Art?

Had to share this.  

I grow a lot of lettuces, celery, bok choy, etc in planter trays.

And I was starting a new season of them last week.  But the trays have a wire hook in the middle to keep the sides from spreading.  They got filled with dirt and the hooks didn't fit in anymore.

So I used a cheap drill bit to both pull the dirt out and enlarge them slightly.  Now, the wire hooks fit in great.  

Emptied all the dirt into a large tray.  Mixed in some organic slow-release fertilizer.  Add fresh potting soil on the top 2 inches.  Leveled the soil in the trays.  And because the dry peat moss part of the soil doesn't get wet easily at first, poured hot water into all the 10 trays.

Ready to plant tomorrow under bright fluorescent lights.  But fluorescent lights don't last forever.  I get a year from them (they are on 14 hours a day).  So I spent an hour replacing tubes that were dead.  Getting the old ones out is sometimes hard.  Getting new ones in is harder.  Frustrating sometimes.  But I got that done.

But I'll have fresh lettuces etc to put outside on the deck (see last year's picture above) in time to get more standard garden veggies under the lights soon.

So what I wanted to share was that I was out of red leaf lettuce.  And buying a single seed packet online is ridiculous (about $14).  And they want to send you 500 seeds.  As if I needed 500 seeds.  I plant a dozen per year.  

So Walmart had a 50 seed packet for $2.  Perfect.  A bit of red lettuce in my daily salad goes a long way for appearance.  

Planting indoors is now on it's way!

I mentioned "art" didn't I?  I almost forgot.  Drilling the tray for the hooks to fit was a bit of a project.  I have a drill press and that helped.  Drilled dirt out and enlarged the holes slightly.  The results were interesting!

Here is the cheap drill bit after all the drilling...

And here is the bit spinning around...

I think that looks sort of artistic...

Do you?

Salad Trays

I keep trays of salad greens on sawhorses of the deck.  They are convenient there.  Most leaf lettuces, celery and pak choy are "cut&come again".  But they do wear out eventually.  I kept the previous planting going from Spring to a few weeks ago.

So it was time to start again.  I dumped all the tray into a large tub.  Very sturdy tub; I think it is used for automotive stuff like draining fluids, but I'm pretty good at seeing other uses for stuff.  Like the 10" wide plaster-smoother that I use to scrape the litter boxes clean.

So I had all the soil in the tub a couple weeks ago and a surprise rainstorm hit.  So I had a tub of mud!  That took a couple weeks to dry out.  And because there was more rain coming, I suspended a tarp over the tub allowing airflow so it could dry out without getting soaked again.

Finally yesterday, I had workable soil again.

I'm missing a few pictures that were so bad as to be unusable.  But they showed a tray in the tub and scooped soil filling it.  I used a small block of scrap wood as a leveler and to lightly press the soil flat.   Then I poked some slight depressions added a seed to each and pilled the holes.  You'll have to just imagine that part 6 times.  😖

But when I was done, I had my salad bed replanted...

 I have small round carrots, pak choy, red romaine lettuce, red leaf lettuce, and green leaf lettuce.  And it's not the stuff you see in the grocery store.  Red romaine lettuce is never seen.  The red leaf lettuce is bright red from top to bottom instead of just the tips.  The green leaf lettuce is lime green.  

The celery is still growing from before, but I don't get stalks; I grow it for the tastier (slightly bitter).  I grow the pak choy for the leaves (for wrapping the contents of shrimp rolls inside the dough wrappers to avoid punctures).

Most of those plants are moderately cold-hardy, but before it gets too cold, I will bring them inside under lights.  Fresh salad all Winter!

Planting Trays All Fall Over

I have a routine in late Winter.  I soak old planting trays in the laundry tub with a bit of bleach to drown/kill any insect eggs and rinse them thoroughly.  Then I fill them with newly-mixed potting soil I make/mix myself.  I fill the trays of plastic cell-packs with my mix.  And then stack them up for easy access.

Well  "Some Kitty" seems to have considered that a good way to jump up onto the old basement refrigerator...

AARGH!  

It sure took a while of sweeping, moving stuff around, more sweeping.  But everything is clean and the soil recovered in buckets.  I'd rather it hadn't happened, but the potting area is cleaner now that it has been for a few years.  

I made sure to leave the recovered trays stacked lower and make more stable.  Set me back a week (I didn't clean it all up in a single day).  But at least I am ready to move forward with planting seeds again...