right after this!
saturday was AMAZING! it was 72 degrees (73?) at our house. in march! we went to hendrick's head for a picnic lunch and built a sandcastle and threw rocks into the water (we can do this for hours). it was so wonderful. then we came home and played outside. i had filled the wagon with water (it makes an impromptu water table. we call it the water wagon) and nina went "swimming" in it. she was hot! so much fun.
sunday finally brought us back to reality, it was only in the mid-40s or something. and today was more of the same, with some drizzle on top of it. oh well, it'll be summer again before we know it.
in garden news, my peppers haven't germinated yet. i had to find out what was going on so i dug up one seed. that's probably not good for it, but i had to know. my vegetable gardener's bible says they should germinate within 6-8 days, but the seed packet says 10 to 21. that's because ed (ed smith, author of the vegetable gardener's bible) says to keep the seeds at 80 to 85 degrees, and my seed packet says 75 to 80. ed claims that the lower temperatures not only slow germination but damage the plant's potential. but keeping the seeds at 80 to 85 degrees is very difficult. so what i've been doing, besides setting them in the bright sun on the warm days (and our mudroom gets pretty hot in the afternoon with the sun shining in), is putting them on my broiler pan with water on the bottom, and heating the water. i'm not letting it got hot enough to cook them, just toasty to get the soil somewhat warm. we'll see how this works out... so far it's been 6 days i think, and no germination yet. however, the seed did look plumper than when we put it in the soil, so something's definitely happening.
tomorrow we'll start the tomato seeds, those require lower temperatures, so hopefully we'll have faster, successful germination.
so exciting!!
1 comment:
That's a beautiful sand castle!
And there's nothing that tastes better than home-grown tomatoes! Maybe I'll come and visit in the summer!
Post a Comment