After the damage to our tulips, plus our dropping temperatures, I thought it would be nice to post pictures of things that are actually blooming right now!
The ornamental apples in the old kitchen garden are blooming quite nicely right now! They always tend to start blooming before any of the other crab apple trees.
The double lilacs in the old kitchen garden are also starting to open up, quite a bit earlier than the other varieties. They all seem to bloom at different times, which leaves us with months of lovely scents around the yard.
Late this afternoon, one of my daughters and I headed to town for some errands and, as we came back and paused to lock the gate, I remembered to grab one of the trail cams facing the gate. It is now set up, low on a tree across from where the tulips are planted. Hopefully, low enough that even a short critter like a skunk will trigger the motion sensor.
The girls and I later went out to check on things and talk about our options. Of course, we also checked on other areas and were very excited to see some purple in a sea of green!
The flower stalks on the grape hyacinths have started to shoot up! They are all so very tiny! :-D One of my daughters was kind enough to carefully step through the greenery to get a picture of one for me. Meanwhile, my other daughter spotted some more flowers.
The little patch of wild strawberries is starting to bloom, too!
Thankfully, everything we’ve got growing right now is quite hardy. As I write this, we are at 2C/36F, but feels like -5C/23F. Or -7C/19F. depending on which app I look at. My desktop app is showing frost advisories and possible snow tonight. My phone’s app thinks we are warmer, and is showing no frost warnings. Either way, it’s cold, wet and windy out there. Chilly enough that I just finished setting up the heater bulb in the sun room again, under the seed trays in the mini greenhouse. I’m still holding out home for the purple sunflowers and gourds.
This chill is supposed to continue through tomorrow, before things start warming up again. Current long range forecasts now show that the first couple of days of June – which is our average last frost date – are supposed to get as high as 27C/81F again! After that, it’s supposed to cool down a couple of degrees, but we’re supposed to get almost a week of rain. If the forecast stays the same, we’ll have about 4 hot days to put our transplants out. We haven’t been able to take the trays outside every day to harden them off, so I’m really hoping that leaving the inner door to the sun room open, and the ceiling fan running on high, will be enough to provide them with the conditions they need.
More tulip flower buds and leaves have been eaten, even with the efforts we made last night to deter the deer.
It might not be deer.
Or maybe not “just” deer.
You can see it a bit in the photo; something has been digging in the leaf mulch. It looks like skunks were digging for grubs.
It turns out skunks eat tulips. too.
I am thinking of setting up one of the trail cams over the area. Meanwhile, I think the roll of wire fence that I intended to use on the squash arch is going to be pressed into tulip protection duty.
I just hope the bulbs have enough energy left in them to grow more leaves and survive this.
Today, we continued work cleaning up along the west side of the spruce grove, between the garlic beds and the old outhouse. We haven’t really done anything there since last year.
Here is how it looked before I started.
I could see some poplars in here that would make good upright support posts for the squash arch.
I broke out the little electric chain saw for this job, but only used it once. The rest was just too small, or had too many even smaller things growing around them, so I ended up doing most of the job with the loppers and the baby chain saw.
Here is how it looks now.
Yes, there are even spruces left in the spruce grove!
My goal was to clear enough to reach the apple tree (to the right of the spruce in the middle) and an old, rotten bench.
Yes, there is a bench in there. Can you see it? To the left of the spruce tree in the middle?
There had been cherry suckers growing on either side of the seat. I’ve left it for now, and will clean it out another time. We are finding the remains of benches and seats all over the place. As we work around the yard, we have often found ourselves wishing to have something to sit down on, and plan to put seating areas all over. It’s interesting to find that my parents had already done the same thing! Sadly, none have survived time and the elements.
The apple tree had a lot of things crowding around it – and a piece of tree stuck in its branches!
I cleared as much as I could to the apple tree. The next time I work around here, it’ll be with the chain saw, clearing away the fallen trees. At least for now, the apple tree is open and getting more light. When I dug my way to it last fall, to try it’s apples, I found it quite tasty, and we’re always happy to find a tree with apples that are actually edible! There are way too many that are not. :-/
Several trees were cleared out of this patch of flowers my mother planted, many many years ago. I’d found them while cleaning up the area behind the garden beds, but I don’t think I saw any of them bloom. Now that they have light, I look forward to seeing the flowers!
