Drama

After a false start and two long waits, I finally got a Succulents Depot box today. The clerk at the Post Office, where we have to pick up all of our mail, said, "This box has seen better days."

So, preparing for the worst, I cracked open the box. The Sempervivum 'Hurricane' was located where it must have taken the brunt of the hit, but it looked relatively unharmed. Semps are tough. There were two rosettes and one of them was partly out of the pot, but I've learned that you just pot those pieces up and eventually they will be fine. Here is the 'Hurricane' after potting up. The smaller rosette on the right is the one that was popping out of the pot. It has a tiny offset forming off to the right.

The highlight of the order for me was the Echeveria 'Blue Rose,' and I ordered two of them to improve my changes of getting a good one. One of them now resides in a new 6-inch ceramic pot I ordered from Amazon. Due to the shape of the pot, it probably took twice as much soil as an ordinary terra cotta. I thought the 'Blue Rose' would go well with this blue pot, but it has a lot of growing to do to make this worthwhile.

I have been using the Black Gold Cactus and Succulent mix, but I didn't have much on hand so I opened up the Miracle-Gro Cactus, Palm & Citrus mix I got a few weeks ago on sale. Before looking at the labels, I thought that Black Gold had more grit and MG had more peat. The labels are not real specific, and after reading them I stand by my initial assessment. The amount of perlite or pumice in the MG seemed skimpy, so mixed it 70/30 with pumice. That made it more of the consistency I am used to with the Black Gold.

The plant descriptions on Succulents Depot (like Ramseys) often have NO information, so I go to Mountain Crest for details on items like this Mammillaria gracilis fragilis 'Thimble Cactus.' They say, "The stem segments fall off easily but readily re-root." Good thing, because first thing I did after unboxing was knock it off the shelf to the ground, and it lost four little segments. I potted up the main part in a 6-inch squat pot, and put the four little balls into a ceramic. My three other cacti are in similar ceramics.

Succulents Depot makes a big deal about shipping plants bare root, but the only one that came that way was the Echervia 'Atlantis.' All the others were smaller and had 2-inch pots. 'Atlantis' has some leaf damage it may grow out of eventually.

The other two items in the order were Graptoveria 'Debbie' and SunSparkler Sedum 'Blue Pearl.' Both have some growing to do and that's all I will say.

Summing up, despite the condition of the box, all of the plants were in survivable condition. Showroom quality, no, but I've come to expect that from plants that spend several days in the hands of the US Postal Service. Contrast that with this no-name Sempervivum that I got at Nana's Bloomers, which I think is showroom quality. This snapshot was taken when it was still in the nursery pot. Oh well.

I have another order coming from Mountain Crest. I delayed shipment until May 11 to fit my schedule, and I am looking forward to greeting 'Doris Taylor,' 'Mexican Snowball,' Graptoveria 'Titubans Variegata,' and a few others into the fold. Mountain Crest didn't have everything in stock and there still are a few on the wishlist I would like to have, including Echeveria lilacina 'Ghost Echeveria' and Echeveria 'Orion.' The Next Gardener has some interesting Pachys, but I have to remember that those usually get blown up in shipping. And I also have to remember that my shelves are full and there are at least 13 propagations that are at or beyond the leaf-forming stage. So once again after an unboxing, I say "Never again" to online orders. This time I mean it.

The crushed box from today's order turned out to be not as bad as it looked, but there was more drama on this day. The original Pachyphytum 'Apricot Beaty' I received six weeks ago from The Next Gardener died, mostly, and they sent me a replacement two weeks ago. The new pot had two stalks in it, and I potted them together. Today I noticed one of the stalks was shriveled, so I did an emergency beheading and the cutting is now in my office next to the cutting that is the only surviving piece of the original plant. The first cutting seems to be rooted. Comparing the two they actually don't look the same. Looking back at the image I took after the first beheading, the color and thickness of the leaves appear to have changed, so we will see whether these two pieces resemble each other more in a few months. On the left is the older cutting, which has been in an east-facing window and has lost its pastel coloration. The newer cutting was under grow lights in a south-facing window until today.

In the greenhouse, I got about 80% done with the irrigation installation, which will be four lines. I have the three lines laid out to cover the beds and baskets, but I need more sprinkler heads for the line that will water the plants on the ground and along the north wall. I haven't tested any of it yet. I know I am going to get wet as I adjust the heads, so I would rather do that all at once. That could be Saturday depending on when the Amazon delivery happens.

