The Weekly Digs #201

In the Garden

We had the craziest wind storm on Friday. I was working in the garden and noticed my caterpillar tunnel looked like it was about to take flight or get seriously bent from the wind. 

I came inside and checked my weather gauge and the wind gusts were up to 30mph. The kids came out and helped me tighten up the ropes that hold down the plastic. 

This was around 3pm. At around 5pm, I was still outside, and I saw it start to lift off the rebar on the front hoops and both the scissor doors completely broke open and the pipe in the ground came out.

I called Cam (he was inside prepping some of our farm orders) and said this was an emergency and I needed his help saving the tunnel from destruction due to wind. We tried to fix the scissor doors with no luck.

Eventually he just said it might be better to open up the whole thing as much as possible so the air can flow through. This is the opposite of what Farmer’s Friend recommends so I was hesitant.

But since we couldn’t get the doors to close anyway it seemed like the air that was flowing through the doors had nowhere to go so we opened it as much as possible. 

Cam had to go deliver farm orders so we came inside and by this point the weather gauge had recorded several wind gusts at nearly 50 mph. 

I said a little prayer that my tunnel would survive and checked the weather. Only two more hours of high wind left. By 7pm the wind had stopped and the tunnel was still in one piece. I’m thankful for that answered prayer!

Replacement cost is $2000 so that is why I was having a panic outside about saving my tunnel. Cam and I have some future plans to shore it up a little better so hopefully it will hold. I really hope we don’t have another wind storm like the one we had though anytime soon!

We did have a few casualties though. Inside my tunnel all the plants were not used to that much wind when we opened it all up. Everything survived, albeit with some wind burn, and a few tomato seedlings that were too far gone. 

I didn’t notice how damaged they had become from the wind until the next day when I saw they were wilted and dead. Initially my first thought was freezing temperatures and frost damage but it didn’t get that cold last night, so the wind must have been too much!

No worries though, these aren’t that far along in growth. I’m doing most of my tomato seed starting this coming week and will replant some then.

Here’s some more highlights from the week

• Kids weeded their gardens and a couple of them got them all covered with compost. Now for some mulch in the walking paths and they’ll be ready for growing!
• Cam and kids weeded two 90 foot beds in preparation for planting potatoes. I am sooo thankful for that. I am already behind on planting them so I’m especially glad to have it all prepped and ready for the most part.
• We got all the bulb onions transplanted. I forgot to take a picture of this, but I’ll share it next week.
• Made a monster batch of granola. It’s a pantry staple for us, since we don’t buy cold cereal from the store. Find my recipe HERE.
• Planted more blueberries. I already have quite a few but we had some extra space on the ends of the rows, plus a few areas where blueberries had died. I planted Last Call, Top Shelf, Blue Crop, and Chandler, all northern highbush types. My southern highbush haven’t thrived so I guess we might be a touch too cold to grow them here. I order my blueberry plants online HERE.

As you can imagine, I am getting a little more tired and sore each day from being farther along with the pregnancy and all the garden work. At the same time, it feels like it is going by so fast! If I go into labor when I usually do (somewhere around 37 weeks), I have just 8 weeks left.