The Summer Begins in Earnest! ...and in Fort Collins

I hope that title made you at least smile. My dad used to say, "It's raining in earnest! And in Maryland." It would make me and my brother crack up.

Anyway, on to the tasks at hand. There are many! They are plentiful. They can not wait! And yet, they have waited, because I've been busy and then out of town. But now that I've returned from my brief visit home, the garden takes first priority.

It's amazing how many weeds can appear in a mere five days. That's all I was gone for - five days! - but the weeds took advantage of it and were waiting for me when I returned. It's almost as if they knew... So. First garden task is weeding. Ben and I did some of that yesterday, and removed the largest ones, but we mostly just skimmed the garden looking for the big bad guys. Today, I shall expend a greater effort scouring the soil for little weedy menaces. Also, I asked Ben to just leave some pretty darn big dandelions yesterday; I'd rather get them with a trowel to make sure I get the whole dang taproot!

Next, I shall remove the netting from over the peas, which, by the way, grew most vigorously in my absence! One of them is starting to twine its tender tendrils around the netting. This I will not allow, because as the pea grows, it will be forced to either come through the netting or grow up and over the arch that the netting forms as it follows the hoops - this will not only make harvest difficult, but it will also block light from the other peas. the netting must be removed from the peas now or never, because the longer I leave it, the more peas will attach themselves to it.

After I remove the netting, I'll need to set up trellises for the peas to climb on. Some will be able to climb on the fence, but the fence isn't up yet - maybe Anne Marie and I will spray paint some fence pieces today and then attach them, but she has some other obligations, so that might have to wait another day. Sadly, the swingset is right next to the peas and onions, and of course this is the play area of choice for Louis' children, including the infamous Joseph. We shall have to devise a way to keep him off of that side of the swingset, lest he fall on the unprotected peas and destroy the crop. I'm thinking some kind of gate; maybe I can create a barrier using the netting from the peas, or something.

I also need to transplant some of the seedlings from their containers in the coldframe into the garden. Chief among these are the cabbages, kale, broccoli (the ones in the apartment as well), and fennel. The fennel may go in Ben's herb garden; not sure yet. I'll be referring to my Mother Earth News Vegetable Garden Planner for placement of these crops (see new album on our Facebook page!).

Speaking of transplants, I need to put the eggplant and peppers in some individual containers. They're getting crowded too, and even though it'll soon be time to put them in the garden, I want them to get a little stronger and grow some more roots in individual containers.

The beets, as I have mentioned previously, have sprouted in clusters (this is supposed to happen). This is great, because it means they're healthy, and it looks really cool - however, I'll need to thin each cluster down to one plant so that plant will form a nice-looking root instead of a lumpy conglomeration of the roots of all its siblings. This is a fairly urgent task, because the beet seedlings are getting rather large.

So, our To-Do List this week is as follows:
1. Weed!
2. Thin beet seedlings.
3. Take netting off peas.
4. Put up trellises for peas.
5. Construct anti-child barrier to prevent entry into pea area.
6. Start fence latticework for peas to climb on.
7. Transplant seedlings into garden.
8. Transplant eggplant and peppers into individual containers.
9. Plant most of the cucurbits.
- the following are continued from the previous post -
10. Plant more carrots and beets.
11. Extend hoop-and-netting system.

Now for some updates:
The carrots have finally sent up some true leaves! This is very exciting, because these seedlings have been up for over a week with no tangible sign of true leafage.

The beets and peas, as mentioned above, are looking fabulous.

The remaining onions look pretty darn good. There is one red onion that I need to keep an eye on - the leaves are looking a tad wilty, and it seems to be significantly smaller than most of its buddies. Hopefully it's not another case of mold, but I guess we'll see.

The potatoes have finally sent out some real leaves! The Colorado Rose ones have, anyway. The mystery white ones that we got from the Food Co-op haven't sent any real leaves out from their buds yet, as far as I can tell.

The strawberries are looking dang fine. One that had come back from the dead is dead yet again. But who knows? Maybe it'll come back again! I'm hoping for some fruit out of those guys in the next few weeks.

The raspberries are looking fantastic! I can hardly tell which were the ones I'd transplanted anymore, because they have made such a comeback from their transplanting ordeal. I don't expect fruit from those little guys this season, but they're looking really healthy - and I guess you never know. The plants that Anne Marie already had have bloomed a little, so it looks like we'll definitely get a small harvest from them (not surprising - Ben told me he got a good deal of fruit out of them last July).

