When I checked on it after I got home, it was hot enough in there to warrant opening up and tying off the door. I also shifted a few bins to the other side, to follow the sun a bit.
We’ll need to bring them back into the old kitchen soon, since they’ll freeze if they stay there overnight, but I am so glad to finally get them out into the warmth and sunshine. We should finally see some improved growth!
I also uncovered the bed in the old kitchen to give it a good watering, since it can’t get any of what little moisture we’ve been getting. Some of the sprouts in there are now big enough that I can identify them as spinach.
The bed my daughter and I covered with plastic yesterday evening is still covered; it withstood the wind! We are expecting rain in the wee hours of tomorrow morning, which will be good.
I won’t be able to do much else in the garden tomorrow, as I expect to be in the city doing the Costco shopping. After that, it’s back to home stuff again!
In the first image, you can see the seedlings that need potting up. They all should be much bigger than this, but it’s just not warm enough, even with using the heater and the heating pad, in the basement.
With concerns about the outside cats potentially knocking the transplants over when we moved them out, I decided to use some storage bins to hold the Red Solo cups I was going to re-use to pot up into. They’ve been stored in the sun room all winter, so they had to get a cleaning of cob webs and whatever other debris managed to get on them. Thankfully, the old basement is where the laundry used to be, so we still have the old laundry sink that I could soak them all in, then scrub the ones with drainage holes in the bottom to transplant into. I also pre-soaked the seed starting mix with hot water, so it still be at least not cold, by the time the cups were filled and the seedlings transplanted.
These bins hold only 9 cups in them, so that basically became my default for the maximum number of transplants to pot up into. Which worked out really well. With the Black Beauty tomatoes, there were only 4 large and strong enough to pot up. With the Chocolate Cherry, there was only 5 to pot up, so they got to share a bin. The Spoon tomatoes and the Sub Arctic Plenty both filled one bin each. The Sweetie Snack Mix peppers and the Turkish Orange eggplant both got one bin each, too, with almost zero “extras” that didn’t get transplanted.
In the second photo, you can see them after they were all potted up, before I topped them with vermiculite. The potted up seedlings are small enough that I could use the lids on the bins, but I had only 2 of them handy at the time. The next photo is after the vermiculite was added. Then I got more lids for the bins from the sun room and my daughter helped me get them out of the basement. Which was actually quite dangerous. We started with me taking them through the old basement and up the stairs to where my daughter was waiting at the door, one bin at a time. She would grab the bin at the door (keeping the cats from dashing downstairs) and take it to the old kitchen, while I went to get the next bin.
The old basement stairs are narrow; each step is about half the width of a typical step. It is also steep than most stairs are, and there is very little space at the door. Which means I could only go to the third step from the top before I ran out of space. Even going sideways and carrying the bin on one arm, I couldn’t reach the door knob, so having my daughter open the door was an essential. Once she had the bin, I could go higher and close the door, but just going up and down these stairs is simply not good. I go down them backwards, like on board ship or using a ladder.
After a few bins, my daughter kicked me out of the basement and we traded places. Apparently, I sounded like I was in a lot of pain. Which I was, but I wasn’t going to say anything, since I know it’s not any better for her!
In the last picture, you can see all the bins and trays now set up on the freezer in the old kitchen. I was so tempted to put them into the portable greenhouse. The thermostat in there was reading more than 40C/104F! Pretty impressive, considering we never got above 4 or 5C today (39 or 41F). And that wind!! Yikes! The problem is that we’d just have to take them back inside after a couple of hours, and I didn’t want to do that today. We’re still forecast to have -6C/21F tonight, though we’re not expected to reach those temperatures until 6am tomorrow, and I know it will drop below freezing inside the greenhouse, even with the heat sink. They will go into the greenhouse tomorrow, after I get back from running around.
Once that was done, I grabbed a late lunch, then headed to the post office to pick up a parcel. On the way back, my cell phone started ringing. I don’t have hands free, so I couldn’t answer it. When I got home, I found a message from the home care coordinator asking about something strange my mother had told the morning home care aid about her puffer, and having already taken it in the hospital.
???