In the garage, I reconfigured some of my grow lights. I had Sansi grow lights on a shelf above LED tubes, and I swapped them. What it accomplished was giving the three big bowls their own shelf, although the smallest bowl doesn't get its own Sansi. There is some natural light, but the shelf is below the window sill so doesn't get the full benefit. I could move the shelf perhaps four inches higher to get more natural light and be closer to the grow lights, but currently the Purpusorum's flower stalk would interfere with that. I must say I like the way the Montage Bowl (left) and the Bonsai Bowl (center) are progressing, although I'm still thinking about cutting out some of the big clump of Sedum 'Shooting Stars' on the left side of the Montage Bowl. The Unnamed Bowl (right) has caught up some with the additions of the past few days, but needs something else to pop. There is a small flowering Echeveria languishing in a shared Home Depot 5-inch that might get the call soon.

What I do in the greenhouse and the garage often are two different things, sometimes even conflicting. Growing Supertunias and strawberries is far different than propagating Echeverias and Sempervivums. I'm putting the irrigation system into the greenhouse not because I want to, but because otherwise the plants would die when we are gone for a few days. But I know it raises the humidity and the water can go where it is not supposed to go, which is not the environment that succulents enjoy. Two years from now I see the greenhouse three-fourths full of hardy succulents (Sempervivums, Sedums, Delospermas), and the petunias, berries, tomatoes and a few other things crammed into the east end or outside. Don't tell my spouse. The air flows through from west to east, which should hold down the humidity for the succulents.

Ghost Roots

Two of the tiny rosettes on the presumed Graptopetalum paraguayense 'Ghost Plant' I got at Gainan's three weeks ago are developing air roots.

The interweb says this indicates the plant is searching for more moisture, light or stability, especially in the case of a leggy plant. It is somewhat leggy and I already have chopped off one of the four large rosettes and planted it in one of the bowls. This summer the remaining three large rosettes and three small ones (two already with air roots) will get the same treatment. It's a good thing. I haven't noticed this on any of my other plants, but none of them came right from the store with mostly-bare 3-inch stalks.

Petunias

Today was finally the day that I put the remaining six Supertunias in hanging baskets. All of the April stuff is done, and the next phase is potting up tomatoes, peppers and other seedlings for eventual planting in a bed, pot or bag, and doing some more directing seeding inside in beds and bags. Weather conditions were low 50s with occasional snowflakes, little wind, and 80% cloudy. That's a big improvement over the past four days.

I had four baskets, so two of them got two plants. First I did the Vista Jazzberry and Vista Bubblegum together. Two weeks ago I potted up all of the plants because some of the original containers were cracked. The new 6" containers were only slightly larger than the original, and the two Vistas were well on their way to being rootbound in just two weeks. Because Vistas have a reputation for being vigorous, I sort of regretted putting them both in the same basket, but I'm sure it will be a centerpiece whenever we have something this summer.

The other plant that looked especially vigorous was Royal Velvet. Originally I was going to pair it with Priscilla, but decided to put Priscilla and Hoopla Vivid Orchid together and give Royal Velvet its own basket. The other plant that got its own basket was Latte. One week ago, Blue Vein and Honey were planted in separate baskets, so that is eight plants in six baskets. In a few weeks I will decide whether to pick up a few more Supers at Nana's to fill out some of the baskets, Blue Vein being the leading candidate for getting a companion.

After using a ladder to hang the Supertunias in the rafters, I got some images from on high. Here are Latte, the Jazzberry/Bubblegum combo, and Blue Vein, with strawberry baskets to the left and the strawberry bed below to the right. I should have taken the picture before watering because the blooms look a bit droopy.

This view is a step lower and also shows the two baskets of snowpeas which were planted April 4. All 14 seeds came up.

Royal Velvet has been blooming ever since it was unpacked April 9. The overhead view is Royal Velvet, Priscilla/Hoopla Vivid Orchid, and Honey, with the Wall O' Sempervivums to the right.

After finishing the Supers, I tackled the clones and volunteers from last year's generic purple-veined petunias. I decided to make a new pot with two large clones, and the 'Red Lodge Red Vein'™ volunteer. Since I used a new pot, that left the old pot of about five surviving plants from last year. I considered saving two of the better looking ones and binning the other three, but ultimately did nothing, kicking the can down the road to another day.

