I was a bit later than usual when I came out to feed the yard babies, so there was quite a crowd.
I immediately noticed Broccoli’s back end was looking bedraggled. As she milled about, eating ravenous, I could confirm.
She has had her litter. Possibly just hours before.
She has her “nest” somewhere in the outer yard, so we likely won’t see them until they are old enough to bring them to the kibble houses.
*sigh*
This would be the first litter of the year. Out of the 33, at most, that we see, I have been able to spot possibly 5 in total that look pregnant, including Broccoli, with one tuxedo I think might be female and is probably pregnant, plus the tiny fluff ball that hangs put in the sun room that I think is female, but is from the youngest litter from last year. I’m working on socializing her, but have had little success.
Why are the ladies all the most feral ones?
We are also getting a regular stinky kitty visiting. A very small skunk, too, and only by itself. The cats are completely indifferent to its presence!
On a different note, while doing my rounds this morning, I’m see8ng more snow crocuses blooming… but not very many plants. Hopefully, more will cone up.
Speaking of which, my daughter’s tulip patch has lots coming up, including a surprise. I found some working their way through the mulch I moved aside from the saffron crocuses. I planted them there because the tulips planted nearby didn’t make it. At all. Now, after at least 2 years, there are tulip leaves visible! These should be the Bull’s Eye tulips, with their unique blossoms. Hopefully, they will actually bloom, and we can confirm that.
We had lights rain, off and on, yesterday, and should be getting more, today and tomorrow. The weekend should be clear-ish then a couple more days of rain. Which would be great, if it were more than just a fine mist that just makes surfaces damp. We could really use some good downpours. We are still being affected by the strong El Nino, though, so our area is unlikely to get much.
Today, my main goal is to plant the summer mix melon seeds. I gave them a extra day in their containers. In checking the others last night, I saw my first watermelon seed germinating.
If the seedlings remain as successful as the pre-germination, after transplanting, we will have a massive amount of winter squash and melons this year!
We now have various melon seeds set to pre-germinate above the heat mat – indirect, so they don’t get too warm.
As with the Wild Bunch Mix of winter squash, I wanted to do all the seeds in our Summer of Melons Blench, There were four more of the Wild Bunch winter squash ready for potting first, though. There were still some seeds left, but I put those in the compost bucket. Some were looking like mold was starting to grow on them, and others were looking slimy, so I figured they were done for. Which is fine. We have so many from the Wild Bunch mix that successfully germinated, we won’t be starting any other winter squash this year, as much as I’d like to. We just won’t have the prepared space for that many large plants, even with trellises.
All of the smallest and not quite emerged Wild Bunch Mix squash are now together in the one half of the aquarium greenhouse. The larger ones got moved to the mini greenhouse frame at the window. The larger ones that were already in the mini greenhouse frame in the window were tucked into a bin and, together with the bin that had peppers and herbs in it, are now in the sun room. The cats like to sit on these shelves to look out the window, but the bins should protect the transplants.
The tray with the hot peppers and eggplant is now on the shelf between two windows in the sun room, along with one of the tomato trays. There’s also space for a cat to sit by the door, as a few like to do. These trays will get plenty of light through most of the day. I’m taking a chance on putting them there, but last year the cats were good about leaving the transplants alone, for the most part. They were more interested in getting at the window, so as long as they can still do that, the transplants should be okay.
Once the space was made in the mini greenhouse frame and the aquarium greenhouse, I made some decisions as to which melons I wanted to start.
The Summer of Melons Blend was the only for-sure choice. The package had 21 seeds, and I set all of them to pre-germinate.
For the others, I decided to try the Zucca melon again. It’s been rough going for these, even though we’ve had success starting them out, so I’m hoping to actually get some this year. They are supposed to get quite massive in size. The seeds are pretty huge, so they got where the only ones to be scarified to help with germination. I decided to try only 4 seeds, with plenty left to try again next year, if it doesn’t work out this year.
