As of today we are at 10 hours and 24 minutes of daylight. The sun is definitely stronger, and the 40* temperatures have been helping to settle the snow pack and even melt some of the 2-3" thick ice floe that is my driveway. Here's one days worth of melting. Gotta love seeing that dirt!
With the sun and the warmth, it's hard to resist starting some seeds. I don't want to start my veg too early, so instead I'm working on catnip, cat grass, and seeing if some echinacea seeds collected a few years ago are still viable. I've also started a small batch of salad greens that are coming along nicely.
Most of my herbs are still alive, which is amazing. As much as I love gardening, I'm really not good at it. I have lost my rosemary, and I'm fairly certain I've killed my lemon grass. The rest seem to be struggling, but still alive. I have my pepper plants that I'm overwintering in the basement. If all goes well, by next month they should be showing signs of life. I've never tried this before but I'm hopeful.
I'm not sure if it was from the potting soil or the garden soil that the herbs came in with, but I had an insane infestation of fungus gnats this winter. They look like fruit flies and apparently they emerge from the soil in damp conditions. According to a YouTube video I watched, one adult can lay 300 eggs in the soil and they're constantly hatching. It's almost like a flea infestation - you have treat to kill all life cycles, not just the pesky adults. The video suggested a dedicated water bottle that has a chunk of mosquito killer, like Mosquito Dunks, in it. Drop a chunk in the water, let it sit for a day or so, then whenever you water your plants, use that water. It's the best way to kill off the larvae and the eggs in the soil. For the adults, there are these wonderful little sticky traps you can put in your plants. They work fantastically well!
After a couple weeks of this two-pronged approach I'm happy to report there are significantly less gnats. I'm still using the treated water and have put out a new sticky trap, but at least there isn't a massive cloud of these buggers around my herbs anymore.
I'm also happy to report that Flea has been doing terrific this winter. He is moving sound, hasn't had any signs of winter laminitis during even the coldest temperatures, and has been seen cavorting and sprinting around the paddock.
He's come a long way from the crippled up little mule he's been for the past four years, that's for certain. He's been on the drug Invokana to regulate his insulin resistance for just over a year now. There were small signs of improvement within the first four or five months but a few backslides, too. The last six or seven months have just seen him get better and better. Invokana is a relatively new approach to IR in equines, so we're not sure what the long-term effects will be. One of the side effects seen in horses has been high trigycerides, which can be life threatening. In these cases, horses are given a less stringent diet. This means I can relax a little on the amount and type of hay he gets. I still have to test any hay to keep it within recommended guidelines, but the hay can be at the upper threshold of percentages for sugars and starch. When we first started this journey of PPID/IR, Flea would typically do well all year until around the end of January, when he'd start to show signs of being footsore. He would remain sore and have difficulty moving until around April, when temperatures would start to rise. I'm holding my breath to see if he makes it through to May this year without issue. If he does, I'll be elated. The one thing he's lacking currently is exercise, so getting the track system completed is my #1 priority this spring. I'll be happy to see both mules moving more, and I'm sure they'll appreciate being able to move outside of a tiny paddock after all these years.
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