Growing Updates

To help gauge how long it's been, I'll try to start adding this at the top of the post.

Days in the Ground

Lettuce	43
Potatoes	16
Carrots	16
Onions	16
Peas	2
Nasturtiums	2

The Red Noreland potatoes are growing like crazy!  The Yukon Gold, on the other hand, still haven't sprouted above the surface.  Oh well, eventually they'll make their way up here.

I saw a handful of carrot sprouts today, after the rain.  They are teeny tiny.  Shouldn't be too long before they are sticking up out of the ground like the onions.  They're growing so fast you could probably sit there 5 minutes and notice a visible change, lol.

Yesterday I spent a couple hours moving the compost bins to a secluded part of the yard.  They were attracting lots of bugs, especially woodlouse (aka rollie pollies).  Well, rollie pollies were neat as a kid, but now I realize that they eat tender seedlings, so they're enemy #1 at the moment.  I boiled some water and yeast, and filled 2 cups I sunk in the ground.  Woodlouse smell it, walk on over, fall in, and die.  Victory! (in a twisted sort of way)  When I went back out today, I found even more of the woodlice in the compost bin...unfortunately these were not dead.  Is having woodlice, along with lots of other bugs and critters, in the compost bin okay?  Hope so...

Last but not least, with our oh-so-wonderful hail-filled Springs, here in North Texas, I needed to buy some type of protection.  I went down to the hardware store and let my mind run wild.  Then I told it "I'm not made of money" and let it run less wild.  I picked up eight 3/8" x 1ft bars of Rebar, and four 1/2" x 10 ft. PVC pipes.  I also went to the paint department and grabbed a 10 ft. x 20 ft. sheet of plastic dropcloth.  A fairly simple design: 

1. 4 bars of Rebar at each corner of the raised bed, stuck in the ground.  
2. Stick the PVC pipe on the Rebar, bend over to another corner, and stick that end on the other Rebar.  

I found it to be surprisingly stable.  Who knew!?  So, the next time there is a freeze (Sunday, perhaps) or hail in the forecast, we'll just run out there, snap them into position, and run back inside.  What could possibly go wrong? :-D