With the boy being grounded, we had a fairly relaxing weekend. He did make another half-assed attempt at coiling the hose on Friday afternoon – likely in an attempt to be un-grounded in time for gaming night – but not only did he just make a snarled hose pile on top of the coil I had made, he also pulled the trickling hose end out of the raised bed I had placed it in and was timing for watering. I really need to set up a drip irrigation system that will be affixed in place, but I had been putting that off until the greenhouse is built and the permanent fencing is in position.
He still seems set on not doing any more chores, so the next couple weeks seem likely to be less busy as well.
This weekend was our first real heatwave that broke 100° and yesterday hit 112°! With that heat, I discovered an issue with my hydroponic plants that i hadn’t considered – the reservoir and nutrient solution heats up quite a bit and got to a temperature that was even uncomfortable for me to place my hand in, let alone the comfort of the poor root balls. The strawberries are all but completely dead, but the tomato experiment seems to have survived nature’s attempts at killing it.
Friday night there was our typically-daily evening windstorm, though it happened later than usual so we weren’t out and about to notice and move the hydro-tomato plant and the wind was strong enough to yank the top off the Kratky bucket, leaving it out overnight and into the morning. Fortunately I found it first thing when I went out to water the garden and was able to get it back in with minimal fruit casualties. There are still a few that are shriveled but the majority will survive. That was also when I noticed just how hot the nutrient solution had gotten. I had been meaning to top it off anyway so I did so with cool water and moved it under the awning on our deck to recover.
Now I’m thinking of how I can protect the buckets from heating up too much. I may try placing them in ice chests to allow me to dump cold water and/or ice to help keep the reservoir cool on the really hot days, or ordering some insulation. They make specialized insulating sleeves for 5-gallon buckets, but they are pretty pricey – I’ll probably just order a roll of the reflective bubble wrap insulation to wrap the buckets in for now, then build a rack to keep a row of buckets shielded from the sun when I finally build the greenhouse.
I also started using a sprinkler in and around the fenced in garden area to help keep the area a bit cooler, and the ground softer to walk on barefoot. That had the side effect of also attracting birds to the area to hydrate and cool down. We sat and watched the birds flitter in and out, playing in the damp grass and eating ants off my daikon radishes.
I had a large bird “trapped” in the garden area this morning. The cat-escape security fence I use to keep the deer out and Roscoe (when I take him out to the garden) in has an angled bar (similar to barbed wire fences) that collapses if a cat were to climb the netting, and that angle kept the larger bird that needed a bit more room to lift stuck in the garden. It was flying back and forth between the netting but not getting enough altitude before reaching the other side, so I positioned myself to direct it away at an angle and it was able to fly right out. I didn’t get a photo of it as I was more concerned with getting it freed from confinement, but I looked through the regional birds and believe it to be a Brown Thrasher.
Anyhow, I need to move a sprinkler and get on to other tasks…
Song of the day: Rainbow’s Gold by Iron Maiden
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