January 24, 2015

Good morning, NOAA is predicting wintry conditions today and until Friday noon as well. There is a 90% chance of snow fall with 2 to 4 inches being a starter. The over night low is predicted to be 19 with a high on Friday around 44. The snow showers are predicted to last until noon Friday. With snow on the ground and a high of 44, there will not be much melting. I have harvested and will take orders for Saturday pick up. Mattie has given us permission to use the Hotel for inclement weather. I am hoping that the roads at least will melt in the afternoon Friday and the market can happen. This has the potential for being a big winter event I suggest if you can hunker down once the snow comes to do so and stay put. We really do not need any one getting hurt over this. Good Luck!! Soon this nonsense will pass and soon April will be here!!!

It happened last year and it is doing it again this year, we get a run of cold weather and the night time temp on the light table drops to 60 /70 instead of 65 /75. I am not getting the dampening off that I got last year when we left the door open to the room with the light table. The temp dropped to 55 /65 and this is prime dampening off temps, instead I am getting zero growth.

Any time that I have a situation that is not performing up to expectations, I always like to fall back to operator error as the cause. My reasoning is that changing cultural practices is easier to do than to say the seed is bad or even that the potting soil is bad.

So I have been studying this problem and reviewing my observations. The facts that I see are; seed germination is very good (around 90 percent), the seedlings after germination are getting a little leggy but actively growing, but when I pot them on all growth stops. Survival has dropped to below 50 percent.

There are some differences with the germination and potting on. Germination is expedited with a heating pad. Where as the potted on plants do not have any heating other than the air temp.

I a m thinking that the night time room temp may be lower than I think. Day time heat is boosted by the lights being on along with the computer. So I am thinking the above temps may be off for the night time. I do not need encouragement to get up early so I will place a thermometer on the light table to see what the minimum temp is at night.

I am thinking that even though the temperature appears to be in a decent range (60/70) that if I could boost this to 65 /75 or even a little warmer, this mortality will diminish.

I plan to get a plant heating mat that will keep the roots 10 to 20 degrees warmer than what they are at present. This I feel will correct this problem. I was reluctant to use one because I thought it might over tax the electric circuit. So I decided to see what a heating pad and a vacuum cleaner would draw. We have used both of these appliances with the light table and computer on. The heating pad is a little lower than the 20 by 48 inch heating mat which would use 100 watts. The heating pad uses 65 and the vacuum cleaner uses 650 so I think we would be OK. I may not be able to purchase one this year but by next seedling season I surely will.

I have noticed that seedlings do better in February than January, because usually February is a warmer month ( that is unless you do not exclude February of 2011, 1.5 degrees and the furnace struggled). It will be interesting to see if this will rectify my plant survival. We can always hope!!

Check out these greens that give kale a run for the money

http://www.alternet.org/food/10-leafy-greens-are-healthier-kale

There a number of veggies that are on hold waiting for continued warmer and sunny weather. I have also noticed there are a couple crop losses for one reason or the other. It has been a bit of a challenging winter. Sadly there will not be broccoli or the early broccoli raab. I am optimistic for a latter crop of broccoli raab. I hope to have cabbages soon along with cauliflower. Jerusalem artichokes are ready but it has been too muddy to lift the roots. Peas are returning to growth and peas can not be too far out along with turnips. Successions of carrots, green onions, lettuce, beets and radishes are doing fine. There still is an abundance of butternuts, pumpkins and some sweet potatoes. I do not anticipate there being any problem of filling orders.

A really nice period of warm sunny weather could really help the garden and so many “quite ready for nicer weather folks”. This will happen soon enough.