After adding more water and letting it soak overnight, we were left with a sort of peat slurry! :-D No fear of the seeds not getting enough moisture, this time!
To contain any potential mess, I set up inside the under-bed storage container that will eventually be used to hold the beer cups that I will be using as larger pots, when it’s time to start the squash seeds. It won’t be needed for some weeks, yet, and it was the perfect size and depth for this job.
It’s a bit hard to see in the photo, but you can tell why having something under the trays to support them was so essential. The first tray I filled is the slightly darker one on the left. It’s darker, because the cardboard is completely wet! Which means it’s also very floppy. There is no way these trays could be handled, without something solid under them.
When I planted the bulb onions, I was left with about half a package of unused seeds.
Not the shallots! I had just enough seed to put two in every cell, minus 1 seed. :-D
Though the peat was well saturated, I still sprayed the tops, more to settle the surface than for actual watering. When it came time to move the trays, I tipped them side to side a bit, to allow excess water that had soaked through the cardboard to spill off.
To get the trays into the tank, I had to take the light fixture off completely. All the trays fit perfectly, from end to end. If I wanted to, I’d be able to fit pots or egg cartons (dozen size, not 18’s) in the space at the front. That isn’t needed now, but when it’s time to start other seeds, we might find ourselves crowding the space as much as possible.
We freed up an 18 count egg carton this morning, so I checked out the fit in the smaller tank. One carton fits, of course, but only in one direction, and it’s long enough that we would not be able to fit in a second one. So I went back to my stack of flats and picked out two. The trays are 5 x 6 cells, and I cut them down to 5 x 5. That will allow two trays to fit in the smaller tank.
I will be adding a bit more peat to the container to absorb some of the excess water and leave it overnight. Tomorrow, I’ll be able to use the cut down trays and start the bunching onions in the small tank. :-)
Between these and the onion sets we’ll be getting in the spring, we should have enough onions in total, for fresh eating and for winter storage, to last us a year, if all goes well. With the bunching onions, I plan to dehydrate a lot of them, but will probably freeze some, too. We do use a lot of onions. I stopped to figure it out, and estimate we use about 200 yellow cooking onions a year, alone. Those are the ones we buy regularly. On top of that are the red onions, bunching onions and leeks we get more irregularly. We don’t usually buy shallots at all, because they are a fair bit more expensive. So it’s well worth the time end effort for us to grow a lot of onions! We won’t be trying this year, but I am hoping that by next year, we’ll be able to try growing leeks, too.
By the end if this year’s gardening, we’ll have a better handle on whether it’s worth it to keep growing from seed, or to go with buying sets. Growing from seed, for the amounts we’re after, takes up a lot of space, but there are more varieties available in seed than in sets. Either way, it’s going to be a trade off.
As a side note, we had company while I was working on the seeds.
I love that they’re coming around during the day now, when we can actually see them! :-D They are so beautiful!
When heading out this morning, I was on the lookout for Creamsicle Jr., hoping to get as much of a look at his eye as I can.
Much to my surprise, the cats that showed up this morning all came from either around the house, or the outer yard. Not a single cat was in the cat shelter!
Ginger came running up, right away, after the jug of warm water. Even Nutmeg almost came close. Nutmeg does let me pet him, every now and then, but not today. Ginger likes to drink right out of the jug (he’s more careful about it, after knocking it over once!), so I left him to it while I kicked the frozen water bowls out of the snow and knocked out the ice. The heated water bowl was mostly frozen over, but not as much as yesterday. I tried looking in the windows into the cat’s house, but could see nothing to explain why they weren’t using it.
While I was taking care of the bird and deer feed (yesterday, we saw five deer come to the feeding station!) I was happy to see Creamsicle Jr.
I had to walk past him to go back to the sun room after putting bird and deer feed out, which he didn’t like, but that warm water was tempting enough that he didn’t run away completely. I tried to move slowly and carefully to get these pictures, trying not to scare him away.
It half worked.
He did not like me coming close.
You can see some frost on the tips of his fur. All of the cats that came out had frosted tips! I don’t know where they were sheltering instead of their cat house, but wherever it was had enough humidity to get them frosty.
The one eye does seem to be more open now. The dark whatever-it-is under his eye and next to his nose is actually something stuck and dangling from a bit of fur.
The poor thing looks so miserable! It’s frustrating, that we were not able to socialize him more over the summer. I really want to get a closer look at that eye and maybe give it a wash, but not even Ginger is socialized enough for that. Hopefully, whatever is wrong will heal up faster as we get warmer.
At the time I headed out, we were still at -34C, though the “real feel” put us at -32C (-29F/-25F). As I write this, the app on my desktop, from The Weather Network, has us at -33C with a “feels like” of -38C (-27F/-36F). It also says our high of the day is expected to be -24C with a “feels like” -33C (-11F/-27F). My Accuweather app on my phone, however, has us at -29C and a “real feel” of -27C (-20F/-16F) with a high of -21C (-6F) with the “real feel” expected to be -31C (-24F).