I also divided the basil purchase into four pots, and hooked up the water. It leaked at the pump handle connection which probably was inadequately protected over the winter, but fortunately we have a plumber who is happy to do small projects at reasonable prices, and he said he might be able to fix it tomorrow. Then I have to hook up the irrigation, which isn't really that hard but is not something I am looking forward to. When we are home, I probably will irrigate just the strawberry bed and the adjoining flower bed and pots. But when we are gone, I have to irrigate everything, including 14 hanging baskets. One of the downsides of that is I should move all the succulents to the garage (17 pots if I'm counting right) because it will get humid in there and it may take some diligence to keep water from spraying everywhere. If I move them, I would not have to be so diligent.

The greenhouse has a gable over the door, which looks nice, but the stream of water from both sides splashes into the window boxes and carves holes in the soil. I used my extensive engineering skills and knowledge of 3D printing to produce a little splashguard. I am too old and confused to use Autodesk Fusion, so this was done with the basic but still confusing tools in Bambu Studio. This is just flat plate with slots and a screw hole, and a short wall at the back to help hold it in place. I only made one so far because the materials I need for weather resistence won't arrive until Friday. This one probably will deteriorate in a year or so. If I knew how to quickly make about 100 holes rather than five big slots, I would do that.

Straw for Strawberries

The strawberry baskets, grow bags and bed have their straw. Bare roots look awful two days after planting. I'm guessing two weeks before they look like strawberry plants.

I re-arranged two of the succulent bowls in the garage. I hope this summer I can put them out on our patios. The so-called Montage Bowl was getting overrun by the Senecio haworthii 'Cocoon Plant' and the Oscularia deltoides 'Ice Plant.' Meanwhile the newest bowl which just had a couple of boring no-names out of a Home Depot purchase, needed something.

I cut out half of the 'Cocoon Plant' and more than half of the 'Ice Plant' for transfer to the new bowl. The cutting from the Gainan's purchase, which I believe is a Graptopetalum paraguayense 'Ghost Plant,' was developing roots after just a week so it also went into the new bowl. The Montage Bowl received some of the no-names. Even though 'Cocoon' and 'Ice' were cut down substantially, they still are among the largest components. Even though the Sedum adolphii 'Shooting Stars' is obscured by what remains of 'Cocoon,' it occupies the most real estate in the bowl now. Someday I will give the Crassula perforata variegata 'String of Buttons' its own container. It may be the most spectacular thing in this bowl, but it is a bit cramped and you can barely see the three stacks in this snapshot. I didn't have any available pots when I got it, so it ended up here.

The no-name bowl is finally getting interesting. The new 'Ghost' is right in the middle.

The container I call the Bonsai bowl didn't have any changes. The Echeveria Purpusorum stalk is still riding high and seems to be chasing the grow light. I rotate it every few days to keep it from getting burned. As you can see there is snow out the window, and it is snowing now. It may finally start to warm up tomorrow and I can get the rest of the petunias into baskets.

Return window

With the AC Infinity controller still not connecting to the app, I don't have real-time access to the temperature in the greenhouse. The two Elitech thermometers (inside and outside) are mostly wonderful but I have to plug them into the USB port on my laptop, download the data, then import into Excel. It's a process. I don't download the Elitechs every days, so to make sure the heaters are working, I check the 24-hour low on a standalone TempPro TP50 thermometer. All of my plants looked OK today, but I got a bit concerned when the TempPro showed last night's low inside the greenhouse at 33 degrees. With the way my two heaters are set up, it should not dip below 40 even if the outside temperature is 18, which it was.

That prompted me to download the inside Elitech data, which showed that the low inside the greenhouse last night was 39.5. That means the primary heater handled it and the secondary heater did not come on. This TempPro seems accurate to about 6 degrees measured against the Elitechs, sometimes high and sometimes low, which is ridiculously bad! This is a device that has 153,000 reviews and a 4.6 rating on Amazon, so maybe I got a bad copy. This is not useful to me and I'm still in the Amazon return window. I'm starting to believe that to be accurate, a thermometer has to have an external probe, which the TempPro does not.

I said the Elitechs are "mostly" wonderful. But sometimes they can be a pain to get started. If I hold down the start button and nothing happens, I have to plug it back into my laptop and do a reset. When I checked the outside Elitech today, apparently the restart didn't happen nine days ago and I missed all of that data. That's OK, I can get highs and lows from the National Weather Service. I would be much more upset if the inside Elitech missed nine days. I have compared the numbers from the outside Elitech to temperatures reported by the National Weather Service, and they are usually within a few degrees of each other. The slight difference is to be expected since they are at different locations. Since I have this other source for outside temperatures, I have thought about using the outside Elitech for other purposes, such as burying the probe in one of the planting beds to monitor variations in soil temperature over a period of time, or using it in the garage during the winter.

