taking the plunge
Well, in the sunny weather yesterday, I planted my beans and the tomato start ursako gave me. (That's Tommy Toe, a currant tomato, correct?) It's pretty early... but they were all getting pretty big. I thought about making a pop-bottle cloche for the tomato, but then I held up the pop bottle next to the plant and saw that they were essentially the same size.
I didn't harden them off (I've never done that, and I don't really have a good way to do it), but I went out and checked on them in the cool rain this morning, and they looked fine. Crossing my fingers to avoid a late frost, now...
The broccoli starts are tiny (still only showing one true leaf), but I think I may put them out anyway, properly cloched. The nasturtiums are getting huge, but I think they're even more tender than the tomato (am I wrong? let me know, I need the space). The pepper and basils are out of the question -- in fact, I think I need to put a heating pad under them or something. The pepper's been up for about two weeks and it's just starting to show a tiny true leaf, and the basils have been up almost a month and a lot of them still have only seed leaves. So slow!
I've been thinking about pesto and basil ice cream and basil simple syrup for drink mixing and all kinds of things, so I think I should probably do another wave of starts. It's hard to motivate myself, though, when the ones I planted in March are hardly doing anything yet.
--
chemicallace persuaded me to volunteer with her at the Seattle Tilth plant sale on 5/5. The big perk I get from that is access to the pre-sale Friday night. I'll be cashiering 12:45-3:15pm -- maybe I'll see you!
--
We finally got a newer computer in the storeroom. We went from a crippled old machine, at least seven years old (bought used in 2000), with a 4G hard drive (horribly fragmented and too full to defrag), a processor measured in MHz, and 128M of RAM, to something that actually appears to have been bought new, that has an 11G HD and another one that's 25G, and a nearly 2G processor, and a whopping 512MB of RAM!
*cough*
Seriously, though. It supports modern screen resolution and doesn't lag the mouse cursor when I move it. This is a huge achievement.
I didn't harden them off (I've never done that, and I don't really have a good way to do it), but I went out and checked on them in the cool rain this morning, and they looked fine. Crossing my fingers to avoid a late frost, now...
The broccoli starts are tiny (still only showing one true leaf), but I think I may put them out anyway, properly cloched. The nasturtiums are getting huge, but I think they're even more tender than the tomato (am I wrong? let me know, I need the space). The pepper and basils are out of the question -- in fact, I think I need to put a heating pad under them or something. The pepper's been up for about two weeks and it's just starting to show a tiny true leaf, and the basils have been up almost a month and a lot of them still have only seed leaves. So slow!
I've been thinking about pesto and basil ice cream and basil simple syrup for drink mixing and all kinds of things, so I think I should probably do another wave of starts. It's hard to motivate myself, though, when the ones I planted in March are hardly doing anything yet.
--
chemicallace persuaded me to volunteer with her at the Seattle Tilth plant sale on 5/5. The big perk I get from that is access to the pre-sale Friday night. I'll be cashiering 12:45-3:15pm -- maybe I'll see you!
--
We finally got a newer computer in the storeroom. We went from a crippled old machine, at least seven years old (bought used in 2000), with a 4G hard drive (horribly fragmented and too full to defrag), a processor measured in MHz, and 128M of RAM, to something that actually appears to have been bought new, that has an 11G HD and another one that's 25G, and a nearly 2G processor, and a whopping 512MB of RAM!
*cough*
Seriously, though. It supports modern screen resolution and doesn't lag the mouse cursor when I move it. This is a huge achievement.