5.6.11

Right in My Own Backyard–A good growth spurt



The last couple of days have been really nice weather wise.  Both yesterday and today I got up to really cool temperatures of around 7° or 8°.  I don’t think it got any higher than 13° yesterday and today we are expecting no more than 20°  I don’t know if the low temps are any good for the garden, but they’re definitely doing me a world of good.

Things in the garden seem to be off to a good start; especially with the yellow and green beans.  I shot a video a couple of days ago that showed the yellow beans just beginning to sprout, and by that same eveneing quite a few had come up.  The green beans were just starting out yesterday, but as of this morning, they’re giving a pretty good showing too.  The radish plants are small but healthy looking and I think the lettuce and spinach patch are beginning to show signs of life too. 

I’m a little disappointed that my little cantaloupe seedlings didn’t make it.  I had started to harden off my seedlings before planting time, but then we had such cold temperatures, I thought maybe I should hold off on that idea.  All of a sudden, it was just warm all the time, so I thought it’d be okay to go ahead and plant them without trying to harden off.  Well, I recently learned that I need to harden off to get the plants accustomed to the new temperature whether that’s cooler or warmer than the temperature in the house.  I just assumed  that if it was warm out, it was alright.  Anyway, I put a few seeds in with the cantaloupe plants when I first saw them starting to die off.  There is one little plant there, but I can’t be sure if it’s one of the seeds or one last seedling hanging on.  I just hope I can get at least one cantaloupe this year.  I came so close to having one last year; it wasn’t full grown, but it had seeds in it and I used some of them to plant this year. 

I thought I was going to lose all my cucumber plants too.  Over the last few days I noticed the leaves looking yellow and sick, but this morning most of them don’t look too bad; compared to what they were looking like that is, and only one looks completely dead.  My Mother was telling me that she was listening to someone on the radio who apparently has the best cucumbers in his neighbourhood every year, and he says that he always plants cucumbers on June 13; no sooner, no later.  Now, I don’t know if that’s from plants or from seed.  I started some new cucumbers from seed in one of the cucumber pots I had taken my plants from when I thought I was going to lose the ones I had planted.  If I have any plants worth planting by June 13, I’ll put one in place of the dead one and I’ll also plant some fresh seeds and see what happens.  I want to put some in hanging buckets too.

Speaking of hanging buckets, I moved the stand holding my tomatoes and strawberries a few inches further from the fence this morning.  I don’t know. but some of the tomato leaves were dying off and I wondered if it was because they were touching the fence.  Last year all my hanging stuff was a bust, so hopefully, that little flower bud is a sign that I’ll actually get something this year.

I found a little robin’s egg in my garden.  I don’t know what’s happening, it’s the second one I’ve seen on the ground.  And this is more than just a drop because there’s no tree branches directly over the garden.  I wonder if it was maybe stolen by a squirrel or something and dropped on the get away. 

Other than painting more backyard ashtrays, I started working on another backyard project.  Dear MIL asked me to retouch her little wooden donkey cart.  I guess it’s just pressed wood or something that was painted all one colour except for a few details.  I decided to give it all new colours.   So far, I’ve done the cart and the hat.  I’ll probably have that done by the upcoming weekend.

Restoration Project Donkey Cart Restoration Project Donkey Cart_3

Donkey Cart
Donkey Cart with primer

Other Articles:

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous6/6/11 17:01

    The video was great, the guys at work thinks you did a great job. They said it took a lot of work, so keep up the good work.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Your post on food gardening is inspiring; nothing like home grown vegetables. Good luck with yours. Those robin's eggs? My money's on the squirrel.

    ReplyDelete