The Garden Thread - March, 2024

March 2, 2024 | Diana in WI/Greeneyes in Memoriam

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

The fire on the ridge made your incredible view even more dramatic!

Your slate roof should wear well and be a great thing to have in a hailstorm. (We just had one several miles away with baseball sized hail, fortunate to miss it!)

[Qiviut]

I definitely want chickens, but I have to be full time living at the house before I can do that. I also need to come up with a chicken tractor - either buy or build one. Both funds to buy & time to make are in short supply right now. There is a farm market fairly close by that sells eggs - chickens are pastured. The eggs are gorgeous - large & brown. I need to ask her what breed of chickens she has - I’m curious. I’ll just have to buy eggs from her until I can have my own hens.

My brother “threatened” to get us a Collie puppy as a house-warming gift. I say “threatened” because my mom is firmly “NO dogs” .... or cats. I have my driveway alarm set to a dog bark so that’s probably the closest I’ll be getting to a dog. The detached garage has a cat door so we may ‘accidentally’ end up with a cat :-)

The last couple of days there has been the case of ‘so much at the other house that I need here’ .... wish I could wave a wand or do a ‘beam me up, Scotty’ type of transport. I make a list when something comes up I REALLY need. I am spoiled rotten having a garage full of tools, pole sheds full of wood (even if a lot is warped). Once I get some shelving & peg board up in the shop, I can start transferring more in larger loads - right now, I have to pile things on the floor, no place to organize, so I’m not moving much from the garage.

Big items are starting to get marked off the ‘to do’ list. The most critical is getting the house roof repaired - got the quote & we’re doing it. Vanity is finally installed, replacing the one we didn’t like. The pole shed cleanout should happen before too long & then I’ll have a place to park things under cover like the trailer. Mowers ... got to get a mower up there. At least the weather is better and starting to be more pleasant.

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

The fire on the ridge made your incredible view even more dramatic!

Your slate roof should wear well and be a great thing to have in a hailstorm. (We just had one several miles away with baseball sized hail, fortunate to miss it!)

Good night!

[Qiviut]

Baseball size hail would put a real ‘hurtin’ on the slate roof. As the slate ages, it becomes more brittle and our roof is original and currently 62 years old! We have a large old pine right next to the house & a huge branch, big enough I had trouble dragging it out of the way near the porch, broke off either late Jan or early Feb (I can’t remember). It missed the roof or we would have had a real mess. We have another pine dying right next to the driveway where we turn in - we’ll have to get that one taken down & I’m going to price getting the one in close proximity to the house removed as well.

My stress level on the roof has come down considerably because I found a roofer who is very experienced with slate and can do the repairs we need. I had to go ‘across the mountain’ and about an hour away to find him. His timeline to get on the job is about 2 weeks, maybe 3 if we get what looks like a week of rain in the weather forecast. When the roof is off is off the “to do” list, I will be having a small celebration on the patio!

[Qiviut]

Oh goody .... /s

2 large broods of cicadas to emerge across Southern, Midwest states this summer
https://www.wric.com/news/u-s-world/2-large-broods-of-cicadas-to-emerge-across-southern-midwest-states-this-summer/

All across the southern and midwestern portions of the United States, large broods of periodical cicadas are preparing to emerge from underground.

Brood XIX, the largest periodical cicada group, is set to emerge in mid-May 2024 in over a dozen states: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. These cicadas, which emerge every 13 years, usually stick around through mid-June.

Around the same time, another cicada brood known as Brood XIII — which emerges every 17 years — will be surfacing in northern Illinois, but also as parts of Indiana, Iowa, Michigan and Wisconsin.

[MomwithHope]

I had over 26 orchids at one point. Different varieties, they are hardy but touchy as far as reblooming. You really need to know what they need as far as root health, light and temperature. Fertilizer not very important. I rarely fed mine. Scale (bug)can be a problem too. Phalaenopsis are the easiest which is why thats pretty much all the stores have. Is that the kind he is giving you?

[FamiliarFace]

He has given me two Phalaenopsis, and one other kind. I don’t remember the name but the leaves were long and skinny vs rounded. It did ok for a while. He lives in the Tampa area, and I’m in Indiana. I’ve always wondered if they couldn’t adjust to the temps or light differences. He keeps his outside, and I always put his in my sunroom, but it doesn’t get a lot of sun in the winter. I probably neglect watering correctly. The phals did last the longest, but never rebloomed.

[Pollard]

Low of 23 tonight so the seed room is apt to drop into the mid 40s.

My seed room temps fluctuate so much, the only hardening off they need is a little breeze and partial sun for a day or two. I could put a fan in the seed room to take care of the breeze part ahead of time.

[Pollard]

Choy and Tatsoi jumping up and will be ready for potting up or planting in a week.

Found just the right size socket to stick paper towel tubes over to use hacksaw to cut

50 per tray. I've got some 1/4" hardware cloth and am thinking about making two 1010 trays for lifting them out for bottom watering 25 at a time. I've got two aluminum baking trays I use for bottom watering. The hardware cloth trays can be carrying trays in general and could be reused year after year. Note to self - continue to save paper towel tubes. The hardware cloth trays would work for half a 1020 of any sized homemade pots or jiffy pots too.

5 up and anxious for 7-Up - not the drink which I never have liked.