I called back and left a message telling her as much as I knew, then called my mother. I hadn’t gotten through to her this morning about her telephone doctor’s appointment tomorrow morning, so I told her about that, first. She wasn’t impressed that it was in the morning, but it’s at about the time she gets her morning meds, so she’ll be up, anyhow – and I intend to be there, too. I then asked her about the puffer. She told me a completely different thing from what the apparently told the home care aid. She also seems confused about the type of puffer they used with her while she was in the hospital, and the original type she was using before then – which she has started using now. She had an unopened refill from before she went to the hospital, and the other type was done, so she started taking it on her own. I have no idea where she had it stashed away. Then I found out she’d already taken it three times today. I told her, she’s only supposed to take it once in the morning, then again before bed. Not several times throughout the day. Plus, we already talked to her doctor about it. This was an experiment to see if it would help with her breathing at night. It didn’t, and she turned out to be developing pulmonary edema, which she no longer has after being in the hospital for a couple of weeks.
Things were still confused, but we agreed we would talk about it when I’m there tomorrow, and she could show me what she had. I then called the home care coordinator back and got her right away. We talked for a while and confirmed my mother told different things to them than what she told me. I then found out they were giving her two puffs in the morning, but not in the evening (with the disc type of puffer, a dose is one puff, while the other puffer, a dose is two puffs, which is why the pharmacist and I decided to fill the prescription for the disc type). So there’s a mix up right there, too. Not that the puffer has been helping her in any way, but a neighbour of hers has asthma, so she decided she needed a puffer, too, and the doctor was willing to test it out with her rather than go through the years it would take to refer her to a specialist and get all the respiratory testing done.
Hopefully, we will get that straightened out tomorrow.
After I was done on the phone, it was time to get out and see what I could do to protect the winter sown raised bed.
I have a cover for the bed, but it needed some maintenance work first, so I brought it closer to the garage, where my tools where. One of the things that needed to be done was secure two sections of the mesh. The jute twine it had been tied together with before had degraded and broken apart. I’d already had to replace the twin in the other join and used paracord for that, so I did the same thing again.
The hoops supporting the mesh are sections of pipe that turned out to be rather too strong. They are held in place with strips of metal strapping, but would get pushed downwards – usually because of a cat jumping on it! So I wanted to get those nice and snug, then screw them into place.
Syndol and Judgement decided the mesh was a night place to sit!
After the hoops were secured, I brought the cover over to the raised bed, but had to get a daughter to help with the rest, because of the wind. We got the cover on the bed, then opened one of the 8’x12′ plastic I’d picked up to cover it.
It was a lot thinner than I expected. Definitely not 7mm, which is what the guy looking up the information for me said it was. I suspect he didn’t quite understand what I was asking for.
Still, it will work for now.
We made sure to water the bed before putting the cover on (and I had to fix yet another hole dug into it). I noticed there are more sprouts coming up, so getting it covered to protect it from tonight’s cold will be a good thing!
After unfolding the plastic, we rolled and tucked the excess under the frame as best we could, but that wind was still threatening to blow it off. After looking around, I found a couple of sticked I’d joined with twine threaded through sections of a hula hoop to create a support for ground cherries flattened by the wind, a couple of years ago. That did well to drape across the top of the cover. We also found some lighter old boards to set on top as well; you can see the end result in the last photo above. Hopefully, it will be enough, but with how strong the winds are, I’m not entirely sure!
If it does hold out, it will protect the sprouts from tonight’s cold – and I plan to leave it on to also protect the bed from the cats! When it’s less windy, I’ll see if I can find a better way to secure the plastic, too. It’s meant to be temporary, though, so we’ll see. When the plastic is no longer needed, I have to find a way to close up the ends of the cover, so it can still be used to keep the cats out.
Since the coldest time of the night will be around the time I’ll be feeding the outside cats before heading to my mother’s, and then I’ll have to hit our own pharmacy in a different town when I’m done there, I’ll have to get my daughters to keep an eye on things and, when it starts warming up, move the transplants into the portable greenhouse. We’ll probably need to leave the door tied at least partly open so it doesn’t get too hot in there. Tomorrow’s high is supposed to be only 9C/48F, but if it could get as hot as it did in there at our current temperatures, it’ll get even warmer tomorrow. By the weekend, we’re expected to get highs above 20C/68F. Hopefully, before then, we’ll be able to get more progress on the trellis build. We’ll also have our Costco stock up trip in a couple of days.
