Back from vacation

We are back from our vacation in Montana, and I am catching up on yard work and greenhouse stuff this weekend. The most interesting discovery at home was in the greenhouse, where I set up the automatic watering system at the last minute before we left. It turns out that I missed one button push, so that it did not actually water while we were gone. I thought that the plants looked a little dry and heat stressed, but overall were doing well. So I went to adjust the programming on the timer, and found my error. Normally the consequences of this would have been a lot of dead plants. In this case though I have been experimenting with a soil mix recommended in the book “Square Foot Gardening”, which is 1/3 each of compost, peat moss and vermiculite (exploded mica rock, which acts like a sponge) and the plants made it through OK. So if you are going to be gardening, I recommend reading and following his book.

Dennis Donohue