starting seeds

Converting the fish tank to a cat proof greenhouse, part 1: starting a cover

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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

Morning kitties, and I think I’ll hold off on that…

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When I opened the door to the basement to check on Beep Beep and the kitties, I found Beep Beep sitting in the basement window at the stairs.

She immediately bolted through the door.

She had to go through the several cats that were trying to bolt down the stairs at the same time! :-D

It’s a good think I was intending to leave the door open for a while, anyhow.

The babies are definitely getting more curious and mobile! Beep Beep is getting more comfortable with leaving them for longer periods, too.

The girls are calling Butterscotch’s baby “Nickypants” because his fur pattern makes him look like he has white pants, just like Nicky the Nose. :-D

After a while, I had to go hunting for Beep Beep to bring her back down, so I could close up the basement again. I found her on the kitchen counter! Bad Beep Beep! ;-)

We’ve been having some very chilly nights lately, so I’ve been keeping a close eye on the seed trays. I was happy to see some new growth.

More pattypans/sunbrust squash are emerging, a few more of the zucchini surprise mix are showing, too.

It’s funny how there is this one large sunburst squash that showed up next to the zucchini mix. If I hadn’t put those straws in to mark the different groups, I would have thought it was part of the mix!

Still no sign of gourds, though. There were no new seedlings emerging in the other tray.

I was supposed to presoak the carrot seeds a while ago, but things got busy and it just didn’t happen. Now I’m glad it got delayed, and I think I will delay a few more days. We’re supposed to get a couple of centimeters of snow tomorrow evening! It looks like things will warm up and stay above freezing, even overnight, by Tuesday, so I will aim to start the seeds soaking on Saturday. The video I’m using said it should take 3 or 4 days for roots to show, so we’ll see how that goes.

The Re-Farmer

Broken gates, sad seedlings and critter company

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The chain link fence in front of the house has two gates in it. One smaller, people-sized gate, and a larger vehicle-sized gate.

Both are broken at the hinges.

I had been leaving both gates open; we only ever needed to close them when the renter’s cows got into the outer yard, when his electric fence failed. With the people gate, when we closed it to keep the goat in the inner yard, the top hinge came completely loose from the pin. It still was doing the job, though – until today!

While I was working on the new garden plot, I heard a commotion. I don’t know how she did it, but the goat knocked the gate off its hinges, and got a hoof caught in the chain link!

She was able to get herself out without any help, but I had to just set the gate aside until later.

In the early evening, while I was in the pen, trying to get the goat comfortable with the idea of being in there with me, the girls were kind enough to fix the gate. Well. As much as it can be fixed, for now.

The ring around the post ended up needing to be lowered. The clasp on the gate side was twisted open, and has been closed up again around the pin, as much as we can. The bottom one, at least, just needed the pin straightened out, then it could be slipped right into the clasp.

Unfortunately, the other post has shifted, so while the latch parts now line up again (with a bit of adjusting), the post is leaning too far away for the latch to catch. So we’ll just use the rubber cord that was already on the fence when we moved here. :-D

The vehicle gate has been left as is. I don’t know if we’ll even bother trying to fix the hinges on that one. They are pretty twisted up, but at least they can’t be knocked to the ground, as they currently are.

We partially succeeded in getting the goat to go into the pen, then let her be, so as not to create bad associations with the pen. We still wanted to be out and around her, though, so it was a good time to start soaking the new garden plot.

She and Potato Beetle kept us company!

The cats are still intimidated by her, but their curiosity seems to be slowly overcoming their nervousness!

Also, we need to pick up a new 100 ft hose. The old ones, in spite of my repairs last year, are not holding out well! The only good hose we have right now is the new 50 ft hose we picked up last fall. With two hoses together to make 100 ft, it doesn’t reach the plot, so we can’t set up a sprinkler. We just have to spray it from a short distance away.

We will be giving the garden plot thorough waterings over the next few days, while I start the carrot seeds germinating indoors. According to the video, it should take up to 4 days. We’re not expecting any rain in that time, so it’s up to us to get the soil watered deeply.

As for the seeds I started in trays…

This is the tray with all squash seeds. No gourds have come up at all, yet. The middle is the “summer surprise” mix and, so far, I’m thinking only one variety as started growing. On the right are the patty pans, and only a couple have showed up, there.

These are the cucamelons, and I’m actually rather pleased with how many have sprouted, so far.

Once I see how many have successfully sprouted for transplants, I’ll have a better idea of how I need to prep the garden area, and what I need for trellises. I was going to build those in advance, but I decided to see how many sprout, first, so I know how many I’ll need. From the looks of it, that was a good decision.

Then there is the fennel.

I’m rather disappointed with these. The only ones that have sprouted where the ones that showed up while it was still set up in the living room. They got really leggy, immediately, and no other seeds have sprouted! We might not have any fennel at all this year, if this doesn’t improve.

Meanwhile, I got notified by Veseys, with a tracker number, that our Yukon Gem potatoes have been shipped. They are expected to arrive in 8 days, so we have time to prepare where we want to plant them.

Thankfully, the weather is pleasant during the day, though temperatures are still dipping below freezing overnight.

There is lots to get done outside in the next little while!

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