garden preparation

Progress: sun room door and garden stuff

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I got a little reminder today, of why I need to start using the sun room as a greenhouse.

The cats have already knocked the mini-greenhouse over once, and despite our best efforts at making sure the bottom of the plastic is pushed under the frame, the cats are determined to get in. Especially Susan! They’ve even clawed a hole in the plastic at one corner. As adorable as she was, taking a nap half in and half out, this is just not a good thing. :-(

The first order of business was to measure and cut the door down to size. We did remember to remove the hinges first, though. ;-)

I’m so excited. I got to use the chalk line we found in the basement to mark where I needed to cut! :-)

I also got to use the circular saw that was gifted to use last year. I’ve never actually used one before. With so many older brothers, I didn’t get to use a lot of the tools we had. Still, it’s pretty self explanatory.

I am, however, a lefty.

It wasn’t the straightest of cuts, but that’s okay!

When we put the hinges back on, we’ll make sure to line them up with the existing spaces on the door frame.

Speaking of which…

The door knobs on the replacement door turned out to be about half an inch off from the old door. So, while the girls scrubbed and cleaned the door, I removed the plate from the door frame, then measured off where it needed to be moved to. After a bit of hunting, I found a chisel and prepped the new location for the plate.

I won’t put the plate back on until the door is installed, in case I have to make any adjustments.

I also moved my seedling trays into the sun room.

The sun room has been reaching more than 20C (68F) during the day. It’s the night time temperature that concerns me a bit, which is why I also moved the mini-greenhouse in. The plastic cover will help keep heat in a bit, so the trays can be moved into there before it gets too chilly.

All clean! This is the outside of the door. It’s not in the best of shape, but it’s better than the old one, and will do just fine.

While it was drying, I decided to check out the future garden space where the old wood pile used to be. I figured I would use the potato fork and see how the soil is, where we covered it with black plastic.

The soil is amazing! The tines of the fork sank all the way into the soil. No ice in there at all, and it is so soft. It will be perfect for the beets and carrots we plan to plant there.

Except…

It’s also full of roots. You can see the dark pile to the side in the above photo; those are the cherry roots I’ve pulled up so far.

The area is just cris-crossed with cherry roots that we will need to dig out. I was also finding pieces of rotten pallet wood I’d missed last year, and some huge roots from the old spruce stumps nearby. We’ll need axes or saws to get those out.

Hopefully, the girls will be able to give me a hand and we’ll get this entire area free of roots tomorrow. Beets are supposed to be planted as soon as the soil can be worked, so as soon as we get it cleared, we can get those started. The ground is so soft that, when it comes time to plant, I’ll have to make sure to put boards between the rows to walk on, so I don’t sink. !!

That reminds me. I got a notice today that my soil tester and garden auger have been shipped and should arrive on Friday. The soil tester measures temperature, moisture and PH levels. The auger is a drill attachment, and we won’t need that until we’re ready to plant in the old garden area, probably in late May.

While I was working on this, my daughter came out with a respirator and a can of spray paint.

This is the same blue we used on the driveway gate. :-) It took an entire can to do two coats on this side.

Then, because it looked like it was going to rain, we made space in the sun room and brought the saw horses and door in to finish curing.

Tomorrow, we would normally head into the city for a big shop. Talking to the girls about it, we decided to wait a couple of days. Instead, I’ll go into town and pick up some more paint, so we can do the other side of the door.

Plus, takeout food. I am just dying for some takeout. :-D I have no idea where; the Chinese restaurant we normally go to is closed on Tuesdays, and the pizza place we order from doesn’t open until 4 pm.

There is, however, that fish and chips place that opened their summer time take-out window early, so they could stay open during the shut down. They’ve got the best pollock and fries I’ve ever tasted – and I don’t particularly like fish and chips in the first place! :-D

Oh, wow. I’m feeling hungry just thinking about it…

So tomorrow, we should be able to go the other side of the door, and get that garden area de-rooted.

The Re-Farmer

Starting seeds indoors

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Well, I’m glad I’d already written out which seeds needed to be started indoors and when. For some reason, I thought I’d need to be doing 3 starts, but I will only need to do 2.

At about 4 weeks before last frost (give or take a few days, depending on which town I look at), I had 2 things to start. Cucamelons and fennel.

I’ve never grown either, so this is a complete learning experience.

I got a couple of those domed seed starter trays with the pellets. These are self watering trays with a capillary mat between the pellet trays and the main trail.

For this seed start, I don’t need to use an entire tray.

The cucamelons will be planted in the chimney blocks currently sitting in the old basement. I have 8 of those left. With the spacing needed, I could plant 1 cucamelon per block. Maybe 2. So I am starting seeds in 16 pellets and will hopefully get at least a 50% germination rate. If I get more, I’ll figure it out when the time comes! It’s a completely new plant for us, so I don’t even know if we’ll like them, so I didn’t use the whole packet. I know we like fennel, so I kept more pellets for those. Then I added water to start hydrating the pellets while I looked at the seeds.

Hhhmmm…

With how few pellets I’m doing for the cucamelon, there are enough seeds even if I put in a couple in each one, but fennel packet turned out to have fewer seeds than I expected.

So I took a few of the pellets out.

Then I had to wait for the pellets to hydrate. I was also waiting for a call from the garage (more on that in another post), etc., so I kept myself busy with something that could handle interruptions.

I crocheted a basket. :-D

Once the pellets were hydrated, I used a pair of shorter bamboo skewers to lift up the mesh at the top, because I know my clumsy fingers would just tear things. *L* Then, I used the blunt end of a skewer to push the seeds to the right depth into the loosened pellets.

If I felt the need, I could have marked the skewer for different depths, but I was only doing two. The cucamelons needed 1/2 – 1 inch, while the fennel needed 1/4 inch.

I made sure to mark the packets for their seed status, because I know I’ll forget. :-D While I had extra for the cucamelon, I used up all the fennel seeds, and most of the pellets have only 1 seed in them. Hopefully, they will all germinate and be strong little seedlings.

Though the tray comes with its own cover, it will still go into the mini-greenhouse my daughter bought for me. That’s more to protect it from the cats, at this point!

My daughters and I ended up finally rearranging the living room, since my husband moved his computer set up out, before setting the mini-greenhouse up where we knew it would get direct sunlight.

Which is basically in the middle of the living room! :-D

I will eventually move the mini-greenhouse outside, but it’s still way too cold for that.

In one week, I will start the squash and gourd seeds. The remaining seeds we have will be direct sown outside, once it’s warm enough.

While I was working on this, my husband did some research and found a relatively local company that sells gravel and soil, with a price calculator on their website. Using that, we calculated that the amount of garden soil we would want to get, which is quite a bit, we are looking at about $650. We could probably get away with about half of that amount, though, and get more in another year. In time, we’ll have enough organic material to build up the soil ourselves, but we’re just not there yet, and probably won’t be for another couple of years. Buying garden soil would be a short cut.

Then we looked up their driveway gravel.

To get enough gravel for the driveway from the road to about the gate into the yard, including all of the front front of the garage, we’re looking at about $2100.

Ouch.

The main thing, though, is that the first batch of seeds are started for our first attempt at growing food since we’ve moved out here! It took a lot of work to get to this point, so it’s pretty exciting. :-)

Now, if we can just have a good weather year, this year, and not another drought!

The Re-Farmer