aquarium

Our 2022 garden: preparing to start seeds indoors

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Last year, we converted two unused aquariums into greenhouses, where we hoped to protect our seed starts from the cats.

It mostly succeeded.

Today, I prepped the tanks for this year’s seeds.

The small tank – a 20 gallon tank – was a real problem with the cats last year.

Even when we pur the original hard cover back on at the end of the season, using the space inside to store the light, etc., the cats still got into it!

The foil around the back and sides were to provide reflective light for the seedlings. As you can see, the cats have torn up the foil, and even left scratches in the rigid insulation at the back!

Last year, we had tried using the lid that came with the tank at first, but the cats would reach through the opening for the water filter in the back, even if it meant fighting past whatever we put to block the opening. They managed to reach in and pull up the seed trays, anyhow. Having to block everything meant no air circulation, so what the cats didn’t destroy, mold did it’s damage. I finally rigged a window screen and that worked, though it was far too late to save the onions we’d tried to start in there at the time.

This tank will be for onions again. After seeing that onion seeds can be planted very close together, and they don’t really get transplant shock, I’m hoping to be able to get all 5 varieties of onions we have in hear.

The problem is the size and shape of the tank is too small to fit any of the commercial seed starting trays we’ve been using. I want to be able to water the planting trays from below, which meant having to find something to use as a tray for the water.

I decided to try aluminum oven lines. They are pliable enough to bend to size, and strong enough that I could fold corners without it tearing. It’s not deep, but it doesn’t need to be.

There’s still quite a bit of space left. If needed, I can fold up another tray and overlap them. I’ll just have to make sure they are attached to each other with a water tight seal. Or we can just use the doubled Red Solo cups again, and not need to have a tray under them at all.

Then the screen window was brought back into action as a cover. A pair of 5 pound hand weights get added to the back, in case a cat walks onto the overhang in front. The metal screen is strong enough to hold their weights. The heavier cats don’t try to go up there, just the tiny ones, so that has worked out. If necessary, we have more weight we can put on it. At some point, I want to build a screened cover to fit, but that’s not an urgent thing.

Since we can’t change the height of the light fixture, the egg cartons are being used to bring the seedling trays closer to the light, and can be taken out to lower the base as needed.

One thing we found last year is that this room is pretty cold, which is why we added the insulation around the back and sides. It was still difficult to keep it warm enough for the squash and gourds we had in there. Onions are a cool weather crop, so they should be fine in here, as far as the temperature goes.

Then there was the big tank to do.

I had to take out the biggest pot with an aloe vera in it to make space for the boxes that are being used to raise the seedling tray closer to the light. Previously, the boxes were under that sheet of insulation at the base to create a raised floor, but with the plants still in there, we can’t do that this time.

This is where we will be starting the luffa, and probably a few other gourds, at the same time as the onions. They will need the heat mat we got for under the seed trays, which is why they have to go in this tank. The mat won’t fit in the small tank. Right now, the mat is under all the trays and pots, so the weight can flatten it out a bit. There’s just enough room left to hold the curing Tennessee Dancing gourds.

At some point, we’re going to have to take the other aloe vera and my daughter’s orchids out. We’ll need the space for the tomatoes, eggplant and peppers, which are the next earliest seeds we need to start. After that, we will need space for the winter and summer squash. Hopefully, by the time they need to be started, we can start moving the onions into the sun room. The orchids (you can see one has started to bloom again!) are here because it was too cold for them to hang at the window in winter. The aloe is there to keep the cats from digging in the pots.

Which happened with the one pot I did take out, while I was setting things up in here! I caught Nicco, inside the barriers I put around the aloe vera. She’s so long and skinny, she snaked her way through the gaps! The little beast!

We had another, larger pot with an aloe vera in it in. It had been okay for months but, a few days ago, we came out to find the pot all dug up, and the only remains of the plant in it were a couple of leaf tips. We never found the rest of the aloe, and have no idea what happened to it! I’m sure we’ll find it, desiccated, under the couch or in a corner somewhere, months from now. :-D

As you can imagine, I’m not too keen on taking the plants out of the tank. They’re doing very well in there! But we won’t have a choice.

We have many things we need to start indoors, but a lot of them will have only a few seeds per packet used. Particularly with the squash and gourds. For the tomatoes, the paste tomatoes are the only ones we will be planting a lot of, since those are determinates being grown specifically for canning. The others are indeterminates and will be more for fresh eating, so we won’t need more than a few plants of each. We have enough varieties that, in the end, there should still be quite a few to transplant in the spring.