It’s supposed to get colder again for a few more days, then slightly milder for another couple of days. After that, we’re basically hitting spring and temperatures are expected to keep getting warmer and warmer. By the end of February and into March, we should be hovering just under freezing. So in the week after this polar vortex is finally gone, we’ll be warming up by about 30 degrees from what we’re at right now. It’s going to feel positively tropical. We’re going to be breaking out the shorts and t-shirts! :-D
So I’m going to have to take advantage of this relatively warm day and head into town. Making our monthly bulk shop is out the window for this month. Buying locally, little by little, has really wrecked our budget. It’s the things like cat food and litter that is so much more expensive here that messes up our numbers. I know a lot of people hate on Walmart, but it’s places like that, and their prices, that allow us to have the room in our budget to care for the cats, and ourselves, at the same time. At Walmart and Costco prices, we easily spend about $300 a month on cat food and litter. Buying the same quantities locally would be closer to $600.
My original plan had been to head out late this morning to hit the post office before the general store it’s located in closes for the afternoon, as they do every Wednesday. However, the mail can wait. I’ll head out in the afternoon, instead. I’ll be heading into town, first. The package my husband was supposed to get turns out to be with Purolator, not FedEx, and now they’re saying we’re not in their delivery zone. They never said that when they first phoned him about it. It has been delivered to a depot in town and we’ve got 5 business days to pick it up. Fair enough. I can take advantage of that side trip to fill our gas tank (at a non co-op gas station, so we don’t end up with more than $400 in damages again) along the way. I’ve already gone over my planned route with a daughter. I’ll be going to the Walmart in a smaller city. They don’t have as much available there, but my sister lives not too far from there, so if the van breaks down on the road, I can call her for help.
I’ll be taking a route that will take longer, but the highway runs through a number of small towns. I know I’ll have a cell phone signal along there, too. My usual route would be first to the town my mother lives in, and the cell phone dead zone covers most of that drive. There’s nothing but isolated farms in between. From that town, I would cut across to a different highway, take the highway to another cross road before finally reaching the highway that goes to the city I am aiming for. The entire route is basically open land with a few farmhouses tucked away behind shelter belts, well away from the roads. The only towns I would go through, between home and this city, is the town my mother lives in, and the village near my sister’s farm.
I sometimes think I’m being ridiculous about this. I grew up there, and I’ve moved back to this area with my own family a couple of times over the decades. At one point, we lived in a house my parents owned, maybe 3 miles away from where we are now, and my husband was one of the many people who made the commute to the city. We are not strangers to these temperatures and road conditions, and didn’t think twice of packing the kids into the car and making a trip to the city just to see a movie. Back then, however, we had a car that was only 3-5 years old, and we were all younger and able bodied.
The van we have now is almost 15 years old and has well over 400,000km on it. We depend on that van more than we’ve depended on any vehicle before. Partly because, with his disability, it’s the vehicle my husband can get in and out of, and has room for his walker. Partly because it allows us to do those monthly shops that would never fit in any car we’ve ever owned.
Thankfully, we do have my mother’s car as a back up vehicle. It’s a couple of years newer than ours and has half the mileage, but has had a remarkable number of problems with it, and not just because of my mother’s terrifying driving habits. After discovering what happened with our van, I’ve already asked the mechanic about checking it over when we bring her car in for an oil change. My mother bought her gas at the co-op gas stations, too, so it may well be pretty clogged up. It would explain things like the terrible mileage. It’s still a relief to have it. We may not use it much, and the registration and insurance costs more than for our van, but being as much in the boonies as we are, it’s worth that expense to have access to a second vehicle, just in case.
Bah. I’m rambling right now. Nerves. I really don’t want to make this trip, but we just can’t afford to buy what we need locally. They often don’t even have any inventory left for things like the bigger boxes of cat litter (almost half the size of what I can get at Walmart or Costco, but almost double the price!). Other things, we just can’t get locally.
But hey! In the time it took to write this, it has warmed up a degree! :-/
After having to get creative to prepare our first tray of seed starts, we left the tray overnight to give the peat in the K-cups more time to absorb the water.
I didn’t check it until late morning, and the peat was still dry in the middle! The water was basically staying on top. It was better than before, though, so I went ahead and planted our first seeds of the year!
I used a skewer to make holes for the seeds and sprayed more water into the holes in the K-cups (the peat pellets were fully saturated). Then I poured some of the seeds into a small dish and used the dampened, flat end of the skewer to pick up seeds and transfer them into the pots and lightly cover them. Using the skewer works really well! I ended up using only about half the seeds in the package to fill the tray, and that’s with 2 or 3 seeds each! Then I sprayed the tops with more water – especially the K-cups – before getting a daughter to help me transfer it into the big aquarium.
