More Gardens and Seedlings - April 15, 2026@goldenoakfarm

On Tuesday morning I was up at 5:30AM and got my post up. I messed around with seedlings and finally got out to the gardens at 8AM.

I started on the Back Porch garden because the alyssum had so overgrown it. It’s hard to see how bad it was in the photo because we had rain in the night. It took me about an hour to clean out this tiny garden.

I got my notes, photos and put down BulbTone and FlowerTine and moved over to the Magnolia garden. There are just supposed to be violets in this one, but I had a good deal of grass and a creeping invasive to pull out. It got some FlowerTone and after photos and notes, I moved to the crabtree garden.

This garden hadn’t been properly cleaned out in a few years. I think my helper friend cut back the vines one year recently. But between the huge pile of vines and all the leaves, only 4 spots of perennial sweet peas had survived.

But there were a lot of the Poet’s Eye narcissus. I rarely get flowers from them, but I did get one last year. Maybe with the crap off them, I’ll get one this year. I put down the BulbTone and FlowerTone and got my photos and notes.

I’d been out in the sun for 3 hours and had enough so I cleaned up the equipment and left the sleds for my son to dump in the afternoon.

I went in to sit down and cool off and at 11:45AM my #2 intern arrived to wash trays.

I started making tuna melts for lunch and got the tuna mixed up and was waiting for the English muffins to thaw for 4 minutes. I went out to talk with my #2 intern while I waited. The furrball was asleep in his chair.

But when I came back in after 4 minutes, I found him on the counter and a good portion of the tuna was gone. Sigh… So I chased him around the island 3X hissing at him and stomping my feet, before he finally ran out to the office. He was quite proud of himself and not at all put out by my noise.

My #2 intern got all 20 trays cleaned up and headed out. I got started on the office seedlings.

I took each tray down, did what thinning was needed, made notes and did the next one. Once they had all been checked, and the lights adjusted, I sat down for while. Then I got them all watered. And then I sat down for a while, as it’s a long hike from the kitchen faucet to the far side of the office, and a lot of trips.

Next I did the same to the trays on the back porch. This is a much shorter trip and in the process of making notes, I realized a lot more of the seedlings were ready to go to the cold frame. So I sat down and made a list and there were 16 of the trays ready to go out. I had 4 spots in the roundtop window and I needed 20 spots for the Saturday seed starting. So I wasn’t going to have to put the shelving up in the dining room window this time.

I sat down for a while and around 4PM I finally got started on the living room trays. That really finished me off.

But my brother called to see if I was up to driving to get his car, so I sat down and started editing the 49 photos I’d taken during the day while I waited for him to get home. Turns out the 3rd muffler hadn’t arrived so no driving.

I finished the first editing of the photos and then went in to watch ‘Leave It to Beaver’ until supper time. Then I sat down to watch after supper until bedtime.

Old water heater guts

My brother had gotten a shower when he got home, and my #1 intern had after her run, but when I turned it on, no hot came out. Sigh… Fortunately when this happened back when I still had construction money, I paid the plumber to run a bypass to the new water heater. That way if the power went off, the old heater still worked, and if the old heater crapped out, like on Tuesday night, there was the new heater.

I messaged Tom to see if he could come see about it, but he’s off on a get away for a couple days. But he’d made an extensive pdf with clear photos back when it first happened and also a couple audio files for coaching so I’ll see if my brother can work on it on the weekend.

On Thursday I hope to get out to the gardens again early as it’s still to be in the 80’s. I intend to get the rosebed done. It’s not been done in a couple years and needs a lot of pruning. Then I if I have energy left, I clean up the comfrey bed under the MacIntosh tree. I might even tackle the spirea…

My #4 helper arrives at 1:30PM and we have to carry out the 16 trays to the cold frame and get them leveled so they hold water. Then I need to take the snowflakes off my windows, finally, if I can find the sheets to store them on.

That ought to finish me off just fine…