Today

I turned the heat on in the greenhouse today. I planted onions (red, yellow, white and bunching), Teddy Bear Sunflowers, peas, potatoes, and cilantro. I decided the big grow bag that got the potatoes will be the one that remains inside. It would be too heavy to move after getting water, so I'll transport an unwatered big bag to our house and eventually put flowers in it. I may plant some flowers or cilantro in the potato bag. Supposedly they don't compete for nutrients since their root systems are at different depths.

I transported all of the mint, rosemary and geraniums from the garage to the greenhouse. The geraniums will have the chance to spread out for the first time since November. When I move the petunias, Cuban Oregano and aloe over there, I can shut down the closet in the garage that has been active since November. That would leave the succulents almost by themselves in the two garage windows. They aren't going to the greenhouse soon, except maybe the Sempervivums.

The compost I put on top of the soil in the planting beds is completely dry and hydrophobic, so I spent some time today trying to get the beds to accept water. In the next week I will install a grow tunnel over the west planting bed and try to sprout some cool-season vegetables (carrots, lettuce, broccoli, beets) before flipping that over to tomatoes and peppers in June. The tunnel is to keep the bugs off, not for heat retention. I don't understand how I can spray a plant from top to bottom with soap in the morning, and it is infested with aphids again in the afternoon. That happened today with the Bergamot. I still have two good Bergamot so hopefully they survive long enough to get planted in the barrel outside the greenhouse.

I tested the two heaters together yesterday, and no circuit breakers were harmed during the testing. I set the new one for 50 and the old one for 40. The old one only kicks in if the new one can't keep up, or it fails. Based on last autumn's temperature records, I believe it is possible to maintain the nighttime temperature at least 20 degrees above the outside. (With no heat there is usually a 5-6 degree difference.) With forecast lows no worse than the mid-20s in the next few weeks, that keeps the inside at 45, which should be good enough to keep everything alive if not thriving. With the sun shining, it easily gets to 80 inside during the day even if it is only 40 outside. I finally got some data from the new thermometer, and the coldest it has been the past nine days has been 18 outside and 24 inside. That's consistent with what I observed before the AC Infinity went on the fritz. Supposedly it got to 109 degrees inside on Saturday, but the probe was sitting on a shelf in the sun. It's now in a more appropriate location, hanging on the back wall. Even though I can't communicate with the AC Infinity controller through the app any more, it still turns the fan on at 75 degrees, and the automatic vents still do their thing. Because the fan still works, I haven't tried to troubleshoot very extensively.

Pictures of a newly-planted onion bed aren't that compelling since, you know, the onions are buried, so I picked something else for Picture of the Day. It's a plant that enjoys the heat, the Mammillaria 'Elegans' Cactus. Unlike the Powder Puff which has been flowering for the past couple weeks, the 'Elegans' doesn't do anything but sit there and look pretty. It had some little purple spots months ago that I thought meant it would flower soon. It still has little purple spots, and no flowers. But it's a nice round cactus.

Actually I do have a couple images from the greenhouse today, but they aren't related to planting activities. First is the allium bud that my phone camera choked on the other day. It is still the only one of the five plants that has a bud.

The second image is the Sempervivums currently occupying the greenhouse. I won't move the five new ones for a few weeks, but I did move the Chick Charms 'Strawberry Kiwi' that I got about a month ago. It is second from the right in the image. The four old-timers have a story to tell the newcomer of the Semperpocalypse of Feb. 19 when six of their companions froze to death. Semps are supposed to be hardy, but the six who didn't make it probably weren't dry enough to endure the cold snap. Since figuring that out, I've been afraid to water the survivors. There's a big color difference between the four that have been in the cold for two months and the one that just came from a relatively-warm garage. Now that the heat in the greenhouse is back on, I will water them and hopefully they figure out soon that it is spring and they will start growing.

OK, I do have a photo of the boring onion bed. There actually are a few things above ground. At left are two rough-looking garlic that are the only ones that have made it this far. In front of them are bunching onion seedlings that I started a few weeks ago, and I scattered more seeds to the right of them. Toward the back are the five alliums that were planted last fall and started coming up in early February. Sitting on the corner is a big chive pot (one of two) that came out of dormancy more than a month ago. The onion sets obviously were stuck into that area in the middle.