I've been playing outside these past few days. Digging out the cold frame, moving pots, tossing frozen cat poop, and beginning to think about picking up all that litter. Bulbs are shooting up greens, expecting crocus any day now. The cold frame has seen better days ever since it became the cat frame, and then snow shed, but it's hanging on enough to do its job.
And its job is to house the seedlings on sunny days, lid propped.
These complicated, bent beginnings are leeks, my first attempt at the onion.
These are the leggy, but graceful Broccoli 'Piracicaba' seedlings. I did not try hard enough to drop one seed per dib, but I do find that broccoli disentangles fairly easily when it's time to plant.
These seedlings are only a few days up, and the window sun and excessive kitchen heat push them to grow too fast. So they get to play outside whenever it's sunny and above 35 degrees F. They come in at night, unless it isn't expected to drop below freezing. I do want to balance the quick growth of inside with the hardening of outside, so that they are ahead of the game when I go to plant in the middle of March.
I'm wondering where the heck to start my opium poppies, linaria, and tomatoes. Maybe a cold frame under my stone table. Maybe the roof. Huh.
ReplyDeleteYou get much sun on the 66 squares at this time?
ReplyDeleteIf so...
piece of plexi-glas over the braai -instant cold frame.
piece of plexi-glas angled toward your building, behind it seedlings.
cheap wooden vegetable crate from local veg market -wrapped in clear recyclables trash bag.
Stop me, they'll keep coming.
Mornings till lunch = sun.
ReplyDeleteThank you, thank you!
So you just discard the cat poop from the soil? The neighborhood cats starting pooping in my plot when the garden thinned out in the fall. I had some beautiful lettuce but didn't eat it cause I was freaked out by the poop. Was I overreacting?
ReplyDeleteCold frame seedlings are looking good!
ReplyDeleteWelcome, Marie. make sure they have ventilation if its gonna get over 45-50.
ReplyDeleteThanks Meems.
Dash -hmm. I wouldn't eat the lettuce if there was poop very near it. I have no vegetables in the area anymore. My herbs are in pots off the ground, but sometimes I don't even trust those because of cat spray. The only thing that you can do to keep cats from pooping somewhere is to make it a hard surface. What I do is throw the cat poop into the ungardened area hoping that they will think -oh, yeah, that's the spot. But they don't. All I can do is clean it up and keep an eye and nose out for it. So often its just covered with a light layer of soil and I don't see it until its on my shoes. Arrgh.
Consider fencing in your vegetables, row covers. It's rough out there.