The Pixie melon is one we’ve grown successfully before, during a drought year, which is what we’re supposed to be getting this year, too. They are a small “personal size” melon. I set out only 5 seeds, which left another 4 in the package. If we have the space, I might try direct sowing the last seeds, since they only need up to 75 days to maturity. The plants are very productive, though, so even if we only have a couple make it, that should still provide us with a decent amount of little melons.
The Sarah’s Choice is one we tried last year, but I think only 2 seedlings survived to be transplanted. They were planted together with some other melons and, to be honest, I’m not sure which variety was which, the vines were so interwoven. The plants did well, but they didn’t start producing both male and female flowers at the same time until quite late in the season, so we didn’t get very many that fully ripened before frost hit. So I want to try them again. This year, I’ll make sure we plant them away from other melon types, so we can tell them apart. Again, I started only 5 seeds, which was a little under half was what was in the package.
I had two types of watermelon to choose from, and I decided to go with the Cream of Saskatchewan. Both were short season, cold climate varieties, but I only had one container left. 😂 Again, I picked out 5 seeds, which was half the package.
The 7 day forecast has changed, and we’re now looking at a cooler day tomorrow, with possible rain, and only slightly warmer days after that. We won’t be back into highs in the double digits (Celsius) until next Monday, if the current forecasts are anything to go by. Which I don’t mind too much. Unless the winds are a problem, the cooler days make it more pleasant do to manual labour in, and we’ve got garden beds to prep, and new ones to build! We need to make room for all those transplants, plus the stuff we want to direct sow!
Today I was going to be helping my mother with her grocery shopping, so I took advantage of the trip, leaving a bit early to swing by a hardware store. I didn’t find everything I was looking for, but found other things I needed, instead. Then I swung by another store to pick up something for my mother I knew she was intending to skip this time, before finally going to the grocery store. I was intending to pick up a couple of their prepared hot meals that my mother likes so much, for our lunch. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any this time. They did have pieces of hot rotisserie chicken, though, so I got some and other ingredients for our meal. We were running low on kibble again, so I bought an 11kg bag that I hope will last us.
After taxes, it cost $50, which is totally insane.
My mother was happy with what I got her for lunch, which was nice. As we were eating, I kept waiting for her to bring up about the situation with the exterminators coming in at the end of the week. We went over her shopping list, then discussed whether she was up to going to the store with me, or just giving me the list to do the shopping for her. In the end, she decided to stay at home. The local senior’s centre has social activities in her building on Tuesdays, which she loves, and all she needs to do it walk down the hallway to attend.
I finally brought up that we needed to talk. I could tell by the look on her face, she new exactly what I wanted to talk about. It was a look of rather scornful humour that I see way too often. I explained to her that the public housing department is required to do this, and they really could evict her if she doesn’t go along. She kept smirking and scoffing in response, (all this for just one bug?) before bringing up the things she is convinced an exterminator stole from her. Particularly the old passports. She had four of them together, she says, and now there’s just two. I didn’t even think to ask, why would someone not only go digging through her boxes papers to find them, then take only two of them. Particularly since the exterminator is in and out very quickly. I reminded her that she’s accused people of stealing before, only to find the “stolen” item later. It’s entirely possible she decided to put them someplace “safe” and forgot where, as happens to everyone. I also brought up a few things she does that are far more of a safety and security thing than someone using 70 year old passports that look nothing like modern ones to make fake ID, but that just had her going off on a rant that completely contradicted her concerns about “scam people”.
I managed to get the conversation back to the exterminator visit – and found out hers is not the only apartment that’s going to be treated. I took a moment to check my email and found a response from my sister. It turned out she had also suggested that my mother just get a motel room for Thursday night, but she refused. My sister’s house is not very accessible, and my mother didn’t want to stay at her place, anyhow. So my sister was planning to come out at 7am on Friday morning! With that confirmed with my mother, we worked out that I will come out on Thursday afternoon to bag her fabric items and move furniture away from the walls in most of her apartment. My sister will have to do the stuff in my mother’s bedroom when she gets there, since the bedroom is so tiny, it can’t be done in advance and still have space for her to sleep. Plus, of course, her bedding needs to be bagged.
