Weather whammy.

It is warm today. Warm. Like, 85F warm. Yesterday was nice, so I opened my window and left it open all night. It's actually getting a little uncomfortably warm now that the sun has moved west and I'm getting direct light.

I had to run to the store and the flipflops, shorts, skirts, and bright colored everything adorned my fellow shoppers. When we get a glimmer of warm weather here, shorts and sandals are the attire. Nice.

Back in the car, on my way home, I heard the host of a talk show about pets joke about the weatherman being in trouble for predicting snow.

Snow?

What?

As soon as I got home, I had to go online to check the weather. Yes, our weather is going to turn again.

No worries. This is Minnesota. We do weather like some people do brunch.

All day I've been nagging myself about going out and doing something in the garden. I went out yesterday and looked around. Some of my straw had drifted over to my neighbor's plot. I moved some of the straw around and chives, onions, and a few other things I left in the ground are sprouting.

I'm not sure if we're going to have a rototiller go through this year. There hasn't been any talk of it, but it snowed a few inches last week, so it's not much of a surprise. Last year at this time, I was really geared up for garden season. I had seeds in the ground and it was so warm. It's not happening this year.

It's not just the weather. I'm having surgery on my right foot tomorrow. I'm going to be in a walking cast, but I'm supposed to stay off my foot for at least 2 weeks and keep it elevated. I am certain that I will not be able to use my spade fork and trying to plant and put up fence is going to be dangerously possible (but unwise) for a month.

I've got lots of seedlings going indoors. I'm still having some die off every couple of days, but since I started with hundreds, I'm still doing really, really well for quantity.

I've transferred all of the seeds to their own cups and I've taken to watering them with a medicine dropper. It's child-size and only holds 2.5mL. I'm still learning how much each seedling needs, but I'm not overwatering anymore. It takes much longer to give each seedling 4 or 5 squeezes of water, but I'm watching the seedling progression more closely than I was and each gets more TLC than they did before. I watered everything with a little extra today.

All of my squash except 2 and all of my cucumber seedlings died. I believe fruit flies did most of the damage. All of my herb seedlings withered and died. I'm going to plant all of these tonight. I'm sure the squash and cucumber will do great, but I'm not comfortable with herbs. I don't know what they're supposed to look like as seedlings and I don't know what to expect. I'll have plenty of time before I put them in the ground.

One month is the goal. I hope to start putting everything in the ground in a month. The Minneapolis Farmer's Market opened this weekend. I love the farmer's market, but I know if I go now, I'll want to spend money and I'll want to buy seedlings. *sigh* One month. I'm allowed to do it in one month.

A lot of snow.

A snow angel I made on 23 April 2013.

Wow, I didn't realize how long it's been since I last wrote.

Our little bit of snow turned into a spring snow extravaganza. We've had 12 days of rain or snow in the last 16 days. We were supposed to get some snow tomorrow, but it looks like the forecast has cleared up and we might get to the 50F's for the rest of the week.

People are really getting sick of snow. My yard, which was completely grass on 22 April had enough snow to make a snow angel the next day, and today all of the snow is gone again. We really can't complain too much since the snow doesn't last, but we've had a dull grey and white landscape. It's been so dreary. The blue skies today have been lovely.

I've had a big die-off of seedlings. I tried to be hands-off after I broke a lot of stems transplanting seedlings, but I was too hands off. Last week, I decided everything that had survived needed more room and some individualized attention. I had the garlic and shallots started in paper dixie cups. I had to peel the cup off the first clove I was going to transplant and the roots had grown into the seams in the paper. The garlic and shallots are so much healthier with a lot more room.

Watering has been a problem for me. I haven't managed it well in the garden, or handling the seeds indoors. Last year I noticed one of my neighbors watering her seedlings with a plastic disposable spoon. Each seedling would get one or two spoonfuls. I used to think that was so tedious, but it makes sense to me now. I got a medicine dropper (free from Walgreens) and I've been using it to water the seedlings. It means I have to water a lot more often, and it takes much longer - I've got about 100 seedlings - but so far it's been working well. The seedlings look healthier than they have - the green is deeper, second and third sets of leaves are coming out.