This is in the winter sown low raised be near the dead tree on the outhouse we were working on last night. I was starting to wonder if they had survived the winter, and the cats! This bed has the root vegetable seed mix I put together, plus our own collected lettuce seeds.
After doing some reading on the tree nursery’s website, I decided a trip to the nearest Walmart was in order, to pick up some supplies. The bed with the new sprouts was going to need protection, too! After doing my morning rounds and a few things at home, it was getting close to noon before I headed out. I ended up going to the Canadian Tire first, though, and that’s where I found pretty much all that I was looking for.
The main things I got were a couple of bags of cattle manure and another couple of sheep’s manure. I wanted to pick up some peat, too, but there wasn’t any, which I found rather odd. After getting some feedback in the comments section of a gardening video, I went looking in the paint section for some plastic to use on raised bed covers, without having to order 6mm greenhouse plastic online. I ended up needing help from two different staff members to find what I needed. Most of what was available was much, much thinner, but they did find some 7mm sheets for me. I ended up getting two 10’x25′ sheets plus three 8’x10′ sheets. Hopefully, this will work out better than cobbling together lengths of dining table protectors! I also got a 50′ roll of 1/2 inch pex pipe. These will be cut to length to use as support hoops. I also found a couple of small watering cans with long, narrow pour spouts. I’ve been looking for them for some time, as it’s been a real pain trying to water the aloe vera without water splashing off the leaves all over the place. It will also make it easier to water the transplant trays under the seedlings.
I did get one completely unplanned thing and that was a smaller Dutch oven that was on clearance.
That done, I went over to the Walmart. They didn’t have peat, either, but I did find cat milk for our elderly Freya and got a whole bunch. Since I was there, I went ahead and picked up things for the pantry and generally just looking for various things we might need.
By the time I was done and the truck was loaded up, I was completely wiped out. Yesterday had finally caught up to me. I had also skipped lunch, so I was tired, in pain and very hungry. I messaged home to let the family know I was on my way and my state. When I got back, I had plenty of help getting things unloaded and put away, and there was a hot meal waiting for me.
Pain levels aren’t the only thing that kept me from getting outside stuff started for planting. It’s been steadily raining/misting all day. On my way home, as my route took me closer to the lake, it was just straight up thick fog. Which will be great for the garden, at least! At least it’s relatively warm, though. It looks like I won’t be getting anything done tomorrow, either. We’re supposed to have a high of only 6C/43F, and the overnight low is supposed to be -6C/21F! For the past while, our overnight lows have been hovering around the freezing mark, at the lowest, but not that far below zero! I’ll have to make a point of protecting the bed with the seedlings overnight! After tomorrow night, our overnight lows are supposed to stay above freezing from not until at least half way through May. Our long range forecasts actually show highs getting close to 30C/86F until the middle of the month, and then suddenly dropping to the point of a rain/snow mix.
If I’m not going to be able to get things planted tomorrow, I’m going to have to make sure the trees don’t try out. They’re being kept in the old kitchen right now, where it’s cooler, so at least they won’t come out of dormancy too quickly.
We have seedlings in the basement that are ready to be potted up, so that can be a project for tomorrow. I should be able to get out and plant the trees the day after.
For now, though, it’s all I can do to stay awake at the keyboard while I type this. I’m not looking forward to trying to get out of my office chair and walking, though. I can feel every joint in my body stiffening up. Even typing is getting difficult.
Yeah, pain killers and an early bed time are definitely in order.
First up, I’m happy to saw we actually got rain last night! After all those ours of the weather maps and apps saying we were getting rain, while not a drop was falling from the sky, it was wonderful to finally hear the sound of a good downpour, in the wee hours.
The down side was that I was awake during the wee hours, after trying to get to bed early! Ah, well.
My goal in the garden for today was to get those two beds covered with netting. I forgot to take pictures for most of it, though.
The first bed I covered was the garlic bed.
After filling in some of the holes dug by the cats during the night. In the process, some of the garlic has had their tips broken off. I’m hoping they will recover!
This bed has shorter support posts on it, and I wanted to use some black netting we have to cover it. I had some cut to size for past garden us, rolled up on a narrow fence post. I figured it wouldn’t take long to cover the bed.
It turned out to be too short. By only about 2-3 feet!