I also uncovered other flowers. Unfortunately, I had a hard time not stepping on them!
I think one of them might be tiger lilies, but I’m not sure.
I suspect we’ll have quite a few new blooms this summer, now that things are cleared up!
Much of what I took out were suckers of cherry trees, grown up around the remains of older, dead ones. Some were so old and rotted, I could pull them out with my hands.
The big branch on the top of the pile is the piece of tree I pulled out of the apple tree.
We really need to invest in a chipper.
Meanwhile…
My daughter did short work of cleaning up the poplars I set aside for building material. We not have more than enough larger, stronger ones to be our upright supports for the squash arch.
The smaller and thinner ones will also be used in various ways, including cross pieces and supports on the squash tunnel. My daughter added quite a bit more to this pile, then everything got moved to the stacks by the side of the house, closer to the garden. A nice shady place were we will be able to pre-assemble parts of the squash tunnel.
Temperatures were reaching 27C/81F by the time I headed inside, while my daughter finished the job. The winds were high, which at least made it feel cooler. As I type this, things are getting dark and and even windier. We’ve got severe thunderstorm warnings happening right now – with the potential for hail! Looking at the weather radar, it does look like the worst of it will pass us by, but…
I think it’s time to finish this and shut down the computer. Just in case!
Having slept in this morning, I was back in the garden far later than I intended, and it was already getting quite hot. Thankfully, I didn’t have a lot to do to finish the last corn block, and I got it done before the shade was gone.
It’s going to be a real challenge, gardening here. Especially the new blocks for the corn and sunflowers, since we ran out of materials to layer under the soil. Thanks to the rain we’ve had, we will be able to mow the lawn soon, so we will start having grass clippings to mulch with. That will help. Especially since, once the morning shade is gone, this area gets baked. Anything that helps keep the moisture and cool the soil will help!
The next thing to do was measure and mark off where the winter squash, melons and gourds will go.
This is next to the Dorinny corn. While I didn’t need to water anything this morning, it was so hot and windy today, that I watered things this evening. While watering the Dorinny corn, I actually saw corn sprouting!!! Just the very tips, breaking through the soil. I’m very excited to see them!
But I digress…
I measured the first row of flags to be 5 ft away from the corn bed; about 1 1/2 meters. After the soil is added – and whatever we manage to scrounge up to layer under it – there should be a path of 3 – 4 feet between the corn bed and the squash.
We are also going to need to clear out some roots. It looks small in the photo, but this is a partially exposed root in what will be the inside path of the squash tunnel. The girls had tried to take out what appeared to be a small poplar sapling, which are all over this area, only to find it was attached to a thick root. We just never got back to it with the tools needed to cut through the root.
Each flag marks where we will be digging post holes (hopefully, without having too many roots in the way!). The two rows are 5 ft apart, and the flags are 5 ft apart in each row. We will need 10 upright supports that are 7ft/2m long to get a squash tunnel that will be 6 ft high and 5 ft wide.
For that, we need building materials.
Which meant doing more clean up in the spruce grove.
I woke up late this morning, and it was already getting hot by the time I headed out to finish in the garden. I still made sure to check my daughter’s tulips, after so many flower bulbs got eaten the other night.
At first, I was please; the rope I’d put around the front and side had worked. No new damage.
Then I looked further back.
The deer had just gone around the back, through the lilacs and caragana hedge. They didn’t just eat the flower buds, either, but the leaves as well.
My daughter was quite upset. It looks like all the ones with black flowers got eaten. We have no idea if the tulips will recover from having so much of their leaves eaten. We’re hoping they will still be able to grow more leaves, but so much has been eaten!
This evening, the girls added more rope around the area, and dug out some chicken wire that was among the junk stacked around the garden shed. You can’t see it in the photo, but it’s along the lilacs in the back. I still have some plastic spinners I’d picked up from the dollar store, then we raided my craft supplies for some Christmas bells. Those got strung onto twine. In some areas, there are short lengths hanging down. At the back of this photo, plus on the other side of the lilacs at a more open area covered by the chicken wire, we tied longer strings of bells.