That finally worked out, I headed to the grocery store with her list. As I was getting her stuff, I noticed they had some sale prices on some things that were even better than in the city, and decided it was worth going back, later. I got my mother’s stuff and was at her place just as the social event was being set up and my mother was already in the lounge, so I took care of putting everything away. She didn’t like that I used the main doors (the other people would see her shopping), though. I used them because they have the automatic door openers that I can activate with my knee, rather than putting the bags down and fighting with keys and very heavy doors. After I put everything away, I started going down the hall to the lobby to say my goodbyes, only to have her meet me and tell me to leave out the other doors! 😄😄
Which was fine by me, but I found it very funny.
I went back to the grocery store for the third time (the cashiers were laughing at seeing me again!), got a few things that were sale. I got about $160 of stuff that would otherwise have cost me about $300 at regular prices in the city. More, if they were regular local prices! A quick stop at the gas station, and I was on my way home. I only had one more side trip, as my husband message me to let me know he had a notification that another package had arrived at the post office. As I was getting it, though, the postmaster had another package she hadn’t make a pick up slip for yet.
I love it when packages come in early!
By the time I got home, though, I was totally drained. While I took a break, my younger daughter headed outside to weed the third raised bed in the west yard for me.
With how things have been going, the past few days, I’d neglected to check on the squash seeds that were still pre-germinating. I remembered to check them this morning, and found little squidlings! So once I was done taking a break, I went to get them planted.
Squidlings! 😄😄
I had three 5″ biodegradable pots left from last year, so I used those for the three biggest seeds, and 4″ pots for the rest.
Because the seed leaves were already pushing themselves out of their shells, I planted them so that the leaf portions were partially emerged from the soil.
The previous batch of seeds I planted are still on the heat mat, and I can see little hills forming where the seedlings are starting to emerge, but these ones are far enough along, they don’t need to be on a heat mat. I did set the pots in water, though. The soil was premoistened, as always, but I want those pots to absorb water, so they don’t dry out the soil.
The gourds, meanwhile, have finally been moved to the mini greenhouse frame in the window.
The next thing that needed to be done was to pot up the early peppers from their tiny tray.
Yes, one pot looks completely empty. There was one cell that I didn’t think had any peppers germinating, but two seedlings started to show up this morning. I wasn’t going to leave just one cell in the tray, so I transplanted the stronger looking one, with as much of the soil around it as I could include. It’ll probably not survive being potted up, but you never know!
Most of the cells had just one seedling in them, but a few had two, and one had three. I thinned them to have just four seedlings (including the one that you can barely see in the vermiculite) per variety. With the hot peppers we already have, plus the Sweet Chocolate peppers, we have way more than we need, and can afford some losses.
At this point, we have pretty much run out of space in the living room for seedlings – and we don’t have anywhere near as many as we started last year! Tomorrow is supposed to be a warm and dry day, so I’m planning on snagging a daughter to help me empty the sun room, clean up the messes the critters left for us over the winter, then set things up for the transplants. The sun room is staying warm enough overnight that I think it’s safe to start moving them out of the living room set up.
Looking at the 10 day forecast, I’m seeing days forecast with highs above 20C/68F! At those temperatures, the sun room will probably be hitting closer to 30C/86F, so if we are we are able to start putting transplants there this week, we will have to make sure to have the ceiling fan going, and the doors wide open during the day.
The bed my daughter weeded today is also bowing out at the sides, to I’m hoping to fix that, tomorrow, then work some sulfur into the soil.
