You know what's fun?

Thinking of crossing my matchbox chilis (OSSI pledged) that are growing on my windowsill and are basically my favourite hot pepper plant with C. flexuosum, which is hella cold-tolerant and is also 24n though of course it is an interspecific cross. I wonder if it will work?

I wonder how matchbox and doe hill would do, that should ( Read more... )

So last year I lost a packet of seed I really wanted to plant. It was a problem.

This year I'm cataloguing all my seeds in a spreadsheet-- not carrying them over from previous years when I bought them but doing a full inventory. Then I'm putting them in a cabinet. They don't go in the cabinet until they're catalogued. Theoretically they don't come ( Read more... )

It's been hovering at freezing for a couple days now. These warming periods aren't unusual here, I have one just a little warmer recorded in 2019 for instance. This one, though, isn't really dipping above freezing nor below. It's hovering.

The snow gives up dense white fog. Meanwhile the top layer of snow softens, it's juicy when stepped upon but ( Read more... )

Today was warm enough to get the snowblower working. One of the issues was that its oil was only good down to -20C, so when I tried to start it at -30C it was basically sludge. There was also a lack of fuel stabilizer and old oil, but I had to run it for a bit to get the oil to pick up all the little metal bits since I hadn't changed the-- well, ( Read more... )

We've got the cold. I think it hit -34 in town last night, so likely -37 or so here.

The new-to-me truck won't start, I think it both needs a new battery and the engine heater isn't working. So that's fun.

Yesterday Tucker jumped the truck and I went down to go get feed. It was snowing-- I know better than to go by the forecast rather than the ( Read more... )

The real cold is coming. -30C was forecast this week, and -20ish for the last couple nights, but two nights ago I woke up to -26 and now boxing day night is supposed to be -40. There's a significant difference between -20 and -40 from my perspective, though I think for most people inside it's mostly just all cold.

I'm thinking of rigging some heat ( Read more... )

I've planted two tomato seeds: fat frog and moment, both micros. I believe I'll also plant a sweet cheriette from one of my saved seeds.

I've sprayed for mealybugs and I'm contemplating what I'll replace my broken grow-light with; it has the old florescent tubes, should I replace it with an LED? It's right behind the couch so I want it to look nice ( Read more... )

So last summer when Josh was going to come up, his drive was almost blocked by highways closed due to wildfires. He made it up ok, I don't remember if he detoured or not. Tucker definitely did around that time on the same route.

A month ago Josh was going to come up but flooding took out a ton of our highways, most of which are not open yet. We've ( Read more... )

At the end of last week some folks from Vancouver and the Island came up for the weekend-- it had been a couple years since I'd seen them. They had come up previously when Thea was little and before I got Avallu, so that would have been late summer 2017. I drove in to pick them up from the airport in the city and we spent some time eating, petting ( Read more... )

Oh.

The northernmost of the BC grape wineries is supposed to have one of the baltics varieties. I wonder if they would give me a bucket of their pomace-with-seed from that variety after pressing?

This is not a short term solution but might be an easy one.

Plant a hundred feet of fence with seedlings every 6", see who survives.