Hopefully, this will keep the deer away from the rest of the tulips.
Of all the green things coming up that the deer are going after, why does it have to be my daughter’s flowers? :-(
I suspect the girls will not be so averse to my goal of hunting, anymore. Especially if it’s venison with a hint of tulip.
Today being Sunday, I normally avoid all unnecessary work. With the weather turning nice, it became a day to get back to hauling dirt, so we’ll have something to direct sow and transplant into, so that counts as necessary work! Tomorrow is supposed to get quite hot, so I wanted to get as much manual labour done today.
I had a couple of distractions.
One of them was the mock orange at the clothes line platform. I was starting to wonder if it had survived our deep freeze in February. We’ve been including it in the watering, and parts of it have started to leaf out, so I figured it would be a good time to prune it, now that I could actually see which parts were still alive.
I did accidentally snip one branch that had leaves, but otherwise, this is all of what got killed off this past winter.
A lot of little twigs and tips got snipped away, too. There’s not a lot left, but I know it will recover quite well. These are remarkably resilient plants!
It was also a nice enough day that the transplants could be set out to harden off again.
This is the first day of hardening off for all the Mongolian Giant sunflowers, and most of the Montana Morado corn. Some of the cups got left in the bin, as they either didn’t have anything sprouted in them, yet, or had only recent sprouts. I’ve been watering them in the bin from below, and I noticed many of the cups had roots coming through the drainage holes, so I put them in other cups to protect the roots while they were outside.
That done, it was time to start hauling soil.
I had company.
Nutmeg really wanted attention!
He and Ginger share many mannerisms. Ginger has a habit of hunching down and flopping a certain way that I just figured was because of the missing leg, but Nutmeg does it, too!
He’s such a cutie. :-)
This was the progress I made before I headed in. I couldn’t figure out why I was starting to feel kind of light headed, but then I realized I’d had only 4 pieces of toast for breakfast – and it was past 3pm!
You can see the corn block that had been done before the rains started, in the back. I’d finished a sunflower block, another corn block, and over half of a sunflower block, before heading in for some sustenance.
Not straight in, of course, because there’s always something to do first, right? :-D The seedlings went back into the sun room, and various garden beds got checked. It’s so nice to see so many seedlings, even if they are still really tiny!
After a couple of hours, I headed back outside. On my way to where I’d left the wheelbarrow by the garden soil, I paused to check on my daughter’s tulips. They have not opened, yet, but we can now see the colours of petals beginning to show in most of them.
Something didn’t seem right, though. In fact, something seemed very wrong.
Were there fewer flower buds?
Yes, indeed! Among the tulips closest to the edge, the flower stalks were cleanly snipped, and the flower buds missing.
It seems the deer were enjoying some appetizers!
I am not impressed. I didn’t expect them to squeeze between the plum and apple trees to get at these.
I left them for the time being, and continued working on the corn and sunflower blocks.
One of the down sides of setting up these beds in the area we intend to plant food trees later on, is that they are very close to the road, and today was a high traffic day. Thankfully, with all the rain we’ve had, I didn’t have the clouds of dust blowing in that we usually do. At least that won’t be as much of a problem for long, as the lilac hedge is leafing out quite nicely. It does a great job of stopping the dust cloud. One of the ATVs that passed by turned out to be our vandal, studiously and resolutely pretending not to see me. ;-) Which is fine. At least he’s stopped giving me the finger as he goes by.
During one of my trips back to the pile of soil, I saw him heading back, then could hear him slow down and finally stop on the road. I decided to see why, and found that he’d crossed paths with someone and they both stopped to talk on the road. So I continued with getting the load of soil, then heading back to the last of the corn blocks I was working on. I could hear the vehicles part ways, and our vandal’s ATV driving onto his property. As I was placing the soil, I could hear the ATV getting closer again, though clearly not on the road. Eventually, I heard it stop and the engine was shut off.
Then I started hearing gun shots.
By the 4th shot, I decided it was time to go inside. I have no idea what direction he was shooting in, but I wasn’t going to take chances with a stray bullet. It wasn’t a high powered rifle he was using; it was likely just a .22 I had only a row and a half left to do, but that can wait until tomorrow!
