I’m taking a bit of a break from working outside, to avoid the hottest part of the day. We’ve reached 22C/71F, and our high is supposed to be 23C/74F.
One of the things I’ve been trying to do early in the day is water all the beds that we’ve planted. I’ve been concerned about them, since we are so incredibly dry right now. It’s hard to give the beds even a shallow watering, never mind the deep watering they need. The problem is that the surface dries out so quickly. What we need is a mulch. The only thing we have for mulch right now is straw. Which is fine if I’m mulching around larger plants, like when we transplant our squashes, etc. Not so good for things like greens.
What I do have, however, is a lawn mower.
So after I planted the last of our beet seeds – three types all mixed up – in the L shaped bed in the old kitchen garden, I brought out the mower.
We already had some chopped up straw that had been on top of the garlic beds; we’d removed most of it and it’s been sitting in the kiddie pool, waiting for use. I chopped all that up a couple more times with the mower, then filled the wheelbarrow with more straw and chopped it up several times, too.
The finished mulch, which now included leaf litter that was on top of the lawn, went back into the kiddie pool, which made it very easy to drag around to where it was needed.
The mulch is so light, I could let the wind distribute most of it for me!
The L shaped bed is all beets. I had thought to put some carrots along the edge of the bed, but there was no room! In fact, I ended up broadcasting the last of the seeds in another little spot.
The patch of mulched soil near the plastic and the tree is where the last of the seeds went. Almost all of these beets are last year’s seed, so who knows how many will germinated.
I then scattered mulch onto the poppy bed, too.
After thoroughly watering everything, I moved on to the big garden.
Once again, I could let the wind lightly cover the beds for me. The beds at each end, with the onions, got fully covered. The spinach beds have their first sowing in the middles only, so I just focused on that area. When we sow more in another week, we can add more mulch then.
Everything got another thorough watering. All the beds will be watered again this evening, when it starts to cool down.
Until then, my next job is to mark off and start preparing the block to direct sow the one variety of corn we have that needs to be planted before last frost. That’s going to be out by the peas, and that’s where we’ll be working on for the next while, as we prepare beds for the beans, corn and radishes, sunflowers, squash and gourds. Then, last of all, the block at the opposite end of the garden, where the Montana Morado corn will be transplanted. None of the sunflowers or corn starts have germinated yet, but it hasn’t been very long yet. I’m just impatient! :-D
We will also use the lawnmower to chop up more straw for more light surface mulch. That, at least, I’ll be able to work on in the shade this time! :-)
So my darling daughters did some planting, while I fell asleep in a bed full of cats. :-D
The plastic covered bed in the foreground is two types of carrots, plus the kohlrabi seeds from last year.
The plastic covered bed in the background is the beets, including seeds from last year, so there are 4 types of beets in there, all planted in short rows. They also planted the purple kohlrabi in between the yellow onions and shallots. I’m quite excited about those!
While the girls finished up watering the seeds and covering them, I filled the paths with the old flax straw and, when that ran out, the wheat straw we still hadn’t moved off the septic tank, right around the corner or the old kitchen. I tried to pile it more against the sides of the beds than the middles, for erosion control. I think it’ll do the job for this year.
The L shaped bed has nothing in it!
There are still beet seeds from last year. I think maybe I’ll mix them up and scatter them, and we’ll have beet surprise! My daughter didn’t want to plant beets in there because she’s thinking the deer will get at them. We can protect the ones by the retaining wall more easily, but I’m sure I can come up with something to help protect them from hungry deer. Especially right in the middle of the garden like that. We still have pelleted carrot seeds left. The deer don’t like carrots, so interplanting the two might help as well.
Hhmm. We even still have some Merlin beet seeds left over from planting by the garlic beds. I could mix those in, too. I know the girls really like beets, so having lots will not be a problem. :-)
Speaking of the Merlin beets.
The plastic was blowing loose from the hoops over the Merlin beets, so we fixed those up a bit.
We cut about 1/3rd of the hoops off, then put them back on their sticks. The excess plastic on the sides were then wrapped around a couple of boards from the junk pile, to keep them from blowing around. Much better than the small rocks I was using before. It meant not needing the lengths of hose on the centre hoop, so those got added to secure the ends more.
This plastic is really, really thin – not at all the kind of plastic one would normally use as row covers – but it seems to be holding out okay. We’re even reusing pieces from last year, plus we still have quite a bit on the two rolls we found while cleaning up, if we need more.
After this, we prep a block for the corn that gets planted early, then I should be able to take a day or two off from hauling loads of soil. :-D
The old kitchen garden beds are done and ready for planting.
These beds were made fairly deep, as they will have root vegetables planted in them.
The only problem is that the soil is going to fall into the paths without something to support the sides. For now, the flax straw I’d taken out and was going to chop smaller with the lawn mower is going to be laid down in the paths, along with straw, until we can get pavers or something to make more permanent paths.
After these photos were taken, I watered everything, including the poppies that were sown last night, and the lilacs, honeysuckle and roses. I do hope that little pink rose survives!