The other major thing we will need to start indoors will be the kulli corn, but those won’t need to be started until about the middle of May, at which point the sun room will be warm enough to use.

We are expanding the garden a lot this year, and will be expanding it more again, next year. I expect to be expanding it every year for quite some time. Which means that we will be needing lots of room to start seeds indoors every year. Until we are at a point when we can get a greenhouse or polytunnel, a goal of mine is to set up a corner in the sun room for starting seeds. We’d need grow lights, so that we wouldn’t have to constantly turn the trays for even sunlight, and we would need a heater sufficient to keep the room – or at least that corner – warm enough for germination. Or use more heat mats, but there is no outlet in that room. We are using an outlet in the old kitchen, with an extension cord running through a window to a power bar, right now. So warming the room would be more practical than using heat mats.

It’s funny. As we work on what we are doing this year, my mind is already on what will need to be done next year.

And the year after.

And the year after that…

As we work on things, we get a better idea of what plans we have will work, what needs to be modified, what needs to be re-priorities, or dropped entirely.

I don’t think we’ll ever reach the end of that process. Which is good, because figuring it all out is a bit part of the fun!

The Re-Farmer

Town stuff, and new fish set up

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My day in town, after dropping my daughter off at work, turned into an all day in town!

I had a 9:30 drop off time at the garage for my van. As soon as he saw me, the mechanic came over to let me know that several other vehicles already dropped off ahead of me. I’d even come early! No worries, though. I was planning to meet my daughter for lunch, anyhow.

I did have some confusion when I parked next to what I thought was my mother’s car, though, and then saw my mother’s car in a different spot. I kept looking at the license plate, then back and the car, wondering how my mother’s car got so dirty? And why was there damage at the back?

And how did it turn into a Chevy?

It turned out to be another generic little black car with a license plate only one digit off from my mother’s! :-D The car I’d pulled up next to really was my mother’s car! :-D

There were a couple of downsides to having several hours to myself, but no vehicle. With the shut down continuing (and extended once again, as of today, even though there have been zero new cases of the Wuhan virus in our province, which never got hit hard by it in the first place), there was no place to go just to sit for a while. No seating in restaurants or coffee shops available, and what stores are open are not open to simply browsing anymore. The other downside is that it rained most of the night and even the outdoor seating was wet.

Ah, well. I had a 5km goal in my Pokemon Go to meet, anyhow.

Which I hit rather handily.

One of the places I went through was a park near the lake, were I spotted this contented couple.

They were just fine ignoring me as I walked by. :-D

I also went to the beach.

Yes, there’s still some ice on the lake, some of which got blown into a corner against the main dock. The wind off the lake was freezing! That didn’t stop people from fishing off the dock, or families visiting the beach. There were plenty of joggers and dog walker, too. It’s the first day of a long weekend, and plenty of people were determined to enjoy it!

My daughter’s lunch turned out to be perfectly timed. It was nice and sunny by then, too, so we were able to eat comfortably on a picnic table not far from where she works. After lunch, I walked back to the garage and arrived moments after they’d finished with our van. I still had some errands to run that needed a vehicle, and by the time I was done, there was no point in driving all the way home, so I stayed in town until my daughter was done her shift.

It’s a good thing my to-do list for the day was kept flexible and tentative!

I did get one big job accomplished, and it was one I’d started last night.

We have had issues with our 20 gallon fish tank. Part of the problem is that it was next to the kitchen window. Sunlight tends to promote algae growth. The other problem seems to be our well water. While it’s great that we don’t need to deal with chlorine, when I did a 20% water change last spring, we had all sorts of problems show up, from a suddenly algae bloom, to pond snails appearing.

No, we don’t drink our well water from the tap anymore. I’m hoping, now that the sump pump is draining well away from the well again, these issues will resolve themselves!

We’d managed to get control of the algae a bit, though over the past year it killed off some fish and most of our plants. We’re down to one fish – an algae eater that doesn’t eat this type of algae! – and I’d fairly recently added a bunch of new plants. The snails, we were okay with, since they seemed to be helping keep the tank clean. There was some concern that they might take over the tank, but I think the fish keeps the snail population under control!

Then a few days ago, the water, which had been turning increasingly green, suddenly turned completely green and murky. We hadn’t even topped up the evaporated water or anything. The only thing that has been changing is the angle and amount of sunlight.

That poor little fish.

What we ended up doing was buying several 15L bottles of spring water and, last night, we completely emptied the tank and cleaned it out. I’d put some of the water in a gallon sized jar and stuck in the heater to warm it up before adding the plants and that poor little fish. The water was so murky, I couldn’t actually see the plants. I got them out by feel. At the same time, I removed sheets of algae growth that we couldn’t see through the water. !!!