I am not going to use the tray’s dome to cover them, as the high humidity can promote mold growth. Instead, we will be checking them every day, and probably spraying them daily. The tray is designed to water from below, to encourage the roots to grow downward, so we won’t keep up the spraying for too long. It’s mostly the dry peat in the K-cups that concerns me. I will also be leaving the light on all the time until the sprouts are emerged for a few days, then reduce it to about 16 hours a day. Hopefully, we will soon have a tray of shallots in here, too! Before filling any pots (if I can’t get more pellets), I’ll have to make sure to use a container to saturate the peat in, first, then fill the pots.
Meanwhile…
I’m a suck.
I’ve mentioned that a few times, usually in the context of cats, but it turns out I’m a gardening suck, too.
Last night, the girls and I were pouring over a satellite image of the property. We marked out the current garden beds, and we have been using it to figure out where we are going to plant various things.
One thing is for sure. If we aren’t able to get a load of soil this spring, we’re lining ourselves up for some back breaking labour, and probably a lot of failed growth. Last year, we basically dug small holes for everything we planted, filled the holes with a soil mix, then planted or transplanted into these in-ground “pots” we created. That’s fine for the small garden we had last year, but not so much for this year! The soil is so hard and filled with rocks, it’s difficult to use a spade or hoe. Even sticking wire flags into the ground left me with several bent flags from hitting rocks. We have so few tools here, we don’t want to break what’s left of what we’ve found! My mother still goes on about how we could get one of the tillers fixed and using it, but I’m pretty sure we’d just break a tiller, trying to use it! I couldn’t even use the soil auger drill attachment when we planted all those bulbs in the maple grove last fall. The original plan had been to slowly build up areas and increase our garden size over several years, but… well, then the world went crazy.
We have so many more things we’re planning to grow compared to last year, it’s going to be a huge job. Especially the area where we want to plant the tallest things – 3 of our corn varieties, and the giant sunflowers. We’re wanting to start going into an area that has never been part of the garden before, and has only had grass on it. Two of the reason we grew giant sunflowers last year was for a privacy screen and wind break. We’re still keeping that in mind for this year. Between tall plants, using trellises, and whatever we come up with to keep the deer out, we should be able to make a pretty decent privacy screen. We may be in the boonies, but the main road goes right by the garden. Aside from vehicles slowing down to watch the deer at the feeding station, through the lilac hedge, we’ve got our vandal and his creeping about to contend with. :-/
As we talked about what seeds we have now, and what will be shipped in time for spring planting, we ended up talking about other things we’d like to plant, and I showed the girls some things I’d found on the Baker Creek website. We have a lot of things that are purple (corn, potatoes, sunflowers, beans, carrots…). We had a blast looking up other purple things, and talked about having a purple themed garden. So, of course, I was adding all sorts of things to my wish list.
I really ought to know better. :-D
Yeah, you guessed it.
I made another order this morning!
Thankfully, seeds are still cheap.
When I placed the order, there was a highlighted note telling people that, because there are so many more orders this year, things are taking longer to process. For us in Canada, that means it could take up to 3 months for our seeds to arrive. That would be too late for anything that would require starting indoors, but that’s okay. I’d rather order them now, while they are still available.
So, this is what we’ve ordered (all links will open in a new tab, so you don’t lose your place. :-) ).
Spoon Tomato: this is the one that I really wanted to show the girls – and then we got sucked into the vortex! We are not big tomato eaters; my older daughter enjoys eating them, and we have ordered a mix of cherry and grape tomatoes for her, but when I saw these “micro mini” tomatoes, I just had to show them to her. While they are incredibly small (possibly the world’s tiniest tomato), they’re supposed to be big on flavour. They’re adorable!
Chinese Pink Celery: this is a new variety for Baker Creek, and one that was already on my wish list. I was thinking for next year, but I went for it. These are supposed to be easier to grow than other types of celery, and seem to be well suited for our climate. Hopefully, we’ll get them early enough to plant them this year.
King Tut Purple Pea: This was another one already on my wish list, and since we’re going with a purple/pink theme, I included them. We only have 1 variety of peas right now, anyhow, and I felt it wasn’t enough. I’d resisted ordering more, since we already have so many other things, but… it’s peas. Can you have too many peas? I don’t think so. I highly recommend checking out the link and reading the story included about them. :-D
Merlot Lettuce: lettuce is one thing I had not included in previous orders for various reasons. We’ve tried growing lettuce before, in our balcony gardens, and never had much luck with them. Plus, they just seem to go bad quickly. But as we were looking at the purples and dark reds, these stood out. Not only do they have an amazing colour (they are well named!), but they are bolt resistance and cold tolerant.
Lunix Lettuce: Every time I see the name, I want to say “Linux” instead of “Lunix”. LOL These have such deep, dark red leaves! Bolt resistant, and apparently great for hydroponics and off season low tunnel growing. We’ve been looking at ways to use poly-tunnels to extend our growing season, so it would be good to test these out.
Lollo Rossa Lettuce: This is a very dramatic looking head lettuce! Also noted for its great flavour. I’ve had no luck growing head lettuce before, but maybe now that we have the spaces that we do, we can make it work.
