WEEK #21: Small Succeses

As if it wasn't bad enough that we planted the tomatoes when they were already too tall, but on top of that we had two nights late this week that had frost.  The potatoes clearly showed signs of damage, along with our tomatoes, and as for our squash...well.....it's dead.  The strawberries also got damaged with loss of flowers.  We may not have any strawberries this year.

Potato plants showing frost damage.

 

The potatoes had only minor frost damage, and will probably grow out of it.  The squash were completely destroyed, so Aaron planted seeds in the ground on each mound to start over.  Our tomatoes that went out sickly clearly got hit hard.  All of the roma tomatoes were dead, with a few beef and cherry tomatoes still lingering.  Luckily, our neighbour, George Clark, who gave tomato plants to Marianne's Gramma and Mom last year, dropped off some beef tomatoes for us :D Marianne's Dad may even know someone who might have romas as well.  We are keeping our fingers crossed.

We decided this week to plant the rest of our seeds outside.  We planted a row of yellow beans, a row of green beans and a row of edename (soybeans), two more rows of cabbage, two rows of rutabaga, a row each of spinach, leaf lettuce and Boston head lettuce.  Now everything is planted in the beds.  Next year, we are going to have everything out by the first week of June, or get something big enough to cover our crops at night in case of a lingering late May frost.

Other happenings this week was creating a shelf and stacking the rain barrels on it to collect water in the future. The location is on the south side of the shed.  The only thing left to do is to run an extension from the eaves trough to the barrels themselves, hook all the barrels together and add a tap.

Recycled 55 gallon drums turned into rain barrels

 

 

Rain barrels next to the chicken coop for scale, and so you can see where it has to be connected from the eaves trough.

The chickens are now full time residence of their new chicken coop.  They are doing really well, and when they are let outside they stay very close to the coop.  They are so fun to watch as they jump around and make short runs and even shorter flights in the air.  We have been very fortunate thus far to still have all 16.  We are not sure what to do with the one rooster, but for now he remains with the flock.

The chickens getting adjusted to their new digs.  So far they seem to be loving it!

Inside their new pad.....POSH!