Saturday, March 23, 2013

Just a lil closer...

     First off ( for the 3 people that read this ), I'm not gonna be on here all the time. While I like sharing gardening stories and bouncing ideas off of everyone, I in no way think my every thought is important. So that being said, keep low expectations of me and you will never be disappointed...Ha!

    I started my Chocolate Bells a couple weeks ago. From everything I've read I expected a germination rate of somewhere between 14-21 days. With those seedling heating mats...I had 7 of the 12 sprout within 5 days. So, in retrospect - invest in heating mats....worth the money! As of this morning I've had 4 more of them sprout making 11 for 12. I was expecting 75% but this is amazing.

 
      Once sprouted, I took the heating mats out and got the lil seedlings under the T5's.
 
 
so here they are 12 days from sprouting...just starting to get the 1st set of real leaves.
 
 
 
 
   I was thinking ( I do way too much of that ) that the openings on my Squash arbor may be a lil too wide to support a rope trellis.... So, I cut the roof apart and added 4 lateral supports.  Measured and painted.. reattached and waiting to bring outside for final assembly. I really hope this works... If it doesn't it will be because of some short sighting of mine... prob wind and storm sturdiness...I'll keep working on stabilizing it for weather.   
 
(BTW - NOT as nuclear red as my camera makes it seem to be).
 
 
And lastly, as I said before my plow guy hit the raised bed back in January. I took it as an opportunity to to upgrade and improve. I re-cut the sides and added and extra foot, also got rid of the OSHA staging plank..not sure if that was treated, so I cut it up and got rid of it.
Old bed was a total of 80 sq ft. (16 x 5 )
 
 
 
 
New bed is 96 sq ft. (16x6) - also turned the layer of cow manure I dressed it with last October.
 
...next is sifting/leveling and amending. See ya soon.