After securing it as far as it could reach with ground staples, I dug around and found another pre-cut length that I hoped was quite short. It wasn’t, but that just means a fair bit of the bed has a double layer of netting over it.
For the other bed, I was wanting to use the mosquito netting I reclaimed from the chain link fence. It was more than long enough.
It wasn’t wide enough.
Which would have been okay. All I needed to do was push the supports deeper into the soil until they were low enough for the netting to cover the sides.
The problem, however, was rocks. I kept trying to hammer the supports deeper, even pulling a few out to reposition them, but there was only so far I could go. Though I used a piece of wood on the tops to protect them, but sometimes I had to just hammer directly on them. Which, of course, damaged the tops.
Eventually, though, I had to give up. There was just no way I could get all of the supports deep enough into the soil for the mosquito netting to be able to cover the top and sides. So that got rolled up and put away, and I found more of the netting I’d used on the garlic bed.
This netting tears very easily, though, so I wanted to protect it where it came in contact with the supports. I’d picked up a pool noodle for something else, so I took a break to take care of that project, then cut up what was left of the pool noodle to make protectors on the supports.
Slits were cut to fit over the twine. The first photo above is a corner, while the next is of one of the side supports.
The next photo is of the summer squash bed, after the netting was fastened in place. If I’d used this netting in the first place, I wouldn’t have had to hammer the supports lower, and there wouldn’t have been so much slack on the sides. But that’s okay. As long as it’s pegged down and no cats can get under it, it should be fine.
The last photo is the garlic bed. Before putting the netting on, I lightly scattered mulch over the garlic, but not the end of the bed that has winter sown seeds at the far end. You can see where I added a couple of sticks to support the twine near one end. That’s near where the first section of netting ended. The two sections overlap by several feet.
I’m glad I got this job done when I did, because things got really windy again.
So this should keep the cats out of the beds. The problem is, the cats will try and jump on top of it. I caught Syndol doing that with the hoop covers on the bed at the chain link fence. That netting can better handle such a thing. If a cat jumps on this netting, it’ll probably tear. The black netting is harder to see, too. I’m thinking of finding something shiny that I can attach to the netting to make it more visible, but will also flash in the sunlight and scare off any critters.
This is pretty much it for garden related stuff today. My husband has some forms from the pain clinic he’d filled out that needed to be mailed, so I took advantage of that to head out and run some errands. With Easter in a few days, things were really busy, but that stuff I needed wasn’t going to wait until next week.
We got 4 of the 5 Cream of Saskatchewan watermelon seeds potted up, as well as a couple of Honeydew. There were still 2 Honeydew seeds, and the Kaho melon seeds, that were not germinated, so we ended up combining them into one tray. I’d gotten rid of the one Cream of Saskatchewan watermelon seed that didn’t germinate, as it seemed like it was not viable, but the remaining Honeydew seeds look like they might still germinate. I’m not sure about the Kaho seeds, though. They may simply be too old.
With the pre-germinated seeds potted up, there wasn’t room in the tray for the container with the remaining seeds, plus the container with the Zucca melon seeds, so they got stacked. The large Zucca melon seeds would need longer to germinated, but it does seem like it’s taking too long. I’m not sure we’ll get any at all this year. We shall see.
My daughter and I then went through some of my herb seeds to figure out what else we could be starting inside. In the end, I decided that I will buy transplants, instead, for the ones we want. I also seem to be missing some seed packets! I’ve no idea what happened to them.
We also talked about some of the flower seeds. I’d picked up some Baby’s Breath for my daughters, as my older daughter in particular really likes them. They looked them up and, apparently, they are considered invasive in our area. Which I find strange, since we already have some in a small flower garden where my mother had planted them, ages ago. They barely survive and are certainly not spreading! It’s part of the reason I got more seeds.
Once we were done, my daughter ended up staying in the basement for a while longer to use the exercise bike, so we could keep the heater on for longer. Later, we both headed outside to feed the cats, then go through the garden beds. I wanted to make sure she was on top of the plans I had, in case they had to take over for me for some reason.
