More planting

Today at the greenhouse, I planted borage, nasturtiums and alyssum between the stakes I placed to mark the strawberry bed. I planted borage in three 5-gallon grow bags that will have strawberries, and planted dill in a 10-gallon grow bag. I potted up a donated tomato plant in a 6" plastic pot pending its final location either in the west bed or a bigger pot.

That's about it for inside direct seeding. If anything doesn't come up, there will be time to try again, or try something different. I realized today that I'm going to have to start watering every day. All of the beds and several of the grow bags are planted, the peas are in their baskets, the Supertunias arrive Thursday, and the strawberries arrive soon. With succulents this winter, I got used to not worrying about watering every day or every week. We have several trips planned in May and June, and I've got to get the irrigation set up.

I have flexible pipe for the hoops to use with the west bed row cover, and I almost got started on that today. But when I compared the 1/2" pipe to the 1/2" brackets, I realized that the pipe measurement is an inside diameter. I ordered 5/8" brackets, which will arrive Sunday. I did manage to relocate the inside trail camera to a permanent location today, and it is no longer in danger of getting smacked by a window. Thus ends the construction update.

I really need to use a better trail camera for the outside location. What I have there now is my cheapest and crappiest one. The only good thing about the Coleman camera is the mounting kit that came with it, which I used inside. On one hand, most of the shots are of the lodge guests running around and I don't need pictures of them. On the other hand, I'm hoping for moose and I should get something better there. And I always like to see a huge flock of turkeys pecking their way past.

When I got to the greenhouse today, there were three deer napping under the tree right next to it. Alarmed by my presence, they slowly got up and wandered one tree over to resume their relaxing. They aren't afraid of me. They are just waiting for me to plant something they can eat. There are four window boxes, two grow bags and a barrel outside, and supposedly they don't like marigolds, zinnias, nasturtiums, alyssum, cilantro, sage, mint, onion, thyme, rosemary and bergamot, which is what I am planning to plant. However, last year they registered their dislike for marigolds by yanking them out of the dirt and spitting them out. I got new, even more toxic marigolds this year and we'll see how they respond to them.

On the succulent front, I repotted the Sempervivum Chick Charms trio. They all got terra cotta pots, the Gold Nugget into a semi-fancy 6", the Cosmic Candy into a standard 6", and the Appletini into an 8". Succulents experts everywhere will chide me for using pots that are too large. Gold Nugget does look small in its pot, but should grow to 5 inches and produce offsets. The other two do not look small in their pots. This is just a quick snapshot, but Appletini in its 8" is sprawling now that it is free of the other two.

If the pot was smaller, those runners or offsets (I still don't know what to call them) would be hanging over the edge. Also, note the volunteer petunia photo bombing on the left. Just as in February, an offspring from last year's hybrids is producing a red flower instead of purple.

Succulents Depot still doesn't have a shipping date because they have to prepare the plants for boxing up as bare root. I've been sketching how to allocate pots, and a couple of Cuban Oregano might find themselves giving up their current accomodations. Rationalizing the entire CO/mint/aloe/rosemary/petunia/geranium situation needs to be done because it's a tangled mess right now. I kept this stuff alive in the garage all winter hoping SOME of it would make it through until spring, and way more than enough of it did. In particular, the CO and mint grow like weeds. Sad to say, we're talking compost bin.