Transition

I started wrapping things up at the greenhouse today, relocating all the cold-sensitive pots to the garage closet at our house. I have learned from YouTube that the 20 degree mark seems to be the sweet spot (literally) for beets and carrots. They need a bit of a frost to bring out the sweetness. I turned the heater down from 42 today, but only went to 25 because I'm not sure whether some of the other plants can handle 20. It may not make any difference because the forecast lows for the next eight days are right around 32. After that "warm" snap is over, I will decide whether to take the plunge to 20 or just shut off the heater for the season.

The beets have some aphids, so I am spraying the leaves with the soap and have the yellow flypaper deployed. The plants are still healthy, but the greens are going into the compost bin when the time comes. The flypaper gets a lot of bugs, but doesn't get them all. (And the flypaper is a bit disgusting when it gets loaded with dead insects.) The carrots don't have any pests, knock knock.

Besides the beets and carrots, what remains in the greenhouse are a good stand of snow peas, a still-robust cilantro patch mixed with garlic, some extremely sickly-looking radishes, good-looking sage, three chive pots, and leafy broccoli (no heads). The broccoli inherited some aphids from the tomatillo monstrosity, but the soap and some thinning seems to have stopped them on that front.

And there's also two buried mum pots. One of them was looking ready to hibernate, so I chopped off half of the foliage and covered it with straw. I took the temperature of the soil inside the pot when I put it to bed. It registered 51 degrees, and if there are no huge snowdrifts in January I will measure it again then. The other mum is still threatening to bloom, so I will wait about 10 days before doing the same to it. (There's also five allium bulbs that have been buried for several months and won't reveal whether they are alive until spring.)

The plants that were transported included the petunia, six petunia cuttings, the geranium, two basil, and the volunteer marigold. I gave the petunia a 50% haircut and cut the blooms off the geranium before moving them. The petunia cuttings I've done so far are still alive, but don't seem to be thriving. I got some rooting hormone, and used it on the last cutting I did yesterday. The interweb seems to be divided on whether rooting hormone actually works, but if nothing else I'm doing a dry run for next spring when I really do want to get cuttings to thrive.

I have three grow lights going in the closet, the original one hanging in the middle, and two new ones on a stalk. The single is very bright, the double much less so. I've got those two shining within inches of the geranium and petunia. Those are in the big pots at right in this image. On the left are the basil, Cuban oregano, aloe, and the little marigold. The covered seed starter in the middle was planted yesterday with arugula. They were old seeds, so I might get nothing, but they are on the heat mat so I'm giving them the best chance I can. To the right of that are the geranium and petunia cuttings, and the sprouts of mint, parsley, rosemary and thyme.

As sometimes happens when I'm puttering around the greenhouse, a flock of turkeys came through the adjacent field. I counted 24, I think the most I've ever seen here. They are town turkeys so weren't disturbed by my presence as I went about my business.