My father bought some sunflower seeds early in the season. Both of us have been quite excited to plant them but both soon discovered that we had no idea where to plant them. While working in the garden planting other vegetables, I came upon my solution.
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I’m sure all gardeners at one time or another have bought those cute little plastic plant markers. Unfortunately, they are quite expensive. My favorite plant marker currently is good old fashion Popsicle sticks, which can be bought in large quantities at any art or craft store.
But if you are the type of person that likes the look and durability of plastic then we have a cost saving suggestion for you. Someone on the Instructables web site suggests using plastic spoons. He wants you to melt the handle off which creates a nice pointed tip, but that just seems like way too much work not to mention smelly. Just simply cut or snip off the handles and you have cheap plastic plant markers.
The NCDC is the world’s largest active archive of weather data. NCDC produces numerous climate publications and responds to data requests from all over the world. One of those resources is frost and freeze data. Gardeners such as myself will find this data very helpful when planning the growing season.
The data provides separate sections for spring and fall freeze data in 10, 50 and 90 percentile values. It also provides multiple freeze/threshold levels of 36, 32, and 28 degrees. It also provides this same data for frost freeze days. This is really nice if you are thinking of growing something new but aren’t sure exactly how many days in the growing season you might have before the fall frosts come rolling in. Lastly, the data is available for each state and each state provides many weather stations making it easy for you to find data that is appropriate for your region.
Tags: Gardening