It was shortly after 8pm when I went inside, but I did head back out again about 10 minutes later. I dug out what was left of the yellow rope we found while cleaning up and tied it around some trees by the tulips.
It might be a bit too high, but I hope it will still discourage the deer from going under the bright yellow thing. We can hand dangly things off of it, to further discourage the deer.
As you can see by the spots of colour, there are still quite a few tulip buds. Thankfully, none of the Bull’s Eye tulips – the little ones in the foreground – were harmed. I counted the other ones, and all 54 bulbs have come up, but only half of the Bull’s Eye tulips (I found a fourth one had emerged, though it’s not visible in the above photo).
While I was doing this, I heard our vandal’s ATV start up again, so I headed over to where I might be able to see something. I did eventually see him off in the distance in his field. I can’t imagine what was out there that he would be shooting at. Normally, I would guess a skunk or some other potentially troublesome creature small enough that a .22 would be useful, but that would be an issue closer to his house or outbuildings, none of which we can see from our place. Out in the field like that, I might expect a bear, but if that were so, I would have expected to hear a higher caliber rifle!
Ah, well. Gun shots in the country are not all that unusual. The only reason it was a concern is because I had no way of knowing what direction he was firing, and I would not expect him to care where his bullets might end up, if he missed hit his target, whatever that may have been.
So that was it for my garden work today. Tomorrow, I’ll finish those last rows in the last corn block.
Oh, my goodness. I just checked the weather. The predicted high for tomorrow has been increased. We’re now expected to hit 27C/81F tomorrow afternoon! I’ll have to make sure I finish up much earlier in the day. The expected low tomorrow is 15C/59F. then temperatures are expected to drop right down again. We’ll have overnight lows just above, or at, freezing for three nights. After that, overnight lows are expected to range between 11C and 14C (52 – 57F) and stay in that range, well into June. Theoretically, that means we can start transplanting things outdoors by the 28th.
Which is what I did last year, when we got a frost on June 2. So while we will do the direct sowing we have left to do, the transplants will wait a bit longer!
Once I’m done with the corn and sunflower blocks, we will be done with all the areas that will be direct sown into. The next job is to work on the bed the winter squash, melons and gourds will go, since we will have to dig post holes for the squash tunnel we’ll be building to support them. Once that’s built, it’s back to hauling soil for the beds all the transplants will be going into.
I forgot to take a picture of the pile of soil. It is much depleted! I suspect we will be finishing it off and bringing soil in from the pile in the outer yard, by the time we’re doing the last of the beds.
The much needed rain we are having right now has been accompanied by some pretty chill temperatures! The furnace even turned on, this morning. As I write this, my desktop weather app tells me we are at 4C/39F, but it feels like -1C/30F. But then, it also says we’re raining right now, and we’re not. As I thought might happen, the weather system is passing us by to the south, and some areas are getting storm conditions, but we’re just getting the edges of it.
A couple of days ago, our neighboring farm was rushing to get their crops planted. One of my daughters and I had gone out past midnight to investigate the smell of smoke. There are several wildfires burning in our province, most under control, but none nearby, yet we were still getting smoke! While out, I noticed lights through the trees that looked like vehicles in the rented field beyond the barn, so we went to check it out. It turned out to be farm equipment in the next property over, where they had worked their way close to the property line. Checking the trail cams the next day, I saw the farm equipment going past our driveway after 2am! They got their seed sowed, just in time for the rain.
Looking over all the garden beds this morning, everything is looking fine so far. Even if we dipped low enough to get frost, the things we have planted won’t need to be covered. Which is good, because we don’t have anything suitable to cover the beds we have. Meanwhile, the seedlings in the sun room remain in the sun room. That will set back the hardening off process a bit, unfortunately. Ah, well. It is what it is!
The work outdoors has had to take a pause. The girls did as much as they could, but it was just too cold and wet to continue building more beds for the corn and sunflowers, nor add to the pea trellis. That, at least, we still have plenty of time for.
