Spring Suprise!

First, no, steel bolts do not "spring out and plunge straight through both cheeks."

Now that we have that out of the way, the seedlings I replanted after the big storm are doing well.  One major issue remains, however.  I don't know what most of them are!!!!!   While they're alive, they're still mostly at that stage where everything looks alike.   Once they have actual leaves I'll start posting pics and we can play "Guess that plant!"  Whee!  I should have some suhyo and some yellow squash that just came up.  They were mystery seeds/seedlings too, but easy to tell apart from other things.  I just replanted my zucchini.  I lost the seeds I bought for a while.

On the bench front, I sanded almost all of the wood last night.  I have some large pieces that still need to be sanded, but they also need to be cut quite a bit, so I'm waiting to sand until then.  We also got the table saw set up, but we need to raise it about 3 inches.  Hopefully we'll be able to do some cutting on Sunday, but I'm not sure that will happen with other more pressing issues.

ReStore Score:

The rest of the wood for the potting bench!!!!!  Huzzah!  Including two planks of bullnose ceder for the benchtop!  Now to get sanding, cutting, staining, drilling, and building!  Trying to re-pot without a bench has shown that this is really more of a need than a want if I want to be serious about my garden.  Pictures will be forthcoming as we go.

Sunny Days

My friend Eve offered to share some of her plants with me!  But she lives in Huntington and we rarely go out that way, cause she's really my only friend in Huntington.  But just the offer has helped put me in a better frame of mind.

I've still got a dozen or so plants in the AeroGarden, both mine and Paul's.  I'm hoping to transplant them this week sometime.

Paul's garden is looking ok, but it was always looking good.  I'm a little worried about his peppermint though.  Between the crash and the cold it's looking a little shocky.  Paul's Genovese Basil should make it, but I think mine is shot.  We have a lot of dried Genovese, so I'm not too anxious there.  My initial guess of about five of my plants, not including the peppers, surviving the storm doesn't seem to be that far off.

Weary

As one may have noticed from the previous post, I lost most of my plants last night when the wind tipped over my greenhouse.  The peppers, and less than half a dozen other plants were still in pots out of the 30 or so that were growing.  Of the half dozen that I salvaged I'm not sure if they're going to survive, or if there was too much damage done to the plants.  The peppers are the only thing I'm sure of.   I don't know if I'm going to replant or not.  This will be the third replanting for many of the plants.   I haven't been blogging my death tolls well.

It's still well before last frost date, so I can still replant and have plenty of growing time, but I'm not sure I have the energy for it.  Watching all your hard word destroyed over and over is very off-putting when the garden is a hobby and not a necessity.   I'm open for opinions.  What would you do?  Replant, buy plants from a nursery, or give it up as a bad job for this year?  Vote using the poll on the right.

THE GARDEN IS DEAD!

LONG LIVE THE GARDEN!

Miscellany

I've decided that I want to post about not just the plants, but about the various garden related projects I've got in the works.  So today I'm posting summaries of all the things I've been doing while it's been too cold for my plants.

POTTING BENCH:

I've got most of the wood I currently have sanded, and now that the temp is above freezing at night, I can start staining again.  I'm using Olympic Semi-Transparent Blue Sapphire stain.  I'd link you the color, but the Olympic website doesn't have a good url to show just the color I'm using.  Before I can sand and stain some of the boards, I need Tim to cut them to size.  We've got a few scraps of pressure treated lumber that was in the garage when we moved in.  I'm using that for some of the small support pieces and for the grate, since the grate will see the most moisture. The rest of the lumber I'm hoping to get from the Habitat for Humanity ReStore.

CURRENT ReSTORE SCORE:

3/4 x 6 x 74 in Cedar Board (w00t)
3/4 x 2 1/2 x 48 in Heartwood Cedar Board

Those are my windfall pieces.  I've also got, in pine, the wood for the front and back legs, two of the shelves,  the bottom shelf supports, some of the bench top frame, and most of the bench top.  I still need the bottom  shelf, the long pieces of the bench top frame, the backsplash, and the back supports for the shelves.

I thought I had one of the long pieces for the bench top frame.  It was a pretty banged up and dirty piece of wood, so I was going to use it where it would not be seen.  In fact it was in bad enough shape that I asked Tim to take the belt sander to it.  I don't have enough confidence in my skills to use the belt sander when it's not clamped into place yet.  When he got done sanding it, it turned into a lovely piece of poplar.  It is now in our random lumber pile.  C'est la vie. 

Sakura!