For now, the beds are sitting and warming up in the sun. Later on, the girls will do the planting. There’s a second type of beet, plus two types of carrots, to go in here. I also dug out the seeds left over from last year, which includes beet seeds left over from the variety pack we got last year. There was even some green kohlrabi left. So the girls will plant those, too. The purple kohlrabi is going to get planted in between the shallots and the yellow onions (I almost forgot about those!), which they will take care of today, as well.
Next, a block needs to be marked out and prepared for the one type of corn we have that needs to be planted before last frost.
Absolutely nothing we’ve planted outside so far has started to emerge. I know it’s too early, but I still can’t help but wonder if we did something to kill them off or something! :-D At least I’m finally seeing some summer squash and melon seedling starting to emerge in their cups in the sun room. Not very many, still, but at least I can be sure we’ll have a couple of varieties to transplant and a few weeks!!
My entire body aches from hauling all that soil and spreading it (yes, the girls helped – and they’re feeling it, too!!), but I’m so happy with how things are looking so far!
After finishing planting the carrots and beets, it was time to get back to the old kitchen garden. We’ve done almost nothing there, since we ended up building the path instead of hauling soil over and planting.
Here is how it looks before I started.
The first thing that needed to be done was to get rid of the lump of soil near the new path. A thatching rake did that job well, as I spread out the soil and mulch down the slope, or around the lilac, honeysuckle and rose bushes.
The long row of mulch on the grass in the background was removed from one end of the garden. It was excess flax straw from inside the cat shelter, and was added as mulch last fall. It’s not breaking down very much, so I plan to go over it with a lawn mower.
I also pruned a large branch from one of the ornamental crab apple trees. That poor little pink rose bush will finally get more light!
After leveling the ridge of soil from the path at the back, I worked out where more paths would go, and raked those areas clear. I was almost done with that when my older daughter came out to help, and she started bringing over loads of soil. It’s hard to see, but along the retaining wall is a bit of green. That’s a flower that managed to work it’s way through the layers of mulch and bloom last year. We ended up transplanting it to a corner near the rhubarb, where it’s too awkward to plant anything that requires tending.
We were not going to finish the job today, but we did get quite a bit done! Here is how it looked, when we stopped for the day.
The area next to the retaining wall is filled to the edge of the path and ready for planting. A small “island” at one end was made, and that’s where we ended up planting the poppy seeds. Flowers next to the flowers! The bulbs my daughter planted there are just starting to emerge. :-)
Here is where the paths will be, marked in grey.
We will continue adding soil to finish the “island” around the little rose bush, which will be extended to the stone patch. Another path runs through about the middle of the garden, joining the stone path and the one that runs across the garden. In the one corner, the path runs around a patch of rhubarb. More soil will be added to border the path, but we will not be putting soil all the way in. There are flowers in one area that we will eventually transplant, but most of that area is crowded by the lilacs, honeysuckle and white roses, and not a good place to plant things anymore, so we’ll just stick to the border of the path. More beets and carrots will be planted in the fresh soil.
It may not be done, but the poppies are now planted, and it shouldn’t take too long to finish adding soil.
We haven’t figure out what we’re going to use on the paths to walk on. We need to put something there, if only to have something to keep the soil from spilling onto the paths. We’ll have to figure that one out.
So that is now done and soon, the rest will be ready for planting in.
This morning, I wanted to get that half-bed planted with carrots. I was happy to discover that the Kyoto Red carrots I’d ordered were pelleted seeds (I’m sure I knew that when I’d ordered them, but completely forgot!), so they could go in right away. Before I did, though, I cooked up some cornstarch gel, and set the other two varieties of carrot seeds to soak. Last year, we used the technique described in the video below to plant carrot seeds, and it worked very well, so I wanted to do it again.
Those will wait until tomorrow, though. For now, the carrot bed in the old garden area is fully planted, and I covered them with plastic after watering them.
They’ll be checked often, and as soon as green can be seen, the plastic comes off.
The next job was the new garden bed beside the garlic.
Before topping it with fresh garden soil, I found what I could to shore up the sides, so things wouldn’t erode. This is a pretty small bed, so it only took two loads of soil to cover it.
Then began my experiment.
After planting the middle with Merlin beets, then surrounding it with the last of the yellow onion sets, I cut small lengths of poplar that were fairly thin. I’d opened up the three dollar store hula hoops I’d bought and removed the bits of what looks like decorative rocks that were inside, to make a rattling noise. The sticks were of a size to fit snugly into the openings of the plastic. I also cut lengths of old garden hose and split them lengthwise and grabbed some plastic that was used to cover one of the garlic beds over the winter.
I suppose I could have cut the plastic tubes from the hula hoops shorter, but I really didn’t want to fuss with it. I was able to fit the ends over the sticks and push them down quite far, even though some of the sticks were nubbly from twigs I’d cut off.
