Seedling, Seedlings Everywhere

April 15th, 2007

Starting plants from seeds isn’t really difficult. But as with almost everything that should be simple, I find a way to make it difficult and stressful.

I fret, water, re-pot, worry about whether I started to early…too late. I feel guilty when a seedling dies. I feel guilty when I can’t start all the seeds I buy. (All that wasted potential!) I feel terrible when I have to thin out the seedlings so that some can survive. (Seems so cruel!) Obviously, it also takes up a lot of room. (My seedlings are threatening to take over my office!)

I “invested” (AKA spent a lot of money) in this light garden from the National Gardening Association. As you can see, I have a lot of seeds going–vegetables, herbs and flowers. Do I have a plan for where they’re going? I sure do. When the time comes, I plan to go outside, take look around and plunk them where they seem to want to go.

Once the seedlings move out of the house, I plan to raise a wider variety of exotic house plants from places like Logee’s. Today I adopted a chenille plant and a pocket book plant from Behnke’s.

The hardening off process for these seedlings has started. Right now I’m blowing a fan at the little babies to toughen them up. First warm day, they get to sit outside on the front sidewalk for a couple of hours. I’ll gradually build up their time outside until they can make it on their own in the big outdoors without trauma, lugging them outside, then inside, then outside, then inside.

Maybe I should talk to them? Play them music? Give them names? Nothing is easy.

Posted In: Gardening, Lifestyle

Mighty Mack Monster Mulcher

April 13th, 2007

I’m headed out tomorrow to mulch some more branches, sticks and twigs with my new Mighty Mack Mulcher…

I bought this baby back in the fall to help deal with the constant avalanche of debris from the woods surrounding our home. Not satisfied with just ANY mulcher, I headed down to Lusby Hardware to consult with Morris about what would be a nice, ladylike mulcher that could do some serious damage to hardwood.

Morris fixed me up with the Mighty Mack. It weighs 300 lbs, can chew up branches up to 3″ in diameter like they were #2 pencils and it also has an electric start. Just push the button and–Voila!–she starts! (There are a bunch of other technical specs that I could quote, but this is not an engineering blog, so I will refrain.)

When I ordered the machine, Morris said, “The first time you drop in some twigs, it’s going to sound like the world is coming to an end! So be prepared.”

How right he was. But I wasn’t prepared for all the smoke and sparks!

Yep. On its maiden voyage, I was mulching up leaves we had raked back in the fall. Things were going along swimmingly and I was down to my last bag when there was a little technical difficulty. The stick I had been using to stir up the leaves to keep them from getting compacted and jamming up the mulcher went too far into the machine.

Oh, my God. The noise! The smoke!

That baby started to moan and groan so loudly, I backed up a few feet in case it blew. I kept thinking that it would work its way through its difficulties and we could get on with our business. But no! It just got worse. Suddenly, a CLOUD of smoke was POURING out of the machine, which was lurching and grinding and making the most hideous of noises. Of course, by this time, I was AFRAID to go near the machine cause I was pretty sure she was gonna blow.

Then the fire started. Okay, maybe not fire, but sparks that LOOKED like fire. I was really not going near the machine now.

Unfortunately, I was in a real dilemma. The machine didn’t stop of its own accord and there was no able-bodied man around to brave the beast, as they had both de-camped to the movies and left me to do the yard work by myself. (Figures.)

So I screwed up my courage and scampered over, switched it off and grabbed the key. I scrambled back to my hiding place by the fence.

Whew! Major explosion and forest fire averted!

The bad news is that after just an hour or so of work on its virgin cruise, the Mighty Mack had to head off to the small equipment hospital.

So, on top of the purchase of a mulcher that equaled about 1,000 bags of mulch I could purchase, I had to pay a $250 repair bill.

I’m going to need to grow a LOT of vegetables to make this equation balance.

Posted In: Gardening, Lifestyle