That's all for now! More updates later. Thanks for your patience as I've come and gone from the blog these last few weeks, and as always, thanks for reading!

WOG out.

More Updates, and the Sad Tale of Several Onions

I went over to WOG this morning, and made the usual rounds. Watered the babies in the bedroom - it's still too cold to put them out; hopefully it will warm up soon. I also watered the strawberries and raspberries. The raspberries are looking good, and so are most of the strawberries. Sadly, some of the strawberries are severely wilted - possibly because of inadequate or damaged roots - and may die. But on the bright side, their brethren will fill in the gaps within the next couple of seasons, if any do die.

The peas are coming in strong, more every time I look. This is fantastic news - I adore peas. The only problem is figuring out when to remove the anti-cat netting, and how. And when I do, how will we keep the beets and carrots protected? Ah, well. I suppose we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

The biggest news of the day is more onion issues. I gently dug out three wilty-looking red onions to see how their bulbs were doing, and discovered blue mold spots on all of them. This is not good! I did some research, and it turns out this is a soil-borne disease, and can exist in the soil on decaying plant matter - I find this unlikely, since we bought fresh soil - but it can also be introduced by infected onion sets. In my humble opinion, this is most likely what happened. I suppose I have only myself to blame - I bought cheap onion sets from a roadside stand, and didn't inspect them all that thoroughly. Well, live and learn, as they say. Next year, maybe we'll be able to start the onions from seed and avoid that whole problem. Or we could save seed from one of these onions, if any of them actually make it that far. I have hope, however! Almost all of the remaining onions are vigorous, with long, bright green leaves.

I also did some weed scouting today. I refuse to get behind on weeding! It was worth looking, too - I was able to pretty much sweep the weed seedlings (I find it fun to call them "weedlings") out of the soil, since they were pretty much all still at the white thread stage. There were a lot of them! And now we're already ahead of the game, in terms of weedlings. I'll have to make a habit of this, in addition to watering and scouting for diseases.

Well, that's all for today! Thanks for reading.

WOG out.

Updates Galore

Only a few updates this week.

On Tuesday, I went to WOG to water and check up on things (as I usually do) and was watering the pea patch, when I noticed that some seedlings were coming up! We have baby peas!! This was especially exciting because we'd more or less given up on the peas as a lost cause - they had been in the ground for a few weeks, with no sign of life, and peas should be relatively quick to sprout. As mentioned in a previous post, we think the problem was that they weren't getting enough water. Well, we remedied that, and the result was some babies! So now we're trying to do a much better job of watering everything daily, or almost daily.

This strategy seems to have worked well, because either some beets or some carrots are also coming up. I think the leaves are more beetlike than carrotlike, but I suppose we won't really know for sure for a while, because the cats messed up the row markers a while back and I had to guess the exact location of each row. Hopefully the other crop, whichever it is, will come up soon as well. The remaining onions, the ones that didn't have Fusarium, are looking swell - only a few red onions are a little puny, and hopefully they'll catch up.

The raspberries look great. I think all of them have new leaves on them now. Hooray! We'll have plenty of delicious berries in a couple of months :) The strawberries look excellent, too - most of the blossoms have opened, I think, which is great news for yield. Of course, we'll only be getting a few berries out of them, but I bet they'll be scrumptious. And next year we'll have plenty of strawberries to go around.

The babies that are still in the coldframe are looking all right. Some of the eggplants and peppers are clearly stressed, probably because it's been chilly recently. We brought them into the house yesterday, because it was supposed to be cold last night (and it was).

The babies in the apartment are looking spectacular. On Chris' recommendation, I put them in the windowsills of the bedroom (it gets the best light, generally), and have just left them there, watering about every other day. I wrapped the curtains around the other side so that the white fabric would reflect some light back down on the babies, as well as create a little greenhouse-like microclimate in each window. This has helped reduce some of the etiolation that was going on, especially with the tomatoes.

The baby broccoli in the windows desperately need to be transplanted into individual pots. I haven't done so yet because I've been worried about the cold weather. The plan was to do that today, but the high is still only going to be about 47. I could transplant them and put them in the WOG house bedroom, but I'm concerned that the cats might bother them. I will wait it out for a couple more days and hope the weather improves.

I still have yet to contact either local autobody to see if they can donate a few tires to us for potato-growing purposes. I need to get on that and get those babies in the ground soon!

