The Modern Victory Garden

Been crazy busy with work this week so time for the garden has been early morning/late evening only.   Weather has not been all that great so it's not like I have been missing out on any real opportunities to get much accomplished anyway.    

The pace of late has been pretty wild and unfortunately my body gave me a little reminder yesterday that I need to pay better attention to it.    

I regularly donate blood. Do it about every 3 months and have done it for years never experiencing any problems.  Yesterday I had an appointment at 11:45 am to give blood.  The donation site is located several blocks away from my office.   I planned to walk there from work, spend approximately 45 minutes getting the blood draw done, and then treat myself to a deli sandwich before walking back to work.   With some significant deadlines to meet this week, I have been pulling some long / intense hours - so the walk to the building and the "lie down" for the draw felt pretty good! Was just wrapping up with the blood draw when suddenly I felt extremely clammy and lightheaded.  Uh oh. Waved over the nice attendant and he immediately got me "unplugged", put my knees and feet up and applied cold compresses. After about 10 minutes that seemed to do the trick and I was allowed to rest another 5 minutes and then slowly got up and made my way (carefully) to the food/beverage table.  Managed to get about half way through a glass of grape juice before starting the same drill all over again.  This time I got to lay on the floor because there was no way I was going to make it back to the cots in the center of the room! Had another 15 - 20 minute lie down with blood pressure taking, cold compresses, and an increasingly worried staffer. Finally got to where I could sit back up and have some Gatorade and saltines (yuck) and eventually made it back into the chair and got some water and V8 juice down as well.  Finally, they required that I stand for 4 minutes with a decent blood pressure check at the end of the time period before they would let me go.   Well, I made it 2 minutes before I was back down again! Wow... this was NOT fun and I was getting increasingly worried about my walk back to work. Visions of myself lying in the street danced through my head.   It ended up that I had to sit there for quite a length of time before I could finally stand and stay up for 4 minutes with a decent BP check. While technically cleared to leave, I felt as wobbly as a newborn colt so I just headed over to the deli in the building and got a half sandwich.   I was so full from drinking juice, water, Gatorade, and eating saltines that I could hardly choke it down.  Luckily I was blessed to find a friend and co-worker there having a late lunch so I had some one to talk to and sit with. Eventually I was able to make my way back to work safely and managed to get quite a bit done - but definitely was not 100% for the rest of the day.   As best I can figure, I was dehydrated and/or low on electrolytes because all vitals were good before the draw and actually were once again afterwards.     Lesson learned - drink more fluids on blood draw day, calm the schedule down just a bit, and probably need to eat more mid-morning before trundling off to give blood!

Okay enough about that, let's talk about the status of the garden and my seedlings!   

You may recall that I wrote in my blog (a while ago) that I thought I might have done in my swiss chard seedlings by rushing them to the unheated greenhouse too fast to make room for more seed starting.   Well, I am happy to report that I was mistaken about that!   They have subsequently bounced back and have been happily growing on ever since and are now just about ready to be planted out in the garden.   Yesterday I began the hardening off process for them by putting them outside prior to leaving for work and putting them back into the greenhouse when I get home at night.  I will keep doing this through the end of this week so that they will be sufficiently hardened for planting out in the garden beds this weekend.    

The repotted tomatoes are for the most part doing very well.   Here;s a few pictures of them. 

 I did lose several shortly after the transplanting.  They just did not bounce back from the transplanting process and were too weak to cope with the chilly and damp conditions prevalent for much of the time after the repotting was completed.     Luckily I always plant 1 ½ times more seedlings than I actually need  - for just this very reason.   It is not uncommon to lose seedlings to disease, cold conditions, and unfortunate accidents  - like the time I dropped a full tray of seedlings (upside down no less) while carrying them out to the greenhouse!   The ones that did not expire were never impacted at all - in that they immediately took off and thrived.     Not sure why some were affected so badly while the remaining ones did so well - just one of those mysteries of nature I guess.   I did not repot all of the tomatoes and there are still quite a few that are still in their original cell packs and are under the grow lights.   Here's a picture of them and the second crop of broccoli starts.

 As you can see these are doing quite well too and the broccoli is about ready to be moved out to the greenhouse this weekend to begin the hardening off process.    

The peppers and celery starts are not as far along (both are slower growing) but are also doing very well. 

The last thing I will mention is that I removed the plastic grow tunnel cover from the bed of cole crops (broccoli, kohlrabi, and cabbages) that were recently transplanted and replaced it with bird netting to protect the bed from my dog walking through it.    I did that this morning before heading off to work.   They are doing well and with the milder night time temperatures forecasted for the next few days it is a good time to let them finish hardening off.   Here is a picture I took of them this evening.  It was getting dark, but I think you can see that they are coming along nicely.

That's about it for now.   Hoping to get a lot done in the garden this coming weekend.