What did you do in the garden today?

I'm still waiting for it to cool well enough to transplant my seedlings and also to plant some seeds directly into my garden beds. I came across this chart with ideal (min, max, optimum) soil temps for vegetable seed germination.

This got me outside measuring my soil temps. Even though we had light rain last night and it's down to 93 F today, my soil temp at 1" depth is reading 101 F. :(

The chart, at least, gives me something to go by.
 
I've been playing musical nesting boxes all day. Basically I had one egg about to hatch. I've been rotating it around 4 different nesting boxes being manned by 3 broodies and half dozen non-broodies who just want to invade the box. I managed to check on the egg at the moment it finally broke out of the shell. I chucked all the chickens out except for the broody in the nesting box with the new chick. Locked the door so no one could interrupt their bonding or, more importantly, invade the nest box and squish the baby. Unfortunately I only have one brooder and it's already got another broody with 4 new chicks in it....so I had to make due. This evening I moved the broody and her new chick to a higher nesting box which is less likely (but not impossible) to be the focus of invaders... Will eventually need to move this mama into the main coop where her baby can easily follow her without fear of injury. Something tells me she isn't impressed by me looking out for her best interests...
 
Fall is in the air, finally some cooler days and evenings. We actually had some frost on the roof a few days ago.

The garden looks like it’s winding down a bit. I am having some powdery mildew issues with the squash (normal) so I pruned. Probably should have hit them with some potassium heavy fertilizer speed along growth, but I think they have done alright. Next year I’ll be doing a lot of spraying through out the year. Lots of pests here, particularly with the fruit trees.

Starting to take in tobacco leaves to dry, tomato’s are ripening, squash are doing well. (The big ones are quite a bit larger than basketballs…oddly enough we haven’t grown any ‘wrinkly’ long Hubbards, mostly roundish footballs…anyone have any luck with that?) I hope we can start a month earlier next year.

Chickens are producing mostly medium and large eggs. 5-6 usually per day. Some real pecking order stuff going on. Two hens look OK, but the rest look pecked at at the base of their tails, two of the giants look OK…suggestions? Bears are coming down out of the mountains and setting up shop in the river bottoms. One is very curious around our coop. It knocked over my trail camera and passed over it. It’s been blowing up trash cans and fruit trees. It’s a younger juvenile, maybe 80-100lbs according to a neighbor. I started putting up an electric fence around the coop and garden. T-posts are in and insulators up. I just need to run the wire and we can sleep easier at night. I love bears, just not in the yard. The kicker is that the one in our neighborhood comes out during the morning hours too and is not afraid of people or dogs.

It is archery season but goddang! I am so busy I’ve only gotten out once. Saw a large whitetail spike and doe. Really crossing my fingers I can find an elk and a deer this year. I enjoy eating it but very much like giving it out to friends who eat meat but weren’t lucky that season or don’t hunt.

We love squash. Does BYC do a seed exchange?
 

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Wow, way too cold in my opinion. But I'm not sure how much is that... about 10? If that's the day temperature, I bet the night gets to under 5.
Our farm grows tomatoes, and we grow them at over 40 Celsius midday. I guess these are a different kind of tomatoes.



can you find out what variety it they are? I did not have tomatoes this summer due to heat.
 

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