I guess I would rather have squirrels than snow right now

We have squirrels too, Sally

We haven't had enough snow this year (yet, at least) for them to do this, but it's fun to watch the little red squirrels popping up from the tunnels they make through the snow to get from one place to another.

I have never seen that, Sandy. That would be so fun to see!

We humans are just posers as gardeners, when compared to squirrels.

porkpal said: Death, taxes, and squirrels?

I can almost see that as a great T shirt slogan

Overall, voles are a bigger nemesis for me, but 'squirrels' is a funner word!

I have engaged the garden experiment I mentioned earlier. I decided to do it before I actually do it in the full-size garden. I'm doing it on a smaller scale.



Each cup is labeled. Control one, control two, variable one, variable two. I'm using sugar pie pumpkin seeds, one in each container. The containers are transparent, so I can monitor root growth. The seeds are right next to the side, so I can monitor seed growth.

As soon as the plants are sprouted, I will engage the next phase of the experiment, which is adding diluted nettle water to the variable plants. I will then chart growth.

Happy spring equinox, everyone!

Yesterday morning it almost actually looked like spring, with no snow left in my garden; now...

sallyg said: I guess I would rather have squirrels than snow right now

Me too!!

Just some misty rain here and it is fairly warm. I went and planted out in ground my Lupine Seeds that I was soaking. They looked good so nice and plumped up and ready to grow.

I want to soak more but first I need to clear off the garden area I want those in. I have it heavily mulched in Fall Leaves and need to get down to bare ground. So move off all those leaves.

Once I put the seeds to soak I can't wait as they must be planted when they are ready so I must be ready.

No veggie seeds have popped up yet here in the house that I sowed Monday and Tuesday.

Happy equinox! Sunny and freezing here and I'd rather have snow or any other kind of precipitation, but at least the wind has abated for now. The garden is trashed.

A young man just arrived to help with yard cleanup. It should be illegal to be that good looking. I may be old but I'm not dead yet! 😂😍

Weedwhacker said: This morning my veg garden was completely bare of snow - now it is all white again.

(not like I thought we were done with the snow for the season, of course!)

Still composting eh? 😁

Rita, can't wait to see your plants later! Since you're planting individual seeds, you could make little holes among the leaves & leave the leaves there. That will keep the ground from drying out as quickly later in the year & probably just disappear over summer as worms munch on them - leaving lovely, fertile worm poo in the soil.

I've done a bit over the last few days.

The six-foot concrete pagoda, I built 37 years ago, to compliment the koi pool and Japanese tea house I'd built myself around the same time, was looking a bit scruffy.
The roofs, sorin and ferrules on the corners needed attention.



I re-painted the pergola ferrules and added a few for possible future replacements.

What makes you think I've done this before?



I also re-painted the sorin.



This was a pain to make back then, mostly from stuff I had in the garage.

There's a central steel rod.

From the bottom.
A shaving foam canister top.
A wooden cupboard handle.
Nine drilled out brass cupboard handles.
Nine shower curtain rings.
Nine 4pt milk carton tops,
A nut.
A Blagden garden lighting support spike, I drilled holes in.
Two wooden beads.

It's as authentic as I could make it.

The roofs got a couple of coats of paint.

Job done!



I didn't give it a complete "make over," I didn't want it to look too new. The balustrades, which are hardwood mouldings set in the concrete floors, did not need a repaint.

Some of the work that went into this nearly forty years ago is always unseen.
At the time, there was no internet and I relied on illustrations in books.

There's a limit to what you can do with concrete, but I had a go at making "simulated pin-joint supports." These are used under the corners of the roofs which stick out quite a long way.


These of course can't be seen, due to the size of the roofs.



The exterior of the tea-house just needed a good clean.





There's no rot even though I made it mostly from reclaimed softwood. But it's had umpteen coats of paint over the decades.



I even scrubbed the floor of the verandah!



This building, in the bottom corner of our garden, is my "Garden Entertainment Centre."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

I overwintered my Yukon Gold seed potatoes from last year's crop in the refrigerator. I reserved the larger ones for a mid-summer planting / fall harvest, but took a lot of marginal small seed potatoes to see if I could get a little early season crop out of them. They didn't chit too well so I don't have high expectations.

On a lark, I grabbed some little Yukon Golds from the supermarket, put a dozen of them in an egg carton, and put them in my water heater cabinet. Chitted pretty well:



I pulled them out and put them on a sunny window. I might backfill my initial planting if it fails with these. I know people scream about using certified seed potatoes for disease concerns and such, but I'm not worried about a potato famine if the crop fails, so

Riley, I appreciate your dedication to detail and plain old hard work. Well done.

Worked to remedy some of my rookie gardening errors from years past. I planted two knockout roses in front of my house about 12 years ago and while they didn't die they really didn't thrive either. I dug them up and the woody and decrepit root ball hadn't gone beyond the bounds of the soil from its nursery pot. I cut off a lot of the old wood and replanted three divisions into 5-gallon pots with a nice loam/compost mix and gave them a good drink. I think I'll see if I can get them to root and recover for a season in the pots and will do a better job of preparing the bed for them if I decide to plant them in the ground again.

Thunder, that root confinement issue is probably responsible for many more plant failures than people realize. I often see instructions to just park new plants directly from a pot to the ground, but in my experience spreading the roots is a better technique. Potbound roots sometimes develop a constricted "memory" and keep growing in a circle even when liberated from the pot. A related problem is a solid peaty root ball that's become hydrophobic, so water doesn't penetrate the root ball. Glad you could save your roses. Good luck with your cuttings.

Sometimes you dig or unpot a plant and say Well, no wonder it never did well, look at those roots ( lack of) . You just don't know what is happening down there otherwise.

Round two with the tiller. I've got, at this point, nada for weeds anywhere. Just a few stray wild onions popping up and those are best pulled when they're big enough to grab.

NMoasis said: Thunder, that root confinement issue is probably responsible for many more plant failures than people realize. I often see instructions to just park new plants directly from a pot to the ground, but in my experience spreading the roots is a better technique. Potbound roots sometimes develop a constricted "memory" and keep growing in a circle even when liberated from the pot. A related problem is a solid peaty root ball that's become hydrophobic, so water doesn't penetrate the root ball. Glad you could save your roses. Good luck with your cuttings.

I cut the sides of the root ball three times (run a slit down the sides) and pull the sections outward on either side of the slit. Then, I break up the bottom of the rootball and spread the bottom roots our best I can. That seems to have worked for me. I found the same, continued growing in a circle mess if I didn't make the roots spread out somehow.