With the slight grade, each frame goes into the ground a little less deeply. I'm going to weld some more pipe on the legs of #7 to get it back up to the full 2 foot. The right leg of frame #3 is off by a foot. Not sure what happened there. Won't be too hard to fix. Just need to dig a hole next to that leg and use a come-a-long to pull the leg over and backfill the remainder starting with some concrete and then dirt.

Setting these frames and getting them level with minimal equipment isn't an easy thing and I'm sure they're not perfect but I think the film will conform and I know the plants won't care. The peaks aren't in a perfectly straight line. That would require a bucket truck for me to get up there and run a string.

I probably should have spent more money to buy some stubs that these frames could slip over. Would have been easy to get those in the ground, level and lined up. That and I really needed a concrete floor to build the frames instead of gravel yard with a grade and low/high spots. It is what it is. A $400 base frame, including paint.

Speaking of paint. I think I'm going to go ahead and buy a gallon of gloss white to mix with the flat white to make a satin/semigloss white and put a second coat on them. I know from the electric sign business that satin white diffuses light. Gloss white reflects light and gave us bright spots in signs. The sun would reflect right back up at the film. Flat white just gets dirty.

Will be interesting to see how a white painted frame does. I would think the galvanized might get hot and might reflect the sun/heat back up on the film. The silver blotchy pattern might be like a bunch of little mirrors to some degree. Touch something galvanized sitting in the sun on a hot day and then touch something white. Probably burn your hand on the galvanized.

In the 15 minutes it took me to do this post, the seed room went from 58 to 67 degrees and 46% to 34% humidity.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Yeah. Not looking forward to that. Hoping for a rock-dry season so the suckers have a hard time emerging!

Not to mention how UGLY they are! *SHUDDER*

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Everything is looking great! So much progress! :)

[Pollard]

Our first year here in MO, we were basically camping the whole time and it was one of the heat wave years plus a cicada year. Sitting outdoors in 108 degrees and those things were loud I’m surprised we didn’t go insane.

[Pollard]

Hardware cloth trays won't fit in my aluminum baking trays but I still have a spare 1020 tray to use for bottom watering. I know it's possible to bottom water in the tray you're growing the seedlings in by pouring just the right amount of water in but I'm not there yet. I prefer a separate tray.

Maybe I'll get some 1010/1020 trays with holes next year but the hardware cloth works for now. It just doesn't like to lay flat.

I found some seed starting mix that isn't inert. Sungro Black Gold. Came out of the bag with just the right moisture to pack. When it's dry, it takes up water well. It has plenty of perlite in it. It's got an NPK rating of 0.09 - 0.03 - 0.03. Seems to work well with starting multiple varieties in a single tray where you end up having some with true leaves while others are barely popping up. This stuff solves the, to fertilize or not to fertilize, dilemma.

I'm thinking I might go for 6 of 7 today. I didn't wear myself out yesterday.

Gonna go see how digging goes. Ace it open til 5pm so if digging goes well, I'll run and get two bags of Sakrete and drop a frame in. Since the rocks are at about 18-20 inches when there are some and these legs will be the least deep in the ground, I think I'll hit depth pretty quick.

The last/end frame is towards prevailing winds so I think I'm going to try for 30" in the ground and lengthen the legs to suit.

[MomwithHope]

The long skinny leaf one was probably dendrobiums. I've had 4 or 5 over the years. Yes they do like it warmer and sunnier. I've had success with them and even a couple catteleyas, that got pretty big. I am in west Michigan. We have great southern and western exposure. I would stick with the phals. If you get another one and the bloom stalk is still there, cut it back halfway and just above a notch. It will grow again and bloom. I would also pull it right from the pot and check for rotten roots. If there are any just clip them off. Potting bark could be rotted too. Rinse the whole orchid under the sink sprayer. Rinse it off completely. Check under the leaves for and brown scale. You can just pick them off and if you get them all they will not come back. I always use a water spray a good watering once a week is plenty. Be sure the pot sits on some rocks or shells so there is lots of air under the pot. I am posting a pick of a phal I bought at Walmart April 2023. For 4 bucks. They had over 30 of them, headed for the garbage bin soon. I found one with two stalks, one spent and one had a few flowers left. Cut the bare stalk, and that thing has had flowers since then. The flowers hung on forever, bare stalk regenerated and bloomed twice and the stalk with the first flowers came back too. You can spot the old cuts on the stalks easily. All that growth in a year. No fertilizer and many times I neglected watering. Watch the leaves if they start looking puckered up and wrinkled it need water. You might try looking at Walmart right after Easter. Cutting the flower stem back guarantees more flowers.

[Pollard]

6 of 7

[FamiliarFace]

Thank you for the tips! I do think they’re beautiful! Will let you know if he ever offers me another one, and I’ll pick your brain, if you don’t mind.

[FamiliarFace]

Baseball sized hail would do anybody in, slate roof or not!

I’m blessed. The worst I’ve seen is bummy marbles sized hail, and that wreaked much havoc. I can’t imagine baseball sized hail.

[MomwithHope]

No problem I should be around for awhile. ☺

[Pollard]

A metal roof will hold up but it might not be very pretty afterwards.

[FamiliarFace]

Sounds like we will have cicadas extraordinaire this summer.

Lovely! /s