She was very happy to see that her tulips are coming up, and we even spotted a few grape hyacinths emerging. No sign of the snow crocuses, though. We pulled back the black tarp to check out where I was thinking of planting the asparagus and strawberries, and it does look like the weeds and crab grass have been killed off well enough to use the space. The only issue will be the roots from the nearby elm trees, and I’m really hoping we can finally cut those down this year. In trying to clean the area up, I found stumps that showed others have tried to clear them away in the past, and they grew back, so I’ll have to take that into account when we finally get those taken down. It still blows me away, how much their roots have been getting into the garden beds and choking things out.
We checked on the beds that I want to cover with the netting, and had to refill more holes dug by the cats. Very frustrating, that we couldn’t cover them because of the wind.
Speaking of the wind, in the next photo of the slide show above, you can see an area in our spruce grove I was finally able to get to. I tell that we lost a few trees over the winter, and saw some that look like they came down within the past day or two. Cleaning up in there is going to be a huge job!
We checked on the netting I put over the bed at the chain link fence yesterday. Much to my surprise, one of the supports at an overlapping section had been completely pulled up and almost took a few others with it! It seems like the extra netting with the drawstring that would normally be the end of the row cover got caught somehow. Hopefully, that won’t happen again, and there was no damage.
The portable greenhouse was getting some wind damage, though.
In the last photo in the slideshow above, you can see the tear along the zipper. It has gotten bigger – big enough that cats could easily fit through, if they wanted. I’m not sure how to reattach it to the zipper. I did add some clear duct tape above the tear, in hopes it will prevent it from tearing more. We also found a tear in one corner where the tie downs are attached. The loop of fabric the cord was tied to actually tore loose from the plastic. The loop is part of a tie that is fastened to the frame itself on the inside, so it can’t go very far. The clear duct tape came in handy to cover the hole and, hopefully, prevent it from getting worse. I know the covers on these little greenhouses don’t last long, but we don’t even have any plants in it yet! High winds were why I’d hoped to set it up in a corner closer to the house, but the ground is just too uneven there.
I’ve been looking at 6mm greenhouse plastic online. What I’d really like to do is get a roll of it, but that’s well out of budget right now.
I keep looking at various notifications on my weather apps, telling me things like, light rain coming soon, or, rain will end soon. The problem is, we’ve had NO rain at all. According to the weather radar, we’ve got a system right on top of us, and we’re supposed to get rain for the next couple of hours, yet I’m not seeing a drop of rain out my window. At this rate, I’m going to have to hook up the hoses and start watering the winter sown beds! I might even have to fill the rain barrel I’ve set up with the hose, to have warmer water for the garden beds, because we sure aren’t getting any rain to fill it! Nor are we expecting any, for weeks.
Tomorrow is supposed to be a cooler day than today, though with the wind, today felt downright chilly. I’m really hoping the wind dies down, so we can get those nets set up. Given my pain levels today, it’s probably good I’ve got an enforced day of rest.
My husband, sweetheart that he is, ordered some Tai Fu lotion (not an affiliate link), that came in today. We’ve used this stuff, in balm form, in the past and it helped, but we were a lot less broken back then. I’m looking forward to trying it when I go to bed tonight. I hope it helps. Lord knows, the prescription stuff I tried a few years ago didn’t do much, and I’m hurting a lot more these days, then at that time. Between the lotion, and today’s enforced rest, I’m hoping to be able to get some work done tomorrow!
I picked up some bare root strawberries, and asparagus crowns.
The asparagus that was have now, which has been drowned out for the past couple of years, is a purple variety, so I grabbed a package of Purple Passion to basically replace them. They had a couple of varieties of green asparagus, and I chose Jersey Giant. Each package has 5 crowns in it.
We already have the Albion Everbearing strawberries that did so well last year, except for when the deer kept eating the greens. I got another everbearing variety – Ozark Beauty. I also want to try the White Carolina strawberries again. We tried them a few years ago, but not one of them survived.
I am thinking of planting these in a section of the main garden area that has been covered with a black tarp for a couple of years, now. We had grown squash and pumpkins in there, previously. I want to move the tarp to cover the rest of what used to be the squash patch. Hopefully, the asparagus will do better there. I’ll probably interplant them with the strawberries, too.
But not yet.
Something else I got but didn’t get a picture of were some 12′ (I think) lengths of tubing. They’re more flexible than the 5′ lengths I tried before. I plan to use one of them, cut in half, to make a netting support over the 4′ square Albion strawberry bed, so we don’t have to worry about them getting eaten by deer again! I might work on that tomorrow.