Dishcloth or Luffa Gourd: this one’s for me! We have so many squash already, the last thing we needed was one more but, like I said, I’m a suck! Chances are, we won’t be able to start them this year, but they seem to be having a surge in popularity, so I figured I should get the seeds now, while I can. Young squash are edible and tasty. Left to fully mature, the gourds are dried, peeled, the seeds shaken out, and the remaining sponge is great for washing with. I don’t think I’d use something that size as a dishcloth, but in the shower, they are great for exfoliating the skin. You’ve probably seen them in stores, along with the back scrubbers and such.
Along with these, we will also be getting some free mystery seeds that Baker Creek always includes with their orders.
This really should be the last of the seeds we order, but I’m pretty sure I said that after our first two orders for this season! :-D
When I headed out this morning, we were at -21C/-5.8F with a windchill of -33C/-27.4F
We’ll be getting colder over the next week, before we start going back to normal temperatures again.
It’s going to be a good time to stay indoors, drink lots of tea, and catch up on my crochet… :-D
Who am I kidding? The girls and I will probably be putting our heads together to figure out a gardening map. We’re dedicating a lot of planning for what will be temporary locations for almost everything, but we’re using our garden plots this year to help prepare the soil for when we plant fruit and nut trees in some of these areas.
Today, I was finally able to continue setting up cat proof greenhouses in our unused fish tanks, to start seeds.
What I wanted to do was line the tanks with rigid insulation where they were near walls. Since there is no way to lower the lights to be closer to the seed starts, I was going to line the insides with foil for reflective light.
I may not need to do that.
Here is the big tank.
I got photo bombed by a Susan.
I had three boxes with identical dimensions, which allow me to raise the rigid insulation floor high. As the seedlings get bigger, I can change the positions of the boxes to get different heights. I’ve got 3 boxes in there, but I might try to squeeze a 4th one in, to stabilize the floor better.
Because of how the top of the tank is designed, to hold glass covers that broke long ago, I had to cut the insulation to fit the opening, rather than the space I wanted them in. That meant the floor piece has quite a gap around it. The sheet of insulation I cut to size for the long, back wall had to be cut into thirds to get it in. Plus, there is a sheet at the end. The wall in the back of the picture is one of the original log walls. The wall at the left is an exterior wall. Yes, it has more modern (almost 50 years old) insulation, but it’s still pretty cold!
The insulation on the sides helps to fill the gaps around the floor piece, which stabilizes it as well.
At these dimensions, I can only fit two seed trays in here, which means there is a fair amount of space around them to add more containers with seed starts. I just have to figure out what waterproof surface I can fit in there to put them on.
I think I can get away with not adding foil, though. What do you think?
The second tank was much easier and faster.
Once again, I had to cut pieces smaller, to be able to fit them through the top. I only needed to add insulation to the back, which is against the exterior wall, but I added more to the sides to help fill in gaps around the floor piece.
I’m going to have to find something better to raise the floor. The orange box is a bit too small.
Photo bomb, courtesy of Saffron!
As you can tell by the dusty footprints, the cats like the lid of this tank!
At this point, I should be ready to start seeds in here. According to the package instructions, I don’t need to start my onion seeds – the ones that need to be started the earliest – until the end of March, but experienced zone 3 gardeners in groups that I’m on have already started theirs, and say they should be started now. The seed trays I have are too big to fit into the smaller tank, so I will have to find something else waterproof to hold seed starts in the little tank. I want to buy more seed trays, anyhow; I’ll have to take a good look at what dimensions are available.
There is only so much I’ll be able to fit in these, even if I’ll later be able to move the onions into the sun room and make room for something else. I did find something that I might be able to use, for when I’m starting the squash and gourd seeds.
The squash and gourds need more space to grow, and they are the things that need to be started soonest, after the onions. I’ll be using these cups, with drainage holes punched into their bottoms, as pots. The storage container is designed to fit under a bed, but the hinge on the lid is broken, so it has been languishing in the basement until now. I have a second one. Once I figure out what to do with the stuff stored inside it, I’ll be using that as well.
We have so many varieties of summer and winter squash, as well as gourds, to try. Depending on how many seeds are in each package, I may not plant them all. Some are packed by weight rather than number of seeds. I figure, at most, I’ll start 10 seeds each of the summer and winter squash. Whatever the germination rate turns out to be, that’s what I’ll be planting. If I get just a 50% germination rate, we will still have lots of each variety, and with the number of varieties, we should have plenty for both fresh eating, and preserving and storage. For the gourds, I’ve decided to start 5 seeds of each, and see how they do. One of them is an eating variety, but the others are to dry and use for crafting purposes. Curing them takes about a year, so the sooner I can get some grown, the sooner I’ll have materials to work with! If space in an issue, though, I’ll drop the gourds for this year.
I still have the mini greenhouse that my daughter bought for me last year, which can hold three of the trays that are in the big tank. The cats still managed to get into the closed plastic cover, and it gets knocked over easily, so anything we start in there will be done later in the season, and in the sun room!
