Failblog
Things that have gone wrong in the past few days:
- The kohlrabi and lettuce seedlings that I’d started months ago have finally all gone to the big compost pile in the sky. I’d hoped to save some of them, but it’s just not realistic… they have underdeveloped root systems, they’re far too tall to be practical, and they’ve received so much damage from wind and other environmental effects that I don’t know if they’ll ever mature.
- My Hippie Planters didn’t work. You know those really cool ridges, textures, and stuff that make it easy to grip a bottle of gatorade? Well, it turns out that those ridges aren’t really conducive to getting a seedling and dirt OUT of the bottle of gatorade. I gave up and threw out all of the seedlings I’d transplanted into them after killing five of the few remaining not-too-leggy kohlrabi seedlings.
- I had been keeping track of the planting dates that things actually made it into the garden in a notebook. Yesterday, that notebook happened to be sitting on the fence rail when I was planting some seedlings. It smacked down, non-waterproof-ink side down, right on top of a seedling I’d just planted, crushing it. Klutz.
I guess that’s why I work with computers and not, say, medicine, right?
As a result, I’ve started a bunch of kohlrabi, carrots, and lettuce in the actual ground in the garden. I filled up the last empty quadrant, and culled a few other plants (some onions and cauliflower that got crushed in the process of protecting the garden from our freeze last week). Tonight when I get home, I have some wildflower and annual seeds to plant in the front bed. (As per links from my beneficial bugs page, I’m planting purple coneflower and white cosmos among others to try to attract the Big Eyed Bugs that eat the Chinch bugs that eat my lawn.)
In better news, my MacBook Pro is back from the shop with a new keyboard and trackpad, and I’m restoring my Aperture libraries and other items from backup as I type this. We’ll return to our regularly scheduled programming here in a bit!
I start my seeds in Eggshells. Poke a small hole in the bottom, fill with potting soil and grow the seedlings in the carton. Plant them shell and all in the garden. No transplant shock at all and the roots grow through the shell.