Blog Update!
For those of you not following me on Facebook, as of the Summer of 2019 I've moved to Central WA, to a tiny mountain town of less than 1,000 people.

I will be covering my exploits here in the Cascades, as I try to further reduce my impact on the environment. With the same attitude, just at a higher altitude!

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Spring is in the air

Daffodils
Well, except for the snow, hail and torrential rains, spring is in the air up here in Seattle!

Cherry blossoms
Ha, ha, just kidding. This last one is an orchid from my Dad's garden in San Diego (taken last week):

Orchid

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

My sinus's say that POLLEN is in the air.

Greenpa said...

Holy jeepers, do you ever live in a different world! Here- the ground my daffodils are in is still frozen like a rock; we still have old snowdrifts on the ground in shaded spots and on north slopes.

Evenso- spring IS in the air- we call them "birds". :-) Robins, bluebirds, etc, etc; back and singing everywhere.

Farmer's Daughter said...

Love the pictures! Your daffodils blow mine away...

I put in my spring veggies today and will be posting about it later on, but for now, I'm going to enjoy the sunny weather :)

JenHarper said...

OK Crunchy! Since you alerted me to the dangers of using rain barrel water from an asphalt shingled roof, I've got another question for you. What is the safest water can? I have just started my herb seedlings and I am using a plastic can. What is going to leech few if any toxic chemicals into the water I'm providing to my food plants? Thanks!

Crunchy Chicken said...

JenHarper - I suspect your best bet is a stainless steel watering can (the old school kind), although I can't imagine the water is sitting in there long enough to leach out anything that will get taken up by the plants.

knutty knitter said...

Its getting colder every day and the Autumn colours are starting to show. My plants are dying back and I STILL have 2 bags of apples and a tree full to preserve in some way.

viv in nz

Greenpa said...

re: watering cans- I wouldn't worry very much.

If your plastic can is leaching stuff- it's going to be organic molecules- which will mostly bind tightly to soil, and are pretty unlikely to wind up in your plants. And the soil will eat them in time. Not zero, but not much.

Stainless- really quite safe at ambient temps. If you were boiling acid water in it all day, a few chromium atoms would come out.

The old standard is galvanized; zinc coated. Really pretty safe. A little zinc may come out; particularly if your water is acid and in there long- but; zinc is a soil nutrient usually in short supply; I have it added to my fertilizer. And it's very immobile in soils, anyway. Again; not to worry.

The OLD old standard was- wood. Oak, cedar. Sounds like a business opportunity to me! "Green Buckets." no toxins.