Addicted to blogging.

Already after only a week of blogging I'm getting blogging withdrawls when I miss a day (or three). This weekend was just too busy, between the farm and garden work, trying to put together a preschool silent auction for fundraising, family and everything else I am starting to feel like a crazy chicken (I don't know where that phrase came from but it's fitting). It was a great weekend but no time to write a post or even get half of the things I wanted to get done in the greenhouse. There are just so many time sensitive projects to get done, you know the ones, better get them done before it's too late to put them in the ground cause summer is coming projects, that are always calling from the garden . 

 A triumph for me! A couple of years ago we bought a 20 foot heat cable to bury in a tub with potting soil and use for starting seeds.  I turned it on this year and realized it had burnt itself out, argh what a pain! These cables are $40-50 dollars and in this day and age that is plenty of money (imaging all the seeds you can get with that). I emailed Charlie's Greenhouse where we bought it, they informed me that we needed to contact the manufacture and that the cables have a two year warranty (ours had expired the month before), they gave me all the info for the manufacture. I thought, what the heck, I was going to try anyway, I sent the heat cable to the manufactures, a company called Wrap On, and less than two weeks later we got a brand-new one the mail. It felt just like Christmas. I would defiantly go back to either one of those company's for the excellent service they provided.

Speaking of the holiday season, I made a cabled hat as a Christmas gift for my sister in-law this last year. She opened her gift and tried to put the hat on. Yes I said tried and not to successfully either, I would like to blame it on her overly large head but she just doesn't

have one (her head is very nicely shaped). It was my curse of being an incredibly tight knitter and not compensating for it with larger needles when I started the project.  I took it back to see if blocking it to stretch it out would work. I haven't giving it back yet to see if it will really fit, but the yarn has relaxed now and it's not so tight. Hopefully she gets it back before next Christmas, sorry Kel.

 

Now that Spring has finally sprung (someone let mother nature know) it's time to get down and dirty (literally) in the garden. I have such lofty goals and such little time, ain't that always the way though. The plan was to plant onions,  spinach and chard this weekend along with what ever else the garden book instructed me to do, but the weather had other things in mind. I need to start some more seeds in the greenhouse, kohlrabi, Brussels sprouts, dill, basil and whatever else I can find. The weather excuse doesn't work so well for the greenhouse, I just simply ran out of time and space in the greenhouse. During

the winter I have such a hard time imaging that I could ever fill up all the tables and yet here is spring and I am practically stacking the seed trays on top of each other (not a good idea by the way). I have run out of room on the heat pads, I have had to start tossing cuttings out (this just won't due), so I brought out a couple of grow lights that we bought a few years ago. Isaac and I (in between the downpours)  built a contraption (it truly looks like a 2 year old built it) for the lights to hang on and fit in the greenhouse over trays and be adjustable as the plants grow, you always want the light to be about 2 inches from the tops of the plants. This is usually something I would leave to my husband to build, but then what kind of self respecting blogger would I be if I didn't put my own handywomen skills to the test and let all of you see how little I have (handy skills I mean). As long as it doesn't burn the greenhouse down what do we have to loose (don't worry it was all made out of scrap wood, I didn't waste the good stuff). Let's hope 

it does the trick and helps the seedling grow strong. Have a great Monday!