With the trays I have now, all I need to figure out is what to use in the small tank, and I should be able to start the onion seeds very soon!
Before I get into various things, I want to share some cute stuff with you, first!
Our collection of baskets that had been stored in the big fish tank ended up on top of the piano for now. The cats love to go up there, so I fully expected them to take advantage of the situation.
It wasn’t long before I found Tissue and Leyendecker among them!
Tissue is in three baskets at once! :-D
The largest baskets, with decorations on them, are the ones we use for our family Easter basket. There are some smaller ones in the collection that we found while cleaning up the house, including a basket that used to be my very own basket to take to church for blessing on Holy Saturday, along with the family basket, when I was a child!
Here is some more cuteness for you to enjoy…
This piece of foam is what was inside the new washing machine when we bought it. Our old mama cat, who moved out here with us, immediately adopted it as her favourite bed, and now Cabbages loves to join “grandma” for cuddles!
The cats also like to bite off pieces along the edges and spit them out.
Our living room carpet is continually covered in cat fur, foam from this thing, cardboard from their scratch pad, and the dirt they’re still managing to dig out of some of our plant pots! The cats leave trails of detritus, everywhere they go. :-D
Our old mama cat has been quick to adopt any new cats introduced to the house, and is STILL allowing several of the kittens – now almost adults – to try and nurse on her, including Cabbages. Cabbages has been taking a long time to socialize but, thankfully, she is getting along quite well with the other cats. Grandma and Keith are her favourites!
Cabbages and Keith will spend hours like this, all snuggled together and napping on my bed.
Cabbages has finally reached a point where we can pet her regularly, and she doesn’t immediately run off. She seems torn between not wanting those big, clumsy humans clomping about near her, and wanting those scritches and pets. She will even tolerate being picked up and held, if only briefly. That is significant progress!
In other things, we warmed up enough today that I finally switched out the memory cards on the trail cams. That micro SD card I put in the new camera this morning, which had been used only once and did not require formatting in the camera when I put it in the first time, needed to be formatted this morning. *sigh* Why would it work fine the first time, after I’d formatted it in the computer, but need to be formatted in the camera, the next time it was used? The other micro SD cards I’d bought at the same time had done the same thing. I had assumed it was because they were not as high end, but that doesn’t seem to be the problem, after all.
Ah, well. I’ll figure it out.
With the bitter cold we’ve had for the past few days, I was not expecting to find much on the cards. Especially from the new camera, which has been just dying with the colder temperatures.
I was surprised.
The older camera was shut down when I switched out the memory card. When it gets cold and the batteries can’t handle it anymore, it shuts itself off. When I turned it back on, the batteries were still at half power, so it was just from the cold. There were still a few files on the card, though, all from one day.
The new camera had files recorded on each day of the deep freeze! This camera displays the temperature, and it actually kept on recording with an internal temperature of -25C/-13F !! Previously, this camera would die before reaching -20C/-4F! It did shut itself down during the nights; the only night files we did get, had a warning displayed in large red letters, saying it was low power. This camera will actually turn itself back on again when the temperatures warm up. I am totally shocked – in a happy way – that it kept working through the deep freeze. I have no idea why it would stop working before, but is working now, at these temperatures. I’m not complaining, that’s for sure! I did still have to warm up the camera with my hands, so I could see the screen, but that would only be a real problem if I had to do it during the deep freeze, because of the frost bite risk. Since I don’t even bother switching out the cards in temperatures like that, it’s a moot point.
This afternoon, we warmed up to -14C/7F, which made me a lot more comfortable about heading out to help my mother with her grocery shopping. She didn’t need much, but took advantage of having access to her car and stocked up on other things. I gave her some of my extra Mingle Masks, hoping she would use one instead of struggling with the surgical mask she normally uses, but she wasn’t up to it. Still, she has them, and saw on me how to use them, so I hope she gives them a try. She will actually be able to breathe in those. She still would have to use the type she struggles with at the pharmacy, though, so she might not bother. Frustrating.
After helping my mother with her shopping, I went back to the grocery store to pick up a few things to tide us over until we can do our big shop, whenever that will be. I had to pick up some bigger stuff, like cat litter and cat food, so there wasn’t enough room in her car for her shopping, her walker, and my shopping, all at once. Which is fine by me. The final bill was a shocker, though. I didn’t get very much, but it cost almost $270. Considerably more than if I’d been able to go to the city to buy the same things.
Bird tracks in the snow, found when I came home. This is nowhere near the bird feeders, but those are sunflower seed shells on the snow. Which shows just how windy things go!
There’s a reason we try to do monthly shops in the city. We save at least several hundred dollars every month by doing that, which means we have more budget left over to buy fresh foods locally. The more we’re forced to make smaller, local shopping trips, the more gets eaten out of our budget, and the less we can get overall, either locally, or in the city.
I did splurge on one thing, though.
I bought a 240 count bag of those red plastic beer cups.
