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Playing in the Dirt

Spring has sprung! And gone again, and summer is here. Apparently. So since we still had seedlings in the windowsill, a few days ago I grabbed a trowel (that's a lie, I didn't have a trowel) and the babies, and plopped them in the dirt.

Selfie of a smiling, slightly sunburnt redheaded woman wearing a black mock-turtleneck and gold necklace with a ring and centered white stone pendant. Behind her is a raised bed with dark, wet earth and a neat block of flopped-over tomato plants, enclosed by mulched paths and a low lattice fence. Brush and trees fill the background.
I swear they're not crushed under the weight of expectations/their first experience of "rain."
And then I watered them, which sorta kinda maybe flattened them a bit, and wished them luck, because I definitely didn't do any hardening off.

It's fine. It's been 80-90 degrees during the days here, and about 60-70 at night, and they'll do well. Or we'll find out which ones are sturdy and which ones aren't being planted next year.

A low-angle photo of a green garden hose attached to a small loop of black soaker hose, arranged among a few small, slightly crisped plants. A narrow, fierce geyser of water is shooting from the far side of the soaker hose, spurting over the wood lattice garden fence.
Hmmmm.
And then I tried out the soaker hose I'd bought, which was designed (according to the packaging) to water trees, by making a closed loop around the trunk. Honestly, it's a pretty small loop, even before you break off five inches of hose because it's brittle and you tried too hard to stuff it into the T-junction, so I could only see it working with saplings or very slim trees. Still, it's a reasonable size for watering the cucumbers, which were also unceremoniously plopped in the ground and slightly underwatered left to fend for themselves over the weekend.

Got the hose hooked up, turned the water on, stood back—yelped—and stood back further. The elderly soaker hose had a crack in it, which turned into a geyser under the pressure of a quarter-turn of the faucet.

A high-angle photo of a green garden hose attached to a small loop of black soaker hose, arranged around some small, slightly crisped plants. A red, round-ended edging brick is propped on the frame of the garden bed and the soaker hose, and water is spraying from under the near end of the brick.
Hmmmm.
Like a good engineer who has no duct tape at hand, I put a brick on the problem.

A low-angle photo of a green garden hose attached to a small loop of black soaker hose, with a small, green, slightly crisped plant in the center. At right, a tall red brick enters the frame, sitting on the soaker hose. Water is spurting from under the brick, knocking the seedling sideways a bit.
That's not exactly soaking.
It...didn't really work.

Eventually I just hand-watered the garden, and left the soaker hose repairs for another day.

A small square of dark, bare soil, enclosed by four white-framed, two-sashed windows laid on their sides, which are leaning on each other and on rough-edged sticks of wood and a few green-painted metal garden stakes. It looks precarious.
Workplace hazard or rural ingenuity? Same difference, honestly.
I also set up the extremely rudimentary but sufficient for requirements cotton enclosure, to protect the seedlings from the depredations of roaming chickens. The idea was originally to enclose the roof of the structure, but as we've leapt straight into summer, I think it'll do just fine as it is. I'll have a few months to muse on how to extend the season at the other end of summer, and maybe by then I'll have acquired enough windows to make a lovely little glass house.

I'm also pretty pleased with the "door" of the cotton bed; the front window slides aside, riding within the channel created by the garden stakes in front and the ends of the perpendicular windows behind, a bit like a pocket door (but, you know, sans wall into which to pocket the door). Cotton seedlings get one more week of cushy indoor life, and then they'll get plopped in the dirt, too.

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