Yesterday, Chris and I went to the Starter Barter in Avogadro's Number restaurant. Most of what people had to offer were tomatoes, and I didn't buy any of them, because I think WOG's neighbor plans to give us some of his starts that he's not going to use - plus, we've sprouted our own, and I want to see how they turn out. We did buy two more hot pepper plants from Drew - one Ancho and one Santa Fe. They are looking good, and hopefully they'll stay that way. We also got two green cabbage plants and one red cabbage plant, as well as five garden huckleberry plants and one wonderberry plant. I do enjoy experimenting with new crops! Hopefully they turn out well. I wonder where we'll put them all - space will be a little tight! But we'll manage, and we can always give some seedlings away.

All in all, this week has been somewhat eventful and vastly encouraging, since the peas and either beets or carrots started to come up. I can't wait to put more plants in the garden! Thanks for reading.

WOG out.

Oooooh, Genetics

I have a triploid tomato seedling. It has three cotyledon leaves - the tomato is a dicot, so most tomatoes have two cotyledon leaves - but it appears to be vigorous and healthy. I am almost entirely certain that the third leaf is an additional cotyledon leaf, and not a true leaf; all three leaves are of similar size, and the seedling really isn't old enough to have any true leaves opening up yet.

I'm not sure what the consequences of not culling this plant would be. If we're saving seeds, I'd have to mark the plant so we didn't try and grow any seeds from it next year - in general, seeds from triploid plants are sterile, because they have an extra set of chromosomes, which makes fertilization of their egg cells difficult. In fact, seedless watermelons are seedless because they are triploid. So this tomato plant's fruits might not have any real seeds at all. On the flip side, if we did just mark the plant and keep it as an experimental gig, we would probably have to isolate it from the other tomatoes so that its (possibly viable) pollen wouldn't fertilize any of the other plants' eggs. But then there's the chance that it would produce a whole bunch of really delicious tomatoes! Oh, decisions, decisions.

So, I went to that grand vault of information, the Internet. Turns out tomatoes have been known to produce triploid progeny, and that they often do rather well. I suppose what I'll do for now is to leave the plant alone and see how it does.

The rest of the tomatoes are coming up in earnest! There are many seedlings in both the slicing section and the paste section of the tomato flat. And there are lots of jalapenos coming up, as well as a few Sweet Bullnose bell peppers (still no signs of life from the Gourmet bell peppers, but they shouldn't be far behind). The eggplant, not to be outdone, are stretching sleepily out of the soil. I'm so excited for all of these little babies! All of them are a tad etiolated, because there's really nowhere in the apartment that gets great direct sunlight, but I think/hope they'll all do great anyway.

Yesterday, I went over to Westmore to check on the progress of the plants that aren't in my immediate proximity. Most of the strawberries look swell, but some of them haven't perked up all the way yet. However, they should do so soon - they've been getting plenty of water, thanks to Anne Marie, me, and the surprising amount of rain we've been getting recently. All five transplanted raspberries look great, as do the remaining onions. No sign of the peas, beets, or carrots yet, but hopefully they'll poke their little leafy heads out soon.

Well, those are all the updates I have for now. Stay tuned - this is the busy season! Hopefully there will be a lot more happening soon.

WOG out.

Seedlings!!

The last time I posted, there wasn't any evidence of life from the tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers that I seeded. On Monday the 18th, I brought the three flats that I'd seeded to the apartment so they'd stay warm.

On Monday, there were two tomato seedlings. Now - as you may already know if you read our Facebook page - they're popping up left and right! Every day since then, there have been new sprouts. As of this morning, we are the proud parents of no fewer than eleven cherry tomato seedlings, three paste tomato seedlings, one jalapeño pepper seedling, and one eggplant seedling. Very exciting! I sure hope more come up soon. It would be a bummer to only have one eggplant and one pepper - I want some bell peppers, too! So hopefully they will be along in the near future.

The raspberries are looking great! I think they've been loving all the rain we've been getting recently, supplemented by my frequent watering. The strawberries look happy as well, although they haven't quite perked up yet. But they will! I have faith.

As far as I can tell, it was just that one onion that was infected with Fusarium, or whatever it was. I'm keeping a close watch on the others, but hopefully the fungus was isolated and will remain so.

