining. We’re warm inside, the hot water tank is still working, as are the well and septic pumps. Our internet may be ridiculously unstable, but we’ve got electricity. When I was a child growing up here, we didn’t have running water or an indoor bathroom until the mid 1970’s, which is when the new part of the house was added on, so there was 7 of us squeezed into the original part of the house. We had electricity, but power outages were common until about the 80’s. Even in winter, we used the outhouse by the garage (though my parents did set up a bucket in the basement to use at night) and a bathtub in the pump shack, where there was a wood burning cook stove to heat the water (and the uninsulated shack!).

We’ve got it pretty good, here! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Trending down

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

It’s getting chilly again!

When I headed out this morning, we were at -21C/-5.8F with a windchill of -33C/-27.4F

We’ll be getting colder over the next week, before we start going back to normal temperatures again.

It’s going to be a good time to stay indoors, drink lots of tea, and catch up on my crochet… :-D

Who am I kidding? The girls and I will probably be putting our heads together to figure out a gardening map. We’re dedicating a lot of planning for what will be temporary locations for almost everything, but we’re using our garden plots this year to help prepare the soil for when we plant fruit and nut trees in some of these areas.

Also, it’s a lot of fun. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Hinge fix done! And so is the van. :-)

/ Re-Farmer / 5 Comments

This morning, I was off to the garage to get the EGR valve replaced. I dropped it off for 10 and had thought it might take an hour or so. He told me it would take two hours, which is a lot of time to fill, when there is nowhere to go to just sit. I ended up walking across town towards the lake – with high winds and blowing snow, I wasn’t going to go right to the beach! – and back again. Then I very, very slowly did some grocery shopping. We have yet to do our big monthly shop in the city, but with having to buy locally so often, it’s messed our budget up quite a bit. :-( Ah, well.

By the time I was in line to pay, I’d only managed to kill 1 hour. Thankfully, the line was slow, but I still ended up done very early. I was able to leave the cart by the exit and walking over to the garage to see how things where, stayed there a while (they let me wait in the office, alone, even though they’re not really supposed to do that anymore. I didn’t stay long, though, went back to claim my cart of groceries, then waited in one of the corners the grocery store has with picnic tables.

It was only somewhat sheltered from the wind. :-/

I went back and forth a couple of times before finally moving the cart to a different corner around the entry, where it was slightly more sheltered from the wind. I knew the garage was close to done with the van, so I walked into the parking lot every now and then to see if it was outside yet.

Two hours passed, and still no van!

After walking out to the parking lot to check again, I came back to a cashier coming outside to talk to me. She could see me through the window and was worried about me being in the cold! She told me I could take my cart inside the vestibule. There isn’t a lot of space there, with how traffic is blocked and redirected now, but she told me it was okay. So I got to be indoors for the last 25 minutes or so! The only downside was that I had to wear my Mingle Mask, which would fog up while I was inside, then when I stepped out to see if the van was outside, the condensation would freeze! LOL

Of course, I could have just waited for the garage to call me on my cell phone, but the last time they did that, I never heard my phone ringing in my pocket. I happened to have it in my hand this time, though. :-D

It turns out the van was not very co-operative for them! I can’t say I’m surprised to hear that. ;-) As I was paying, he made sure to tell me to not buy gas at the co-op from now one. I told him I’d already stopped! He also warned me that, while he cleaned the lines out as far as he could, I might still feel some stutters or hiccups as bits of carbon breaks loose. He recommended that, when the opportunity arises, such as when leaving a stop sign, to floor it. That is something I normally avoid! LOL It’ll help clear the carbon out faster, though. So I’ll do it. Just not today! It was just too icy out there.

Once the van was paid for, I drove to the grocery store. The staff in the vestibule, there to sanitize the carts, recognized me as I drove up. By the time I stopped at the doors, she had the cart out and helped me load it into the van!

We had issues with this place when we first moved out here, but since then, they have really improved, and these days have been going above and beyond. It is much appreciated!