The blocks for corn will all have 5 twenty foot rows, while the sunflower blocks will have 3 twenty foot rows in them – though we might not have enough sunflowers to fill the blocks. At least not of the purple ones. If the half we started indoors still haven’t germinated in such ideal conditions, I don’t hold much hope that the direct sown half will germinate, either. :-(
With today’s weather, it’s unlikely we’ll be able to get more progress in building beds, but hopefully we’ll be able to get more done over the next couple of days. I don’t mind the delay. We need this rain so much. For all the watering we’ve been doing, it can’t compare to the deep soak that several days of rain can do! Even with the chillier temperatures, I think what we’ve got sprouting right now is going to thrive for it.
Not at all like the mischievous bugger I had to stop from trying to attack one of the trunks of the big jade tree in the living room! :-D
I did very quick rounds this morning, since I had to head out early, but I did manage to check on the mulberry tree.
It clearly has handled being transplanted just fine!
It’s also doing very well with the cooler, wet weather we’re having right now.
I haven’t been able to get much done for the past couple of days, and not because of the weather.
Yesterday, I called the court office to make sure today’s court date was still on. As expected, with the long weekend, our provincial government increased restrictions even more than they did before Mother’s day. They don’t come into effect until midnight tonight, though, so…
Well, I could only leave a message, as there was no answer. I had to go to my mother’s, on a related matter, so I quickly headed out in the afternoon. Of course, that’s when I got a call back, but not with an answer to my question. I called back, left another message, but never heard from them by the end of the day.
Thankfully, my daughters were able to continue working on things in the garden while I waited for the call. There’s one area ready for one corn variety, then they began working on a trellis for the peas. The plan was to do more clean up in the spruce grove, and use the poplars we’re cutting down to make an sort of A frame on the existing supports, but we haven’t been able to work in that area at all, lately. So they decided to use what we’ve got now and made pegs to hold the twine we were going to attach to the frame, instead. They didn’t get to finish it before they had to come in as the temperature dropped, but it’ll be a while before the peas will be big enough to need the support. I didn’t get any photos yet.
I headed out to the courthouse this morning, leaving early enough to get some fuel and still have time for delays, like road construction (there was some, but just a short stretch) and meet with my brother, who booked the morning off work so he could be with me. We deliberately set a time to meet an hour before court was supposed to start. Just in case.
When we got there, I saw security guards, so that was hopeful. From previously visits to the building, there were security guards only when court was in session.
Well, not this time. It turned out they were there for the court office! The first guard we spoke thought that court had gone virtual, so he went into the office and talked to someone for us, then came back with a number for the crown office, in the bigger city, for us to call. While we were still talking to him, the woman he spoke to came out with a printout for him, and it said everything was delayed until June 18, because of the increased restrictions.
So my brother and I went to his car and I called the crown, only to be told they knew nothing about any virtual court dates; that would be with lawyers only, and the court office of the city we were in to schedule. She was quite frustrated when we told her we were just at the court office, and they told us to call the crown!
We went back to the court office. I wasn’t allowed to go in until I emptied my pockets and they scanned me with a metal detector, while I got the usual covid questions. I did get asked about my Mingle Mask, but when I said I was medically exempt, they were fine with it. My brother had to quickly dash back to his car while I went in (only one person allowed into the court office at a time, anyhow). When I asked about the virtual court session, she told me only lawyers could call in to those (?!?!?!), but that they weren’t doing restraining orders, anyhow. After we talked for a bit, she got my name and the name of our vandal to look up our file. She remembered talking to someone about it and asked if I’d called a couple of weeks ago. I had not. I called yesterday. It had to have been our vandal. Or, more likely, his wife. My voice may be low, but not low enough to be mistaken for our vandal! She then went to look things up while I went to wait in the lobby.
Shortly after, my brother got back and, even though we were only going to wait in the lobby, the security guards still had to scan him, and we both got our temperature checked on our wrists.
When the woman came out again, she told me she’d got through to our vandal’s lawyer, and he agreed to a court date of July 9 – if the courts are open then.
Our vandal’s vindictive civil suit against us is scheduled for July 12.
*sigh*
I do, however, now have the name and phone number for our vandal’s lawyer – something I should have had long ago, but it’s not like anything it working the way it’s supposed to right now. The worst of this is that this is for a retraining order. It’s a safety issue for us, and it just keeps getting delayed. This is now the fifth time!