I'm still just guessing as far as how much water to use, but since I'm checking every day, I don't overwater and I can recover from too little water before it kills the plant. I'm measuring the water based on the number of "squirts." Today, little seedlings got 3 squirts, garlic and shallot cloves got 4, and the plants that are working really hard, like the squashes, got 5 squirts.

I plan to carry this over to the garden be watering each plant individually instead of relying on the sprayer on the hose to get everything wet. Last year, my watering wasn't even. It meant some of my plants had really shallow roots. Some of the plants that wanted a lot of water sucked the soil dry. I hope to fix that this year.

Today I started reading Country Wisdom & Know-How. I bought it a few years ago and it is a FANTASTIC resource for everything.

To start with, I'm going to read up on all the kinds of seedlings I've completely wiped out. With all of the snow, it's going to be early June before anything can go in the ground. I've got a few extra weeks to start seedlings and I can do it with the official proper way to start that kind of seed.

I'm going to start my garden layout too. This book is great for explaining companion plantings and lists of plants that don't do well together at all. It's a huge book. Lots of information and when I get tired of reading about gardening, I can read about raising chickens or making jam.

Just a little snow.

We had some snow on Friday. Just a bit. It made the grass look like it might have an icy crust, but I didn't test it out.

We've been damp all weekend. It's rained off and on. The News just said we're expecting at least an inch, and I heard something (I wasn't really listening) that we might have snow again later this week.

I am sure we are going to get one more whammy storm before we can call an end to it. I don't have any great insight beyond living here for so long. We always have to have weather in September that is really, really hot. In January, we get a warm spell, that seems strange. In February, it gets really, really cold for about a week. In April, it snows. This is how we do, as the young people say. But we haven't gotten a big snow - 2 inches at least - this month.

I've been making a concerted effort to leave the seedlings alone. I've done damage just moving things around. I'm still concerned about the shallots and garlic. In the next few days, I'm going to move them to bigger containers. I don't want to hold them back already.

I never did get to the reading I'd planned on. I've been in a cycle of excessive sleep, pain, and numb hands. The pain and numbness is definitely related to weather - when the barometric pressure drops, joints have a chance to swell up and things in joints move around to places they wouldn't be and using joints is harder. Gravity and atmospheric pressure are your friends. I go through sleep marathons from time to time, but I don't know why. Oh, and hungry. I've been ridiculously hungry lately. I can't seem to keep full. I've even woken up to get food, drink a bunch, and get back to sleep within 1/2 hour.

So, I've got a jaw-cracking yawn going on and I have got to eat something.

Shallots and garlic and water.

The shallots have been sprouting for a few days now. One of the cloves was popping out of the soil in it's little paper cup. When I tried to push it down, it wouldn't go. It doesn't have and sprout yet, but the roots are working hard. I hope I'm not stunting them in the paper cups. Maybe I should go plant them outside?

The garlic is just showing sprouts today. I think I'm going to have the same stunting/crowding problems with the garlic that I'm having with the shallots. I'm going to study up today.

The greenhouse is assembled to it's full size with four shelves and five bulbs lighting and heating the space. I noticed seedlings are starting to droop, especially the squashy-type veg. I'm not sure if they're just too top heavy from stretching tall with only one set of leaves. Some of the short squashy-types that have just emerged are short but are already putting out true leaves. Others have withered and look dead.

The lettuces that were doing so well flopped over and are mostly dead and withered. It's happened every single time I've tried to grow lettuce in a container, but in the past, if I take the container outside and leave it in the garden with all of the other growing things, it's rises from the dead and throws out beautiful, healthy plants. Maybe it's the heat in the greenhouse. Or the light? I haven' succeeded yet, so I don't know what works. More reading. I contacted the Master Gardeners at the university, but I didn't get an answer for growing seedlings other than advice that lettuce is sowed right in the ground, not transplanted. But I don't plan to transplant these. I just want some fresh containers of lettuce and greens. I'll have to keep looking.