This is an example of an Elitech-produced graph. It is the inside data for April 13-16. When you see little squiggles as the temperature bottoms out, that is the heater cycling on and off. That is what I want to see when I look at these graphs.

The ideal situation would be to get the AC Infinity connection to the app going again. I'll fiddle with it when the weather warms up, but for now the fan is still coming on at appropriate times and I don't want to mess that up. I think it will require a complete reset, and maybe replacing the controller. If I had to do it all over again, I would tell Jesse to forget the AC Infinity equipment and just leave a hole for a standard-sized fan. I would control it with a simple thermostat like I use with the heaters. I have a relative who is an electrical engineer; maybe I will talk him into rewiring the fan to use a standard plug. I can't believe people entrust their grow setups, particularly greenhouse heaters, to AC Infinity's quirky equipment and unusable software with an interface from the 1980s. There have been two significant failures since installation last July, which I would define as atrociously unreliable. We got through it somehow when when the fan failed during the hottest part of the year and it took more than a week to get a replacement. The second failure is this communications gliche that has no obvious solution. Another pet peeve, the apparent default setting for screen brightness is "invisible during the day," and my attempts to adjust it do not stick.

It seems like an eternity, but Supertunias 'Honey' and 'Blue Vein' were put in their baskets and raised to the rafters of the greenhouse just five days ago. Fearing the worst from the weather, I did not want to plant all eight. But 'Honey' seems comfortable enough, putting out these yellow and peach blossoms.

'Blue Vein' has some buds but no blossoms since being transplanted. We haven't had tunia weather (defined as 60-75 degrees) since planting, but the greenhouse seems to be giving the Supertunias and the generics enough protection to produce something. Last year's petunias bloomed right up until I pruned them Jan. 31 in the garage and haven't done much since, but some of their clones and volunteers have nice blooms this spring in the greenhouse. The cloning program of the generic petunias had about a 50% success rate with the use of rooting hormone (and much lower without).

Strawberries planted

The Burpee bare root bundle turned out to contain 26 'Albion' strawberry roots, one extra. I planted 11 of them plus the 'Montana' plant in the east bed (pictured), 10 in four hanging baskets, and five in two grow bags. The grow bags are the backups if some of the others don't thrive. I'll check the plants tomorrow before I spread the straw.

That leaves the six Supertunias to put in four baskets. The six tunias in the garage closet all look good under their grow lights, but I can tell that getting them into the baskets and hanging them in real sunlight inside the greenhouse will be good for them. The weather will remain cold through Tuesday, but I'll at least get the baskets ready before then. It was warmer in February than it has been the past few days. (Low on Feb. 7: 40 degrees, 20 degrees warmer than recent lows.)

I have to decide what to do with last year's petunia pot. I thought there were only three plants in there but now it looks like there were six. I just took out one that was dead, and several others aren't looking great. Maybe a couple of them are worth saving, or I might just start over in a pot with new soil, the two big clones (same purple-veined blooms) and two or three volunteers including 'Red Lodge Red Vein'™.

That will take care of most of the planting for a while until the various seedlings are ready. I'll pot up the tomato seedlings to 4" soon, and maybe some others. The next major project is setting up irrigation, which will be interesting with 14 hanging baskets (6 tunia, 4 strawberry, 2 geraniums, 2 peas/cucs) and miscellaneous pots in addition to the four main planting beds.

I just ordered another six Epic 6-cell seed starters from Botanical Interests, Epic Gardening's seed company. No minimum free shipping. I don't know that I need another six this year, but these things are built like tanks and I will use them in the future. Speaking of Epic gardening, I'm cool now because I have joined the strawberry club and I say "strawbs" just like Eric.

Everything in place

The strawberries arrived from Burpee's today, 25 'Albion' bare roots and one 'Montana' plant. I haven't opened the bare roots bag and won't until just before I plant them, but here is 'Montana.' It had six hard little berries on it, which I clipped off so the plant could devote its energy to recovering from its trip. I guess the plant is OK, but the ones at Home Depot are lush in comparison. Once again, to get the variety I wanted, I had to order online. I gave it a drink and stuck it under the grow lights in the closet with the Supertunias. The bare roots bag is in a bucket in the garage.