Oh, that reminds me; while at the hardware store, I found they had a sulfur powder available. This can apparently be dusted directly onto the plants, or added to a watering can, rather than being worked into the soil like the granular stuff we got. That might be worth getting later on, but I want to see how the beds do with the granular sulfur worked into the soil, first. Getting a bale of peat would be higher on the priority list right now, though.
For all the running around I was doing today, at least we got a few things accomplished at home, too!
Okay, so I’ve scattered seeds and such, but today is the first day for direct sowing. It was such a gorgeous day for it, too!
I planted all the edible pod peas from the package, minus the ones that split apart as they soaked between damp paper towels overnight. Not a lot of carrots were planted; I’ll include them between other things, over the next while. I’ll probably do the same with more spinach. Basically, they’ll be space fillers and ground covers until it’s too warm to plant them anymore.
The box frame cover got worked on first, then set aside, since I put in the old salvaged T posts to hold netting for the peas to climb. I couldn’t drive them in very far, so they will need to have support added to them before any trellis netting is added, so they don’t get pulled into the bed by the weigh of the peas – or the net, for that matter! I intended to add a third post in the middle, but hit something hard. Possibly one of the branches set at the base of the bed, when it was first built and filled. Or a rock that got missed.
I found my pH meter and did a reading. No surprise the pH is still at 8. I even stuck it into the compost heap nearby, and the needle barely moved. I had a bit of an ah-ha moment earlier today. Well, more like a “duh, of course” moment. Maritime Gardening did an April garden tour video and was taking about how acidic his soil is, and mentioned that liming the soil can make the soil more alkaline.
Liming.
Lime.
Garden lime.
Which is made out of limestone.
Which is what we are sitting on top of.
Our area has limestone quarries and commercial gravel pits – we even have our own little gravel pit – with limestone based sand and gravel below a very narrow band of topsoil.
Of course our soil alkalinity is maxing out the pH meter. How could it be any different? *smacks forehead over what should have been obvious*
Increasing the acidity is going to be a challenge, that’s for sure. The use of raised beds will make it easier, at least.
Our order of sulfur is supposed to arrive by Thursday. Once we’ve got that in, we’ll be able to start amending the various beds with it, to increase the acidity. My husband actually ordered 2 different bags. One bag is 90% sulfur, 10% betonite clay. The other is guaranteed 99.5% elemental sulfur, but both are supposed to be broadcast evenly, then worked into the top 6 inches of soil, at a rate of 250g/10m² (0.5lb/100ft²). These low raised beds are 27ft², so they shouldn’t need much but, from what I’m reading, the more alkaline the soil, the more sulfur is needed (which makes sense), plus our soil type would also need more, for it to make a difference. Even so, it won’t actually do much for us this year; if we were treating a field, we’d be adding it to the soil a year before planting a crop. Any amending we do this year will mostly benefit what we grow, next year. Once we’ve started incorporating it into our soil, though, we should test the soil every few months to see how much difference it has made. Still, every little bit will help.
While it will be slow going to increase our soil acidity, using sulfur is supposed to be one of the quickest ways to do it!
Anyhow…
In the early evening, the girls and I went around the yard, checking things out and enjoying the longer daylight hours and warmth. We blew past our predicted high and reached 16C/61F! Plenty of trees and bushes have leaf buds showing. It took some searching, but we were thrilled to find a few shoots of snow crocuses and grape hyacinth emerging through the leaf litter. We even spotted the leaves of two tulips that had emerged near the saffron crocuses! These were not there, this morning!
We are getting into that period when everything starts to just explode into new growth.
Before long, we’re probably going to be complaining over how hot it is! 😂😂
For now, I’m just really happy to get some progress done outside. We’re supposed to get some rain next week, but we should have plenty of lovely days like today, to get things done outside!
Well, I ended up doing a bit more than I expected to, yesterday evening!
The first thing I did as plant a few more pre-germinated Wild Bunch winter squash seeds. To make space, I changed out what the pots were sitting in.
