King of the Wilderness-Chapter 192 - 150: Autumn Vegetable Planting and a New Family Member
A few days after Lin Yu'an and their group succeeded in hunting, other hunting teams also returned with great harvests, and the meat they brought back was properly stored in the residents' freezers.
The hustle and bustle, along with the fatigue, gradually faded away after a few days of rest, but the entire Wiseman Community was steeped in the joy of harvest.
Lin Yu'an's life transitioned from the wildness filled with the smell of gunpowder and blood back to the peaceful and vibrant daily life of Wood Forest Land.
By the end of September, the autumn atmosphere in Alaska had become intense.
The morning air carried the chill of frost, and the leaves of the birch forest had turned a golden yellow, shining brightly.
This day, Lin Yu'an had an important task to do: planting new vegetables for the upcoming long winter.
He and Aliya first picked the last batch of mature cucumbers and tomatoes in the greenhouse. Looking at the three large baskets overflowing with the bounty, satisfaction spread across Aliya's face.
After the harvest, Lin Yu'an began clearing out several elevated seedbeds, preparing to transplant new seedlings.
Aliya, holding her daughter Olivia, stood by watching him busy at work and suddenly said, "Dear, can you manage all this by yourself? It looks like a job that requires a lot of patience and attention to detail."
"It's okay, I can handle it, it just takes a bit more time," Lin Yu'an smiled.
"I think this would be a fantastic family activity," Aliya looked at him, a meaningful glimmer flashing in her light green eyes!
"Besides, Ethan will be waking up soon, and I can't manage two little ones by myself while helping you with transplanting the seedlings."
She paused, revealing her true thought: "Why not invite Emily to join us? She loves children, and I think she'd be thrilled to be involved."
"This way, we can take turns caring for the kids, and also get the garden work done together. Don't you think?"
Lin Yu'an looked at his wife and immediately understood her intention. He could only nod helplessly and picked up the satellite phone.
Once the call was connected, he directly said, "Emily, it's me. Are you busy?"
"We're planning to transplant the seedlings in the greenhouse, and Aliya thinks it would be a nice family activity. Plus, she can't handle two kids on her own, so we were wondering if you might have time this afternoon to help out?"
On the other end, Emily was evidently surprised to receive such an invitation, paused for a few seconds, then replied with a hint of excitement in her voice, "Of course, I can! I'll come right over!"
This plan for planting vegetables for winter storage, Lin Yu'an had already begun implementing a month ago in late August.
Even when the cabin wasn't fully completed, Lin Yu'an was engaging in this hopeful and meticulous work.
He slowly added warm water to the professional seed-starting medium soil, mixed with peat, perlite, and vermiculite that he bought from Fairbanks, and carefully stirred it by hand until the substrate reached the optimal moisture status of "forming a ball when squeezed, scattering when dropped."
After evenly filling the nursery trays with the substrate soil, he began the critical seeding stage.
He precisely sowed seeds of hardy cabbage and cherry radish, one by one, into the center of the holes, keeping the depth strictly at about twice the diameter of the seeds to ensure the best germination environment.
After sowing, he covered the surface with a thin layer of vermiculite to retain moisture and prevent moss growth.
Finally, he placed the nursery trays covered with clear plastic lids in a simple seed-starting rack equipped with a heating pad and a full-spectrum plant grow light.
Given that the sunlight and temperature in Alaska's autumn were insufficient, he used this artificial intervention to create a perfect incubation box for these seeds, maintaining a constant temperature of 20 degrees Celsius and 16 hours of light daily.
Now, after more than a month of seedling growth, Lin Yu'an carefully moved his over-a-month-old seedlings out of the cabin.
In the nursery trays, tender yet robust cabbage and radish seedlings were unfurling their true leaves, lush green and full of life energy.
Half an hour later, Emily arrived driving her Subaru.
She brought a large bag of homemade oatmeal beef cookies.
"Wow! They look great!" Emily couldn't help but admire the robust seedlings in front of her, which had thrived over more than a month.
Aliya, meanwhile, laid out a thick picnic mat in a corner of the greenhouse, with Ethan and Olivia lying on it, curiously observing everything around them.
"Now, we're going to move them from the crowded nursery to their spacious new home," Lin Yu'an pointed to the nearby cleared elevated seedbeds.
He first picked up a small hoe to dig small planting holes in the fertile soil of the seedbed according to the spacing requirements of cabbages and radishes.
Using a small wooden stick, Lin Yu'an gently pushed up a cabbage seedling from the bottom of the nursery tray, along with its complete root ball that had grown into a white thread-like clump.
Before placing the seedling into the planting hole, Lin Yu'an didn't fill it with soil right away.
He took out two types of organic liquid fertilizers he had purchased earlier—fish emulsion and seaweed concentrate—and, following the instructions, mixed them into a spray bottle filled with water, shaking it thoroughly.
For crops like cabbage and radish, whose main edible parts are their roots and leaves, the focus during the seedling stage was on encouraging the rapid growth of roots and leaves.