I’m on several cold climate gardening groups, which are all busily talking about starting seeds indoors right now. I’ve seen people recommend using these as pots to start seeds in. They just need to have drainage holes punched into their bottoms. While I will be starting some seeds (like onions) in Jiffy pellets, and others (like corn) in toilet paper tubes, I learned from last year, that I need something bigger to start squash in. I did transplants outdoors too soon because they had gotten too big in their starter trays, only to lose most of them to one last late frost. By starting them in something bigger, even if the weather is not cooperative and they get in the ground later, they will have enough room to keep growing in their pots.
Ideally, I would be using biodegradable pots that can be put straight into the ground, with no disruption of the roots. That’s what I will be doing with the toilet paper tubes and corn. I’ve been looking at pots like that. The Jiffy peat pots are relatively inexpensive, and come in larger count packages. I would have ordered some last night, along with the seeds and plants I got for my daughters, but they were sold out. The alternatives were “cow pots” – the same idea, but made with cow manure instead of peat. They are way too expensive, though.
So when I saw the beer cups in the store, I went for it. They are the size I need, and can be reused. With 240 of them, I have more than enough to plant everything we have that need to be started indoors, and need the extra space.
Now I just have to figure out what to put under the the drainage holes. I can think of all sorts of possibilities, but they all require buying something, and that’s just not an option right now. Even if I could find them, they are “non essential” and stores still wouldn’t be able to sell them. (Like with clothes.) Maybe I’ll find something later in the month that I’ll be allowed to buy. The first seeds need to be started the second half of March, so I have a bit of time to find, or even build, something.
One more little step of progress towards our gardening. :-)
Tomorrow, we take the van in to the garage and hopefully find out why it’s been stalling. What we find out then will determine what we do and when, in regards to getting the monthly shopping done, and picking up the new hot water tank on warranty.
Ah, that reminds me. I asked around about how this location has been about medical mask exemptions and things like shields and Mingle Masks. It turns out they’ve gone full mask nazi, even to the point of staff following people around, harassing them and kicking them out.
That is going to be a problem. At the very least, I need to go to the customer service desk with the sticker from the hot water tank, and warranty authorization number.
I did find out another location has been safe to go to. As far as I have been told, I need to go back to where the tank was purchased, but that may mean only the franchise, not the specific store. The first tank we got was from a location in town that told me they don’t do warranties, so I had to go to this other location. The one that was recommended to me is actually a bit closer; just in a town to the north of us, that we almost never go to.
I’ll have to make some phone calls.
What a hassle even the simplest things have become.
Truthfully, the things I ordered today are not for me. They are for my daughters. My excuse is, they both have spring birthdays, so this is my gift to them!
Here is what I’ve ordered. (All links will open in new tabs)
Purple Passion Asparagus: This is the one that got the bug in my ear to order more! The new Vesey’s spring catalogue had come in, and my older daughter came to me, all excited about these. They are not only hardy to zone 2, but apparently are so sweet and tender, they can be eaten raw. She didn’t ask about ordering it, though, since she knew we already had so much.
So I ordered it anyway. :-D We do have some asparagus here; a few brave spears come up in the spring, but not enough to harvest. Asparagus takes 2-3 years to get going, so ordering fresh root stocks now just makes more sense. Once they’re established, they should keep producing for up to 20 years. We’ll be getting the 6 pack of these, delivered in the spring.
April Cross Chinese Radish: This is a Daikon type of radish. I actually don’t like these – or any radishes at all – but my younger daughter really likes Daikon radish, so this is for her!
Red Meat Watermelon Radish: This one is for both my daughters! A white radish with a pink interior and green “shoulders”.
Robin Beet: We got only one variety of beets this year, with a second variety my younger daughter had wanted being out of stock. It’s still out of stock. Both my daughters really liked the deep, dark, sweet beets that we grew last year, so these should be right up their alley. These are “baby” beets, maturing at only 25-30 days.
Black Form Iris: this is another one for my younger daughter. There is another black iris that she had wanted to get for our fall planting, but it was out of stock, and still is. I know she’ll like this one, too. Like the asparagus, this will be delivered in the spring.
So that’s it! Just a little order, at least compared to the last one I made at Vesey’s! :-D I think the girls will really enjoy growing these.
I found them while looking for something else, of course. :-D
Here is where, on the tank, I want them to sit.
The bar across the middle has extra surface area in the corners of the ledge the covers rest on. There’s lots of room, here.
The outer corners, however, don’t have that, so there’s a lot less margin for error in positioning the pads well.
The first step was to clean off the ledge the frame rests on. An old toothbrush worked very well for that!
Since the cross pieces of the frames have an angled edge, to better fit into the space, I figured it would be easier to place the felt pads in position on the ledge first, adhesive side up, then placing the frame on top.
The felted pads I have were from a larger package with mixed sizes of circles, plus long, narrow ovals. The larger circles were used up, and all I had left were smaller ones, and some of the long ovals. I’d hoped I still had some larger circles left. If I had, I would have cut them in quarters, and fit them right in the corners, but half circles would have to do!
