After thinking about what Judy and I have been texting about on snow vs ice and the extreme and unusual cold impending, I decided to cover the biggest part of every strawberry bed, even the backyard ones. I hope it will snow as forecast on Sunday before the most extreme cold for insulation.
Window rearranging
Some guest plants are departing, so the Salvia greggii cuttings are moving into the plant window where it’s safer from the cat.
Spring planting! It’s going to freeze next week!
Paula and I were going to plant things tomorrow, but it’s looking quite chilly. It’s just gorgeous out right now. So we spent a half an hour or so and got two kinds of onions (yellow granex and white granex) from sets in the beds, two kinds of potatoes in containers (experimenting with burlap sacks, potting soil bag, and cardboard boxes to make hilling them easier to get more potatoes), and seeds of French breakfast radish, green wave mustard, and Oregon sugar pod II pea. The peas we already have a few little vines of but I figured another round wouldn’t hurt to replace some since they blanch and freeze well if we get a lot.
Plant window ventilation
No more cases of damping off since Wes has added the fan for me. Many plants were ready for watering! So I think the fan is helping dry things out.
Airflow to prevent damping off?
Wes rigged up a small fan with power supply to pull air through the plant window. Fingers crossed it works! There’s always taking the baby plants in and out each day for sunshine but I’d really rather not. Because I’m lazy.
Damping off fungus attacks
Well we are having some damping off fungus in the plant window. Lost the only surviving tommy toe tomato seedling and a lot of onion seedlings are falling over. I had hoped we left enough air circulation despite our cat blocking plexiglass but apparently not. The chef is looking into tiny fans to put there. I’ll have to start another tommy toe too.
Mulching the peach tree
Paula came over this afternoon for a masked visit outside. We put down cardboard around the new peach tree and covered it with cedar mulch.
Data visualization for garden borders
The household welder/chef has begun the process of edging the garden perimeter (Figure 1).
New (old) reference book!
Mom found this book for me! Very excited to read it!
Sedums for terrible rocky pile of old roots
These are not native or edible, but they sure will be useful to keep other plants out and shade the soil for my nearby strawberries and mealy blue sage. I planted some out near the curb last fall and today finally planted some rooted stems in a nook by our porch. There was a big sweetgum tree there lifting the foundation that we had to remove. This has left a weird combination of rotting roots, and probably several past owners’ worth of decorative pebbles AND wood mulch. A real great growing environment as you might guess.