I don't feel confident about my seedling management at all. I've had massive failure in previous years. This year I've used seeds from previous years - not heirlooms, seeds left over in old packets. The greenhouse thing is new. I turn the lights on. I turn the lights off. I open the door for circulation. I close it for humidity. I'm watering from the bottom. I've broken some stems when I've moved things around - some plants don't mind, some drop dead. If I get 40 plants from the 150+ plugs I've seeded, I think I'll feel successful. I'm well on my way with only 5 plugs or so without healthy looking seedlings, but I'm not confident.

I refreshed the water in the trays the plugs sit in. I'm not scientific about watering at all. I try to keep water in the trays. I've messed up a couple of times. I try to be mindful of the seedlings that are working hard to throw up stems and leaves. Air circulation and temperature affect the moisture too. Dozens of plugs sit in the same trays together even though they are different varieties. That seems like it's wrong, but I don't have the space to sort everything into it's own special places.

I've spent about $50 on seeds and soil. Pflaums sell pots, 3 for $5 with 3 seedlings in each plot. I can always fall back on them for the things that don't succeed.. I'm going to keep trying.

Green beans like to be crowded.

Well, that's what I ready anyway. My green bean plants are over a foot tall and were becoming problematic in my little greenhouse. I'd accidentally bent the stalks and moving them just a little to water them put them in danger of breaking - a true heartache when they've come along so well.

Last night, I took the green bean plants and put them all in the same container maybe 14 inches across and 5 inches deep. Then I wrapped all of the stems around each other to a little support to keep them all upright. They have that little bit of fuzz on them that makes them stick together anyway and with their leaf pairs sticking out, they clung to each other anyway.

They aren't in the greenhouse anymore. They're by the window. Today, like magic, a couple of the stems threw out 4-6 inches of vine and there are at least 4 new leaf pairs going. Cool beans.

On PBS tonight, Nature had a program about how plants communicate. They can attract polinators, shoo away polinators that are too aggressive, fight for root space with "stranger" plants while playing nice with plants that came from the same parent plant. Non-native plants can grow like crazy and take up a lot of space while poisoning the native plants around them, but some native plants create a barrier around their own roots to hold off the aggressive plants and will integrate in groupings of the weaker native plants protecting them from the aggressive non-native plants too allowing both native plants to grow healthy while holding off the "bad guys." Fungus and fir tree roots give each other a boost and connect thousands of trees in the same forest to keep everyone happy.

It's interesting to think about. I'm even more impressed with the scientists who've come up with experiments to test theories. One scientist exposed the leaves of a tree to radio active carbon gas (think carbon dioxide in, oxygen out). They came back the next day with a Geiger counter and found the other plants that got the carbon from the tree that "breathed" the radioactive gas.

Another scientist blocked parts of plants from themselves so the plant couldn't tell that it had been pollinated. He said he made the plant kind of crazy by making it "blind" to the things going on around it and it's own self. The plant's floral smell became stronger, more energy went to the flowers and other bits to attract sexy bugs even though it had already been pollinated for days.

Plants are smart. Smarter than we realize. How do we recognize communication between organisms without nervous systems? If other plants, fungus, and bugs can understand what plants are saying, can we ever understand it so we can listen too? Can we talk back other than the clumsy bumping around and manipulating the environment and genes of plants in the process? Sure. We'll just have to wait for it.

Folks who grow things know a little bit about this. There are guides for companion planting - putting plants that support each other together and you can make a fruit sweeter. Include red and orange flowers and you'll get hummingbirds. Put marigolds on the border and it will keep some creatures away. It's much more sophisticated than that, but I take my list of do's and don'ts for companion plantings handy when I draw up a garden plan - and I DO have to plan to give each plant the space, sun and water that works best.  That's complicated enough. The green beans in my window will remind me.