Once they were in position, I lined up the cover and dropped it down, pressing just enough to make sure the adhesive stuck, then removed it to press the adhesive in more thoroughly.
In this corner, you can see the pad will protect the tank’s frame from the wire. This was the edge of the roll, so no sharp bits sticking out, like the edges I had to cut, so I didn’t trim it.
And this is why I lined the pads up to the corners of the tank, rather than the frame. Yes, there’s a likelihood that the pad will get pulled off where it’s overhanging, if I leave it like that (I will trim it later), but it also isn’t sitting on the screw head. It was supposed to be countersunk, but some of the screws simply stopped and would not screw in any further. I am not sure what was stopping them but, whatever it was, I was wrecking my screwdriver’s tip, trying to get them to go in further, so I stopped. The others were just fine.
So the corners are padded now, protecting the tank’s frame from being scratched up, should a cat decide to jump onto the cover.
When I was fussing with everything to prepare for this, I did have a kitten not only jump onto one of the covers while I was there, but also walk across on the light fixture! Not a problem for a light kitten, but a potential problem, if one of the heavy adults tries to do it. Thankfully, they seem to not like the new covers and are staying off. At least while we’re around to see! The few times I’ve seen one of the adult cats up there, they have stuck to walking on the wood and stayed off the wire and away from the light fixture.
Meanwhile, the baskets and other items stored in the tank have been removed. I’ll need to take a vacuum to the bottom to clean it, then see how my seed trays fit on the bottom. That will help me decide whether the rigid insulation will be lining the inside, or the outside, of the tank. Whatever I do with the sides, the bottom will have its own layer of insulation lining it, too.
It’s remarkable how handy that insulation has been. I’m glad my daughter bought so much extra!
I’m going to need the little step ladder to be able to access the bottom of the tank. I could barely reach to get the smaller baskets out!
The joys of being short! LOL
Another little bit of progress made! :-) I can hardly wait to see how this works for starting seeds!
Yesterday, I got started on making covers for our big fish tank, to keep the cats out. Today, I assembled the first one.
Of course, things did not go to plan.
Does anything ever? :-D
One of the things I needed to figure out was how to secure the hardware cloth to the frame pieces, for those inevitable times when a cat jumps on them. All I’ve got for materials is whatever we can find lying around the farm. While doing my rounds this morning, I went digging in the side of the garage where we store the lawnmowers and snow blowers. I knew there were some roofing nails in there, so I grabbed a while bunch and brought them inside.
Here is the first problem.
All of the nails were huge. There was only a single smaller size, and it was still too large. What I wanted to do was secure the mesh to the tops/bottoms of the boards making up the frame. Previously, we’ve used a staple gun to do that, but these were not for things where the wire mesh was expected to hold weight. Particularly not the sudden weight of a cat leaping onto it from above.
The mesh was going to have to be secured along the sides.
That meant cutting it with a half inch overlap on all sides.
I’m getting closer to the end of my roll of 1/8 inch mesh, and it really does not want to unroll at this stage! :-D I had all the boards on there to hold it down, and it still kept rolling itself back up again!
Once the mesh was cut to side and flattened, I affixed it to one side.
Normally, I would have used the staple gun to tack it in place, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. Which is really weird, because I’m the only person who uses it!
So it had to be tacked in place by screwing in the cross piece, holding the wire as taught as I could in the process.
Then I took out one of the screws in each corner.
I had placed the wood in place on the tank and marked each one with pencil, but once the hardware cloth was in place, I couldn’t really see my marks anymore. Plus, with the cross pieces a fraction too long, I had to make sure I didn’t line the side pieces up to the other end, or the while thing would be to big.
So I quickly drilled a pilot hole in each of the other corners of the cross pieces, then went back to the tank.
This way, I could place the long pieces where they were meant to sit, line everything up, then add a couple of screws through the pilot holes to hold them in place.
Then it was back to the basement to continue.
Once each corner was secured with a pair of screws, it was time to bend the wire mesh. Since the sides would be bent in one direction, and the ends in the other direction, I first cut out the corners.
The wood pieces may have been lined up to the tank, but no matter how careful I tried to be, the wire mesh ended up uneven.
Ah, well.
Once the mesh was bent, I drilled pilot holes for each nail (to prevent the wood from splitting) and hammered them in. The flat tops of the roofing nails were perfect for securing the mesh. Very different from how I had to do it with the larger mesh on the screen “door” we made to keep the cats out of the old basement.
Time to test it out again!
Oh, dear.
The addition of mesh and nails – especially the nails – made it wider. It wasn’t so much that it no longer fit. I could have let it just rest on the nail heads, I suppose. They would, however, damage the tank’s frame.
There was a very easy solution to this problem.
Flip it upside down.
With the cross pieces being every so slight too long, I used my Dremel to take off the corners at roughly a 45 degree angle.
It now fits!
Unfortunately, the wood is a bit warped, so it doesn’t sit flat, but it should still do the job.