They are now in a baking pan, over a cooling rack, to allow air to circulate under them. This is a recommendation from Gardening in Canada, as a way to keep the pots from getting moldy or starting to fall apart. The problem, though, is they can’t be bottom watered while on this, which means they’ll be watered mostly by misting.
I would love it if Costco got another shipment of these baking pans. They are basic, 9×13 pans and were very affordable. I didn’t realize just how good the price was, until they were gone and I tried finding more, elsewhere, only to find they cost 4 or 5 times more! Even the restaurant section of the wholesale store I checked out was ridiculously expensive.
Also, that’s the last of my 3″ biodegradable pots from last year. The new ones I got are 4″ pots, which is what the green plastic one is.
Speaking of “biodegradable” pots. The last thing I potted was the coffee tree I got for my daughters. I repurposed a pot that we’d planted thyme in, last year. The thyme had been started in one of these biodegradable pots and the whole thing was potted up. Unfortunately, the indoor thyme got forgotten about and died. It was set aside until tonight, when I finally went to remove the dead thyme – and pulled out a pot! It was completely whole; only brittle from being so dry. No degradation occurred while the plant was still alive, at all. That is not how these pots are supposed to be! When it comes time to plant these outdoors, I will most likely break the pot up so that at least the roots won’t be constrained. If I can remove them completely without damaging the roots, I will!
But I digress…
After potting the pre-germinated seeds and rearranging the aquarium greenhouse to fit them, it was time to work on the San Marzano tomatoes. I decided they needed to be done, even though they are still recovering from their accident, as they were just getting too crowded. I used another deep cell tray to transplant into, but instead of filling it with seed starting mix, I use a Pro Mix potting soil I picked up today. As usual, I premoistened the soil, first.
Good grief, there were a lot of sticks in it!
I can’t even say it’s a brand problem. My second bag of Miracle Grow seed starting mix was full of sticks, too. The first bag of Miracle Grow had them as well, though not as bad. The first bag of seed starting mix I got – Jiffy, I think, but I can’t remember for sure – was probably the best of the lot, with only a few sticks in it, but it was also a much smaller bag.
Once the new tray was full of potting soil, I went through the San Marzano seedlings. A couple were pretty much dead, so I just pulled them. After removing and potting up the “spares”, I top dressed the ones left behind with vermiculate, then set it back at the window.
They are definitely still in rough shape. I hope that, now that they have more room, a bit of fresh soil and the vermiculite, they will recover faster.
As for the spares I transplanted out, there were only 9 strong enough to transplant to the new tray, plus one that got transplanted into a cell in the original tray that lost its seedlings to the fall.
I’m honestly not sure these will all survive. 😞 We shall see!
That left 12 cells available. I had the small tray with 12 cells planted with three different types of tomatoes in them, so I decided to thin those by transplanting. With the Chocolate Cherry and the Black Cherry, there were 4 “spares” to transplant out, but with the Forme de Coeur, a couple of cells had 3 seeds sprouting when I thought I’d planted only two, giving me 6 “spares” to plant out.
Once I started working on them, though, I realized I would have to plant all of them out of the little tray, so once these were done, I planted the remainder into 4″ plastic pots.
The outside rows of 4 pots are the Black Cherry and Chocolate Cherry. I didn’t have room for all the Forme de Coeur, though…
… so the last one went into the bin with the peppers and thyme.
Hopefully, I didn’t want too long to transplant these from those little trays! This one’s looking particularly rough. 😞
I hadn’t planned to be filling an extra fourteen 4″ pots, so these ones were filled with a mix of seed starting mix and potting soil.
The other small tray with the peppers in it will need to be potted up, too. I’ll probably use Red Solo cups for those, since I only have 4 or 5 of the green pots left, and the new biodegradable ones I got, I’m saving for the winter squash. For the peppers in the small tray, I don’t think I’ll thin them by transplanting, though. Instead, I’ll just keep the 4 strongest seedlings of each variety.
