Apr 28, 2024 7 min read

April #3: Well... f*ck

The popular saying, 'When life gives you lemons, make lemonade,' feels quite useless when life takes the lemons away, leaving you with nothing but sugar water. This sums up my feelings this month, which took a sharp turn after several less impactful ones.

April is perhaps my third favorite month of the year. March is usually still quite cold, with gardening tasks mostly limited to indoor sowing and some amount of outdoor sowing that barely extends beyond radishes. But April signifies an awakening for trees and berry bushes. Let me tell you, there is nothing more beautiful at this time of year than watching cherry trees in bloom.

This year, however, the gods of global warming, whom I love to talk about, have been overly generous, gifting us a very warm March and an even warmer April—at least the first half. My cherry trees and all my apple trees went into full bloom! It was a beautiful sight and a potentially great harvest with canning and jam-making vibes already in the air. I’ve also got my hands on some high-quality late potatoes and expanded the potato area by five additional bags.

homeoffice

In the office I dreamt of in my March update, construction took finally off. I removed the old bed framing, cleaned the concrete floor, and began laying planks I repurposed from beds to create an elevated frame. Initially, I considered using cheap carpet or wooden flooring, but then I discovered terrace flooring tiles that click together easily. It seemed like a no-brainer due to the almost perfect fit for a 5x6 grid.

However, what seemed like a total no-brainer turned into more-brainer. The concrete floor wasn’t perfectly flat, nor were the planks and framing. I had to abandon my plan for an alternating tile pattern and align them in one direction. Although they still look nice, the lack of flatness (flatlessness?) made the tiles unstable and wobbly. And how do you fix something wobbly and make it not wobbly? With 35 TORX head screws of course!

I then outfitted the room with an IKEA couch, a complementary LACK coffee table, and the LEGION ROG RAZER GAMING Nespresso machine, which can be powered by my 1kWh power station that I plan to connect to a 100W solar panel—these have become incredibly affordable over the past two years.

brace yourself

Then disaster struck. The National Weather Institute announced a steep drop in temperatures across the country, announcing the return of winter conditions with new snow and crucially, freezing temperatures below -2°C. Upon hearing this, I knew I had to delay acclimatizing my peppers and keep them indoors for two more weeks, hoping for only mild freezes. Despite about ten days of harsh weather predicted, with the first seven being the worst, I was optimistic. My garden, protected on all sides by trees and terrain, usually shields from freezing winds—only morning frosts posed a threat. After five days, I was relieved to see my trees still blooming; the cherry tree even began forming healthy baby green cherries. Unfortunately, my neighbor’s walnut tree didn't survive. Overall, I thought things would be okay.

Cherries did survive initially, walnuts did not.

It was not. The institute later forecasted even more severe conditions for the remaining three days, with temperatures far below -2°C. The next day was the worst. I returned in the morning to find a TOTAL WRECKAGE. I was heartbroken. All my beautiful cherries were frost-burned, every single one. Expecting one of the best harvests in years I was devastated and demotivated. The apple trees also suffered, albeit less severely, but the frost will definitely impact them.

Not even 24 hours later and all my cherries are dead.

I’m not alone in this shit, however; my friends and colleagues reported similar losses, and professional fruit farmers are facing a total loss this year. A single day ruined the entire harvest. Thankfully, everything else survived, including my sprouted potatoes, which I had covered generously with grass, gooseberries, and red currant bushes.

the living

Moving away from this depressive situation, I bet my season on my thriving plants. A friend gifted me a pack of Butter Pumpkin seeds, which will hopefully make pleasant companions to the other pumpkins I'm growing, the Sweet Meat Oregon Homestead variety. They will all be planted in new raised beds alongside Banana melons. It’s the first year for these three plants, so my hopes for a huge harvest aren’t exceptionally high, I will be very excited to harvest even one pumpkin and one melon.

Regarding the tomatoes, I managed the lighting much better this year compared to last, and they look healthy and are the appropriate size for their age. I took a low-quality timelapse of their explosive growth. I've divided the tomatoes into two groups: soil-grown and hydroponic. I selected 12 plants to grow hydroponically in a coco-perlite mix, while the rest will grow in regular soil. Currently, the soil-grown tomatoes are larger because I've been feeding the hydroponic ones with a weak nutrient solution, fearing a strong one might kill them. However, with about two weeks until their permanent transplantation, it’s time to give them a proper feed, and I expect them to outgrow the soil ones within a month or two. I also need to build them a trellis.

The Micro-Tom tomatoes, which I sowed late, sprouted nicely using seeds from the HydroLIXHULT experiment with a 100% germination rate, and I'll be giving some away. However, the Hawaiian Currant tomatoes did not germinate—not a single one, despite the same environmental conditions as the others. It seems I just had bad luck with those seeds.

Lastly, my peppers are thriving and eager to move into the greenhouse. I propagated six additional plants, as they looked too healthy to prune and discard. The sweet bell pepper 'Bajka' and Tabasco have already started producing buds, usually a sign of root-bound plants, indicating a need for more space soon. The more heat-loving Habanero and Nagabrain peppers are still happy indoors, mirroring their behavior from last year, only really taking off in July. And it is my premiere with leaves edema on two Nagabrain Choc plants! The edema is a sign of bad air circulation and high moisture. It's nothing life-threatening and it will fix itself in a week or two.

The greenhouse would make them really happy. Pic. 3: The "crystals" are edema it is a sign of bad air circulation.

While I’ve promised an update on the irrigation situation, the cold weather has prevented extended outdoor work. However, I’m testing a potentially cool solution and have already posted one update on my Printables account.