Hello everyone. Nice to be on here again.
Last time I posted I had just gotten my onion sets in the ground. The picture above shows them now. They are doing quite well. I have been keeping that area moist and lightly mulched with compost. About once a week, I go through with a pitch fork and aerate the ground around the onions.
My garden plot is now completely laid out with plots and rows defined and tilled deep. Just waiting on those warmer nightly lows temps. We are still as low as 40 F overnight. Meanwhile I have been busy nurturing all my seedlings in the greenhouse. Boy are they doing well.
These are photos before and after a compost tea application. There is a two day span between these two photos.

And these are the same black krim tomatoes five days after the second photo was taken.

I would like to note that all of my seedlings this year are really healthy looking with nice thick stout stems as opposed to long “leggy” stems. I attribute this to consistent watering, strong root development via large pots with a compost/potting soil/bone meal mix, and weekly applications of compost tea. I predict my plants will be able to grow more robust than they could have otherwise. To make the soil mix I use I just fill a 32 oz styrofoam cup 1/3 full of compost, then I dust the top of that with bonemeal. Next I shake that up and add a handful or two of potting soil. I gently place my transplant, with root ball, in the cup then “backfill” around the roots with potting soil. I gently firm the soil down and they are ready to go.

Now I have all the transplants squared away and growing well. I have also been preparing my garden plot with two pickup truck loads of cow manure. The manure I got this year was pretty fresh so I have spread it out nice thin on my corn plot. In about a week or so I will till it under and plant the corn a day or so later. I also have some manure on my tomato and melon patches that is older and tilled in a bit already. Tomatoes don’t like excess nitrogen. It will rob your crop yield for green growth instead.
I also ripped one of my spigots off my rain barrel system. I quickly closed my valve connecting the tank to my second tank so I only lost one barrel of water. Once I used up the second one, I used that opportunity to fix the first barrel, and elevate the whole system on a bench of sorts that my buddy Jay, of Haywood Carpentry, and I put together last week.

As for the spigot, well let’s just say there was a kink in the hose line, and I’m out there in the middle of the garden trying to whip this hose around to un-kink it and I think I ended up unthreading the spigot from the nut inside the barrel. The fact is, there isn’t a lot of “threaded spigot shaft” protruding inside the barrel for the nut that secures it to thread onto. The entire exterior spigot rotated just enough for the connection to fail.
So, solution time. Instead of threading a spigot and nut directly to the barrel wall, I obtained a “bulkhead fitting,” as is was called. This attaches to the barrel and then the spigot attaches to the bulkhead fitting.

This assembly provided three benefits.

First, it made assembly of the barrel much easier. The large bolt looking part, or “bulkhead,” had to be ground down around the head so it would fit through the hole in the top of the barrel, but once in, you can pull it through the spigot opening and attach the nut to it from the OUTSIDE. Key word “outside.” You can then tighten the assembly, being able to hold both parts outside the barrel. The center of the bulkhead fitting is hollow and threaded. The smallest interior diameter I could find at my local farm store’s irrigation department was a 3/4. My spigot was 1/2. So in the plumbing department I got a 3/4 to 1/2 reducer and my spigot now threads into the center of the reduce which threads into the center of bulkhead. A little tip; to guide the bulkhead directly to the spigot opening, tie a nut to a long bit of string, drop it down in the top of the barrel. Next, use an extendable magnet, put through the spigot opening from the outside of the barrel, to grab the nut and string and pull it through the spigot opening. Once you have a guideline running from the opening on top to your spigot opening, slip the bulkhead fitting over the upper end of the string and let it slide down the string, through the opening on top, down in the barrel and directly to the spigot opening.
The second benefit of this bulkhead was that it extended my spigot away from the barrel so I now have far more clearance than before.
And finally, this bulkhead provides a much stronger connection to the barrel. Because there is a large rubber washer provided, the connection is perfectly water tight without the need for sealants. If you want more assurance use some thread tape before threading the nut and spigot into ther respective places.
Thank you dad for pointing this thing out to me. Cost me $8 which is a little expensive for me considering I could probably make something else work, but with more effort. I will eventually replace all my rain barrel spigots with one of these spigot bulkhead assemblies. My water bill savings have already justified the cost of the first one.

So that’s all for now. Next post I should have details about filling up my garden with my transplants.