Once at home, I pulled into the yard to unload. The girls very carefully opened the main door and propped it up, so it was all ready and waiting to be finished while the girls put away the groceries.

Drilling the pilot holes was a pain. I’d hoped not to need to, with the lilac wood I used already having soft spots in the middle; I could easily push a nail through the middles. I was only able to get one of the original screws in, though. Even with using the Dremel and a carving tip to enlarge the pilot holes, the last 2 screws would go only so far before I found myself stripping the heads instead of going further. The lilac is a surprisingly hard wood.

In the end, I replaced the original screws.

So now I have two Robbies and and Phillips. :-D I really should have replaced the third one, but the new screws are slightly shorter, so I left the longer screw in place. The new screws were still pretty hard to get all the way in, but the square tips handle the strain a lot better than star tips.

Then came the litmus test: removing the supports under the door and seeing if the hinge would hold!

It held. :-)

The door now opens and closes smoothly! I was going to say “again”, but honestly, it’s been a problem since before we moved here. Which makes me wonder, how many years was the door just getting noisier and noisier, and being more and more of a problem to open and close, and no one thought to look at the hinges? There are other problems with the door that we identified since moving here – which is why the goal is to replace the doors and frame completely – and I even remember checking the hinges in the frame myself, but somehow, no one thought to squeeze their heads in to see the hinges on the door side.

The centre hinge has not been done, and with the weather forecasts right now, it’s going to wait until things warm up again. If we even bother to do it at all. Not being able to open the door any wider makes getting into the space a real pain!

There are other things that are a much higher priority!

Which means we can take this down, now!

The Re-Farmer

Hinge fix, continued

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

It looks like we’re being hit by the edge of a storm passing to the south of us, so we wanted to make sure we could close the inner door overnight.

All I wanted to do was trim the pegs and get them flush to the surface, first.

You’d think that would be easy, right? Ha! Of course not!

I first tried using a small cutting wheel on the Dremel.

I went through two of them before I gave up. The space was just too tight, and the cutting wheels shattered!

I did have a small saw that I brought, just in case. I just couldn’t cut flush to the surface (may apologies for the crappy photos; the light sucked, too!

Unfortunately, that left me with quite a bit of wood to get rid of. For this, I switched to small sanding disks.

I don’t know how I would have done this without my Dremel tool. We probably would have had to take the door off completely, which would haven us a whole new set of problems!

It’s really hard to see, but the wood plugs are now flush with the surface.

This was enough to let us close the door, and that was the main thing!

Tomorrow, I’m taking the van in to the garage earlier in the morning, so we’ll finish the rest after I get home. We’re expecting snow all day tomorrow, and through to Friday morning, but the temperatures aren’t expected to take another deep dive until the weekend. That gives us time to get it done, without getting things too cold in the entry.

I’m glad we have a storm door, of this would be waiting until spring!

The Re-Farmer

Starting on the hinge fix

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Well, for better or for worse, I’ve started working on the door hinges.

This is intended to be a temporary fix, until we can replace the door and frame completely, but I have no idea when we’ll be able to do that, so this patch job may need to last a while.

The first thing to do was to open the door as wide as possible (with a built in closet in the way, that isn’t as far as I’d like!) and place supports under it to hold the weight.

One of the things we’ve been finding lots of, while cleaning this place up, is laminate floor tiles. It’s amazing, how handy these have become. A couple of pieces of wood under the door made up most of the height, then it took 3 of these tiles to get it fully supported where it needed to be. We’ve also used them to put under bench legs and wooden shelves in the basement, to get them off the damp concrete, and so on. I’ve found a couple of cases of these tiles, just in the basement – there are more in the barn. Definitely things to keep, even though they’ll never be used as flooring! :-D

Once propped up, I could remove the screws which, I’m happy to say, were not damaged as I had thought they were. I do not have to replace the screws. I was able to remove 2 of them with just my fingers, and the only reason I had to use a screwdriver for the 3rd one was because it was the offset middle one, where the hinge wasn’t pulling away from the door as much.

The hinge still needed to be pried loose before I could take a good look at the damage. It fits perfectly in that recess.