The peas still haven't sprouted yet! I spoke with our friend Karen yesterday - Karen co-manages the student organic garden on campus, SusDev (short for sustainable development), so she knows a great deal about growing veggies. I asked her what she thought about our pea predicament, and she said that because some of them have been uncovered, they might have dried out too much to germinate. She said it's very hard for peas to do without water for any period of time, really - so we need to do a better job of keeping them consistently moist. To help our poor little peas, I used a little of the soil that was left over even after the herb garden was piled up, and covered the exposed pea seeds so they wouldn't dry out as quickly. Then I watered them well and left them to it.

That's all the updating to be done for now! All good news, I might add - always a plus :) We're headed in the right direction! As always, thanks for reading.

WOG out.

Mulchberries, Anyone?

Today was a pretty big day in the garden. When I arrived at Westmore this morning, our friend Louis and his family were there. Louis is a PhD candidate at CSU, and he knows a lot about agriculture. We talked about potatoes with him - he suggested growing the potatoes in old tires. Sounds weird, right? But apparently it really works. What you do is lay an old tire down flat in the garden and cover/fill it about halfway with dirt. Then plant four or five seed potatoes in the soil inside the tire. When the potato seedlings are strong, cover them almost entirely with more soil and stack another tire on top of the first one. Repeat once more, so that you wind up with a stack of three tires. This method reportedly produces significantly higher yields than traditional ways of growing potatoes, as well as keeping the tubers in a confined space for a very easy harvest. We have our seed potatoes, but unfortunately, we're fresh out of tires. We would like to call around to local auto bodies and see if we can have any of their old ones - we found two, Hawker Automotive and Alpine Tire Center - but both of them were closed by the time we discovered them this afternoon. So, that will be a project for a different day.

After Louis and company departed, Anne Marie and I drove the pickup to the Fort Collins Recycling Center to shovel some free mulch into the truck. Sadly, they were fresh out of mulch, so we meandered down to Fort Collins' Spring Creek Community Gardens and loaded up some of their free mulch, then lugged it back to Westmore and spread it on the paths in the garden for weed control. We'll have to go back later for more, though, because we didn't quite have enough to cover all the paths.

Meanwhile, Katara and Oatmeal, the younger kitties, continued to find new ways to get under/through the netting that's over the peas, onions, carrots, and beets. I used some of Anne Marie's garden twine (basically a  spool of twisty-tie) to mend the feline-formed rips by "sewing" the edges together, and then I stuck some more of her garden stakes through the net into the soil to (hopefully) secure the netting more effectively. I had to remove some of the onions from the soil and replant them, because the cats have been pushing on the net over the onions and chewing on the leaves, thereby not only damaging the plants, but also dislodging them. The good news is that in replanting the onions, I got a very good look at their roots, which appear to be quite healthy. One onion actually had dead-looking roots, and the leaves looked a little wilty. However, that plant did have some new leaves pushing through, and there appeared to be either new roots or a white fungus pushing their way through the onion's basal plate. According to a CSU Extension Factsheet on Soil-Borne Diseases of Onion, this fungus could very likely be Fusarium Basal Rot. I'll have to keep an eye on that one.

Later, I made my way to Sue-of-the-Raspberries's house for some free strawberry transplants. As with the raspberries, the strawberries were very healthy - the reason Sue was giving us strawberries in the first place was that they had reproduced to the point that she and her husband Steve just had too dang many! I wound up with three small cardboard boxfuls of Small Fruit Sue's gorgeous strawberry plants (many of which had buds already - yay!) and drove them back to Westmore to transplant them. I had several extra, because as I planted them, I was giving them plenty of space to spread. It will only take a year or two for them to put out enough stolons/runners to fill up their entire bed. So, I planted probably twenty-five or so strawberry plants, watered them well, and that was that. Sue also told me about an event called the Starter Barter, coming up next weekend in Fort Collins. Thanks again to Sue and Steve for all their help and willingness to share their plants!

In other news, I checked on the babies (a.k.a.: transplants) and the raspberries, and all are doing well. There's still no sign of life from the eggplant, tomatoes, or peppers that I planted, but the broccoli, fennel, kale, peppers, and eggplant that I transplanted (as well as the broccoli I seeded) are all doing swell. The peas, carrots, and beets have not yet sprouted, but hopefully they will soon.

As I've mentioned previously, I have been researching organic methods of cat repellent, to keep those cute little fluffy nuisances out of the garden. The cheapest one we've seen is sprinkling cayenne pepper around the edge of the garden to form a border, a force field if you will. Or if you won't. So there! Hahaha... Well, Anne Marie said she'd give that a shot, so hopefully the cats will respect the cayenne.