The next several hours was spent emptying the tank, removing the substrate and decorations, scrubbing, rinsing and scalding everything we could – with no cleaners, since we didn’t want to accidentally poison the tank. I even kept what snails I could find. :-D

The cats were absolutely fascinated by the entire process.

In preparation for this, we decided on a new spot in the living room, found a old table in the storage shed, and set it up.

The cleaned out tank was then set up in its new location and filled with the bottled spring water and the appropriate additives.

The fish and plants, however, had to wait. The heater was set up in the cleaned tank, but it took quite a while to warm the water sufficiently. I wasn’t able to get the plants and fish in until morning.

We have an extra 15L bottle of the purchased spring water to top off the tank, instead of using our well water. Hopefully, this will solve the main problems. I don’t expect to never have algae problems again, but we shouldn’t get the crazy growth we had been!

Also, the cats are obsessed with all this. Susan is sitting on top of the big tank that we can’t use, since the part that broke on the filter during the move apparently is not available for purchase, even from the manufacturer. We found a way to cover the top solidly, and it has become a favorite place for the cats to hang out.

Now, they’ll have something else to watch from above!

:-D

Hopefully, the surviving plants will establish themselves and spread, like they are supposed to. I saw some pretty good root systems had started to develop. Once we get some good plant growth in there, we will get a few more fish again. :-)

This turned out to be a much bigger – and longer – job than I expected. But it’s finally done, and I think the fish is much happier in clean water again! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Something fishy going on!

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Today was very much a kitchen day for me.  We roasted three chickens yesterday, ate most of one for supper, then I de-boned all three, saving the bones and skin to make a stock.

Since I was tending the stock for so many hours (which will be a separate post), I took advantage of the time and started working on cleaning the kitchen.  You know, the pull out the microwave, clear everything off the counters, wash the knife blocks, kind of cleaning.

Our 20 gallon fish tank is in the kitchen, and I decided to do a complete water change on that.  Which meant taking the plants, and our three lonely fish, out completely.

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That is the last neon tetra of the 10 I bought, last year. :-(  The algae eaters were sold to me as Siamese algae eaters, but that’s not what they are at all.  I believe these ones are Chinese algae eaters.  We had a pair or Siamese algae eaters when we moved, but when we found we couldn’t set up our 90 gallon tank right away, I quickly picked up the 20 gallon tank we are using now, and transferred our plants and fish.  Sadly, the Siamese algae eaters did not survive.  They survived the drive over, but in the time it took to get the small tank, I think their water just got too cold.  I do want to pick up more; they eat a different kind of algae than the other types of algae eaters.  Plus, I want to get more neon tetras again.

My goal had been to set up the 90 gallon tank with enough plants to not need to use an aerator at all.  With the number of plants I have now, we are able to do that with the 20 gallon tank.  I do have the portable aerator, just in case, but haven’t needed it in months.

Unfortunately, a piece broke when I was disassembling the filter for our 90 gallon tank in preparation for the move.  It’s a connector for a hose.  I figured I could just pick up a new part after the move, but no one carries the brand out here.  It’s not even available on their website.  I can do without an aerator (though we do have one), but not without a filter.  A filtration system for that size of tank is not cheap, so it’s not like we’ll be able to replace it anytime soon.

So the big tank, on its stand, sits in the corner of the living room, taking up space. :-(  My older daughter and I were talking about what to do with it.  We might just put a board across the top, then cover it with a cloth, so it looks better. :-/  I’m sure there’s a piece of plywood we could use, somewhere around here! :-D

Meanwhile, our little fishies are now back in their home, with fresh water and re-arranged decor. :-D

The Re-Farmer

A long day – and yes, I got critter pictures!

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It’s the last business day of the month – payday – so it was off to the city to stock up for the next month.  I rather prefer to be able to do that in an afternoon in the middle of the week.  As someone who hates crowds and shopping, it was a LOT less stressful.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

I was actually able to get some photos this morning.  Much to my delight, we had 5 deer visitors this morning.

First to arrive were Mama and the twins.

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Her babies are getting so big!

And confident, too.  I caught on that Hungry Girl and Barbecue had shown up, too, only because I saw the twins chase them into the spruces!

At one point, while Mama and the twins were eating, I saw that something else was making Mama nervous.  Something close to the house…

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Yes, our very own cryptid, the Mothman, showed up this morning!  I saw her a few days ago, going by in the same area between the feed and the house, but other than that, we haven’t been seeing her at all lately.  It never fails; each time I see her, I am again struck by how big she is.