She said that, if I chose to, I could call the lawyer myself and potentially work something out privately and bypass the courts completely.
Well, I suppose that’s an option, but I really don’t think there’s anything our vandal would agree to that didn’t involve completely dropping the whole thing. Considering that he’s still calling my mother with his bizarre rants about how we’re all laughing at him, his mental state is clearly a concern.
So that was another wasted morning – and another day my brother booked off work that was wasted, too. At least we were finished early enough that he could still make a meeting.
*sigh*
I made sure to call my mother before I headed home, because I knew she’s be concerned. As you can imagine, she wasn’t happy, either, but is having a hard time understanding why the court office isn’t calling us to let us know about the cancellations. It’s almost as if she thinks ours is the only case they’ve got, or that there are very few of them. Meanwhile, they probably had a couple dozen files or more, just on this morning’s docket, all cancelled. The extra frustration is that they DO call the lawyers (more likely just their firms, really), so there’s a sort of two tier justice system. People who can afford lawyers (or are willing to go into debt for one) and those who can’t. Though to be honest, it’s always been like that, so nothing’s really changed, there.
Once I got home, I contacted my LegalShield firm. That membership has more than paid for itself! It’s been so long, the file was actually closed, but it was reopened, and the lawyer assigned to my file will call me. Given that today is the Friday before a long weekend, I don’t expect to hear from him until Tuesday. It’s possible our membership will cover some action between our lawyer and our vandal’s.
I also looked up our vandal’s lawyer. There is a Canadian website that lists all lawyers, and I found his profile – with no photo, and a different phone number from what I have. It listed him as “in good standing” and included the name of a firm. I looked up the firm, which was not linked from the profile, which turns out to specialize in criminal defense. This lawyer was not listed on their website. It’s not even a matter of there being more than one person with the same name. The guy has a somewhat unique surname, and only one in Canada showed up in my search. This is also not the same lawyer or firm our vandal has worked with before. I wouldn’t be surprised if they found a way to drop him from their case load. Still, it all comes across as very strange.
So now I wait for a call back from my lawyer. We’re also somewhat stuck indoors today. We’re getting actual rain right now. From the weather radar, the worst of the weather will be hitting the southern regions of our province, but it’s big enough that we’re getting at least some much needed precipitation. We might even get some of the storms they’re predicting to happen overnight, though I doubt it. What has been happening, though, is repeated loss of our internet. As I am writing this paragraph, we have no internet connection at all. Again. Hopefully, we’ll get enough of a connection that I can publish this, soon!
Traditionally, a lot of people put their gardens in on the May long weekend, but from the looks of the weather this year, few people will. Particularly those living closer to the Rockies, where they have been getting snow! From the zone 3 gardening groups I’m on, quite a few people had taken the chance and started transplanting outdoors, and are now struggling to save their gardens. Thankfully, everything we’ve planted so far is frost hardy. They should be okay, even without being covered. Hardning off our transplants is getting delayed, though I can at least open the inner door to the sun room. Between the screened window of the outer door, and the ceiling fan, the seedlings will get exposed to differing temperatures and some wind. Rotating the bin the purple corn and giant sunflower seedlings are in seems to have made a difference, too. The sunflowers that were looking all floppy and leggy, yesterday, are now standing tall under the lights. That’s encouraging. Now, if only the purple sunflowers would start germinating!!!
Oh, our internet is back! Time to see if I can publish this before the signal is lost again…
Wow, what a difference a day makes! After yesterday’s heat, our 9C/48F (feels like 5C/41F) is a welcome, if slightly chilly, reprieve. Welcome especially for the rain we got last night! I didn’t have to do any watering this morning!
These are the purple pea seedlings. Definitely not a high germination rate, but it’s possible more will sprout yet. With these, the entire packet was planted, but with the others, we still have lots left. If there are still lots of gaps left in a week, we can successive sow more.
The forecasts have, of course, changed again. We’re supposed to stay wetter and cooler for the next while, and next week, there’s even an overnight low of -1C/30F predicted. But just on the app on my phone. The weather app on my desktop still predicts a low of 5C/41F for that day. We shall see.
It was cool enough that I did not plant the beans this morning. It will wait till later in the day.
