Harvest

Yesterday was all about the cucurbits. We weeded every last bed, which was a bit involved since we needed to take off and replace the floating row cover. Luckily we have a pretty good team, so although it was sometimes a touch grueling overall it went smoothly.

I spent an hour or two in the afternoon looking around for a thermostat to control our air conditioner. It seems to freeze up when it stays at 8 C for too long, and the time it takes to reach 8C depends on the surrounding air temperature so using a timer to turn on and off the air conditioner, as we currently do, isn't enough. What I'd like is an outlet that is controlled by a thermostat. After calling around to many many places it turns out that this beast is rare. Alas, I found one that's only available in the USA, and so we're having it shipped up. I could have done it using a regular wall thermostat which we could wire into an outlet, but when I figured out the costs it comes out even or even slightly more expensive. Plus, I'd have to spend a bit of time hooking it all up, where as the one we've ordered should just plug in and go.

My plan is to connect the timer and thermostat outlet together so that the timer forces the air conditioner off after three hours of use or so, regardless of the temperature, so that it'll give it a chance to defrost in the event that it starts freezing up. I'm hoping we don't actually need to do, and instead rely on the thermostat to keep the temperature high enough that the air conditioner never freezes, but low enough (10 C or so) that the veggies are cool enough. But without the timer, if ever the air conditioner freezes somehow, then the temperature will rise and the thermostat will keep the power going, in which case the A/C will stay on and keep frozen, and that's no good for the machine or the veggies.

What I really want is two temperature sensors. One for the ambient air, and one for the grill of the air conditioner to sense when the air conditioner freezes. Then I could build a little switch to trigger a defrosting period.

Hrm.. if only I knew a bit more about electronics. I think I'll have to learn.

Anyhow, today we harvested for the Georgetown Market tomorrow. We harvested: lettuce mix, spinach, kohlrabi, pac choi, radishes and garlic scapes. The pac choi are looking great... super huge and tasty. The radishes were tasting pretty disgusting last week, but with some water this week they've grown and have a much better flavour. Actually, they're delicious.

After doing the harvest thing in the morning we did odd jobs in the afternoon. Actually, for me it was mostly hand weeding. Amanda and I, and then Jarrod and Jeff managed to hand weed three beds of lettuce mix and a bed of salad greens (beet greens, chard, and some mangy looking cress).

At the end of the day Jeff and I experimented with the sprinkler system by bypassing the pressure regulator to get the maximum pressure to the sprinklers. Works very well now. The spray is much more even and has doubled in range.