The first thing I did when I got home, though, was pot up some pre-germinated melon seeds. The four Sarah’s Choice seeds were ready to go!
I had just enough pre-moistened seed starter mix left to fill 4 cups to plant them in. The cups have drainage holes in them, and they and the other seeds are now in a tray over the heat mat. I took the old heat mat out completely. It was cold, and no longer working.
There are a few other seeds starting to germinate. Nothing with the Zucca melon. I expect to be planting more pre-germinated seeds in a couple of days. I want to give some of the seeds more time.
With the old heat mat removed and the new one shifted over, I also moved the tray with the seedlings over. There are still a few blank spots, but enough sprouts are up that it shouldn’t be on a heat mat anymore – but I do wish that old mat was still working though, because I think they would still do better with one.
That done, I headed outside again.
I’ve noticed that the cats have really been digging around in the winter sown garden bed at the chain link fence. While I was at the Dollarama today, I picked up some row covers that I hoped would work out.
This bed is narrow, so those metal supports would be fine for it. It was the mesh that was important. It’s open enough that the wind can blow through it – the mosquito netting we’ve been using gets turned into a sail rather quickly! – and rain can get through, but it’s fine enough to keep the Chinese Elm seeds from choking everything out, once those start to drop. Plus, the ends can be closed up, which will keep the cats out.
I wasn’t sure how many I would need to cover this garden bed, so I got 5, just in case. In the second photo, you can see some of the damage the cats have been doing.
Setting them up with the wire supports was a bit of a challenge! The wire is supposed to be run through evenly spaced pockets in the mesh. That was the first problem! The wire is thin enough to pass through the mesh. It was hard just to get it through the opening of the pockets! The other end, meanwhile, kept getting caught up in, and through, other sections of mesh.
The set came with a solution for threating the wires through the pockets, though I doubt it was intended as such. Each kit has a bundle of 5 supports. They are held together by fitting the ends into a white plastic cap, one for each bundle of ends. I used one of those caps on the end of a wire support and, as long as there was enough tension to keep the cap from falling off, the wire slid through quite easily. If the cap did fall off, it could be pushed back through the pocket to the wire.
It took a while to get the hand of it, though. The wires and the mesh kept wanting to get all tangled up with each other. Plus, every stick or twig or leaf on the ground seemed to automatically get caught in it! What I eventually figured out was to first make sure the netting was bunched up in the middle of the wire, then stab one of the ends into the ground next to my leg. At least a little bit. I was sitting in the shade, so while the ice and snow was melted away, the ground was more frozen than in other places. It was enough to keep the wire upright, though, and I could just add the next ones as they were done.
I set up the first two assembled kits at each end of the bed. The kits have a drawstring at each and to close them up, but I needed to overlap several of these to ensure no gaps. Once the ends of the beds were covered, I assembled two more kits to fill in the space. Once the ends were closed with the drawstring, those got set in place with ground staples. In one area, the two kits overlapped enough that they didn’t need anything else, but another join got secured with more ground staples.
I think this will work out very well for now. I could probably remove that mosquito netting entirely and use it somewhere else. If the winter sowing survived, this netting can stay until things start getting too tall for it. The mess easily slides up and down the wire supports, so it’ll be easy to reach under to weed.
The bed was incredibly dry, though, so I used the water from the heat sink in the portable greenhouse to water it, then refilled the container. With sort of defeats the purpose of the heat sink, but there are no plants in there to protect right now.
When it was time to refill the container, I also prepped something else I found in the Dollarama.
Coconut fibre bricks! It’s been years since I’ve seen these. I’ve got one of them in a bucket of water to expand until tomorrow. I plan to incorporate it into the soil that’s in the pots I’ll be using for the luffa inside the portable greenhouse. It will be a while before the luffa can be transplanted, I’ve got time to get those ready. With the coco fibre in there, it should help keep the soil fluffier, and hold moisture more evenly. I’ll save the second brick to amend soil in one of the garden beds, later.
The garden bed at the chain link fence is not the only ones the cats are damaging. After I finished refilling the heat sink in the greenhouse, plus the watering cans, I checked out the main garden area. The garlic bed and the summer squash bed have both been dug into. Some of the garlic was almost completely dug up! We’re going to have to cover them.
