an ounce of prevention...

i knew a freeze was predicted last night. i thought of bringing the salad box in, or at least covering it. but, i was really tired from getting up early to see our guests off, for their early morning flight back to L.A.

i went to bed early, and thought of the delicate little seedlings outside, not one bit.
woke up to some frost covered plants, and more regret than i can handle this morning. we'll find out later who survived. right now, it's too soon to tell.

return

i guess my garden blogging is as seasonal as my garden. we've had two days of spring-like weather, and now, I'M BACK, BABY! here's a couple of shots of the garden, and the cold frame, buried deep in snow.



re: the cold frame
i failed to understand that the sunlight falls in different places in the winter, than it does in the summer. thus, my lovely cold frame was in full shade all winter long. it is shaded by the building (our storage space/art studio) just south of the bed. needless to say, there was not much going on in there all winter. however, two broccoli plants, 3 kale, one parsley, and a micro lettuce sprout did survive to see the sunlight, which is now beginning to fall on that box.




i guess it will make a good place to get an early start on some plants. plus, carl spotted one little broccoli flower! i sowed some arugula seeds in there yesterday, and started a salad box on the porch, with cold-loving greens.



today, the warmest one yet (at 75 degrees!), i spent most of the day outside, in the garden. my seed order arrived too, along with a new rain gage for carl, and an inexpensive soil testing kit. i don't know if i have the courage to test the soil. i don't really want to know how bad it is...

................

last fall i went to a worm composting workshop at the wonderlab, where, for $10, i got information about vermiculture, and came home with a worm-composting system, including the worms. the bin is made from 3 five-gallon buckets, with holes drilled in the lid, as well as the bottoms of two of the buckets. i've been feeding the worms all winter, and keeping them in the insulated studio. they've done really well, and have been very easy to deal with. today, i dumped the buckets, and attempted to sort worms, bedding and half-eaten food from the worm castings, which are the good stuff, for the garden. it was a bit tedious, but i ended up with a dump truck full of compost. a tonka truck load, that is. i haven't decided which bed with get this yummy treat.



i also tried to turn one of our compost bins, and dug out some (mostly)composted stuff from the bottom of the bin. i spread that on a bed that i think i'll fill with spinach and other spring greens. the main garden area that i worked and planted last year is okay for some things, but once the oak tree fills out, it gets too much shade. so, i'm thinking it is a good spot for the early greens and peas. and, in spite of the lack of full sun, beans, carrots, tomatoes and basil did fine there last year. i moved my pea trellis, and planted peas!

peas pop UP!

that's a command. from cosmo. we planted them in the ground 19 days ago, and still, not a single one has sprouted. our next door neighbor's peas are up and growing fast, and so are the ones i started indoors, and transplanted to the garden. i am not sure what happened. the ones i started indoors were soaked for a day in a vitamin C solution. they germinated in 4 days. i used seeds from the same package when i direct seeded in the garden, but i did not soak them first.

i soaked a few more yesterday, and have planted them indoors today. i wanted to try again outside, but today it just feels too cold to put anything in the ground.

last week we had lovely weather, and i did a lot of digging in the garden. i prepared two more beds, and in the process of making paths through the plot, i ended up with raised beds. i feared they would collapse without some support, so i staked some boards around them. i think it all looks rather funny, but it will work. cosmo stays out of the beds if he has paths and stepping stones to follow.



i am so anxious to plant everything, but i know i still have weeks to wait.

sigh.

first failures

yesterday was one of those days where it seemed i had to do everything, at least three times, the wrong way before i got anything right.

i wanted to transplant some seedlings to larger pots, they were getting kind of leggy and out of control. it was silly of me to plant these flower seeds indoors in the first place, and i have made a note in my garden book to only start tomatoes indoors next year. in any case, i still had these plants to deal with, so i prepared some containers. the "potting soil" i had picked up turned out to be some crappy top soil, so i went to the nursery to get something more suitable for seedlings. the stuff i came home with was not much better, and it was very wet and impossible to work with. i pushed through though, and re-potted about 24 fragile flower starts. i really don't have room for them indoors, at my little seed station, but i thought i could make it work somehow. it was such a pretty day, with sunshine all day, i decided to let them bask in the sun for while before i brought them inside. after dinner we went back outside to play, and all of the seedlings looked shocked and nearly lifeless. i guess it got a bit too cold for them. i am pretty sure it was the temperature (or possibly the sun?), and not the transplanting that did them in, because i had some marigolds out there too, which i had not moved, and they looked the same. i rushed them all in under the warmth of the grow lamp. today, it looks like some will survive, but most of them will not.

i feel a mixture of regret and relief. i wish i'd done things differently, but then again, i know i can direct seed more flowers later this month, and now i have plenty of room indoors to nurture my tomatoe plants, which are very healthy and beautiful (they never went out yesterday). and i guess i've experienced an important lesson in gardening...sometimes, things die. sure, i could have prevented that from happening this time, but, as it turned out...it was just one of those days. my bad luck was not limited to gardening efforts either. it was everything.

lucky for me, today is another day.