Ooops forgot to post yesterday

 Well it was cold and windy and wet yesterday so who can blame me? Mostly cold and windy... and cold. Believe it or not I went to bed worrying that the new seedlings would be okay.

It was cold yesterday! I mean it never got out of the mid 60's during the day and we had frost warnings and temps in the low 30's overnight. San Diego (and my area especially) are no longer the 'tropical paradise' of years ago. 

They were fine. The benefit of having a tall building on one side and a cinderblock wall on the other traps in warmth since the building is the last thing to get sun it holds onto some of the heat.  They all certainly got enough rain though which is good but even the north bed looks like it could use a sprinkle if I want to keep those carrot seeds moist. The soil is very cold in the shade so having some sun on the soil is a good thing.

I fixed some hard boiled eggs and made egg salad the other day. As I'm peeling the eggs it dawned on me that shells are a good source of calcium. Going to crush them a bit and then take them to the garden. Excellent! Also going to be getting a box of food tomorrow and may have some greens to throw in the compost as well. Anyway, I put the shells in a baggie and took them down this morning, mixed them into the pile feeling very farmer like.

Yay for recycling, adding some calcium and stuff to the soil! I didn't remember until after I got upstairs that I could have used the eggshells as a snail deterrent around the radishes. Oopsy.

 

That are still getting eaten, had to cull a couple of tiny ones that were nibbled to death. Trying to think of anything else I have in the apartment or that's cheap to put out there and keep them from getting eaten. I got nothing. Not even sand. Not going to put salt in there, vinegar does nothing and would damage the radishes. Need to find out where they're coming from maybe, the tomato is doing fine, no damage there so hard to say. 

It takes a long time for the eggshells to break down into calcium for the soil but then that compost is going to take a while before it's  useable. Still thinking about getting a cage type thing to use for it and maybe encourage other tennants to drop their veggie scraps in there. ONLY veggies. Not going to even think about what anyone else would consider 'compost' material. Paper yes but not shiny paper, no foil or meat products either. It isn't a trash dump is recycling organic products from the kitchen.

I swear I will do videos when I get a yard of my own. Get the tripod out and a camera and go at it. I've seen a few places that were affordable but being mobile homes in a park..'easy care landscape' means mostly rock and bricks. Shoulder to shoulder with neighbors..no thank you.

Something else I noticed about a lot of properties is, no fences. Just hanging out there with neighbors not far away and no fencing to keep out wandering animals or people. My decades of city life shows but still. I don't want deer or bears or whatever wandering through my yard and picking my garden as a buffet line. Of course would get some hardware cloth and make a cage for a garden but that's a lot of work and don't even have a property yet.

Anyway, keeping critters out of a garden of the 2 and four legged variety is a constant battle on top of the six leg and stomach foot types (gastropods that is). Every garden is going to have a small scale war going on every day with nature. It's inevitable and you just have to come up with methods and strategy that works.