A week of bad weather sure slows down the prep at the Camrose site! As well, it put a halt to my efforts to start hardening off the seedlings. I got 1 good day of them being out for several hours in the coldframes and then it became too stormy, wet, and cold to bother with putting them out. It’s supposed to improve now as of tomorrow so things can get going again.
Tonight we’ll head to the Camrose plot and get the rest of the frames laid into the ground and dig some holes to drop in my experimental pvc pipe watering system. (pictures coming) I found some 3″ diameter, pre-drilled, pvc pipe which I’m cutting into 2 foot lengths. The idea is to sink it into the ground leaving about an inch or so above ground and water into the pipe for a slow release into the soil. I’m not sure how many I would need for each block of veggies so I plan on making 10 lengths and comparing it to hand watering and a soaker hose too. This year is truly going to be experimental, so next year we can improve the methods. Of course, having a small almost non-existent budget also leads me doing things in the way of hardware on a smaller scale than I’d like. But this will prevent any expensive mistakes the first time around too!
I took some new pictures which will be posted tonight to the afore-mentioned picasa web photo album from a previous post. You’ll get to see that some of the cucumber seedlings have opened up some male flowers already! …They were supposed to wait until they got planted out!
