Checked in at the Millwoods plot this evening and did some weeding and picture taking of the new seedlings. I also discovered the pumpkins I wasn’t sure if I had actually planted the seeds or not (note to self: do not plant seeds when tired) had actually sprouted. Those I transplanted to their new home in the north-center bed of the garden.
I noticed 1 squash seedling had snapped off, but the one next to it is fine, and a broken tomato branch or two, nothing too bad. It was rather annoying to find a vodka bottle had been thrown into the garden, which luckily didn’t damage anything. Curious holes had appeared in the white cucumber leaves too, but not so many or so large that the plants would be hampered. Looks like some little bug had at them but the culprit was nowhere to be found when checking the plant.
The whole garden has been pretty windy this past week with the storms and rain blowing through and it has been leaving signs on the plants. You’ll see sections of windburn on all the tomatoes. I hope they will still grow well and bear decent amounts of fruit! Tomorrow when I go out to the garden, I’ll be setting up windbreaks on the beds to help prevent further windburn, and setup the cages for the squash and tomatoes that need it. Also the last 2 panels of mesh are getting attached to the cucumber trellises now the cucumbers have passed the surface of the soil.
While looking at the pictures I took this evening I came up with a bright idea for when we have the farm – Automated row covers!!! Since I’ll be building raised beds a couple feet off the ground (think beds 2 ft tall of cinder block or bricks) it would be a cool idea to have row covers that swivel up to cover the plants when there is a frost warning and then swivel back to uncover them when desired. I think for total geek-factor I need to make it wind, light, temperature, and moisture sensitive so it’ll do it’s job by itself when not on manual override. and then I’ll need to make the sensor array and controls have different thresholds to allow for different conditions like frost, heavy rains or hail, or the need for shade in scorching conditions. Now I need to make drawings so these can be built…then hook it into the Internet so it can monitor the weather website for the frost warnings! I think we’ll make a prototype over the winter to test out the concept….
Now onto the new pictures! Notice the wind blowing the Lemon boy and Ultra Pink tomato plants, gives you an idea of the stiff winds they’ve been experiencing.