The Saskatoon bushes are in full bloom right now! I haven’t seen a lot of pollinators yet, but I hope we’ll have lots of berries this year.
It’s too cool and blustery to more our transplants outside. I want to harden them off, not kill them! The inner door to the sun room has been left open, though, and the window is open in the outer door, so that will cool the sun room down and, along with the ceiling fan, allow for more air circulation.
I rotated the bin the sunflowers and purple corn are in, and adjusted the lights above them to a higher level. I don’t know what to think of the sunflowers. They look really leggy, but these are also a giant variety of sunflower, so this might actually be normal for them.
The corn next to them is doing quite well. Here are the rest of them…
There are still 10 cups that have no germination yet. We are still seeing new seedling popping up, though, so they may still come up. They really responded well after I found a way to put the aquarium lights above them.
The purple sunflowers still have zero germination. These are the ones that were planted in the tray of Jiffy pellets. I don’t know what to make of that. Especially with how quickly the Mongolian Giants germinated. At least the other seedlings are doing well, overall, and more of the squash and melon seedlings are slowly emerging. We should have a decent amount to transplant next month!
Temperatures were supposed to cool down today. I suppose they did, since we didn’t reach 30C/86F , however as I write things – at almost 7:30pm – the temperatures have dropped to 25C/77F, from 27C/81F, earlier. :-/ At least we did get a bit of rain early this afternoon; between that and the wind, it was enough that our seedlings that are being hardened off had to be brought back indoors. Still not the thundershowers we were promised. Those have been pushed back to the end of the week.
Then the sky cleared, and the heat returned. *sigh*
The crazy thing is, the weather system that’s coming our way has already brought snow and overnight temperatures of -5C/23F in other areas. Other zone 3 gardeners in the groups I’m in have been scrambling to save their gardens. Meanwhile, our long range forecast now goes as far as June 2 – our last frost date – which has an overnight low of 12C. The lowest overnight low before then is 5C/41F, an increase since the last time I looked.
Well, no matter. Today, we had to work on the beds for the beans, regardless of the heat. They can be planted any time now, since they won’t sprout until after our last frost date, so they should be safe.
We have three areas marked off at 3′ x 20′ (just under 1m x just over 6m). We’ve managed to scrounge enough cardboard to line one of the areas, plus a little bit more. The rest was covered with a layer of grass clippings, all of which was watered down before we started adding soil.
We will be planting double rows of bush beans in each strip. The trench in the middle is to help hold water. It turns out we can just manage to water even the furthest strip with the hose, so we won’t be needing to use watering cans from the rain barrel for these. Though we marked off 3′ wide strips, the soil is only about 2′ wide (about half a meter).
I’m tempted to go out and sow the beans now! I will wait until the morning, though.
The next area we need to work on is where the sweet corn and sunflowers will be going, which is to the left of the bean beds in the above photo. This is going to be the farthest we’ve had to haul soil, so far, and I’m still not even sure how we need to space things. We started half the sunflowers indoors, and none of the purple sunflowers have germinated yet. Only the Mongolian giants. Of the packets we will be direct sowing, neither have a lot of seeds in them (which is why I’d ordered two of each). So the areas needed for the sunflowers will be smaller. The packets of corn seeds, however, have plenty in them, so we’ll be looking at blocks at least the same size as the one the Dorinny corn is planted in, which is 20′ long by about 14′ wide (about 6m x 4 1/2m).
We have some calculating to do.
Either way, that’s a lot of soil that will need to be moved, and we don’t want to waste any of it. We don’t even have anything to put under the soil as a barrier and amendment anymore; not in any useful quantities.
Ah, well. We’ll work it out!
Meanwhile, on a completely different topic, while we were working in the garden, I got an email notification from a family member. It had a link to a news article. Someone in our little hamlet won a Lotto jackpot! I read the article and realized I know them! (The article only mentioned the husband’s name, and it’s his wife that I know from years ago.) I am so incredibly happy for them! It couldn’t have gone to a more deserving family! It’s also wonderful to hear that someone local has had such a great blessing.
Maybe I should start buying lottery tickets again? :-D
But I digress.
Time to go back to figuring out our corn and sunflower area!
The Re-Farmer 