This week was a strange and disappointing one. When I at the garden I noticed that some of my tomatoes that I planted the prior week didn’t make it through their “shock” phase. I think I lost about three varieties and I’m all out of seed. I’m pretty sad about that but I’m willing to understand that these things happen.
The goal for Saturday was to check the status on all of the new transplants and give everyone a nice soak of fish emulsion. I did that and reseeded some of the things that weren’t looking too hot. The buttercup squash has seen better days, all of the lemon cucumbers died and it looks like some of the parsley has started melting into the ground. I am happy about most the progress of things in general but it is very disappointing when you see the things that you’ve started from seed looking like they are on their last leg and some pest has taken chunks out of their leaves.
The weather in Northern California is setting record lows. I’m worried. This weekend we had partly cloudy weather and scattered rain showers. I have never experienced a May like this one. At night it’s been getting into the 40’s and the days have been in the 60’s to low 70’s. The plants are just not growing as fast as they should without the warmth of the sun to heat the soil. I’m trying to be patient and see the bright side of things. Cooler temperatures mean that lettuce, turnips and other cold weather crops have an extended growing season.
Instead of fretting over my transplants’ unhappiness I started working on my fence project. The things that I have to worry about disturbing my garden are chickens, cats, peacocks, ducks, the occasional rabbit and gophers. But for now, I’m just making a decorative fence (which will keep out only a few of these critters). I’ll put wire fencing to the inside of my decorative fence and I’m planting my beets, turnips and carrots in green plastic strawberry baskets to keep gophers from snaking on them under the soil.
I found a plan for a found wood fence and arbor in a gardening project book I purchased. Luckily, I have a lot of wood to “find.” The property has a lot of volunteer trees that need to be cut down and I’ll put them to good use! I spent a good portion of Saturday using a hand saw to cut down sucker trees and misplaced volunteers. It was a good workout for my arms. At this point we’ve, cleared some of the wood out but I know we’ll need more for the size garden we have. I had just started working on the arbor at the entrance of the garden when it began to rain.
The fence will have to wait for another day – it’s forecasted to rain all the way up until Friday this week. Either the fence will be waiting or I will get used to working in the rain. I just don’t like being in it but maybe it will grow on me.
I’m interested to look back on this post next year at this time to see what progress I would have made but as for now, I feel like a lot is out of my control. I have faith in my plants’ desire to live and I have faith in me and that’s all that I can do.
P.S. I got stung three times by my bees this weekend. It hurt but I didn’t react to the venom at all. No swollenness, no itchiness and practically pain free after the first day. I have a lot of honey right now! And I got to see an orientation flight for the first time – this is when the newly hatched brood come out of the hive all at the same time to learn to fly. Hundreds if not thousands fly around the outside of the hive very slowly and it looks magical.
Daphne
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