These are the parts and pieces from a gazebo tent that was broken when a piece of tree fell on it. I had a bunch of shorter pieces – all pieces that were broken in half – that I put around the garlic bed, as it won’t need a lot of height. The tent pieces all have holes in them that had screws or pins running through them, which are prefect for holding twin in place. I ran the twin through to make Xs across the bed, as well as straight across and the sides. I did the same with taller supports I put over the bed sown with summer squash.
We have a couple of types of netting that is large enough to fit over these. We’ve got black netting that is more open, but for that, we’ll have to put something on top of the support posts, so they won’t tear through. There’s also the mosquito netting I’ll be moving off the chain link fence. We have other netting, too, but they are for trellising, so the openings are large enough for a cat to fit through.
The roll of bale twine I used on this has been sitting in the sun room all winter, and the cats have been pulling out the middle and playing with it. By the time I got things untangled while threading it through the support posts, it was starting to get quite chilly out there! As I write this, our temperatures had dropped just below freezing. According to the short range forecast, though, we’re expecting overnight lows of -6C/21F. At those temperatures, we’ll want to put some sort of protection over the winter sown beds. Something more than netting! That’s the down side of having removed the mulch, so the ground could thaw out. I will probably spread some of the mulch back lightly over the beds again. The beds are even looking like they could use a good watering, too! We didn’t get a lot of snow this winter, so things are pretty dry right now, and there is no rain in the forecast for some time. What rain and snow we’ve had lately hasn’t been enough keep these beds from drying out.
Tomorrow, we’re looking at a high of 15C/59F. That will be a wonderful temperature to get things done outside!
As long as I don’t overdo it. I got chilled enough while working the twine through the supports, I still haven’t warmed up, even after a hot meal and a hot cup of tea! My entire body is stiffening up and starting to really ache.
Time to pain killer up and get to bed. Hopefully, the painkillers will be enough to let me get some sleep!
I ended up using a dollar store shower curtain I’d got to potentially use around the eggplant and pepper bed last year, but ended up using the dining table protectors instead. That should help out with warming up the soil and, hopefully, kill off any Creeping Charlie and crab grass in there. I will probably use one of these two solarized beds to plant our potatoes.
I also removed most of the mulch from the wattle weave bed and had a pleasant surprise.
In the first image, you can see the wild strawberries (or whatever they are), which I was expecting. What I was NOT expecting, but hopeful for, you can see in the next image. That is thyme! It survived the winter!
In the next photo, you can see an overview of the long part of the bed. There’s a sort of lighter colour mass about half way down; those are the self seeded Chamomile. Hopefully, it dropped seeds and will come back again this year.
The very last photo is the thermometer in the covered bed. It looks cloudy because I took the photo through the plastic cover. It looks like it was about 18C/64F in there.
Looking around, I couldn’t see much of the green seedlings I uncovered while removing most of the mulch. I likely damaged them too much. There were a lot of seeds scattered in there, though, so I expect more to be coming up soon.
The temperature inside the portable greenhouse was a fair bit higher!
40C/104F! That would definitely start warming up the water in the heat sink I set up, though when I popped the cover off to check, it still seemed cold. That would be in comparison to the very warm temperatures I was standing in!
The next image, meanwhile, is a screen cap taken right after I got a photo of the thermometer, showing what the outside temperature was at. 5C/42F A 35 degree difference (Celsius)!
It should be interesting to see what the thermometer says in the morning, after the 0C/32F we’re supposed to drop to, tonight.
Oh, I also remembered to remove most of the mulch from the strawberry bed in the main garden area – and return the chicken wire over the top. It was quite frozen under there, and there’s no sign of the Albion Everbearing strawberries we have planted there.
The next time I should have time to do anything of note in the garden will be on Wednesday, and right now, the forecast for Wednesday is for a high of 14C/57F with a mix of sun and clouds. It should be a very good day to be working outside!
Meanwhile, I moved things around with the seed trays in the basement. I had the containers with pre-germinating seeds on top of the light fixture over the heat mat, but that light turns itself off, so what little heat it produces doesn’t last long. I thought I figured out how to reprogram the timer, but it seems to have not made any difference. It’s been a while, and there has been no sign of germination. They’re just too cold. So I ended up moving the trays with the chitting potatoes to the top shelf with the winter squash, under the shop light, then set up the second heat mat under aquarium light. So now the tray with the eggplants, peppers, tomatoes and luffa seeds is on one mat, and the three containers of melon seeds are on the other.
