Today is Blue Beanie Day. Where all peo­ple involved in web design, devel­op­ment and other sub-industries are asked to wear a blue beanie on their heads (dig­i­tal or oth­er­wise) to show sup­port for web standards.

There’s even a Blue Beanie Day Photo Pool for those who enjoy tak­ing pho­tos of themselves.

So much has hap­pened since the last post. Here’s the rundown:

Bugs and failure

The prop­a­ga­tion tray was a dead end. Only about a third of the trays sprouted and the few that did were snipped of their del­i­cate leaves before I moved them to the gar­den. Once in the gar­den it took about two days before I noticed that the zuc­chini was being slowly anni­hi­lated every night. The next night I went out to inspect the gar­den and saw a fam­ily of ear­wigs tag-teaming the plants. Not hav­ing any spray or bug­dust handy I picked them off one-by-one and flicked them over the fence. Before I could stock up on repel­lents the gar­den was attacked again and the  gar­den was left look­ing like a bar­ren wasteland.

Sorry, Try Again

I wasn’t look­ing for­ward to replant­ing the entire gar­den from scratch. I eschewed the prop­a­ga­tion tray and just dropped the seeds into the gar­den to see what would hap­pen. The plants only took around half as long to sprout this time, which was great!

The gar­den is look­ing really healthy now. The ear­wigs and other insects moved on once the orig­i­nal plants had died, so every­thing there has been able to grow in peace. (I still haven’t bought any­thing to pro­tect the garden.)

Water­melon and egg­plant are com­ing along well and the pot­ted tomato plant is fir­ing off a lot of flowers.

Today I added Stephan’s ice­burg let­tuce, a small pot of chives I’d grown from a packet bought at Coles and a small cherry tomato plant from one of my cowork­ers (Who appar­ently can’t get rid of the damn things quick enough).  Pro­vided we don’t have any more scorch­ing days for the next week or so they should set­tle nicely.

Home stretch

With only one week to go I won’t be fin­ish­ing Project Pri­mav­era with any of my own veg­eta­bles (or fruit if you’re being picky).  Luck­ily Abbots­ford Con­vent is hold­ing a Farmer’s Mar­ket next Sat­ur­day the 28th. The same day the project is com­ing to a head.

The plan is to wake up crazy-early that morn­ing, head to Abbots­ford for sup­plies, cook the sauce and then head to Mike’s house with a steam­ing Tup­per­ware con­tainer and maybe even some beer. It won’t be a dish grown by me, but it’ll still be my primavera.