This was before I’d gone out to feed the critters, and so I popped out right away, hoping to see the Mothman.  Alas, she had disappeared, once again.  Not a sign of her, anywhere!

The other cats where happy to see me, though.

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Nasty Crime Boy, Beep Beep and Butterscotch dove right in.  Lately, the food bowls have been completely empty by morning – picked clean.  I’m not sure if it’s the cats that are finishing the food off.  I see enough tracks in the snow to know that some birds are eating the kibble, too.  Skunks come by, but they tend to be rather dormant this time of year.  I recall we briefly saw one before the snow, but not since.

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Squishum and Rolando Moon got a bowl to themselves.  Rolando Moon is why I tend to be surprised by Mothman’s size.  Rolanda Moon is so much bigger than the other cats, with a big round belly – we thought she was pregnant at first, but she is the one my brother had fixed shortly after my husband and younger daughter arrived.  She’s just big.  I see her and begin to think that she and Mothman are close in size.  But then I see Mothman again and… yeah.  Mothman is quite a lot bigger than Rolanda Moon.

Once back inside, I found Mama and the twins had gone, but soon after, Hungry Girl and Barbecue came out of the trees.

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Whatever was making them so skittish in the past week or so, seems to no longer be bothering them.  They seem a bit more relaxed, and tolerant of our movements inside.

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I just really like this picture of Hungry Girl.  Such a pretty lady. :-)

After this, my older daughter and I worked on our shopping list.  Last month, we got 3 big bags of dry cat food at Costco, as well as a bag of mixed bird seed to supplement the bag of bird seed we got locally.  I opened the third bag of dry cat food just this morning.  We decided to stay with 3 bags of cat food, but not to get more bird seed for now.  The mixed bird seed bag is cheap at Costco, but we decided to wait until we get the bird feeder cleaned out and possibly moved by the living room window (we might just get another feeder), and start getting bird seed in the spring.  For now, the birds we have this time of year are happy eating the deer feed, which has the same seeds as in the big bag of bird seed we got locally.  Last month, we got 2 bags of deer feed and there is still a bit left of the second one, so we’ll likely get 3 or 4 bags of deer feed, instead of both deer feed and bird seed.  At least for the next month or two.

We also decided not to get things like flour, as we can get a really good price locally, and I’d just got a big bag not long ago.  And we still have lots of canned cat food left, too, so we decided to skip that.  We also still haven’t even opened the laundry detergent we got last time, nor the container of cat litter, so a couple more things didn’t need to be added to the list.  We are well stocked up on quite a few things, still, so our list got to be focused a lot more on actual food! :-D

That gave us room to get things we pick up more rarely; a case of Coke Zero and a case of V8 – we don’t have bottle depots in this province to get our enviro fees back, but we’re keeping the pop tabs (pure aluminum) and the cans themselves separate from the rest of the recycling.  When we have enough, we’ll take them in to someplace that will pay us for the metal by weight.  It might take us a long time to have enough to make it worth hauling in, but we appear to have a lot of space to store such things now. ;-)

Because I wanted to check out an aquarium store in the area, we decided to go to the Costco closest to us – the one with the pharmacy that didn’t know wtf they were doing, and the horribly designed parking lot.  It’s a smaller one, too.  I just didn’t feel like driving to one of the two locations farther away, then come back to a store that’s on the same street as the closer one.

Thankfully, because of the time of day, it was not very busy.  A relative statement for a Costco, I know. :-D  We filled a flat cart with our shopping, this time using our hard sided grocery bags to help keep the smaller stuff from falling.  That worked out well.

One the the main things we are sure to pick up the most of at Costco is meats, because it’s so much cheaper than the local grocery stores – and mostly pork, because that’s even cheaper.  This time, we picked up a big bag of oranges, too.  Normally, we get fresh fruits and vegetables in smaller quantities at the local grocery stores, but my husband has been getting some dangerously low blood sugar readings, so he asked for some oranges. (Yes, we also have the glucose tablets.)  We got twice as much eggs as usual. I typically get the double trays with 60 eggs.  We go through a lot of eggs, yet never seem to have enough to boil up a whole bunch for quick snacks or to make egg salad. :-D   We also got an extra gallon of milk, to make more yogurt.

My daughter has a birthday coming up, so we picked up a big fillet of salmon for her birthday dinner, as well as a big bag of mixed baby potatoes (we will have lots of regular potatoes, thanks to my sister dropping off another bag).  I look forward to making a special dinner for her. :-)

All in all, I think we’re well stocked for the month again.  We didn’t even have much we needed to get elsewhere, though we did stop at a Save On Foods in the area.   That was my usual place to shop before our move.  I even used to work there, many years ago, and found it a great company to work for, so I’m glad to support it when I have the chance.