Speaking of room, I need to make a decision on these guys.
These are getting large enough they’ll need to be moved out of the aquarium greenhouse. The question is, do I try to thin by transplanting, or do I just thin them?
Who am I kidding. I can’t bring myself to just yank and kill off so many strong, healthy seedlings! However, transplanting them means 7 more pots, on top of the 6 already here. I can fit them in the mini greenhouse frame at the window, if I can move out the onions and shallots.
Hmmm… onions are a cool weather crop. I could start hardening them off and transplant them outside.
Speaking of planting things outside, the last thing I did for the evening was set the snap pea seeds between wet paper towels for the night. Tomorrow, they go into the ground!
I love having cool weather crops that can be planted so early – earlier than usual, this year. I’m hoping the long range forecasts are at least close to accurate! Even if things end up cooler, this is stuff that should survive anything but an unseasonal deep freeze. Hopefully, we’ll soon be seeing our garlic coming up, as well as the snow crocuses.
This morning, when checking on the Wild Bunch winter squash seeds, I spotted one seed with a root showing.
By this afternoon, there were several more.
So I potted them up.
So far, it’s 6 out of 25 seeds, but I can see that the rest will start germinating very quickly.
Outside, the rain finally settled into snow, and we’ve got a light dusting of it out there right now. We’re just getting the tail end of a system that dropped a foot of snow, elsewhere in the country! The only thing I’m really concerned about outside is the saffron crocuses. I took their mulch off and the ground they were growing through was still frozen, but I’m not sure how the newly exposed leaves will handle these temperatures.
They are now saying tomorrow will have a high of -1C/30F, but the day after is supposed to reach a high of 10C/50F!
Until then, it’s a good time for inside stuff – like getting the germinated seeds planted in pots!
We got quite a bit of rain overnight! Enough to completely fill the rain barrel I’d returned to the corner of the sun room. When I came out this morning, I had to put the diverter back on!
It was still raining ever so slightly while I was out (I counted 31, maybe 32 cats this morning). The only garden related stuff I did was to take the mulch off the sunchokes and asparagus beds – the last beds that needed to be uncovered – so they can thaw out faster.
The rain looks like it has stopped, but it’s too muddy and chilly to do the work I had intended to do outside today. I did end up setting out the Purple Caribe potatoes to chit in the old kitchen.
A couple of them were large enough that I cut them in half, and those ones are perched on the carton in such a way that they will have air flow under them, so the cut areas will dry out.
Looking at how many 1kg give us, I’m rethinking where we will put the 2kg of German Butterball potatoes. My thought had been to put them where the squash were planted last year, but that’s a huge space. I’d basically just have one row of potatoes. So now I’m thinking we might use one of the low raised beds, instead, where the soil should be softer.
We really need to think about increasing the acidity of our soil. It is very alkaline, and pretty much everything we are growing needs soil that is at least a little acidic. We should pick up a bale or two of peat, but that has a very minor and slow effect on acidification. A lot of the usual soil amendments, like adding compost, actually increases the alkalinity, which is the last thing we need. I ended up running errands in the small city yesterday and was looking for Sulphur, but saw nothing. We do have a box of fertilizer we found when cleaning out the old kitchen years ago that is for acidifying the soil; it’s meant for azaleas, but should work for other things, too. If it’s still good. Does water soluble Miracle Gro have an expiry date? I have no idea how old this stuff is. The box was opened but, based on how full it looks, it may only have been used once!
Since today was an indoor kind of day, I started pre-germinated some winter squash.
We’re at just under 7 weeks before last frost, which I hope is enough time for these. Not knowing what varieties are in this mix means we will have different days to maturity among them. I’m still hoping to be able to start some other varieties of winter squash as well – ones we actually know what they are! I’m just not planning to grow entire rows of each. With pre-germinating the seeds, I can start just a few of each and not have to be as concerned about germination rates like when they’re sown into pots or pellets.
