This past week has been mostly sunny, warm, and dry here in Central Missouri. Mrs. Augie's daffodils and crocus are blooming all over the yard, and the new baby chicks are warm and happy in the chicken house.
Been chipping away at the greenhouse project, and have it mostly completed. I need to put some sheet metal on the outside along the bottom to protect the poly panels from the weed whacker, install the gutter and downspout, and get some gravel down on the floor. Sometime before next fall I'll get the planter boxes built and filled up with nice fluffy dirt.
My seeds arrived from Jung's mid-week, as did the heating mats and temperature controller from Amazon. Air temp was 40° when I went out to check things this morning, and the soil temp in the starter cells was sitting on 65°. I've got the thermostat set on 75°, so it looks like even with the 1" foam board that I installed on the bottom side of the shelves, the mats aren't going to keep up without some help. It's probably good enough for now, but I think I'll need to put a radiant heater of some sort in there for the winter.
I had just enough potting soil on hand to fill the starter cells. The local nursery opens for retail sales tomorrow, so I'll swing by there after work and pick up some more. If they have tomato plants in the varieties that I want I'll go ahead and grab those while I'm there.
And the fish are biting now too. I caught and caged enough bluegills today to feed half a dozen people. Haven't seen any of my yellow perch yet, but I'll try again tomorrow.
WOW! The greenhouse looks great, and I can taste those fish from here!
A stocked pond - what a DREAM that would be! :) The only place we have water (a small creek) is down in the pasture - and the cows are always mucking about in that all summer. :(
One of these days, I’m going to go daffodil digging somewhere around here. It’s the first color of the year and I want some for my property. They line the sides of the roads but I don’t want to dig them up on someone’s land so I’ll find some on a power line or something. Just need a few to get started. I’ve got the orange lilies, white and blue/purple irises and some surprise lilies that way. The surprise lilies actually just popped up out of the orange ones a few years after planting those. I separated them out a couple of years ago when thinning the orange ones.
Evidently, I found a spot for the lilies that they really like because mine get 5 foot tall. Gave some to a neighbor up the road and when I dropped them off, they were in bloom and 5 foot tall. I dropped them off in big clumps 1x2 foot with plenty of dirt attached and set them off on the ground. They kept on blooming. The next year after he had planted them, they grew to 2-3 foot tall for him. He tends to mow them after the flowers are gone which might have something to do with it.