A snowstorm dropped five inches on us yesterday and today, but it seems to be over. It won't really warm up until Tuesday, but with the heat on in the greenhouse, it will be at least the mid-40s inside at night and warmer during the day. The current plan is to plant the strawberries tomorrow, and the Supertunias no later than Tuesday. Then I have to set up irrigation, and the season really will be underway. I fertilized the potted non-succulents in the greenhouse today, keeping in mind that the planting beds already were fertilized this year with three inches of compost.

On the succulents front, Succulents Depot once again is not giving any indication that my recent order is going to be shipped anytime soon. The FAQs say orders are usually shipped within 1-3 days. I placed an order April 5 and cancelled it April 14 when I decided to get some of the items elsewhere. Then I re-ordered April 15 and once again my order is "confirmed" but not shipped. We are going to be out of town soon and I don't want the plants sitting in a dark box at the post office for 10 days. Succulents are tough, but that's ridiculous. Andrea at customer service has been very nice and says the delays are due to a backlog caused by shipping delays due to weather around the country. So I'm not going to get mad at them, but it is frustrating to place an order and then nothing happens. Andrea said if the order isn't shipped in the next couple days, it will be delayed to May 11 as I requested. I said I would follow up in a few days if I didn't hear anything else. I have already set the Mountain Crest Gardens order to ship on May 11 to avoid all of this uncertainty.

As I have said before, I would rather not even deal with the online companies, but despite the occasional surprise like 'Topsy Turvy' and 'Coastal Coral,' the locals usually just have the basics. This is my third order with Mountain Crest, and they will probably get a fourth unless I recover my sanity before then.

Springtime for Sempervivums

All of the Sempervivums except the little orphan are in the greenhouse now. If we didn't have some trips planned they would stay there from now until...forever. But I have to set up irrigation to keep all the other plants alive and it will get humid in there, so I will bring all of the succulents back to the garage to stay dry during our absence.

Some of them already have been growing this spring so before they get any further I took baseline images of them today. Since Semps grow mostly horizontally, not vertically, I took most of the images from above. I didn't have a tripod, didn't focus stack, and the light wasn't great so I'm not going to post all the images. But I thought two of them from the original Plants for Pets order unpacked Jan. 29 were worth a look.

I believe the first one is Unknown #3, and may have declared it dead prematurely. I appear to have gotten it mixed up with Unknown #4, which had pronounced purple tips. This is why I dislike getting plants that don't have IDs. Anyway, it looks like #3 is putting on some growth this spring, and the leaves are much darker than they were a few months ago.

The next one is and always has been Unknown #5. While #3 has added purple, #5 has been becoming more green. The other interesting thing about #5 is the way it pups. It has two new buds growing from the stem rather than forming on stalks, which means it is a species called Sempervivum heuffelii. Three of the six late lamented frost victims were heuffelii, but I don't know if you can draw conclusions from that since this one survived. In the overhead shot, the offsets are on opposite sides at about 2:00 and 8:00. The second image shows one of the offsets.

Of the original 10 Sempervivums, six were lost to the frost but one lives on through the orphan. Of the survivors, 'Budai Mountains' seems the least active. It isn't dying, but it hasn't reacted to spring yet. The actual Budai Mountains are a low range of hills (1,834 feet) in Hungary, much lower than my location in the Beartooth Mountains foothills (5,588 feet). It is somewhat less cold hardy than the others and maybe it needs it to warm up more. (But somehow it survived the frost.) Unknown #6 hasn't grown much but the edges of the leaves and the centers of the two rosettes are now very dark purple. Unknown #1, represented by the orphan, is very green and is growing new webbing.

I've been referring to #1 as an arachnoideum for lack of a better description, and it occurred to me to ask Google if all webbed Sempervivums were arachnoideums. The answer was "no." We will have to see what the offsets and flowers look like.

Including three on order, I'm now up to 16 live Sempervivum varieties including a duplicate of 'Gold Nugget.' I need to convert half of the greenhouse to gritty, well-draining soil to have somewhere to put them. The beds are 16.5 inches deep. I figure the top 12 inches of garden soil and compost needs to become 50% pumice, about half a yard (13.5 cubic feet). In Oregon next to the volcanoes, that would cost $25. Here, 1,000 miles away, I'm hoping it will be no more than $250. We don't have volcanoes.

