Category: Infrastructure

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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.

The extremely innocent young cat who definitely did not nibble and step on several seedlings causing the current fortification of the plant window and abandonment of the table as a plant staging area.
It looks like two or three of the five cuttings have “taken”, based on the new growth.
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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.

White granex onions with some moss curled parsley from last year.
Yellow granex bulb onions with some cabbage and chard from last year.
Paula had the excellent idea to show the Yukon gold potato (burlap sacks/top) and Kennebec white potato (box and plastic bag) with their planters. We’re having a big freeze forecast for next week, so I only used half of the seed potatoes in case these die. (Also, I ran out of containers for now.) I am putting potatoes in containers to make them easier to hill dirt around, and also because crop rotation when all you plant is Solanaceae is very challenging.
Briar says it was good sleepy sunshine to supervise in. She was pleased.
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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.

The plant window has some permanent residents like various succulents and a venus flytrap, but is mostly full of young plants right now.
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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.

The small fan. You can see the plexiglass gap there and a larger gap is at the top, which you can see in the next picture.
The cause of all this nonsense (Gram the cat) walks by the clamp I need to put back up to hold the plexiglass in place. Briar supervises.
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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.

Onion seedlings falling over from damping off, which is caused in seedlings ny overwatering. I set them outside in hopes that some might make it.
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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.

Paula insisted I have to be in the picture. Thanks for the picture and help, Paula!! You can see our rock and sedum garden in front of it.
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Data visualization for garden borders

Figure 1. Length of each side of the mulched area in front yard as a bar graph. X axis represents side of garden east, north, west, and south. Y axis is exactly the length of garden edges.

The household welder/chef has begun the process of edging the garden perimeter (Figure 1).

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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.

That long silver thing is my stainless steel coated hose. This is necessary because the dog is so obsessed with the water hose that she punctured several heavy duty rubber ones while attempting to get them to be fun again. Thank you to Judy for these beautiful sedums!
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Onion success in a dish

I haven’t had much success getting onion seeds to sprout the last few years. This time I tried making sure there was constant moisture by putting the seeds in a sealed dish with a clear lid (lid not shown). Now that the seedlings are taller I have removed the lid.

The best seedlings I’ve ever gotten for onions!

For those readers in Norman, the takeout dish is from Magic Noodle on Classen. Highly recommend. I get the spicy xian noodles.