Tuesday, April 3, 2018

Hatching, Sprouting and Snowing, March at Humblebee.

We've been enjoying a very mild and relatively snowless Winter in 2018 but today it's snowing with a vengeance and mazingly the schools are still open despite very slippery roads. My guess is that the school authorities thought this would turn into rain before long but it hasn't. That's okay, it's not quite Spring yet. I had a nice hot breakfast of fried potatoes, egg foo yong and onions so now my tummy is happy and warm.

Regardless of the current weather we have to be thinking ahead to planting season and especially we have to think about having plants ready for sale in the nursery in a matter of weeks. It's tricky because each variety takes a different amount of time to germinate and grow, plus once they are starting to grow they need light and the greenhouse is still getting down to below freezing at night. So what are we going to do?

For the young plants we are going to have a partition in the main greenhouse that's got a heat source for those days and nights when it's cold. That's a project for next weekend. But the unit for getting the seeds germinated is built and officially called the Sprouter. It's far bigger than the shelf unit we had last year. We had an issue with it maintaining the temperature last year, cool at night and too hot during the day so the changes we made this year are that it's a wooden box and we've insulated it with fibreglass not just to keep it warmer but because it will also help control the airflow and shade it from overheating on sunny days. Helping to even out the fluctuations in temperature will really assist in germination.

Along with the seed sprouter we have a home made incubator full of eggs that’s scheduled to hatch at the beginning of April so stay tuned! Life is returning to the farm so Spring must be coming.

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