improvements don't really improve the cold frame

I repaired my cold frame today.  The lathe I used was too flimsy to do the job well.  The frame threatened to blow away in the wind, it got bent out of shape by its own weight, and the plastic detached in one corner.

So I attached some 2x2 cedar to the frame to add heft and stiffen it up.  My patch worked but I really must say this turned out to be an ugly project.  It looks real cheap and rushed.  Next time I start a new project, I will slow down and find out how others went about it before I get started. 

Nonetheless, I did learn something from my efforts -- if you want to protect something, what you build must be substantial.  Lathe is not substantial -- use 2x2 or other sturdy-sized wood instead.

flimsy cold frame

Today I made a lightweight cold frame to use as I harden off my transplants.  It was really easy to make but turned out rather flimsy.  So here is what I did and at the end I will tell you what I am going to do to fix it.

Necessary supplies: 4 foot lathe, metal fasteners, a square, a hammer, 3.5 millimeter plastic, scissors, and a stapler.  So I used a square to make sure my angles were good before pounding the fastener in with a hammer. 

Here is what the fasteners looked like before and after.  The fasteners were rather sharp but I found them easy to work with even with kids around.

Then I cut off the amount of plastic I needed from my roll.  And attached it using a stapler -- I have a heavy duty stapler somewhere but couldn't figure out where it was when the time came so my desk stapler had to do.

I think this modest cold frame will be enough to keep my transplants protected while they harden off.

But my cold frame is a little flimsy.  The wind threatened to take it away so I put a chair in front of it for the time being.  When I get a chance next week I am going to buy some 2x2 and attach it to my frame for greater stability and heft.  I don't think a mild wind will down it then.

Still, I am wondering if at this point if it would be more time efficient to just try direct seeding into the ground.

cutie peas

Bug Identification: friend or foe?

So I found a couple bugs in my yard over the weekend -- and since all my bug knowlege is limited to the generic: bee, worm, beetle, ant, butterfly, slug, I took pictures and sent them off to Seattle Tilth for identification.  My first mystery companion?  (Click picture for a closer look.)

A millipede.  A gardner's friend.  These little guys are a slow-moving decomposers of organic matter such as leaves. They tend to roll up into a spiral when scared -- perhaps that should have tipped me off to its essentially good nature.

My second mystery companion? (Click picture for a closer look.)

A wireworm.  A gardner's foe.  This little guy tends to live in soils that recently held sod -- which makes sense since I first spotted these quick creatures when I was removing grass for my epimediums.  If I only knew what I was seeing then, I would have dispatched of them.  Instead I left them to their own devices.  As adults they are harmless click beetles.  However as young wireworms, they like to eat seeds, stems, and roots -- not good news for a veggie gardner.  And the worse news is that they stay in their larval wireworm stage for two to six years before becoming adults.  For more information you should check out this University of Maine Cooperative Extension fact sheet that Seattle Tilth shared with me. 

Perhaps is was wireworms that did this to my tyfon (turnip.) 

Since my epimediums have been slower to emerge than expected, I am going to try a technique that Seattle Tilth said might be helpful -- leave some decoy carrots in the bed to lure the wireworms from the new starts.  If I have nibbles in a week I will know that I have a problem.

The raised bed is ready to plant

Well, the weather turned from short-sleeves to sweatshirts and hats overnight -- dampening our gardening enthusiasm.  Nonetheless, we managed to finally fill our large raised bed with our best approximation of Mel's mix (basically a self-mixed potting soil made of multiple composts, peat moss and vermiculite.)  The mix made sense to me since my raised bed is basically a very large container.

The light and fluffy mix is begging to be planted.  So I am probably lucky that the weather changed so quickly or I might have turned my tender veggie sprouts out too soon.  I will have to read up on this but I think the plants can go out once they have true leaves and/or their roots break through the pellets. 

I imagine it would be be best if I harden, or leave the pellets outside protected, for a day or two before I plant them out in the soil.  To help me harden my pellets, I am thinking of building a small square frame and covering it with a heavy, clear(ish) plastic sheet -- kind of like a smaller version of My Tiny Plot's peach frame -- so I am ready when the time comes.

In the end I am happy that the weather has bought me a chance to regroup.  And I am also pleased that the colder weather is bringing rain.  I am sure my new strawberries will appreciate it since I am a lazy waterer (my soaker hose still isn't attached to the faucet!)  

PM project: the fruit bed

This afternoon I turned my attention to our fruit bed.  I had already laid down the soaker hose so I pulled the strawberry starts from my fridge.  I was having a hard time visualizing 50 strawberry plants one foot apart, so I snagged 50 toothpicks from my baking supplies and spread them around to help me with my spacing.

I left the hairy mess of starts out on a plate between damp paper towels since it was short-sleeve weather and I didn't want the roots to dry out. 

Raintree Nursery (where I got them) says that strawberries are very flexible: they can be planted in mounds, beds, rows, containers, etc. -- but their root tips should be straight.   Now the rest of what I show you I might have gotten wrong.  I am NOT an expert.  I did what seemed right for me -- it may or may not be right, it may or may not be right for you. 

Disclaimer complete, I will now share my process: when I planted my starts I would flip the berries upside down and open up their root skirts.

Then I would place them in a prepared hole.  I prepared the holes by shoveling out a spadeful of dirt, then crumbling most of the dirt back in careful to be gentle with the worms.  Then I would shape the crumbled dirt in the hole into a mound that was essentially soil level high before setting the strawberry start on top so its skirt would fan out.

Then I would cover the roots with the remaining soil.  If you look around you can find a lot of pictures like this one from Ask The Berry Man that give a visual of the level at which the crown should be planted.  I hope I got it right. 

For the most part though I didn't worry much about planting my strawberries because I knew that the area would be covered with compost later this afternoon -- and that made me feel like I had backup.  So by day's end, with the help of a neighborhood teenager who hauled all the compost, my fruit bed looked like this.

I can't wait to see what it looks like this summer!  But for now, with an achy back and a mild fever, it is time to get myself to bed so I can recuperate for tomorrow.

AM project: removing tyfon cover crop

It was a busy day at Scaredy Cat farm.  This morning I laid down a soaker hose for my fruit bed then started the transformation of my  "weed bed."  The first task was to remove all the tyfon cover crop I planted there last fall.  Previously the bed had been covered with landscape fabric and beauty bark.  I picked tyfon as my renovation crop because it has long tap roots to break up soil and it is edible (though I wasn't brave enough to try more than a few leaves.  The bottoms are supposed to be like turnips but something seemed to have gotten to mine first -- see this January post.)

There was a lot of work to do so I enlisted all the help I could get. 

And while this looks like lots of work, it wasn't.  What started as an Indiana Jones adventure morphed into the German Army, into being farmers, into a fourth of July celebration, into pirates. (Tyfon is that easy to pull.)

The kids and their neighborhood friends did a great job.  As you can see, they razed the lot before losing interest.

Which left me with just the devastation to deal with. Unfortunately, despite the tyfon I still had a thick mat of weeds.  I started to remove them -- first individually to make sure the really bad weeds were dealt with appropriately, then with a hoe to mow down all the annuals. 

I still have work ahead of me (more hoeing and covering the area with compost), but with any luck this bed will get seeded for wildflowers as a draw for beneficial insects tomorrow.