April 16th – 9 AM – 32 degrees

Its pretty, but……..

… enough is enough!!!

CUPUFU

Sandy City performs a major trash pick up service twice a year.  With the exception of hazardous materials, they will pick up any thing you pile in front of your house and take it to the dump.  Years ago it went by the acronym CUPUFU.  Clean Up Paint Up Fix Up.

This year the spring pick up was on Monday, April 13th.  I spent the entire weekend clearing brush and accumulated leaves off the “hump”.  The hump is a mound between our house and Josh’s house.  It covers a culvert that drains water from a cul-de-sac in back of us.

We clearly won the “biggest pile” contest on our street this year.  In the photo you can see the bags of leaves (at least 20) and the brush and branches that were removed.  There was also some detritus from the basement construction project.  All of the basement stuff disappeared from the pile before Sandy City showed up.  There are people who perform a useful function of salvaging recyclable materials from the trash piles.  We disrespectfully call them scavengers, while they should be called ‘recyclers’.

And this is a picture of the cleaned up “hump”.  It looks like we could make a pleasant area for some purpose under the trees.

The plants have taken up residence next to the bees

The seedlings have made the journey over to Josh’s Greenhouse.  The have survived their first night, and it is 47 degrees this morning, so I assume they have survived their second.  The greenhouse is heated by a kerosene heater which not only supplies heat, but carbon dioxide as well.

This is a picture of Victoria and the plants in the greenhouse.

The bees live right next to the greenhouse. You can see a corner of the hive over Victoria’s right shoulder. 

This is Josh and his bees.  He had just arrived home from a trip, and his bees arrived while he was gone.

Josh’s Greenhouse

This is the future home of Pratt’s Plants.  I went over and helped Josh put the windows on the greenhouse.  He is recycling windows that he replaced in his house last summer.  The front window is 6’ X 6’ and must weigh somewhere around 300 pounds.

 

Josh assures me that the Greenhouse will be ready for plants in a couple of days.  On Saturday his bees are coming.  He is going to have a hive to the left of the greenhouse.  I hope to be able to take some pictures of the arrival of the bees.  Apparently they come in a cardboard box, with the Queen in her own private little container.  Josh’s brother is going to do the honors of moving the bees from the cardboard box to the beehive.  Josh is going to be flying (smart man!)

Pratt’s Greenhouse (continued)

Marion questioned in a comment why I am not growing more vegetables… I will repeat my response (edited) here…

The reason I am not planting more vegetables is one of real estate, preference, economics and climate.

We would have to dig up serious parts of the lawn to grow more vegetables.  Large parts of the lawn are unusable because of tree roots. The Cottonwood tree has taken over the whole lawn to the west of the house.  Its roots lay just under the grass as it likes to suck up the water we put on the lawn.  Any where you dig to the west of the house you will find roots varying from finger size, to arm size, and even to leg size.

We also devote serious garden bed space to flowers because we like the color.

For space reasons it seems more productive to grow things which go vertical  or are bushy (tomatoes and peppers). I am planning to plant pole beans this year.

Then there are economics. It just doesn't seem to pay to grow carrots or other root vegetables, while tomatoes and peppers and herbs seem more worthwhile.

And finally this is not generally a cool weather climate.  Once winter breaks we have a very short spring (winter has not really broken yet.) Cool weather plants like spinach and lettuce and peas do not do well. Also plants which do best in humid conditions (like sweet corn) are challenged since our climate is technically a desert… Sage brush and tumbleweed inhabited our yard when we moved in. 

Project One – Bill Pratt’s Greenhouse (corrected)

With time on my hands and motivated to live a little more frugally, I decided to start some seedlings.  I was also motivated by Josh, my neighbor, building a greenhouse, and offering me some space in it for my plants.  At the present time I have planted 7, 72 ‘pot’ trays.  They aren’t really pots, but little bags of peat.  The come looking sort of like buttons, but when you add water to them they grow to be about two inches high.  The first three trays are shown here…

This was the original planting.  The tray to the left contains (from the bottom up) – 1 row: Sweet Basil; 1 row: Cinnamon Basil; 2 rows: Jalapeno Peppers; 2 rows: Sweet Peppers; 2 rows: Cherry Tomatoes; 2 rows: Beefsteak Tomatoes; 2 rows: Roma Tomatoes.  The other two trays contain Marigolds… all sizes and colors.

I have since planted four more trays.  One of them is starting to sprout, and contains a variety of Herbs and African Daisies.  You can see the four trays under daylight lamps in this picture.

  The greenhouse is not done yet, and there is no sunshine, so I have had to convert the guest (Nick and Alina’s) bathroom into a greenhouse.  I have the two sun lamps, and a space heater.  I am trying to keep the heat in the ‘greenhouse’ at about 75 degrees, as I have a whole tray of Impatiens planted, and they germinate best at that temperature.  I also planted a whole tray of Poppies Petunias.  Poppy Petunia seeds are just about the smallest seeds I have ever seen.  It took me quite a while to place 3 seeds, one at a time, into the little ‘pots.’

I will keep you posted on the progress of my plants.