Because of how close this is to the frame and storm door , I actually got a better look by taking a picture, then with my own eyes!

The damage isn’t actually as bad as I feared it would be.

The next step was to bring out the Dremel to clean out and enlarge the screw holes.

The Dremel just barely fit in the space available, but it worked. I used a couple of grinding and engraving tips; first a small cone shaped one to clear out the holes, then a metal tip to clean out further into the openings than the cone could go.

The wood is so dry, there was smoke coming out of the holes from the friction!

For the wood plugs, I ended up choosing some pieces of lilac branches I’ve still got hanging around. They were already the size and shape I needed; I only had to strip bark off the pieces, then make one end slightly narrower. Also, I will need to pre-drill holes before putting the screws back in, to prevent cracking, and the core of the lilac is already little more than sawdust that can easily be removed. They’re basically already pre-drilled. :-D

I was going to use wood glue to put the pegs in, only to discover it had dried out, so I went with all-purpose glue that I happened to have.

After making sure the pegs fit into the holes, I applied a bit of glue to their ends, then gently tapped them into place with a little bitty hammer I happened to have. With a normal sized hammer, I wouldn’t have had the space to swing, without hitting the window of the storm door.

The pegs will now sit for a few hours before I check the glue and decide to cut the pegs flush tonight, or wait until tomorrow morning. If I can cut the pegs, we’ll be able to close the door most of the way as the glue finishes setting overnight. If not, we’ll be stuck with this all night…

These are the pieces of insulation we’d cut last year, to fit over the inner door, held in place with Velcro strips, to keep frost from forming on the bottom of the door, and ice on the windows. It worked well, but there were some issues with the strips, and we haven’t found a workable alternative, yet. Thankfully, this winter has had only a few days cold enough for the ice and frost to form.

The arm bar is coming handy for holding the pieces in place!

If this works out, we’ll do it again for the middle hinge. That should tide us over until we can replace it all with an insulated steel door and a steel frame.

Hopefully.

The Re-Farmer

A furry standoff!

/ Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

While doing my rounds this morning, I was joined by Nosey and the Spice boys.

Usually, I am joined by Potato Beetle, but I didn’t see him until I was going back to the inner yard.

Up in a tree.

Waaaaaaayyyy up in a tree.

Something seemed off about it, so I went around to the power pole nearby to see what was going on. Once I got around my late father’s car, I found the problem.

There was Nicky the Nose, on one of the bottom branches!

Gosh, he’s a big, burly cat!!

Looks like he’s been trying to assert dominance again, and it was a standoff. Nicky is too big and heavy to go any higher, but Potato couldn’t get down without getting too close to Nicky.

We’re not having that! I dug out one of the pruned tree branches from the nearby pile and waved it around at him, and he took a flying leap from the tree, into the snow and ran off.

It took a while, but I stayed outside long enough for Potato Beetle to get himself down from the tree, so I could cuddle him while bringing him over to the kibble house.

I don’t know how to feel about Nicky. I don’t want to turn away any stray cat that’s hungry. Nicky, however, does what dominant toms do; goes after the males to drive them way, to keep the harem for himself. The other toms that used to visit back when Nicky first showed up are gone. No idea what’s happened to them, but he’s the only one left. Even Creamsicle seems to be gone completely, now. Moved on to another farm, or dead, we have no way of knowing. As the kittens get older, he’ll be after them, too. So while I am more than happy to feed and care for any stray that shows up, Nicky isn’t just any stray. He’s causing issues with the colony. I don’t know if we should be driving him away, or if we should be trying to socialize him more, to put a stop to it!

Ah, well. We’ll figure it out.

Today is supposed to be another warm one, and then temperatures are supposed to plummet again on the weekend. We didn’t start working on the door yesterday. It may have been warmer, but we had some wicked winds from the south, and that door faces south. The winds were a bit much to have just a storm door, should we have needed to leave the inner door open for any length of time. In fact, the entire house was shuddering and whistling for much of the day. Today seems to be a lot calmer. We shall see how it goes!

