Garden Prep and Puzzles

Well, it's back to winter again.  I finished mulching the garden paths yesterday, and even with gloves, until I worked long enough to generate some heat, digging into the mulch bags felt like stabbing my icy fingers.  We're making up for the past two balmy winters by having a darned cold one that's lasting forever this year. 

Where is the sun?!

It always feels good mentally to get the paths mulched, even if it's back-breaking during the hours it takes to do it.  This year, it took extra hours and extra bags of mulch because I had virtually neglected this chore the last couple of years.  Aside from building up the east end bed where it sloped away into the yard, I did the much needed work of marking out all the paths anew and hoeing out shallow trenches for most of them so the mulch wouldn't float away into the beds when we get heavy rains like it always has in the past. 

I think it was worth it.

Unfortunately, I had set out onions before I got around to buying more mulch to finish the west end where the onion bed is this year, and before I decided to create another mulched path through that bed, so I ended up crowding the outer row of onion sets.  I expect that will reduce my harvestable onions by a good number.  I was concerned about it for a bit, and then decided that I haven't had a good onion harvest since the first year, so I didn't care quite as much.  And now, I don't care at all. If the onions do poorly again this year, I'll quit planting them and use the space for something else. 

I read an online article about growing onions from seed for better luck, and after less than a minute decided that was way too much trouble, and the transplanting looked like way too much work.  Store bought onions are fine.

onion sets ready to be covered with composted manure

Speaking of growing from seed:  I had numerous six-packs of seedlings coming along nicely in my cellar set-up when one morning I went down to check on them and mice had eaten over half of them down to the soil.  They'd gotten past two traps and a container of poison bait to do it, too - had actually gotten the trap bait out of the traps without springing them, which was a Houdini trick for sure, because I always jam those cranberries tight into the trap's teeth so that doesn't happen.  They must have dried up enough to loosen themselves.  The biggest surprise was some industrious mouse had buried two of the poison pellets in one of the cells after there was no longer a plant in it! 

Unfortunately, I didn't get over the shock and irritation before I started reseeding what I'd lost, and I picked up a tray of tomato seedlings that had survived without replacing their labels (which I have to lay down beside them to allow the light fixture to be lowered as far as possible), leaving me no way to identify the variety.  When I realized what I'd done, I had to curse myself as much as the mice, pull out all the remaining seedlings and start over.  Unfortunately, I didn't have any spare seed for two of the cherry tomato varieties.  Live and learn.  Hopefully.

I don't know what I'm going to do about the mouse problem.  I lost some seedlings to the same thing last year, but not nearly so many.   I thought about getting more traps and encircling the seedlings so they can't get past without springing one, but my concern with that is that they'll walk across a trap to get to the seedlings and only get a leg caught.  There's nothing worse about mouse traps than coming upon a mouse with a broken leg caught in one and trying to get away from you.  Believe me, I know. 

I have one of those electronic plug-in devices down there, which obviously doesn't work.  I'm going to try a different type, and if that doesn't work....??  I can't in good conscience lock the cat in there.

Birds!  Another flock of grackels coming through.

I'm hoping, but not getting excited about the possibility, that this rhubarb plant is going to have red stems when it grows up. 

A couple years ago I dug up  two plants from my mother's little patch.  Why are hers - which always have red stems - coming up with the new leaves red, and mine are green?  Could it be because hers get shaded by the asparagus where she has them crammed in at the end?  And why do the ones I transplanted not have red stems when they grow up like hers do?  This is a puzzle to me.

It seems like the stems on some of my varieties are red when it's cold and they're growing very slowly, but once it warms up and they start growing large enough to harvest, they're mostly green.  I have one variety that has rosy pink flesh inside the green outer skin, but I can't remember which one that is.  I'll have to tell you when I harvest this year.

I ordered some seed from a company that specializes in rhubarb of two types that were supposed to be the very reddest.  Not for me.  Recently I read that even from seed, it's iffy to get a red-stemmed variety, and the best way is to divide a plant you already know is red-stemmed.  So, why aren't the ones I divided from my mother's red-stemmed varieties red?  The only difference I can think of is that mine are spaced generously and growing in good soil.  Hers are crowded and growing where the roots are constricted.  But that can't be the secret, can it?  Surely the people who grow rhubarb commercially don't starve their plants.  Do they?  I haven't found any information that says to crowd them and compact the roots.  I'm stumped.

The result is that I've got a huge bed of rhubarb - much more than I can use - in my attempt to get red-stemmed plants.  Some of my neighbors appreciate the produce.  Whether it's red or green, it all tastes the same. 

Not much to do now but wait for some warmth and sun. 

The seedlings I have out in the portable greenhouse are still alive, thank goodness, but they're not putting on any growth.  I don't blame them.  It's too cold and dreary to do anything but hunker down until the sun decides to return.

The weather forecaster is not encouraging.