In addition, my search for a quick-release organic fertilizer has come to a close. My academic adviser had told me a couple of weeks ago that he recommends alfalfa meal as a sustainable, organic, quick-release fertilizer - that sounded great, only I couldn't find a locally-owned business that sold it. The other day, though, I remembered that at a conference I attended in February, I had picked up a pamphlet from a business called S T Organics, LLC, up in Hereford, CO. I looked them up online, and lo and behold, they sell alfalfa meal for a pretty dang good price! Problem solved.

Updates on the potato tires to be coming soon! Thanks for reading.

WOG out.

Weather Woes and General Updates

As those of you in Fort Collins know, today it is snowing. A lot. Actually, it might be done for the day, but we accumulated at least two or three inches. Naturally, my first concern was the coldframe and the poor little babies it contains. Last time we had weather this cold, the pepper and eggplant transplants kicked the bucket! Now we have more peppers and eggplants, and again, cold weather. I needed to get those suckers inside a house. So I rolled out of bed around 8 this morning and headed over to Westmore to grab them and bring them back to my apartment, where they might be threatened by Kaly, Chris' cat, but would probably be fine. When I got there, Anne Marie had just finished taking them as well as the broccoli, kale, and fennel seedlings into her house. I was quite relieved! And proud of her for doing so (I would have called and asked her to take them in, but I didn't want to wake her up). So that was taken care of.

Then her son, Ben, notified me that some of the pea seeds had been displaced from the soil. Ack! I didn't know how this could be possible - just two days ago, I had more firmly secured the netting so that we could be sure the cats couldn't reach the peas, onions, beets, or carrots. Now, to be fair, the peas could have been out of the soil when I was doing that, but I hadn't seen any. But this morning, I took a closer look at the netting and found two sizable tears in it. There's a good chance these have been allowing the kitties access to exactly where we don't want them. I couldn't do anything about the netting just then, because I didn't have the time. Plus, I'm not really sure what I can do - I suppose I can mend the rips, but what if the cats just make the holes bigger? We'll have to keep trying and see.

I also checked on the raspberries, and they seem to be doing fine still. They've gotten plenty of water the past few days, so that's good. I hope they all survive - it would be great to have some extra raspberries this season! And in the following seasons, as well. 

In other news, I've been looking for some reliable cat repellents, for obvious reasons. The one I liked the best is a motion-sensing noise-maker, that emits a high-frequency sound when the sensor is triggered. The frequency is too high for humans to hear, which is great. Also, these things would mean a one-time installation and that's it. They're battery-operated, which is quite convenient. The problem is that they're about fifty bucks apiece, and we'd need two to adequately cover the garden. We'll need to discuss them more, but these gadgets probably won't be the method we end up using. 

There are also scents that I've read cats don't like, such as certain herbs, as well as citrus peel. There's this one plant that some web sites have suggested, called rue - but it also causes rashes on human skin when touched. Not ideal. We could mix up a powder of flour, cayenne pepper, and some other stuff, but that would require multiple applications, at least until they get the point - kind of a hassle. There are plenty of sprays and things out there, but we're looking for an organic solution. Right now, the cayenne powder method seems the most feasible. Updates on this later. 

In addition, we're looking for a sustainable, organic quick-release fertilizer. The best bet so far is alfalfa meal, which clearly doesn't come from animal products, can be produced locally, and is organic. The problem is that I haven't yet found anywhere that sells it. Amazon.com does, I've found, but only in small quantities, and I'd prefer to buy locally anyway. If you know of somewhere in Colorado that sells this stuff, please let me know!

Well, those are all the updates I have for now. Thanks for reading!

WOG out.

Root Crops

Today was somewhat underwhelming after the extensive activity of yesterday – however, this was fine, since I was pretty tired from moving all the soil around.

The most exciting event of today was planting the first rows of beets and carrots, one row of each. These crops are planted in succession, about one batch per week, because each plant only produces one crop, the root. If we planted them all at once, the entire crop would also be ready at once, which would mean we’d be trying to eat a whole lot of carrots and beets at the same time! Thus, we plant in succession.

I had drawn up a sketch of a garden plan, the main purpose of which was to outline where each crop would go. That pretty much went out the window, partly because the beds weren’t quite as I expected, partly because it’s easier to plant near the existing netting row cover so that I can simply stretch the same piece to include the newcomers, and partly because I’m not sure where the garden plan sketch is. But no big deal; if I find it, I can edit it so it’s a more accurate representation.