The Re-Farmer

Converting the fish tanks into greenhouses, part 5: all set up and pretty much done

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Today, I was finally able to continue setting up cat proof greenhouses in our unused fish tanks, to start seeds.

What I wanted to do was line the tanks with rigid insulation where they were near walls. Since there is no way to lower the lights to be closer to the seed starts, I was going to line the insides with foil for reflective light.

I may not need to do that.

Here is the big tank.

I got photo bombed by a Susan.

I had three boxes with identical dimensions, which allow me to raise the rigid insulation floor high. As the seedlings get bigger, I can change the positions of the boxes to get different heights. I’ve got 3 boxes in there, but I might try to squeeze a 4th one in, to stabilize the floor better.

Because of how the top of the tank is designed, to hold glass covers that broke long ago, I had to cut the insulation to fit the opening, rather than the space I wanted them in. That meant the floor piece has quite a gap around it. The sheet of insulation I cut to size for the long, back wall had to be cut into thirds to get it in. Plus, there is a sheet at the end. The wall in the back of the picture is one of the original log walls. The wall at the left is an exterior wall. Yes, it has more modern (almost 50 years old) insulation, but it’s still pretty cold!

The insulation on the sides helps to fill the gaps around the floor piece, which stabilizes it as well.

At these dimensions, I can only fit two seed trays in here, which means there is a fair amount of space around them to add more containers with seed starts. I just have to figure out what waterproof surface I can fit in there to put them on.

I think I can get away with not adding foil, though. What do you think?

The second tank was much easier and faster.

Once again, I had to cut pieces smaller, to be able to fit them through the top. I only needed to add insulation to the back, which is against the exterior wall, but I added more to the sides to help fill in gaps around the floor piece.

I’m going to have to find something better to raise the floor. The orange box is a bit too small.

Photo bomb, courtesy of Saffron!

As you can tell by the dusty footprints, the cats like the lid of this tank!

At this point, I should be ready to start seeds in here. According to the package instructions, I don’t need to start my onion seeds – the ones that need to be started the earliest – until the end of March, but experienced zone 3 gardeners in groups that I’m on have already started theirs, and say they should be started now. The seed trays I have are too big to fit into the smaller tank, so I will have to find something else waterproof to hold seed starts in the little tank. I want to buy more seed trays, anyhow; I’ll have to take a good look at what dimensions are available.

There is only so much I’ll be able to fit in these, even if I’ll later be able to move the onions into the sun room and make room for something else. I did find something that I might be able to use, for when I’m starting the squash and gourd seeds.

The squash and gourds need more space to grow, and they are the things that need to be started soonest, after the onions. I’ll be using these cups, with drainage holes punched into their bottoms, as pots. The storage container is designed to fit under a bed, but the hinge on the lid is broken, so it has been languishing in the basement until now. I have a second one. Once I figure out what to do with the stuff stored inside it, I’ll be using that as well.

We have so many varieties of summer and winter squash, as well as gourds, to try. Depending on how many seeds are in each package, I may not plant them all. Some are packed by weight rather than number of seeds. I figure, at most, I’ll start 10 seeds each of the summer and winter squash. Whatever the germination rate turns out to be, that’s what I’ll be planting. If I get just a 50% germination rate, we will still have lots of each variety, and with the number of varieties, we should have plenty for both fresh eating, and preserving and storage. For the gourds, I’ve decided to start 5 seeds of each, and see how they do. One of them is an eating variety, but the others are to dry and use for crafting purposes. Curing them takes about a year, so the sooner I can get some grown, the sooner I’ll have materials to work with! If space in an issue, though, I’ll drop the gourds for this year.

I still have the mini greenhouse that my daughter bought for me last year, which can hold three of the trays that are in the big tank. The cats still managed to get into the closed plastic cover, and it gets knocked over easily, so anything we start in there will be done later in the season, and in the sun room!

With the trays I have now, all I need to figure out is what to use in the small tank, and I should be able to start the onion seeds very soon!

The Re-Farmer