pots – Cat's Garden

First freeze

admincatsg Uncategorized December 9, 2021December 9, 2021cedar, cold front, freeze, humid, peppers, plants, pots, warm

Today we hit a lovely 77 degrees. Though it was a bit humid, it was overall not a bad day outside. I even took my dog out for a nice walk outside.

Tomorrow should be another similar day, warm with a high of possibly 80 degrees. And the evening will be a cool low 50’s.

But typical Texas Saturday we expect a cold front to come in. The daytime temperature will drop to just below 60, with a low expected to be 32. It will be our first freeze of the season here in this area.

Now part of what makes this one of the joys and challenges of gardening here, is it was just the other week I turned the raised beds outside. Why turn them, because the weather had been warm. After turning the beds I sowed seeds. The bak choi and lettuce are already coming up. The bell peppers I transplanted (moved) and the bean plants I moved have taken well to their new homes and have been flourishing. Since I still have pepper plants, and tomato plants in pots and in the ground outside, I will need to see about covering them somehow. I will also plan to move those potted plants on my deck to a more covered area.

But don’t worry. In typical Central Texas style even though Saturday will be cool, by the following Tuesday we will be back into the high 70, then 80’s on Wednesday.

I expect the quick cool down then lovely warm up will lead to some lovely cedar pollen counts. Gotta love Texas.

Weather station

admincatsg Uncategorized March 24, 2021March 24, 2021grow light, humidity, pots, recycle, reuse, seedlings, seeds, temperature, weather station

I know I’ve mentioned I put in a new weather station, but I still have the old weather station up. Just as a refresher, the new one is an all in one unit on my fence line, out in the open. The old one has part of it up against the house (the temperature and humidity gauge), and the wind portion on my deck.

Right now the new one, way out in the open shows a temperature of 65 with a humidity of 98%. The old one shows a temperature of 67 with a humidity of 92%.

I find this interesting as I think the new one out in the open may be a more accurate reading. I did learn that the new unit rain gauge resets itself at midnight. The other night we got rain late, after 11PM. I checked the reading just before midnight and it read 0.19. But the next morning it read 0.09. So we got total of about 0.28 inches of rain. And yes, this is why I wanted the new weather station. I think getting more accurate readings will help me better care for my garden.

Just as a side note, I’ve been dumping some pots from our storm last month. Some of the plants look like they are coming back, and some seeds took off. I actually have some seeds coming up from last year that hadn’t germinated. But for pots on my deck, many of which were cutting of other plants, I decided that I didn’t really have a reason to keep them, and some I just didn’t want to keep. How many pots of the same succulent did I want!! Do I’ve been teasing roots and plants out of pots and putting the dirt into one big pot to reuse. And I figure I will check the pots, see which are worth keeping, and reuse them for planting something else.

One other note, I had purchased some starter plants at Home Depot the other week, tomatoes and peppers. They are doing great. I also broke down and purchased a grow light from Amazon. I have a sun room, that I am going to turn into a plant room. I have plants in there on a bakers rack. Now I am putting my seed pots in there, with the grow light. Since it is an indoor room the temperature in there is always house warm, but the light is a different story. Hopefully the grow light will help the seedlings. We’ll see.