On the way out, we found the aquarium and fish supplies shop I was looking for – it was kind of tucked away from the road, so I almost missed it. *L*

I talked to someone there about finding a replacement for a part I broke on our filter system, when trying to dismantle it for packing.  I was hoping to replace all the hoses, as they are getting old and stiff.  Unfortunately, no one in the city carries this brand, and the other brands use very different hoses, and none of that particular part.  And I’m not about to replace the whole thing, just for a missing part.  For the 90 gallon tank, the size we need cost about $380-$450, depending on the brand!  After talking to him for a bit, he had a suggestion for me to try and use it anyhow – it’s stuck in the hose, anyhow, so since the part broke while I was trying to remove it from the hose, it’s not like it will pop off.  I’ll have to take another look at it and see if it can be salvaged.  I would REALLY like to get our 90 gallon tank going again.  That 20 gallon tank was supposed to be much more temporary!

Which lead me to my next request from the guy I was talking to; to show me to their algae eaters!  I had got 10 neon tetras to provide the oxygen/CO2 balance for the tank I needed.  Unfortunately, after a week or so, I woke up to a mass die off!  I found 6 dead tetras, and there were two live ones left.  I never found the missing 2.  Unfortunately, 2 tetras really aren’t enough for the amount of plants I have in there, though there is certainly enough plants that I don’t need an aerator.  I’m also having a harder time with algae.  Partly because the tank is next to a window, which it shouldn’t be, but I have no place else that will hold it – another reason I want to get that big tank going.

The guy first lead me to some golden plecos.  Now, I love plecos, but they get BIG.  When we got our first pair of little plecos, one of them killed and ate the other.  Then it eventually grew to over a 18 inches long.  Regular plecos can get much, much bigger than that.  I want to focus more on plants when I set up the new tank, with just enough animals to have the right balance.  Long term, I want it so that I don’t even need a filter, and have a self-contained, ecosystem.  Plecos would be too big and active for this.

When I mentioned that I’d had two Siamese Algae eaters before, but that they didn’t survive the move, the guy lead me to the ones they had, and I got two of them.

Here is one of them.

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Okay.  I wasn’t going to say anything at the shop, but I’m pretty sure these are Chinese algae eaters, not Siamese.  They are a lot smaller than the ones we had before, but the mouths are different, for starters.  Siamese Algae eaters do not have the suckerfish mouths to attach to the side of the tank like that.  We shall see as they get bigger to properly identify them.

The main thing is that they are algae eaters, and that’s what I need.  They will be good with my aquatic plants.

I must admit, even with the algae, it’s much easier to maintain a tank with well water than with treated city water.  I almost never need to use additives.

By the time we got home, it was almost evening, and I sure was happy to be back in our home in the middle of nowhere.

I didn’t realize just how much I’d come to dislike the noise and activity of the city until we moved away from it.  I don’t mind visiting it.  I just don’t want to live there.

I got a call from my mother this evening.  She was in the habit of asking me how the cats are outside.  Now she has started to ask me how the deer are, too!  They were never around when my parents were here; at least not regularly.  No one was feeding them, so they had no reason to.  She is really enjoying hearing about the antics of our regular visitors – and got a chuckle out of the names I’ve given them.  :-D

I also mentioned to her my thought of adding a ramp to the outside of the house.  I’ve learned that my brother who lives next door was going to build one for my dad, after he’d had so many falls, but then my dad went into the nursing home.  My sister does freelance house designing, so she’s got the code book for that sort of thing and was able to give me the details.  My mom was okay with the idea, which is good, since it’s her house, after all.  It would make things easier for her, too, when she visits.  She has an awful time with those two steps right outside the main door, too.

All in good time.

I remembered to ask her about the stuff we found in the horror tunnel.  It took me a while to get her to remember where I was talking about.  She’d forgotten about it completely.  She said she was storing stuff.  I’m not sure she completely understood what I was describing to her, because “storing stuff” doesn’t describe what we found tossed in there!  Then she went on to talking about how she never threw away anything that might get used.

Yup.  And then some! LOL  Plus lots of things that would never get used again.  Plus things stored in places that don’t protect the things in them very well.  Plus storing things in places where it’s virtually impossible to get at them again!

I’m all for saving useful things, but my goodness.  A line has to be drawn somewhere!

Which, I admit, is much harder to do when you live somewhere that has lots of places to leave things and forget about them.

:-D

The Re-Farmer