My heart decided to attack me on Memorial Day weekend.  I thought I had been being pretty good to it, but it begged to differ.  Everything else was suddenly shoved to the back burner while I (1) enjoyed hospital food, (2) quaked in fear, (3) rested a lot at home, and (4) tried to figure out what to do so I wouldn’t ever get another one.

The weeds saw their opportunity and moved in.

It’s disheartening to see, but philosophically only a minor blip in the game of life, I suppose.

Trencher

It actually worked pretty well.

It  got a lot of the dirt out of the trench, and what was left was soft enough that I could just push the dahlia tubers down through it and get them at a depth of about 6 inches.

Fifteen minutes of hunkered-down scrabbling along was enough to get 100 tubers planted.  The tractor did the rest of the work, filling the trenches by driving backward using the loader bucket to smooth out the soil.

All Covered Up

And I never touched a shovel.

I put 200 gladiolus corms in this trench and another 100 elsewhere.  Next will be 100 dahlia tubers.  I’m not sure if 400 corms/tubers is enough to bother making some kind of little V-plow dealie to bolt on the sub-soiler, but it sounded like a super idea when I was shoveling.

OUTSIDE

UPSIDE DOWN

I grow Bells of Ireland every year, but I never get as many as I want. I’ve found that the re-seeders from the previous year always seem to germinate better than the ones I try to start. To take advantage of that trait, I sowed a row of them last fall so the seeds would get the full outdoor winter experience. I also froze and soaked some on the advice of something I read somewhere.

The seeds I sowed last fall are in fact coming up! I was just out and looked under the row cover that was protecting the seeds, and there are quite a few seedlings popping up. I am really happy that this worked and would do an Irish jig if I could. I guess I know how to grow Bells of Ireland now. Yippee.

I also had some of the soaked seeds left over and two weeks ago I put them in a 72 cell tray. It has been sitting on the floor of the greenhouse since then. So far I have only three seedlings in there.

TM

Red and Yellow Tulips

The weather was cool with off and on sun and some dramatic skies.  The red tulips were past their prime for cut flowers, and probably were for bulb production, but the yellows were still nice and tight and a crew was out cutting in that field.

I'm glad that's not my job.

The farm we stopped at was selling bunches of fairly short tulips for about 55 cents a stem, and we walked out with 40 of them.  They have an old moss-roofed shed that I’m sure they keep just for the photographers.

Photographers' Magnet

The festival runs through the month of April, with bloom times at the whim of Mother Nature.  Our timing was great due to pure luck.  We went during the week, and it was perfect.  Weekends can be crowded, I hear.

Skagit Valley is near Mt. Vernon Washington, about 60 miles north of Seattle.

My version is based on one by Tod Hanley, but I used 20 foot PVC hoops and he used 24 foot square steel tubes.  He needed a tubing bender to build his.  I didn’t.   The hoops are anchored by being placed over rebar lengths that are driven into the ground.  The plastic is anchored at both ends and held down by ropes parallel to the hoops on top of the plastic.  This way the plastic is free to be lifted up for ventilation and is held in place by the rope tension.  You can see how it works in this photo (from www.kerrcenter.com).

Sides up for ventilation

The flaw seems to be that the wind can raise the sides up too, and once it gets inside, there can be enough force to turn the thing into a kite.  In my case this past weekend, all the rebars on the east side of the house were torn out of the ground and flung as far west as the ropes would allow.  It must have been quite a sight.

I’m not sure what to do about it.  I could anchor some skirt boards along the ground and fasten the plastic to them, but that would put the kibosh on raising the sides for ventilation.  I may just build some 3 foot sidewalls and fasten the PVC hoops to their tops.  Ventilation could be built into the sidewalls.    Hmmm, not a bad idea.  I’ll have to check out the $$.

There are dianthus, trachelium, and digitalis basking in the sunlight this morning, with lobelia, millet, asclepias, and rudbeckia still under lights in the basement.  There’s no heat in the greenhouse, so these little guys will be brought back inside this evening, and every evening for quite a while.

It’s easy so far, with only 17 trays going, but in another month I’ll be swimming in plants.  I’ll also be in Seattle for a week, and I don’t know exactly how I’m going to get the plants cared for when I’m gone.  I may put them in my hoophouse and cover them with a couple of layers of row cover.  Then I can probably get a friendly neighbor or relative to water them a couple of times.

So yes, I’d say we have spring.

Seeder with switch.

If you would like to see more details of adding the switch than most people will ever want, I’ve updated my how-I-built-it page at My Homemade Vibrating Seeder

It was pretty simple and if you would like to see how I did it, go to My Homemade Vibrating Seeder.

No sooner did I get this posted, than Speedy Steve G. from Virginia showed me one he did in about a minute.  A bent piece of cardstock, a piece of tape, and wham, bam you have a seeder.    Pretty cool, Steve.

Steve's version