Anyway, the beet and carrot planting today occurred next to the peas, up on the north side of the garden - I chose here because there was already netting in place over the peas and onions, so I could just unwind the big roll of netting some more and continue what was there. The planting itself was easy enough, in spite of Katara’s persistent desire to be the center of attention and/or play with my hands. But after the seeds were in the soil, the anti-cat netting was more than a little reluctant to stretch over the newly planted section of the garden. After much adjustment, I finally got it over the carrots and beets and the hoop I'd added and secured the whole contraption. I hope the cats will be effectively kept out.

The broccoli is still looking good, as are the kale, the one remaining fennel, the more recent pepper transplants, and the raspberries. The tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers I seeded last weekend still aren’t up, probably because it’s been too chilly for them. Even in the coldframe, the temperatures get fairly low at night and don’t get all that warm during the day – it’ll be at least a week, I think, before they start stirring. However, once they do emerge, they’ll be worth the wait! As always, thanks for reading.

WOG out. 

Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo! SOIL!

The title of this post, by the way, was supposed to read as though someone was blowing the charge call. Don't know if that worked or not. Anyway...

As you may know, depending on whether or not you've been religiously following Westmore's progress, we picked up half a cubic yard of soil from Weitzel's last weekend and spread it in part of the garden to use as a gauge for how much soil we'd need total. And so we could plant peas and onions (see: Peas and Onions and Cats, Oh My!)

So yesterday, 4 more cubic yards of soil were delivered to Westmore's back driveway. For those of you who don't know, 4 cubic yards is a LOT. My job today was to get the soil from the driveway into the garden beds. By myself. Using only a shovel and a wheelbarrow. Hooooooo boy.

Well, I got to Westmore around 8:30 this morning, and gaped at the daunting pile of soil that faced me. It was so daunting, in fact, that I turned around and left. Just kidding. I didn't work on the soil right away, though. First, I transplanted five baby raspberry plants in among the raspberries that are already at Westmore. It wasn't hard work, but it did take some time. They needed to go in the soil right away, according to our helpful friend Sue, from whom we had gotten the babies. Thus, that was priority #1 for the day. I got them tucked in and well-watered before turning to the soil.

I had learned from unloading the first half of a cubic yard of soil last weekend that good soil is pretty dang heavy. Today, it didn't help that the entire pile was at ground level (as opposed to being in the bed of a pickup, as it was last week), so it was extra work to lift each shovelful up and into the wheelbarrow. Of course, I did it anyway. Chris showed up a couple of hours in and helped a lot with moving the soil around. Many wheelbarrowfuls later, the garden beds were complete, and the soil pile was almost gone. Anne Marie and Ben will be using the leftover soil to make an herb garden tomorrow in the front yard.

In other news, the broccoli that I seeded last week sprouted yesterday! The little seedlings are so cute and delicate. I feel like a proud momma! I can't wait for the eggplant, tomatoes, and peppers that I also seeded last week to sprout - that'll be a few more days though, at least. The onions that we planted last Saturday are looking good; some of them got displaced when they got caught in the deer netting, but I took a look at the bases of their little bulbs, and most of them had roots starting! This is an excellent sign. The peas that I planted next to the onions aren't up yet, but they should be soon. I suspect they're not really enthusiastic about germinating, because the cats have been disturbing that bed. To remedy this issue, we bought some deer netting to stretch over the bed and plastic tubing to support the netting. At first, Katara and Oatmeal, the younger cats, were simply more attracted to the netting as a jungle gym (see: Sad Seedlings and Cat Hammocks). Yesterday, I added another hoop to support the net better and keep the kitties off the bed, and so far that seems to be doing the trick.

Also yesterday, Sue-of-the-Raspberries offered to give us some transplants to replace the ones we lost to the cold weather last weekend. I had contacted Drew to see if he had any more extras to give us, but he'd already given them away to someone else. I got to Sue's house yesterday to find that Drew had given his remaining extra seedlings to her! She offered me whatever I wanted of what was left, so I took twelve eggplant seedlings, six broccoli seedlings, and twelve hot pepper seedlings. They're all in the coldframe and they look great so far - if their good health continues, we'll have plenty of babies to stick in the soil when the time comes. Sue also offered us some strawberries, so hopefully we can go get those soon and plant them in the near future. More updates to come soon. As always, thanks for reading!

WOG out.