Sunday, January 18, 2009

January 18, 2008

First off, quick update on my son. He's a real trooper.  You have to drill down to get him to tell you it hurts.  He's even great at using only his left hand to do everything when he's right handed.  Tomorrow he gets the stitches out, then it's only regular band aids from here on out.  Boy kids heal fast.  Oh, why not, here's a shot of him waiting to be treated in the ER.



Now where was I?  Well, last night was a really late night.  I had slept in so it was easy to stay up, especially when I was watching a movie and cutting 1" PVC pipes into little pieces.  The first several were bad, jagged edges and broken pieces, but once I got the hang of the cutting tool, it worked well.  Besides, it doesn't have to be perfect, just solid.  At 2 am I finally finished the movie and the cutting, but silly me, I didn't think to take a picture until I had put everything away.  You'll note though, that it stores nicely so I can take it down and put it away when I don't need it anymore, if that happens, not sure.



When I woke up I had to take this picture out my office window at all the frost on the ground.



Anyway, I didn't get a chance to go out and buy the lights today.  During breakfast I got a call saying the demo was starting at my folk's old house, so off I went.  On the way back I swung by Target to check out the Sterilite 18 gallon totes, only to find them all gone.  Oh, sure, they had plenty of the Rubbermaid Roughnecks for $9 each.  I'm not even sure those will work well for a SWC.  I'll have to think on that.  Thank goodness I don't need to plant my SWCs until May if last year is any indication (I was going through my pictures last night and found the ones from the day I planted, May 3rd).  Wow, that's a long time from now.

At least after we did demo, we took an entire truck load of transplanted plants my Aunt wanted to save and move to the new house.  I'm sure she'll miss the wonderful flower garden she created over 40 years at my folks' house, but at least now she has a clean slate to work with.  On that note, I tried again to convince her to follow through with her thought to take Master Gardener classes now that she's retired.  Why not, she's got the time and probably could teach most of the classes already.

Lastly, I took a pic of each blueberry plant to put next to the description in yesterday's post, but grrr, WordPress had an error loading the page so I can't edit that post, even to put a title on it. hehe.  So I thought I'd at least put them here so you can see what my bushes look like in the dead of winter.

Legacy: My favorite part of this bush is that it's an evergreen here.



Blueray: I love the big clusters of berries.



Northblue:



Jersey:



Lastly, a word on planting blueberries.  I know you can plant them in either fall or spring, but for my money, I like fall planting.  That gives them all winter to get used to the new environment and start growing healthy root systems.  At lest it worked last year, so I hope it works just as well with these last two that I planted last October.

Enjoy your garden!

6 comments:

  1. I'm glad he's feeling better! One of Clancy's books said that with kids "if all the parts stay in the same room, they'll heal." Still, I know you'd rather be in pain than watch your kids in pain. As a mom of two old little guys (5 & 7), I'm sure you and I have more ER time coming.
    Last year when we put the oldest's tent up in the front room, he came rolling out with the tent cover and said, "Will you throw me off the roof so I can see if this will work as a parachute?" Oh yeah, I got hours in ER coming to me.

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  2. Had to laugh at Carolynp's comment! So true - especially with two boys to egg each other on. I have just one - and a girl - but grew up in a large family and there were regular "incidents" with the two boys in the mix.

    The blueberries look like they are thriving in their location.

    I must have missed it - but are the PVC pipe pieces for your light set up? Or is that for the SWCs?

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  3. I'm a newish reader of your blog (I got here from Lauren and Garth's blog, Dropstone Farms). I've been rooting around, but I haven't figured it out yet: what are SWCs?

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  4. SWC: Self Watering Container (actually the "technical" name for this would be sub-irrigated planter).

    I'm about to try making a couple with the roughneck totes as they are on sale at the moment, but this will be my first so I'm no expert.

    Ray Newstead exclusively uses the roughnecks for his "EarthTainers". There's a description and construction video here: http://www.tomatofest.com/tomato-earthtainer.html

    He's using the big 'uns, though they share the same shape. In the 2.0 version he uses a smaller round basket instead of the big square beast.

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  5. Those are some massive tomato plants on the link, I thought my plants were big last year, nothing like that!

    You really have a great selection of blueberry bushes. In a couple years you should have loads of blueberries to pick. After making that pie I am definitely going to find a u-pick blueberry farm this coming season.

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  6. I bought my shop lights last year and doing all the comparison shopping, you'll find the shop light fixtures are least expensive at Wal-Mart beating Lowes and Home Depot. Just thought I would point that out. About $2 cheaper per fixture here.

    Meijer has 30ga. Sterlite containers on sale this week for $8.99. That's the best I have seen in awhile. The 18ga Rubbermaid ones at Walmart were $8.50.

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