I have updated the static Sempervivum page with all of my acquisitions, including those which have been lost, with links to images where appropriate:

Most recent acquisition, a tight-webbed unknown purchased at Nana's Bloomers, April 14:

Volunteers

I find it interesting that petunias that sprout from seed don't necessarily breed true to the characteristics of the parents, especially if the parents were hybrids. The volunteers from last year's purple pentunias are coming out red or pink. They do have the veining of the original, and if anything it is more pronounced in the one shown here. Clones, of course, do keep the original color and veining. Here are a volunteer and a clone.

Theoretically I could apply for a patent on this variation for discovering it, but I don't know that it is commercially desireable. The veining is intense, but the overall color is a bit blah. I suppose this is how they do it, breeding billions of petunias to find a few marketable variations that are worth cloning. But I can still give it a name and call it by an unenforceable trademark. May I introduce 'Red Lodge Red Vein'™. I'm going to save this one.

After three tries, I figured out the size of 3D-printed clips to use to hold the netting in place on the hoops in the west planting bed. The fabric is described as "Garden Pest Barrier Netting," and I doubt it holds in any heat. It just holds the pests out. Water passes through it so I don't have to take it apart for watering, and hopefully enough light gets through for all the lettuce and radishes to grow. I'll have to remove it from the right side to allow the peas to grow in a few weeks. As the image shows, it hangs down a bit, but I don't want to cut it in case I want to use taller hoops. I don't know whether this will work but I got sick of battling aphids all winter, and I have seen moths flying around the greenhouse already.

I have enough pipe for hoops and netting for all four beds, but I don't know whether I will do that. It depends on what pests hit the strawberries, flowers and onions.

It is Earth Day so of course I had to put an order in at Mountain Crest. I have no idea where I am going to put everything so I delayed shipment until May 11. By then the greenhouse will be in production and the garage can catch any overflow. Just don't ask me what I'm going to do Nov. 15 when it all comes back to the garage. The order includes:

• Crassula capitella ssp. Thyrsiflora 'Pagoda Village'
• Echeveria 'Doris Taylor'
• Echeveria 'Muesli'
• Echeveria 'Red Beauty'
• Echeveria elegans 'Mexican Snowball'
• Graptoveria 'Titubans Variegata'
• Sempervivum 'Gold Nugget'
• Sempervivum 'Gold Rush'

The 'Gold Nugget' was a freebie. I already have one but I had to dig it out of a pot with two bigger plants, and I have seen better copies. The fuzzy 'Doris Taylor' is the must-have on this list. I've had my eye on all of these except 'Red Beauty,' which was added to get me one cent over the free shipping threshhold.

First baskets

I put together my first baskets today. Actually my first Supertunia baskets; the pea baskets were planted weeks ago and have sprouted.

Winter is going to have its (hopefully) last gasp Thursday and Friday, and I was thinking about putting off doing the baskets until next week. But today I asked, "Which of the eight would I miss the least if they froze," the answer was Honey and Blue Veined. I've been having a hard time finding a match for Honey, and I have two purple varieties that seem to be more interesting than Blue Veined. So those are the two with which I began this experiment. I kept it simple, doing just one plant per basket.

First is Honey, and it is already flowering. The Blue Veined basket is next, and the question may arise whether you should plant the rootball in the middle, or try to balance the plant in the basket. The Blue Veined rootball was a bit skewed to one side, but I planted the ball in the middle. All the more room to add another $7 Nana's purchase.

When I put the potting mix in the strawberry and petunia baskets a few weeks ago, I used half Promix, half compost, and a dose of vermiculite. Everyone says the pH test strips are mostly useless, but for what is is worth I came up with a pH of 7, neutral. Both strawberries and petunias prefer a more acidic soil. Today I dumped the two baskets, screened out the bigger chunks that came in the compost, scattered some water-storing crystals, added two tablespoons per basket of soil acidifier, and planted the tunias in that mixture. I plan on doing the same for the other 10 petunia and strawberry baskets, and the three strawberry grow bags. I have already tried to incorporate the acidifier into the strawberry planting bed.

While I was making petunia baskets, I was distracted by helicopters attacking a 1,600-acre forest fire on a nearby mountain, five miles south of the greenhouse. The airport used by the choppers is right across the road from the greenhouse and lodge. Everyone is hoping that this does not spread into a 30,000-acre bomb like the one five years ago, just to the left (east) of the current one.

Five years ago, just to the east of the current fire: