We have been a little busy the past couple of days getting the upstairs bedrooms painted.  When the renovations were done the contractor took out the existing baseboard electric heaters.  Because of the new high efficiency gas furnace even the existing gas fire places would not be used for heating.  It was considered that the fireplaces would not be able to supply enough heat for the new addition.  Consequently a new furnace was installed.
Once the baseboard heaters were out, (they hadn't been used since 1997), the area had to be repaired with filler and sanded.  Once that was done it was on to the painting.  Finally getting that done.
We are off on the 9th of March to Florida.  Taking a leisurely drive down to stay with friends for a week and then off on an 11 night cruise of the Southern Caribbean out of Fort Lauderdale.  Predicting to be back sometime in the first week of April.  Not sure how long it is going to take us to get back because we will be under no time constraint.  Hopefully Spring will have sprung by the time we get back.
Our dutiful daughter Heather will be looking after the 'garden' while we are away.  I may even do some more planting before we go.  It may be a little early but I will also do some more seeding when we get back.  That should be enough time to get things started before planting outside in mid-May.

Yup - falling behind again.  I can't figure out why but it just seems as if that is the way that it goes sometimes.  Getting things back in order after the renovations has taken some time as well as being busy being out and about almost every day last week.

My two experiments seem to be going ok.  Check out the photo and write up about the 1st Experiment.  One seed in each of the mediums did not sprout so wondering why and should I plant another.  I really want to do the comparison and even with a couple of weeks difference in sprouting dates there may not me much difference over the long term. 

Well I don't know if it really is good to me or not but at least I am still here to see the day.

Not a very exciting day as far as days go but I did finally manage to put up the last two covers over the bird feeders.  Just got some plastic salad bowls from my favourite store, Dollarama, drilled a hole in the bottom and hung them over the feeders.  So far the ones I had already done seem to be working ok but no birds.  In fact haven't seen many birds in the neighbourhood all winter.

Will try our darnedest to get to tonight's Hash event.  I have been missing them and meeting up with the gang on Saturday brought all of that to the forefront.

I also put up all of January's weather under the menu heading WEATHER.  If you want to see that you will have to press the MORE button and the other items will come up.

Another seed sprouted in the '1st EXPERIMENT', hopefully the remaining ones will also sprout soon.  On another note, I now have four plants growing in separate hydroponic containers.  I am still waiting to get the full tote set-up moved into my man cave once it has been cleared out, painted and me move in.  There are quite a few other lettuce that should be moved from the starting trays into the full setup.  I will have to watch for algae the Heinz bottle.   The containers should be light free so that algae does not start.  As I found out in previous years it can cause havoc with the root system.

I also got a "Flower Rocket" from the Dollarama today and planted it in soil.  Advertised as having over 1,000 seeds of various Spring flowers.  I will wait and see what happens.

Was off to the “GAGGLE” for lunch meeting with a bunch old fellas from my  navy days.  We meet up every other month for a get together to have a drink or two, lunch, remember the good old days and a bit of a meeting to hear about what has been happening since the last meeting and if there is anything else that we may be interested in.  The saddest part is the list of names of those who have passed along since the last meeting.  This one had the average number of ‘departees’ of six.  And of the six I was, at one time, good friends with two or three of them and knew five!  Sadly the list gets longer after each meeting.
At home after the GAGGLE I went to work on my ‘acreage’ again.  I had decided to replenish the grow pots where the seeds had not sprouted with new seeds as well as start two new basil plants.  I had started two grow pots with lettuce seeds and now replenished 1 salad bowl, and 1 deer tongue lettuce and 1 semi-savoy spinach.  When they were all done I found some lettuce seeds on the table and put them into a grow pot as well.  It will be a surprise as to what kind will come up.  All of these are destined for the hydroponic totes once the roots have come through the bottom on the rock wool.  Tomorrow after Old FARTS I will probably make the water meter for the totes.
​Tomorrow we are supposed to have limited street access and be without electricity for the day.  That is because they are replacing the hydro poles on the street.  The holes have already been dug so it will be moving the new pole, using a massively tall crane, over the house and dropping it into the hole.  Hopefully not through a new hole in the roof.

