45° F? Chilly feet for the seedlings indeed. Getting the sheet mulch down will help. Paper mulch around the seedling stems will help. Still, there’s good reason to have Memorial Day as our default day for planting, isn’t there?
Measuring soil temperature is a good exercise for me, because it keeps the idea of soil as a living system in the forefront of my mind. Soil isn’t just there. It’s ever responsive to changing conditions, including air temperature.
OK, so this measurement is really two days old, and I don’t know how to read the scale anyhow, but whatever, I’ve got a new metric!
Note to self: Do not put directions in your pocket and then forget which pocket. Do put the directions in a baggie and nail it on the post near the instrument (at least until you remember what the directions are). Going in situ is almost always the lazy way; it’s like writing set-out information right on the jug instead of keeping a notebook, for example. Why create a new information flow if you can stack functions by leveraging an old one?
Anyhow, posting to a blog doesn’t count as work.
This is my other set of windchimes; I thought the gardening tools were…. Geez, what’s a word for “cute” that guys can use?
The pink flowerpots are trying to be rain collectors; but they aren’t very good, are they? Because they hang at an angle, they fill fast, and they’d be unable to distinguish between a shower and a storm.
Maybe I should get a real rain gauge, just for grins. Although I’d have to write down the results every day, and that sounds like work. Maybe an Arduino rain gauge that would take the metrics and store the data automagically….
The lilac buds seem to have doubled in size in three days (previous measurement). And they’re getting fuzzy.
Methodological problems, though: I can’t measure the same bud against the same background because, surprise, the twigs are growing, thrusting their way upward, so the relative positions of bud, twig, and blue snow shovel* all change, and I can’t get the same shot twice (paging Heraclitus). I imagine agronomists have keen tools to measure their plants with: Maybe tiny rulers they lay directly on the plants, and then photograph?
NOTE * I’m tempting the Weather Gods, I know, by calling the snow shovel a prop.
Here’s my neighbor’s garlic, happy, indeed exuberant, in its raised bed.
The soil temperature is twenty degrees higher than my squash mound’s (also raised, though in its own way). That’s the difference between full sun, here, and morning and afternoon sun, in my garden.
Assuming that both instruments are calibrated, anyhow….
Ridiculously early, I mean.
One theme this Spring has been instrumentation, so I thought I’d measure the lilac buds; then I can track their progress! But I think I need a better protocol: Holding the measuring tape (upside down) with my left hand and then holding the iPad up with the right, while clicking the on-screen shutter with my thumb* isn’t so easy, especially because the bright sun means I can’t really preview the shot on the screen. But I fire off half-a-dozen shots or so, and one of them is will be worth saving!
Oh, and I don’t put away the snow shovels, not only because they’re a contrasting background for lilac bud shots, but because such an act of hubris would anger the Snow Gods, and we’d get an April blizzard. That would be bad.
NOTE * Thank you, Apple, for moving the shutter release button for the camera app to the side of the screen. If button were still at the bottom, I wouldn’t be able to contort my thumb to get at it while awkwardly cradling and balancing the iPad in the cupped palm of my right hand! Maybe some clever person could work out how to use the mic jack for a shutter releas cable…
