"Most English-speaking people...will admit that cellar door is 'beautiful', especially if dissociated from its sense (and from its spelling). More beautiful than, say, sky, and far more beautiful than beautiful. Well then, in Welsh for me cellar doors are extraordinarily frequent, and moving to the higher dimension, the words in which there is pleasure in the contemplation of the association of form and sense are abundant."
-- J.R.R Tolkien via wikipedia
Today we did not make a cellar door but we did make something nearly as beautiful in essence. We finished off the end of the greenhouse, and built and hung two eight foot doors. Quite grand an achievement. It consumed about 40 person hours of work (at most), and plenty of lumber. But the result is that the second half of the greenhouse can be used now to grow tomatoes.
Again, I iterate that it is immensely satisfying to pretend to be a carpenter. The aesthetics of working with wood, saws, pencils, and screws is enormous. Especially when it gets to be around four in the afternoon and the day is cooling off slightly, and the earth and wood and trees are lit up with the slanting golden light. It's pretty easy to feel like a king, I say.
Then there's the fact of actually constructing something physical. It's a bit of the same enjoyment I get from writing computer programs, only there's a different flavour with this. Maybe partly because it's a fairly new experience for me... it's like programming with a new language, or maybe like working with databases or threads for the first time. I'm exploring an new terrain and that's inherently exciting. Construction is also incredibly fun because I'm reasonable good at it -- working the numbers, and the designs come naturally enough -- so I'm able to move at a decent pace. And that keeps me entertained.
There wasn't much work in the greenhouse today. Ali and Leslie trimmed the onions because they were getting a bit long and floppy. Trimming them (about three centimetres, or until they stand about ten centimetres) is supposed to cause the seedling to put more energy into root and stem growth rather than continuing to grow upwards. The result is a heartier seedling that is more prepared for transplanting and the outdoors.
We also did a second spraying of the horsetail mixture I mentioned before. Leslie noticed some "dampening off" on some of the broccoli and other brassica family members. Dampening off is a condition where the young seedlings just flop over and die. It's often due to a fungus that grows on the soil because it is too moist. It's part of the reason we installed the fan -- greater air movement means less chance of parts of the greenhouse becoming damp -- and also why we first sprayed the horsetail mixture.
5 comments:
I have a feeling my poppy seedlings are dampening off... :( Of the 24 tiny seedlings I remember transplanting from the paper towel, there seems to only be one still standing now. I'm still hoping (like a fool?) that the ones that have flopped over might recover...
I've been worried that the soil has stayed too moist for too long. But I haven't noticed any fungal growth. Is it microscopic?
It turns out the correct term is "damping off".
I'd say what you're seeing could very likely be damping off, especially if you know that the soil has been moist. i'm pretty sure those little guys have had it though, so your best bet is to re-seed 'em.
I'm just about to do that. But it looks like most of my other seedlings have had it, too. I'm not happy with my flat soil. It felt pretty nice when I filled the flats with it, but it seems to hold water maybe a little too well, and after a couple days becomes quite firm and chunky, as if it's gotten glued together.
I just built a sieve this morning for sifting my flat soil, which seems to have made it a lot nicer. But I don't know if that's going to be enough. I'm investigating.
reading your writing [mostly the first 2 paragraphs] gives me the same feeling as when i read emily carr. your words flow like rivers, jon, i like rivers. alot.
well, thank you anon.
as to the trowel, what's your soil mix composed of? wait a moment whilst i write a post on our soil mix and we can continue the discussion there maybe.
you might also try monitoring the soil moisture a little closer. leslie's the one that handles this sort of thing at WCF, so I don't have much to say here. as i mentioned, we installed the fan to help with the moisture problems we were having so maybe you could try to improve your coldframe's ventilation?
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