Sunday, February 20, 2011

The First Work-up

The incessant winds that have battered our area for nearly three full days finally subsided during the night and the morning broke sunny and warm. With showers predicted for tomorrow, I thought it might be a good idea to see how the garden plot was doing. Even with all of the wind we have had the soil still was fairly damp (no shit; its February 20th for crying out loud!). Anyway, I just had to get the hoe in there and get a small area worked-up for some early lettuce seedlings I hope to plant by March 15th. Some pelleted limestone, a handful of 10-10-10, and some shredded leaves, and it was ready to go. I covered part of the area with black plastic to help it begin to warm up a bit over the next few weeks.



I had been holding onto a scrap of concrete reinforcing wire that I had left over from making tomato cages a few years back and it was just crying out to be made into a tunnel so I covered it with heavy-duty poly. I'll stake that down over the area once it is planted and block the ends with bags of leaves. I'll also include a few gallon milk jugs full of water. These will soak-up heat during the day and radiate it back out to the tunnel during the night. That should give me sufficient frost protection to get some lettuce by late March and also offer a nice area to harden-off other seedlings for spring planting.

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