I’ve been looking for my bottle of castor oil for a week now. There are vole holes in my winter tunnel and wanted to give the soil another dose. I finally found it. Of all places – in my new garden shed! I forgot about that spot. There it was with the empty pots and garden sprays. I’ll have to get used to having a shed.

Today I opened up the tunnel. I’m really pleased with how everything is doing. Fortunately, no more vole damage, except a small bite in a Daikon radish. And the plants are still fine after a week with low temps below 20F. In the afternoon, even at 28F, there’s lot’s of condensation on the plastic. Unlike the rest of my garden soil, the soil inside is not frozen.

So I mixed up some castor oil and applied it. I’m a bit concerned I may have used too high a concentration. I used 1/4 cup castor oil, 1/4 cup liquid soap in 2 gallons water. That’s 1.5%. About 4 times what I find is recommended now that I look. We’ll see.

I’m thinking my tunnel might soon be covered with snow and I might not open it again for a while. Just as good as the plants inside now are small for harvest. I think my layers of plastic and double frost fabric probably reduce the faint sun we have. So the plants won’t do much growing until March probably. Wow, I wonder if they’ll survive til March?