Sorry about such a long gap between updates. We have been very busy doing stuff, and we took a break for three days at the beginning of the week to drive down to Oregon and play on the beach. During that time, we were too busy hanging out together and watching the children run in the sand and seeing museaums and such to catch up on blogging.
Since comeing back, we have been too busy catching up on the work we didn’t do while gone, and several projects have all come due at once, so we have not caught up on blooging.
We will try to make up for that in the next few days.
One thing we did do before leaving on Monday was get all of our surviving plant starts in the the ground. This has been a rough year for our plant starts in the cold frames. The temperatures have been fluctuating pretty wildly, from 33 degrees at night to 70 degrees during the day, which is far too warm for a cold frame on a composite deck. The deck heats up in the sunlight, and the heat gets trapped under the cold frame, even with the automatic vent. Unless someone is home constantly to monitor the temperature and open and close the top, (which is not the case because, alas, Mommy and Daddy both ahve to work for a living), the heat from above and below combines to cook some of our baby plants.
Rather than leave them unattended for three days, we decided it was safer just to put them in the ground.
The first step, however, was to repair the 3/4 galvanized Tee that froze earlier this year. Fortunately, had one lying around in the shop, and recently installed a vice, so it was a pretty quick job. Unfortunately, in the process, the riser twisted and…
Ripped the thin-wall poly pipe that feeds it from the water main.
Lesson learned. Never, ever, every, buy thin-wall poly. Pay the extra money, buy the thick wall stuff. Now that whole branch needs to be dug up and re-plumbed, because apparently (according to the plumbers I have talked to) thin-wall poly does not repair worth a darn.
I might put in a temporary patch and hope it holds until mid summer, but that job is now on the to-do list.
Some of our starts got a little leggy. Next year I want to upgrade to grow-lights.
But the real issue is we just don’t have the time to check on them and care for them the way they need.
Soil temperatures continue to hover around 54 degrees. Peas and radishes are doing well, not much else is really interested in coming up. Maybe next spring we will make a low tunnel and see if we can warm one of the beds up early.
Summer cabbage and broccoli planted. This garden is going to be a lot less ambitious than last year’s. We are still working to figure out what works, and get a crop rotation set up, and then once we have that, expand production in the next 2-3 years.
With the irrigation system broken, and time ticking away, and needing to be on our way to our trip, Daddy cobbled together two sprinklers and a timer that covers all the growing crops. Not very efficient, most of the water falls on the paths and on the empty beds, but there you have it. That’s what we had time for.
Haste makes waste. I planted from memory instead of consulting my diagram, and planted all the cucurbits in bed 6, instead of bed 5 as planned. I have no idea how that is going to mess with our planned crop rotation. Oh well. We’ll figure it out.
Little Farm in the Big City 