There are still a couple of things I need to do. One is to find some way to cover the edges of the hardware cloth, for safety reasons. I’ll probably just use Gorilla Tape, if we still have some.
The other is to find my self-adhesive felt pads. The kind that’s meant to go on the bottoms of chair legs or the like, to protect floors. Since the bottom is now the top, the screw heads are facing down, and each corner screw is sitting on the plastic ledge in the corners of the tank. It wouldn’t be an issue, if I weren’t expecting cats to jump on it, so a bit of padding would be a good thing. I haven’t seen them since we packed for the move, though. :-/
Aside from those 2 things, this cover is done.
The other one will wait for another day! :-D The earliest we should be starting any seeds is in late March, so we have time! :-)
I have spent some time thinking about how we can convert our big fish tank into a greenhouse to start seeds in, while also making sure the cats couldn’t jump in.
The original covers the tank came with would have been ideal, but the hinges on those broke long ago.
Since a piece of the filtration system broke during the move, it’s just been sitting in a corner. To keep the cats out, we cut pieces of foam core to fit across the top, then covered the whole thing with a huge table cloth. It turned out to be a great place to store baskets in, and the top became a favorite place for the cats to hang out.
Until they broke through.
We ended up cutting some rigid insulation to fit and taping it in place, which worked much better. With their jumping from the piano onto the top of the tank, though, they’ve knocked even that right off!
What this means is that the cats are used to having access to the top of this tank. If I set it up as a greenhouse to start seeds, they’re just going to jump in, unless I find a way to cover it.
The tank has a bar across the centre and, after thinking about it for a while, I decided to make a pair of wood frames with hardware cloth, that will fit on each side of that centre bar. That way, if I need to get at the seed trays inside, I just need to lift one smaller cover at a time, rather than struggling with one large cover.
I fully expect the cats to jump on while I try to do anything in there!
Today, I got started.
The first thing was to take a tape measure to the inside of each half of the top, as well as the lip the original covers used to sit on. Each side is 16 3/4 inches by 22 3/4 inches. The ends and centre bar have a 1/2 inch lip, while the sides have a 1/4 inch lip.
I then grabbed a couple of pieces of wood I’d salvaged from a shed and started by cutting the long sides. Once I had 4 of them cut, I double checked that they fit properly.
They fit just fine, with a little bit of play that will make putting them in and taking them out easier.
While I was checking the fit, my daughter came by. As we were talking, she reminded me of one of her Christmas gifts to me.
I wish I’d remembered them before I took the measurements! This thing is MUCH easier for me to read than the tiny lines and numbers on my tape measure. It made marking the distance to cut the short pieces a lot easier, too.
Another reason I wish I’d remembered them before I took the measurements.
When I checked the short pieces, they were just a hair too long! The difference is so slight, I could probably sand it to size.
But I shouldn’t need to.
This is how the frame will be laid out. The hardware cloth will be sandwiched between the top and bottom pieces at the corners. I haven’t figure out what I can use to secure the hardware cloth best. Ideally, the wire mesh would be sandwiched between wood all the way around, not just at the corners, but I just don’t have the wood to do that. Nor can I think of anything we have that could be used in a similar way. Whatever I come up with will have to not just support the weight of a cat that’s decided to lie on it, but the force of a cat jumping onto it from the top of the piano. All sorts of ideas some to mind, and get discarded just as quickly. :-/
The thing I’m holding in place in the photo is one of the supports for the light fixture. The L bars insert into ports at the bottom of the light’s frame, so where they are is where the bottom of the light fixture will be.
Once I double checked how everything was going to fit together, I moved on to the next step.
Washing the pieces of wood.
They were probably sitting in the shed I found them in for more than 10 years. My mother tells me that shed was full of lumber when she moved off the farm, some 7 years ago, so what little we found in there was the junk that wasn’t worth stealing, I guess. :-/ Still better than nothing, I suppose. Anyhow. There was a whole lot of grime on them, so I gave the pieces of wood a quick scrub. They don’t need to be really clean. I just need to be able to handle them without getting filthy, and trying to scrub them after the hardware cloth is in place is just not a good idea! :-D
So they are now all laid out in the basement with a fan on them, do dry. I will continue to work on the frames tomorrow!
One of the recommendations for using grow lights to start seeds is to have the lights very close to the soil, and gradually increase the distance as the seedlings grow.
That won’t be an option with this set up.
I’m thinking of lining the inside of the tank with aluminum foil to reflect more light onto the seedlings. It doesn’t need to be from top to bottom; just at seed tray height. Which means I could probably get away with lining all 4 sides with foil in the big tank. I will probably line 3 sides of the 20 gallon tank, too.
The other thing to consider is warmth. We don’t have grow mats, and it’s unlikely we will be able to get any. We do, however, have more pieces of rigid insulation that we can put under the trays, or even along the sides closest to the walls. The LED lights won’t generate heat, but I’m sure we could find some way to warm up the tanks enough for seeds to germinate.
Progress on the set up has, at least, finally begun!
The Re-Farmer 