I Wet My Plants

For those of you who are confused as to when to start, transplant and harvest your seed-started plants, don’t despair!  I’ve jimmied together an automatic seed starting schedule that will calculate it all for you.  All you need is to enter your last spring frost and your first fall frost.

You can download the document here: Seed Starting Chart

Sales are over and the season is getting on.  Anyone interested in free heirloom tomato plants can get in touch with me by email. Not sure what I’ve got left exactly though there is a variety of stuff.

I’ll only be available this Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

Cheers!

I’ve set my tomato plant sale dates for Saturday, May 22 and Sunday May 23 from 9 AM to 3 PM on the Victoria Day long weekend.

I’m selling them for $3.50 each or 3 for $10.

Here’s a list of the different types I have:

Amish Paste
Andrew Rahart’s Jumbo Red
Aunt Ginny’s Purple
Azoychka
BHN-624
Black Cherry
Black from Tula
Black Krim
Black Plum
Chapman
Cherokee Purple
Cosmonaut Volkov
Coustralee
Crnkovic Yugoslavian
Eva Purple Ball
German Red Strawberry
Giannini
Gogosha
Gold Rush Currant
Green Zebra
Jaune Flameé
JD’s Special C-Tex
Josefina
Juliet
KBX
Martino’s Roma
Matt’s Wild Cherry
Mexico Midget
Momotaro
Opalka
Paul Robeson
Prue
Purple Russian
Red Brandywine
Red Penna
Red Zebra
Riesentraube
Sapho F1
Sara’s Galapagos
Sioux
Snow White
Sweet Pea Current
Tommy Toe (red)

Please EMAIL ME if you have any questions about the tomatoes or pick-up. Thanks for stopping by!

I realize that my choice of words for pre-pre-orders and pre-orders was pretty crappy.  Here’s my attempt at correcting any misunderstandings.  There are two sales this year:

Buy a Seed to be Sown for You Sale
This is the pre-pre-order that closed on March 20th (yeah, dumb name but it was all I could think of at the time).  My thought was that people who really knew what they wanted early in the year could tell me and I would sow a seed for them that they could buy as a seedling later on.  These pre-ordered seeds would be sown at the same time as I normally sow seeds for my tomato plant sale (see next).

Buy a Seedling Sale
This is the pre-order that I had last year.  I’ve started about 50 different types of tomatoes (a lot of red-coloured tomatoes as well as cherries) and I have about 400 seedlings.  If you can believe it, I’ve scaled back from last year when I had 800 seedlings.  These seedlings will be available for purchase mid-May, after I’ve hardened them off.

Details of the Buy a Seedling Sale will be posted soon and people who are interested can email me with their selections for pick-up in mid-May.

In the meantime, here are my little seedlings in the garage:

So I’ve been really into the idea of extending the gardening season as well as protecting my cabbages, Brussels sprouts and broccoli from the dreaded white butterfly.  I’ve been scouring the interwebs for a good project to take ideas from and ended up at Johnny’s Selected Seeds Quick Hoops Bender.  Cool tool, eh?  It’s also a cool $69 plus $32.45 for shipping.  At just over $100 US, I couldn’t justify buying it and shipping it to Canada to only make a few hoops.  I set myself to finding a do-it-yourself (DIY) solution.

When I first tackled this project I thought 3/4″ PVC pipe was the way to go.  I’ve worked with it before when building props for Halloween (my other hobby) and I was used to the fittings and cutting of pipe, etc.  After reading blogs and posts from different gardeners who’ve built their own low tunnel hoop houses, I realized that the PVC would be too fragile to overwinter in my cold climate.  If I was going to build something, why not build something that will last?

Enter  electrical metallic tubing (EMT), a.k.a. galvanized electrical conduit.  These metal pipes are used to run electrical wiring in houses.  All the sites I’ve read (US sites, I should add) mention how a 3/4″ – 10′ length of EMT only costs about $2.  Great, I thought, this will be a cheap experiment.  Checking my local hardware store, I found out the same pipe costs $8.48.  I looked online at Lowe’s USA and found their price was $3.27, a whopping 2.6 times cheaper than here in Canada (btw, 1/2″ pipe up here is $4.98 and $1.87 down there. Ugh.).  I decided the next trip across the border would have to include a stop to Lowes.

In the meantime, I needed to find a way to bend the EMT without the use of the Quick Hoops Bender or a pipe bender – a handy pipe-bending tool that I don’t have and don’t want to purchase.  The problem would be to create the arc that the 10′ pipe would need to have so that the ends of the pipe would have a 4′ distance.  Basically, I was trying to figure out how to recreate the pipe in this photo.

To start my experiment, I bought one 1/2″ EMT, one 3/4″ EMT and one 3/4″ PVC pipe, all in our high Canadian prices.

Reviewing the Quick Hoops Bender manual (PDF), revealed that each hoop was to be extended 16″ beyond the end of the bender, i.e., there would be 16″ of straight EMT on either ends of the pipe.  I pounded scrap rebar into the ground until it was at a height of 16 inches:

I pounded another piece of scrap rebar into the ground 4′ away:

I took my 3/4″ PVC bendy pipe and stuck the ends on the rebar:

Stepping back, I had a 10′ long and 4′ diameter arc!

It’s not as perfect-looking as the Johnny’s picture but I didn’t care.  I dragged out a large piece of scrap plywood and placed it behind the pipe:

I took a Sharpie and traced the inside of the arc onto the plywood:

My next step will be to drill screws at 18″ intervals along the line to create a jig around which to bend the pipe.  Having two different diameter pipe will help me figure out which one is more suitable for this experiment.  Once I’ve got a few hoops made, I can then put them in my garden and cover it with remay to protect all my brassicas.

Yay!