Determination

So crazy it might just work...?

So, perhaps predictably, as soon as I set out my tender veggie seedlings our infamous spring winds kicked up with a vengeance. Last year was much worse so I'm trying hard not to complain (too much)... I awoke this morning to a dire wind forecast and decided to put my creativity to work by creating as much wind protection as possible for my veggie babies. For bean and squash support I had just bought more t-posts and had a good bit of fencing left from my wonderfully functional garden fence, and Dad brought home the t-post pounder so getting those in was quick and easy. Then I grabbed three raggedy tarps and bungeed them over the fencing to shield the big zucchini/pattypan squash bed from winds that I can only describe as withering devil's breath.

The photo above shows the other (less raggedy) parts of my crazy rigging. The tomato cages are up and all available Walls-o-Water are filled (Walmart in Socorro is sold out, so I'll be hunting more down tomorrow in ABQ), so the tomato babies should be okay. To protect the pepper babies inside the Wall-o-Water perimeter (my brilliant idea from last year, thankyouverymuch) I draped some Agribon-19 over the whole bed and pinned the heck out of it with strong bamboo clothespins. For the winter squash babies along the back fence I made an Agribon "shield" by clamping a length of the frost fabric onto five freshly-pounded t-posts, then adding bamboo stakes between those and old bricks along the bottom to minimize flapping.

After one day of steady wind and 40+ mph gusts, everything is holding up and very few seedlings have succumbed.

The forecast calls for 3 more days of strong, gusty, bone-dry wind.

On Sunday I'll either be crowing about my ingenuity or humbly heading out to buy new veggie starts.