Well, not much to post about the garden today. For after 10 hour days of manual labor over the weekend, I'm doing 12+ hour days at work again. No end in sight until maybe December for me, and I still have 2 weeks vacation to use, hehe.
But what I did want to share was that we had a fall storm pass through, looking very winterish today. It was thunder storms with pea sized hail passing through. We had it for a brief time in downtown Seattle, and my wife missed being hit by ligthning in her car by a quarter mile (she saw it in her rear view mirror). Shaken up a bit, but all was ok. Though after a bad storm like that, I was worried when I raced home (at 8pm) to find that my hoop covers were none the worse for wear. I half expected them to be torn to shreds by hail. Not sure if we got it here or not, but if we did, hey held up admirably. And the wind, though nowhere near as bad as we get in the fall, didn't dislodge much of anything. Very promising.
I'm thinking of watering every three days for now. I'm not used to having to water much, especially in the wet fall and winter months, but seeing as how the covers are on, I'll have to water in the pooring rain. Unless I want to take the time to uncover them and let the freezing rain do it for me, then re-cover it. I think I'll garden with an umbrella or baseball cap instead, hehe.
Another thing I was thinking about today (just cause I can't garden doesn't mean I don't think about it), was to do a test to see how much warmer it is inside my hoop covers. I've got two remote temp gauges for my radio controlled weather gauge. I could put the one from my kids room inside one of my hoop covers and compare it to the one right outside in the garden. Interesting test. Maybe I'll do that after I water.
Lastly, I saw an advertisement for 40 acre parcels for $30k over in Eastern Washington. Heck, I could afford that. So I called my brother up and mentioned it to him, since he's the one that dreams of being a real homesteader. I'm just moving toward being an urban one. hehe. Well, it seems that this place isn't new. They've been trying to offload these parcels for over a year with little success. Seems an old rancher or two died and thier kids didn't want the ranch, so they subdivided them into 40 acre parcels to sell off. It's cool that apparently rural communities have crafted laws to promote homesteading rather than businesses building condos and single family subdivisions. Could you just see multiple families buying a huge ranch out and creating a homesteading community? Sounds pretty cool to me. And I like that it's less than 3 hours from Seattle and gets 300 days of sun a year (pretty cold in the winters though, ask Granny, she's relatively close and heads to Arizona about this time every year), hehe.
One can dream...
Enjoy your garden
It would be interesting to see the temperature difference in the hoop cover as well as the minimum night temp.
ReplyDelete40 acres sounds good to me. My uncle has a 50 acre farm in Central Ontario although it is used more as a cottage then a farm. It is a nice size, not massive but provides everything you could want really.
That's a nice dream, one I'm having more and more lately. I'd never get any work done though.
ReplyDeleteI figure it's just a matter of time before you bust out of that suburban postage stamp and go for some acreage. 40 acres is a bit large I'd say. I wonder if there's any water under that land.
ReplyDeleteDepends on where it is in E. WA. We don't get a lot of cold weather here in the Columbia Basin, not like up in Spokane or down there in Pomeroy/Dayton. The winters here are usually bearable, we seldom get much, if any, snowfall. Besides, if you were close enough Granny could put in some extra veggie garden beds on those forty acres and plant flowers in mine ;-) Of course, you'd have to sink a well for irrigation, unless it's in an irrigation district. Here, even in town, we have unlimited water from the irrigation district for 6 months of the year. We need it, as we have practically no rainfall....just lots and lots of sunshine! Many of these old farms are/were dry land wheat farms.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite E.WA area is Walla Walla. I loved it when we lived there, and it's a great area for gardening.
I had 40 acres in central Washington (2 - 20 acre parcels next to each other actually) prior to moving here to the wet side of the State. It IS wonderful to have such an abundance of sun and long growing season - but - it is incredibly hot and dry and the soil tends to be alkaline and sandy. All manageable - but I must say I love my soil here much better. Just wish I could have brought the abundant sunshine with me.
ReplyDeleteI will be interested in what your inside temperature read is compared to the external temp. Are you planning to do a time series over several days/weeks?