Can I tell you a story, Rick?

Time to catch up on the stories I mentioned here.

Corner update
The thermometer/hydrometer. I did look at the digital ones but I liked this one better. For one thing, it's a lot easier to read than the digital ones. In addition, it pivots. So if we're outside or don't like the angle it's at currently, we can always move it.

Garden bed by the grill
My next door neighbor had bought too many red cabbage plants so he gave me 4 plants. I did some research on companion planting for red cabbage and discovered that dill is perfect for it. And since we are growing cucumbers to make pickles... perfect! But dill seeds were to be planted in late March so I'm hoping that the plant will bloom and do Ok.

The other two gardens
I'm going to do sister planting in these gardens with Sunflowers, Cucumbers (the Sunflowers providing the post for the Cucumbers) and watermelons and pumpkins which provide shade for mulching and weed/insect control. But remember that I had lost a batch of Cucumbers because I planted to early? Well, hopefully this second batch will hold. So far so good. It turned out I didn't have as many watermelon plants as I thought I would so I'm going to plant a couple of pumpkins plants here. While I started the seeds to late, the plants should do fine. I just don't know if they'll produce a pumpkin and/or if the pumpkin will go to full ripe in time before the first frost.

My seedling shelves
As can be seen, I have a bunch of seedlings. And we have been trying to eat outside as much as possible so I had to free up my picnic table and this spot of the yard gets full sun all the time. The bottom shelf, well there was a bit of a mishap. I was watering the plants yesterday and the entire bottom shelf fell over. The logs holding the shelf up are not level width wise or depth wise. I had to reclaim the kid's table to put those plants on there. The shelf itself was very easy to make. I took a board we weren't using anymore drilled four holes, one at each corner, and bought some ropes. I cut two sections of rope long enough to loop twice for each side. Tied a knot at one end of the rope and put it through the first corner hole. Took the rope and put it through the chain link fence and then up over the top of the fence. Then down to the corner hole in front and back again to the back hole. Once the rope went through two times, I tied the rope off at the back through the fence. It's held up amazing well through wind and rain.

Seedling containers
When growing from seed and starting with a seed greenhouse, it's advised that once the seedling has grown big enough to be planted to plant directly into the ground. However as discovered with cucumbers, sometimes that isn't the best thing. So again armed with google, I discovered that seedlings can be placed in 3- or 4-inch containers as kind of a parking spot (which is why this is the size container plants are in when buying them). The best "parking spot" container are the ones that come commercially. The reason being that the best time to move the plant from the parking container to their final or next location is when the plant is too big for the container. This can be determined when the roots start to go out of the container. And commercial containers are very easy to get plants out of. Everyone however suggest to park the plants in Terra Cotta pots. Not so good. For one thing, it's not as easy for the roots to come out of the container. Most of the time, the roots start going up and eventually the entire container becomes one big root ball. For another thing, it's somewhat difficult to get the plants out of the container. My experience has been that after two plants grown in the same container (one after the other obviously), the terra cotta pots will break.

I soon began to use whatever container I could find. Recycling cans from soup/canned vegetables/etc. work great except talk about not seeing roots. The good thing is that metal cans hold water very well so while it's not easy to get the plant out, the plant will most likely succeed because of the water retention from the can. Just remember to put as much of the dirt from the can with the plant in the transplant.

Overall, I'd have to say that the take and toss cups such as this,
are the best. The roots can easily be seen and it is easy to remove the plants from the cups. But that gets expensive in my opinion. In a moment of "Augh, I ran out of containers and I still have seedlngs!" I grabbed the nearest unused thing which happend to be a zoo cup. That's when I found the best containers. Paper cups. They are reusable for at least the same amount of time as terra cotta pots if not more. I've used some cups 4 times now. They hold water exceptionally well. For this final batch of seedlings, the dirt has been amazingly wet where as terra cotta pots tend to pull water from the soil. True, you can't see the roots but it is easy to determine when a plant is ready to be transplanted. Biggest advice on that, it's better to wait and have the plant be too big for the container than to hurry and have it die due to shock. In addition, once the cups are no longer reusable, fill them with sawdust or tiny sticks or lint from your dryer and use it as a fire starter for your fire put or fireplace!

Plus if you use zoo cups, you get to do homemade Chia pets!