I check on all of my seeds, not just the ones in experiment #1 and #2, on a daily basis and make sure that there is a slight bit of water in the bottom of each of the trays.  I have herbs, lettuce and beans that will eventually go into hydroponic totes.  That will mean at least one more of my hydroponic setups. These are all meant to be grown indoors, well except for the ones that are in soil for the experiments.  Once they have sufficient roots I will transplant them into something so that they will be outside once the weather warms up.
Have been receiving some comments on my experiment #2 about the lights and checked out the light colour on the original box.  It is supposed to be close to daylight.  However, the literature says that plants should have some red, blue and possible green light as well. I am not sure how much red and blue is produced with the LED lights.  One article says that LED light is not ‘white’ but blue and to much blue can be harmful to some plant.  I think that, if I remember, to try and get some red Christmas lights once they go on sale after Christmas.  It will be interesting to see if there is any difference - but that is a future project.
I am planning on putting in a water meter in each of the hydro-totes.  It will be a bit of a compromise of several I have seen on the net (YouTube “Hi my name’s Jeb”); a bamboo garden stake stuck into a styrofoam Easter egg that I got at Dollarama will be the measure stick.  Drill a small hole in the top of the tote just large enough for the meter stick to pass through, mark the stake when there is no water in the tote with red electrician’s tape, then add water in measured amounts and mark the stake at the various levels with different coloured tape.  That way I won’t have to open the totes to check on the water level until it does have to be topped up.
I should have put more than one seed in each of the pots for my two experiments, especially for the old seeds.
Off to the GAGGLE tomorrow so not sure if I will be doing any ‘gardening’ other than check up or not.  If this set does not work out I will retry with 3 or 4 seeds in each pot in another experiment, probably either before or just after we get back from out holiday.
I have been thinking of starting some more herbs and I may just do that later in the week.  I now have enough small (popsicle sticks - from Dollarama) markers that I can mark each pot.  I didn’t have any markers when I planted the original seeds so just marked one pot and kept the each variety in a four pot group.  Well, I moved the tray they were in and of course they got all mixed up.  I can pick out some of them but not sure on others.
Snow finally stopped over night and this afternoon took a walk up to Home Hardware to pick out some paint for what is going to be my ‘man-cave’ once I can move in.  My man-cave will hold by computer, TV and of course my garden.  I will have a couple of shelving units for the trays of seeds that I will be starting for the outdoor planting in May as well as my present hydro-totes setups.

​

​As I have previously stated I have been interesting growing plants hydroponically for the past couple of year.  This year I have also started a couple of experiments that you can read about under each experiment menu.
Usually what I have done in the past is simply start the seedling on a shelf mostly with small 18“ grow lights.  This year I looked into getting larger 4’ foot grow lights either florescent or LED or more of the smaller lights.  I Looked around during the latter part of 2017 to see what was available.  Then in Costco I saw they had 4’ LED 4200 lumin lights on for $49.99 which was a big saving over other florescent light setups and even a better deal on florescent grow lights.  As an example, in the hydroponic store that I use 18” florescent grow lights (as I have) are $34.95 while 18” LEDs are $79.95.  They also had heavy duty 102 litre totes on for $9.99.  I picked up 2 totes and one light came home and installed the light on the shelving unit that I already had set up.
​Of course one is not enough so on the next visit I picked up another light and two more totes.  Now that I had a complete hydroponic setup, lights and water containers, I thought it would be a good idea to make a light support unit which could also be used as a tomato support when the tomatoes go hydroponically outside.  It was then off to Lowe’s to see what they had,  I purchased three 10’ x 3/4” white PVC pipe, 2 x T-sockets, and 6 x elbows to make the frame.  I had the the pipe cut into 4’ lengths at Lowe’s  and at home cut two of the two foot lengths in half and assembled without using any glue so the unit can be stripped down.  The two totes fit nicely in the frame.  Total cost for the hydroponic unit (totes, light, frame) including 15% GST (tax) $132.39.  Oh I see I forgot the four S hooks from the Dollarama store at $2.30 including tax so full cost is $134.69!
​