After googling about WordPress media upload problems, I browsed lots of irrelevant (about WP 2.5) or inapplicable (about blogs hosted at wordpress.com) or incomprehensible (change security settings to 777 — huh?), I did the simple(and overdue) task of upgrading my WP 2.7 installation to 2.8.

And uploading works now.

So here we have a picture that’s about a month old now, my first strawberry from my backyard.  I planted 25 strawberry cuttings in pots and hanging baskets, 2 died mysteriously but the rest have done very well.  None are huge, but it’s only their first year.  This variety — Seascape — can be harvesting in its first year, whereas most varieties, you’re supposed to pinch off the flowers in the first year and only harvest fruit begining in the second year.

As you can see, the first fruits of the first year were a very good size!  That first berry was the biggest, none have approached it since.  But they’re all beautiful.

Seascape is also an all-season ever-bearing day-neutral variety, so we’ll still be getting berries into the fall.  I’ve noticed the berries are getting smaller as the season wears on, and we only get one or two each day.  Even though we can harvest fruit the first year, it’s not a plentiful bounty.  Just little snacks for my daughter.

It’s also been a terrible year for strawberries.  It has been raining at least 80% of the days all summer, and it’s been below usual temperatures.  My peppers are suffering as well, they’re just not growing much in this cool weather, though my greens are doing great and even my tomatoes are thriving.

But since it’s bad weather for berries, I’m grateful to get any at all, and greatly looking forward to their second season. 

After nearly two months of care and concern and pampering, the time had come for the hardening off.  Our last frost date is next week and we’ve been having beautiful weather, so it seemed good.

I have two flats of beautiful tomato seedlings, 3 varieties, some heirloom, grown from seed. Also some peppers, red, chili, and jalapeno.  Monstrously large (already!) cucumbers.  And a hodge-podge of herbs and greens.  They were healthy and strong and gorgeous.

The first day they went outside for about 1/2 hour, the next day about an hour. They seemed fine. Then we had like 5 days in a row of RAIN or else it was really, really cold, so they stayed indoors.

Then the past few days it’s been gorgeous again so I set them back outside.  They got about 2 hours one day, and they seemed a little wilty… a few plants had some fading in their lower leaves. By the next morning those leaves were curling up. That day I left them out much longer than I had intended, about 5 hours. Mistakenly, I thought that was probably okay because it was such a warm, summery, sunny day. They should love it!  Right?

Wrong. Eeps. So only now, today, looking up stuff online about hardening off and wilting, I read that seedlings should start out in the SHADE, or partial shade, so they don’t get SUNBURNT. And then only gradually move into the sun.

You guessed it, I had them in full sun right from day one. I thought that’s what I was supposed to do. I don’t recall ANYTHING I’d previously read about hardening off mentioning this rather important point!  Either I was reading the wrong sites, or I just wasn’t paying attention…

All is not lost.  The newer leaves on the tops of the plants are still bright green and healthy, and many of the plants are only mildly affected.  Worst case scenario, I lose a few, but I have so many it won’t be a terribly loss.  Most likely scenario, they all survive and recover, but I lose a couple weeks of growth and harvesting time.  Fortunately, I think there’s enough buffer time that I’ll still get a great crop.  And… well… lesson learned.

It was 9 degrees today!  Er, for any Celsius-challenged American-type folk who might be reading this, that’s a good thing.  At least, it is, after a long and snow-filled Maritime winter!  Which, we can now say, we survived!  And it wasn’t so bad, really now.  Except of course for the electric bills… brrrr….

It was so toasty warm this afternoon that the kids went outside onto the deck, Pomme in just her underwear and bare feet.  She spun around until she got dizzy, jumped up and down, and tried walking down the steps until she realized that the walk at the bottom was still a frigid icescape… although admittedly a very wet one in these temperatures.

Flipper amused himself walking off the back of the deck straight into the snow — which would be a 4-foot drop to a twisted ankle in the summer time.  His socks got wet, though.

And since this is the sunny, southern side of the house, I looked around the deck for handy places to hang baskets of tomatoes and strawberries, and found plenty!  I’m ready for spring… now let’s just get rid of all this snow!

I got a phone call for another accompanying job.  I made dinner (okay, it was frozen chicken strips and nuked potatoes, but still…) .  And I planned my garden.

Last night, I ordered the last of the seeds that I need.  So all that’s left is getting the things I need for starting the plants that need to start indoors, some hanging planters, and the wood and soil mix for the square foot garden.

With that as a goal, off we went today to the local nursery.

One of the key components in a square foot garden is “Mel’s Mix”, supposedly an ideal growing environment that’s easy to care for and is probably best compared to hydroponic growth media.  It’s composed of equal parts peat, compost, and coarse vermiculite.

In the year that I’ve been researching SFG, I have come across dozens if not hundreds of horror stories of gardeners just absolutely unable to find coarse vermiculite.  According to Mel, it’s easy to find, available in large bags, and cheap.  And when folks would complain and ask exactly where they could find it, because they had searched everywhere, his response is generally a cheer (and, IMO, not very helpful) “oh it’s out there all right, just keep asking, you’ll find it!”  The right stuff, apparently, comes in 4 cu ft bags and is under $30.

I heard stories of folks having to settle for fine-grade, which works but not as well and tends to only come in small bags so you need dozens of them.  Or of finding the right stuff but it costing them $100.  Or just not finding any at all.

My online searching was so far a bust… I could find the small bags of fine-grade easily enough, but that was it.  The few places I did find with the right stuff were far away, with, obviously, exorbitant shipping costs.

So it was not without some anxiety that I stepped into the garden center.  I found the small bag of fine vermiculite almost straight away, and just at that moment a sales dude came to me asking if I needed any help.

Crossing my fingers, I asked if they possibly had any of this in bigger bags.

Why yes, he said, they had 4 cubic foot bags.

“Perfect!” says I, “that’s exactly what I’m looking for.”

Alright, he says, but first warns me that’s it’s a bit larger stuff than the bag I’m holding.

I’m almost giggling at this point.  “That’s great!  It’s the coarse grade that I need!”

So he went and fetched it for me and I forgot to even ask how much it cost.

Once I had collected some seed starting trays, we traipsed through the checkout (Pomme going gaga for the resident kitty asleep in a basket on the counter, and for the stuffed duck toys on display) and found that, indeed, the bag was under $30.

Well now.  That was easy.

I’ll still have to go back another time and get some compost and peat, but that can wait until I have the frames built.  And I can’t really build the frames until the snow is, you know, at least less than five feet deep.  Silly Maritime weather.  Ah, how I missed it… well… mostly anyway.