I’ll need more pots, though.
Among the last seeds I want to start indoors, by about 3 weeks before last frost, are several types of melons.
Last year, we started so many squash and melon seeds, then had entire trays where nothing germinated. A real waste. I think we’re going to have a much better success rate using the pre-germination method. It should be interesting to see how much of a difference it makes, as time goes by.
The next few days are supposed to continue to be colder and wet, with possible snow, with Friday having a high at, or just below, freezing (it’s Tuesday as I write this). By Sunday, we’re supposed to be back up to the double digits (Celsius), but our overnight lows will be staying close to freezing through most of May. We don’t expect to be direct seeding anything until June, but there are quite a few cold tolerant things we’ll be able to direct sow once the current cold snap is done.
May will be our month for building more raised beds, and harvesting more dead trees to build with.
There is so much that needs to be done!
Weather willing, we’ll have more prepared garden spaces than we had last year, but I’m not sure we’ll reclaim enough to match what we were growing in – well, trying to! – the year before.
Well, it finally got done! At about 1am, the video I meant to post yesterday was finally uploaded to YouTube, which then was going to take another hour to process it, in three different quality options. I waited until the lowest quality one was done, so I could select a thumbnail, then went to bed!
The question is, was it worth it?
I’ve watched the video myself, selecting the highest quality option, but I really can’t see much of a different.
Here is the video in question.
Could I ask a huge favour?
Could you please watch this video on YouTube, selecting the highest quality option, then compare it to this one…
… also on highest quality option?
Then let me know in the comments how you watched it, and if you could see any difference in quality or play.
I’m using my new desktop to watch these, and the YouTube settings for both allow me to watch them at 2160p/4K.
When exporting the older video in my software, I used the default “good” quality setting. There is little difference in file size with either “good” or “high” options, so it should not have taken so very long to upload. I don’t know if it was an issue with our internet, or with YouTube itself. Or both. I’ve had this happen before where the upload took so long. it was basically stopped. I gave up and started over again. The problem with doing that is, no matter how far along the upload was, trying again starts at the beginning, not from where you left off. In that case, when I tried it again, it uploaded much faster and without any problems the second time around. I seriously considered doing that again with this one, and probably should have.
First, thank you for the kind words I received after my last post yesterday. I’m happy to say I did actually get sleep, and am in much less pain today. I’m going to take it easy for a day or two, so I don’t have a relapse, but I did take the last step in preparing the bed I’ve been working on.
I got a couple of hoses set up to give it a soak and grabbed the first nozzle I found.
It promptly broke. The threaded portion cracked right off!
I couldn’t find the new nozzle we got last year, but I did find another older one (these were nozzles we found when we moved here, and they outlived others I’d bought new!) and that one got the job done.
I took all the plastic off again. There was condensation built up under it, as we had a touch of rain last night, but the soil beneath was still dry. I spent about 20 minutes going back and forth, giving it a deep watering. With the melting snow and water actually being absorbed by the soil instead of washing away, I know there is moisture close to the surface, so the amount of watering I did should be enough.
I ran out of ground staples while putting the plastic back, so I had to find weights for the last section.
The bricks being used to retain the soil is temporary. We will be gathering materials for something more permanent. I’m thinking something about 3 times the current height with the bricks. When that’s done, we’ll take the extra time to make sure everything is in a nice, straight line. In the process, we’ll replace the boards that are holding the soil from falling through the chain link fence with something better. The path itself will eventually have bricks or something, so it’s not to muddy.
A path we will make sure doesn’t get buried like those sidewalk block chunks I’ve been finding!
Looking at the forecast, I’m thinking the earliest we can plant the Purple Caribe potatoes in here will probably be next weekend. We’ve got a couple of warm days, then the temperatures are supposed to drop to freezing, then take a few more days to warm back up to double digits (Celsius).
I’m already feeling time slip away from me. Half of April is almost gone already!
The Re-Farmer 