Tonight is supposed to dip into the 30's again. Last night we had freeze warnings. It's the middle of May, but welcome to Minnesota. The Columbine and English Daisies are still happily growing in their little fenced garden. They're good hardy varieties. The marigolds all died as soon as it started to get a little chilly a few weeks ago.
I checked the handful of winter sown containers I managed to get out this year. We have two kinds of rhubarb, white acorn squash, and umpqua broccoli coming up. No surprise, the grapes and cherry tree seeds have not germinated. There are some sprouts in the red goji berry container, I'm hoping they're actually goji berries and not just some weed seeds that got in there. I have one container growing grass... grass! How'd it get in there?
We sprinkled the flower seeds out on the septic mound and along part of the driveway a while back, but so far no noticeable sprouts. We didn't prepare the soil or anything, just tossed the seeds out and hoped for the best. Perhaps it's just too early yet. Mother Nature knows best.
Our Nanking Cherry tree is full of blooms. It puts out flowers before it puts out leaves. I hope this late freeze won't cause the blossoms to drop. I'm looking forward to more cherry jelly. I'm almost out of last year's jelly. It's delightful on a plain bagel for breakfast.
This week I put nine tan eggs into the incubator. I always tend to put in the darkest of the dark, and the blue ones, and sometimes I pick through the weeks eggs and put some brown ones in. It occurred to me that maybe I'm picking the same hen's eggs from different days. So today I only selected eggs from Friday's egg basket. That way I know I'll get a true variety from the nine I put in the incubator. Here's hoping for some colorful babies.
This last box from the new hatchery is turning out alright, I guess. We lost all of the Salmon Faverolle chicks - all four pullets (we ordered three, they sent four) and the cockerel. We also lost one Buff Orpington pullet (though they sent us one more than we ordered so it's not as much of an issue). The hatchery did refund us the cost of the Salmon Faverolle chicks, but I decided not to place another order to replace them this year. It's not worth having to come up with a 15 chick minimum and pay shipping again, then have a bunch more chicks I don't necessarily want.
I did hear back from Cackle Hatchery, who drop-shipped the order for Valley Farms Hatchery. They said the Boubon Red turkey poults are straight run, despite them having sexed a bunch to restock their breeders; that only the sale ones were the checked and sexed tom poults. So there's still a chance that we could have a pair out of our three Bourbon Red poults. Fingers crossed!
Yesterday I sent Thatcher on to another home. I put Fern in with him before he left and there were several fall offs, so hopefully we can get one last litter.