When I checked on them before shutting things down for the night, I was already seeing hints of radicals! They will be ready to be potted up by tomorrow or the day after!
Amazing how just a little bit of warmth makes such a huge difference!
We had such a gorgeous day today! I finally got to the winter sown beds to remove the mulch, and even got to work on some beds that were not pre sown. I got enough done that I went ahead and recorded some video, instead. I hope you like it!
Temperatures are going to drop over the next few days before getting back into the double digits (Celsius, of course), but only for a short time. We’re supposed to be fluctuating quite a bit over the next couple of weeks. We’re still supposed to stay above freezing for the highs, at least, but a few nights are dipping below freezing. I’ll continue to monitor the temperatures in the portable greenhouse. It might still be a while before we can safely put trays in there and leave them overnight. Once we bring the trays out of the basement, they’re not going back!
I was really happy with the covered bed in the old kitchen garden. I had to be SO careful removing that mulch. There were a lot of seedlings visible. It’s too early to tell what they were. I’m hoping they survived the disturbance! The cover should protect them enough, now that the mulch is off. Especially considering there were still patches of frozen soil in there! I was especially happy when I uncovered the garlic bed. There were so many garlic tips visible! All blanched because of the mulch, but they will soon turn properly green, now that they’re exposed to sunlight. I’ll be watching all the winter sown beds closely for the next while, as a light mulch will need to be added, once the seedlings are large enough.
If felt so good to finally do some real work in the garden!
The first (rather crappy) image above is of our very first sweet pepper seedling! I was starting to wonder if they were going to make it or not.
The pre-germinated Spoon tomatoes (in the next image), however, are growing like gangbusters! Almost every cell has at least one seedling emerging. Of the four varieties, these ones have been growing the fastest, and I’m quite impressed with them.
While I was out today, I picked up a new dial type thermometer for the portable greenhouse. With the old one showing temperatures like 50C/122F, and I thought for sure there was something wrong with it, since it didn’t feel anywhere near that got while I was in the greenhouse.
It looks like I was wrong!
In the next photo, you can see old and new thermometers, next to each other. The new one is on the right, and had been in there for maybe 10 or 15 minutes.
This time, however, it did actually feel very hot in there. Not sure why it didn’t, last time!
The last image is of our chitting potatoes. When I’ve done this in the past, I’ve laid them out on cardboard egg trays, cut side down to dry off. Recently, I watched and MI Gardener video on chitting potatoes, and he was laying them down on wood shavings to absorb the moisture. With I think would work better than the egg cartons. So this time, I used some older drain trays from seed starting kits – they have cracks in them and can’t hold water anymore, so they won’t be used for seed starting anymore. I put a layer of the stove pellets we use for litter on the bottom. As they absorb moisture, the pellets will swell up and start breaking apart into sawdust. I am thinking that will do a very good job of absorbing moisture so the cut surfaces will try off and “heal” better.
In the past, I set the trays of chitting potatoes up on our chest freezer in the old kitchen, which gets in the way of actually using the freezer. They are supposed to be set in warmth and light, so I moved things around and set them under the light next to the seedling tray with the warming mat. I had to lay them crosswise to fit, so half the potatoes weren’t getting as much light. That was solved by shifting the winter squash tray on the shelf above, so now the shop like that shine through the openings in the shelf. That should work fine, and the trays can be rotated, if necessary.
I checked on the pre-germinating seeds while I was at it. Still no sign of radicals.
As for the potatoes, I honestly don’t know where I’ll be planting them this year. They can be planted before the last frost date, though. I am expecting to plant these in one of the main garden area beds, and it will just depend on which one I can get ready yet. We hit 15C/59F today, and tomorrow we’re supposed to reach 17C/63F. I’m rather hoping that the snow covering the beds in the main garden area will finally melt away! Maybe then, I can lay some plastic down over some beds to help them thaw out faster.
I’m itching to get started on a lot of clean up out there, but some areas are just too muddy, while others are still covered in snow! At the very least, though, I should be able to start removing mulch from the winter sown beds that no longer have snow on them. Somewhere along the lines, I’ll figure out where the potatoes will go!
The Re-Farmer 