Garden – 05/24/2010

Once again I got myself into another little side project with the garden. This time it has to do with setting up a makeshift irrigation system as cheaply as possible for the garden.

For the last couple of years, I’ve been thinking about how to run a water line over to the garden area as easily as possible. Since dragging around a 100′ hose in the yard is just too cumbersome. And trenching the yard to put the irrigation line underground is just overkill.

Once again, Menards was having a sale on plumbing/irrigation parts, and while I was looking at the sales flyer the idea hit for running the irrigation piping on the top rail of the fence going around the yard, and just securing it to the fence rail with zip ties. So with a plan in place, it was time to pick up all the parts for this project.

It turns out that this whole project only ran me about $50, and that included the crimping tool which was $9.99. Yeah I could have done this even more cheaply and gone with plastic quick connect fittings which would have been ~$6 total instead of $22 total for all the brass fitting. But for me, the extra $16 was worth the splurge.

I guess we’ll see over time how this set-up hold up to the weather.

Seed Starting – 1st flat – Day 13

Amazing what another five days of growing will do, but it looks like I have a mixed bag of results as far as seeds that ended up germinating.

Success:
Aji Limo
El Jefe
1/2 the Bell Peppers
1/3 the Banana style peppers
1/2 the Sage
1/2 the Basil

Failed:
The other 1/2 or 1/3 of all those listed above
all the parsley
all the cilantro
all the oregeno
all the rosemary

I have to say that I’m not 100% sure that the parsley, cilantro, oregeno, and rosemary have failed. Since all those herbs take anywhere from 14 to 21 days to germinate. So before I toss out all the dirt in those flats, I’ll give them another week or so to do their thing.

Seed Starting – 1st flat – Day 8

It’s been a little bit tricky, figuring out how to get the temperature just right on the heating pad. Since when I wrapped the whole flat in a movers blanket, the temperature inside the flat shot up to 95F. So I’m going to test out simulating the heat and light cycle of the sun in the growing area. So last night I set up a make shift growing station with a grow light on a couple of copier boxes, with the heating pad and the grow light both plugged into a timer.

The basil ended up sprouting this past weekend, which was a lot quicker than expected. And when I checked the flat this morning, I started to see some activity on the El Jefe jalapenos and the sage. As it currently stands, it seems like the heating mat is cutting down the germination time almost in half, which is pretty amazing. That is of course, with me assuming that the seeds that I saved from last year are still viable. Which is the big question mark for the garden this year.

Seed Starting – 1st flat – 2010 season

OK, the first flat of seed were sown last night. And here is the breakdown of what is going into the first flat of 72 cells:

9 cells – Aji Limo
9 cells – El Jefe Jalapeno
6 cells – Bell Peppers
3 cells – Jalapeno “M”
3 cells – Banana pepper – green color
3 cells – Banana pepper – yellow color
3 cells – Banana pepper – orange color
6 cells – Sage
6 cells – Basil
6 cells – Parsley
6 cells – Cilantro
6 cells – Oregano
6 cells – Rosemary