With the warmer weather of the last few days, things are moving along a little quicker in the greenhouse. The patch of arugula transplanted so long ago is finally starting to fill in new, full-size, TASTY leaves. And the all-lettuce mesclun, direct seeded two weeks ago, has been appearing. Even though days in the greenhouse have been way warm for weeks, the frigid nights really slowed down growth. Warmer nights mean faster greenhouse action!
Melt-off complete!
Well, it’s done! Four days of steady melting, from Saturday to late this afternoon, and the main snow coverage, which had been up to a foot (30cm) deep in parts of the field on Friday, is gone. The small pics are from Saturday, Sunday and Monday late afternoon. Huge puddles remain today, twice the usual of the last three years, and they’ll take more than the usual couple of days to seep away. There’s a big pile of snow this side of the greenhouse, shouldn’t have plowed that snowbank there, I’ll probably break it up with the Kubota compact tractor. And there’s the remains along the fence line, that shrinks at its own slow, protected pace. For most of the garden, drying out is underway. Cool!
Submerged garlic and root-diving voles
For all of the melt-off’s magical moments—garlic tips emerging and big puddles that look like tiny seas—there are mild melt-off concerns as well. About one third of the garlic beds have been fully submerged for nearly two days now, and may stay that way for 2-3-4 more, especially if it rains tomorrow as promised. (This area usually doesn’t get flooded with runoff, but I should’ve paid attention to the natural gully and not rotated the garlic there, just in case.) I doubt being underwater for a while will affect the garlic, but I don’t know for sure… How long garlic can hold its breath is another thing I’ll soon find out! And elsewhere, I discovered the handiwork of VOLES (it had to be them) in the herb patch. Under cover of snow, they’d neatly excavated 25′ feet of parsley roots, methodically working their way down the double row. These aren’t tunnels, just holes that go down about a hand’s length. Interesting. Another first. And no loss. But could this be population explosion year in the local vole cycle? Last year’s spring lettuce raids in the greenhouse were nothing compared to organized action like this… Good thing they don’t like garlic!
Field wakes up…
There’s a kind of magical moment between winter and spring, as the snow rapidly disappears and the water runs off. It lasts only a couple of days. Unusual sights are everywhere you look. I watch it closely every year, but this time around, with the blog-and-camera habit by now well-ingrained, I’m appreciating it more. I found garlic earlier than ever, only a few hours after emerging from months buried under snow with little or no light. The color is odd, I’m used to GREEN, but they look healthy, so I guess they need some sunlight to put on a little color. At the lower, south end of the field, the melting snow runoff gathers in a giant puddle, 40 or 50 feet (12-15m) across at its widest, and a few inches deep. This field has good drainage, so the puddle doesn’t stick around long, shrinking by the hour and vanishing entirely within two or three days. This year, the residue of the oats cover crop added a bit of a surreal dimension, as a bleached gold beach, and wavy underwater like seaweed. When you focus tightly and think miniature (like a kid would!), it’s a crazy little inland sea-for-a-day… All over, the little details of melt-off, looked at up close, are entirely odd and gone soon…
Liming the Chickenhouse
Whitewashed the meat bird half of the Chickenhouse today, using the traditional purist blend of nothing but hydrated lime and water. This is an old school farming standard from Bob, completely new to me.
The lime is a very fine powder that comes in bags. Mixing was easy. A power drill mixing attachment churned it to a thickness a bit lighter than regular paint, and then on it went with big brushes.
The lime is a bit caustic, so wearing a mask when mixing, and gloves and goggles to avoid splatter, is a good idea, although I didn’t this time around (and I did take care not to inhale clouds of lime dust!).
Afterwards (it’s follow Bob’s lead), I did some reading and, not surprisingly, was quite amazed: yet another simple, inexpensive, effective approach that’s been complicated (in this case, into the costly world of high tech paints and sealants).
Classic lime whitewash disinfects, repels insects, and preserves by sealing surfaces and wicking up water. It dries to an opaque white that beautifully reflects light to brighten up dim spaces.
The photo doesn’t capture the luminescent quality of the white, it almost glows.
It’s also safe for animals (which, yes, includes us humans, lime can even be used in chicken litter to keep it dry).
There are lots of applications, interior and exterior, for wood and masonry. It’s not as permanent as oil or latex paint, will rub off a bit, and needs to be refreshed every year to keep it in top shape.
It’s also INEXPENSIVE: a 50lb (22.5kg) bag was about $7, and you can mix up at least 15-20 gallons from that, the way we used it. That means you could whitewash an entire small building, inside and out, for maybe $20! For big jobs, a sprayer would make it real easy.
You can tint it, and there are also various recipes that include alum, salt and other additives that may improve adhesion, but the tried-and-true basic is just lime and water.
And you need hydrated lime (calcium hydroxide), NOT dolomitic lime nor calcium carbonate, aka garden lime (both are recommended for raising pH in garden soil). We got ours from the feed store.
I’m not sure how popular this sort of whitewashing is these days, but it’s certainly still used, and a few decades ago, this was a standard type of paint. Anyhow, it looks and sounds great, and we’ll see how the chickens like it!
WHICH LIME? Use hydrated lime (calcium hydroxide Ca(OH)? also called builder’s lime, mason’s lime, slaked lime, or high?calcium hydrated lime). Don’t use agricultural/garden/barn lime (crushed limestone, calcium carbonate, CaCO?), dolomitic lime/dolomite (magnesium?calcium carbonate, roughly CaMg(CO?)?), hydraulic lime (variable composition, often containing silicates and aluminates), or quicklime/burnt lime/caustic lime (calcium oxide, CaO—dangerous to handle, boils over explosively, causes chemical burns). The right hydrated lime works out no problem.
Ah, SPRING!
Man, what a difference a day and a bunch of degrees can make! The temperature didn’t exactly shoot up, but it went from hovering around daytime zero, to around 10°C (50°F). This was one weather trend, predicted on the 15-day-forecast weather site, that I figured wouldn’t suddenly go south (it’s gotta warm up sometime), so I’ve been waiting for it, to the day, for a couple of days now. It’ll get steadily warmer for a week or so, than maybe drop a bit, but even if we get another BLIZZARD, the ground will have warmed up enough that new snow won’t be able to stick around for long. So, I do believe, SPRING IS HERE!!!
I woke up to sunshine, and without even checking the temperature or confirming the forecast, set up a table outside the Milkhouse and out went the leek, onions and parsley for a little rapid hardening off. Getting them out to the greenhouse in a couple of days will free up a lot of rack space!
Wandering around the field a bit, checking the melt-off’s progress, I poked around the edge of the Jerusalem artichoke bed. The ground was still fairly frozen, and had melted to clayey muck only in spots. Poking around in a soft spot at the base of one of the plants, I came up with a handful! First harvest! The tubers look beautiful, the ones in the front of the pic about marble size, the biggest in the back, like a golf ball. As seed stock, there’s going to be a ton from the 45 pieces planted last year. I didn’t end up harvesting any in the fall; now, I’ll get to for the first time eat ’em!
Herbs return
Sage and thyme don’t look like much as they roll out from under the snow, but they’re good to see. Another chilly day, slightly above zero, but COLD. Still, the sunny days lately have been heating things up, and the snow is slowly receding. It’s pulled back from around the greenhouse, and it’s starting to retreat over the herb patch (that’s sage and thyme at the far end). The REAL melt-off starts tomorrow…!