I used the pieces of hose to hold the plastic sheet to the hula hoops. Then I used packing tape to gather up the loose pieces at the end and pull things taught. I ended up getting a couple more piece of hose and used them to attach the plastic to the sides of the center hoops as well.
This thing is going to blow away in our next stiff wind! :-D It is by no means durable! This is more about keeping the deer away than anything else.
One of the wind socks we got to help deter critters ended up being spun so much in the wind, the twine I used to tie it to a tree broke. It’s in the shape of a spiral, so I hooked it to the top of a bamboo stake, then wrapped the spiral around the bamboo. It won’t get blown around as violently anymore, but still moves around the stake, so it should still help startle critters away.
So that bed is now done and planted!
In between watering the new bed, I made sure to water the strawberry spinach bed, and covered that with plastic, too. Though we’ve been diligent about watering, these are almost surface sown, and the surface dries out very quickly. I’m hoping it’s not too late to put the plastic over them. :-/ We shall see!
So that worked out rather well. Tomorrow morning, I’ll see if the hoop cover is still there, of it it blew away during the night. :-D
The next job was much larger! But that will in in my next post.
While heading out to feed the outside cats, I heard a noise from an unusual direction.
I had startled Nicky the Nose on the sun room roof!
I always get a giggle out of how he pancakes himself like that when he’s startled. As if he can somehow make himself small. :-D
Our cats never go on the sun room roof, that we’ve seen. They’ll go onto the new part roof, where they can look at the girls through the second floor windows, but it’s quite a leap to go onto the rest of the roof from there. It was a surprise to see Nicky there!
My daughters had a Mother’s Day treat planned out for me. In our tiny little hamlet, we have a small hotel with a bar and itty bitty restaurant. Well, with all the restrictions in place, they’ve had to change things up. About a month ago, the separate bar and restaurant was reworked as a single country style pub, and quickly got a good reputation for their excellent food. It’s a small menu for a small town, but we’re just excited to have options at all.
Of course, the government promptly pulled the rug out from under restaurants again, so they’re limited to take out, only. I guess the government isn’t done killing small businesses, yet. So we wanted to give them some support!
I saw them post a photo on their Facebook page for a platter that is not on their menu, so I had to ask about it. They were able to put together an appetizer platter for us, including deep fried mushrooms, which are also not on the menu yet. It was awesome! Even with 4 of us, by the time we were done, I could only manage one slice of the pizza I got for myself. My daughters ordered their cheeseburger platters, and were thoroughly impressed just by the size. There was enough there for two meals! And yes, they tasted really good, too! It’ll be much nicer to be able to order food from just a few miles away, instead of having to go to another town. Unless we want Chinese food. ;-) I’m glad we were able to order there today. Driving by over the past month, I was always seeing vehicles and people out front and, on nice days, people sitting and eating at the tables outside. Today, with the increased restrictions kicking in at midnight, there was nothing. Just two employees, and me, and I only heard the cook, but never saw him. So we’ll be trying to order food from there as often as our budget allows. Hopefully, lots of other people will be doing the same. Considering how few people live here, that still won’t be much, but it might be enough to keep them going.
In other things…
I had hung on to the soil samples from the tests done in them, and today I finally got some photos before getting rid of them. Here are the jars from the first two tests we did.
The first sample was from the soft soil uncovered when the old wood pile was cleaned up. The water is still very distinctly orange! The second sample is from the new garden soil we purchased.
These are from the third and fourth tests we did. The one that’s more orange and still cloudy is from where we’d planted potatoes using the Ruth Stout method, while the other is from the unamended soil that has never had anything planted there before. I find it interesting to see how clear – or not! – the water became, after letting the samples sit undisturbed for so long.
Later this afternoon, my daughters and I went out to do some watering, and to plant onion sets in the last of the beds in the old garden area. The 2 bags of shallots had only a dozen sets each, so they were planted in one row along one side, while the yellow onions were planted in a three row grid on the other. Later next week, kohlrabi will be planted in between the two. Besides that, there’s still half a bed left that will be planted with carrots. Aside from successive sowing the spinach, that will be it for those beds.
There were still maybe a dozen onion sets left over, so I’m thinking of interplanting them with the beets that will be planted near the garlic beds. Hopefully, they will help deter deer from going after the beet greens. If all goes well, that will be completed tomorrow.
Before heading back indoors and out of the high winds we were having, the girls and I checked on the flowers we’d planted in the fall.
We’re finding more and more of the teeny, tiny crocuses blooming! I know these are not large flowers, but I didn’t expect them to be this minuscule! I suspect, after they’ve had a year to establish themselves, they will come up a bit larger, next year.
I then spent some time tending the seed starts in the sun room. The gourd pots got moved to the sun room awhile ago, but there is still nothing of the Ozark Nest Egg, Thai Edible Bottle gourd, and birdhouse gourds. I am hoping it’s just because they take so long to germinate normally. I probably should have started them earlier. It’s the squash and melons that I’m eyeballing more. They haven’t been in the sun room long, but I was hoping the increased warmth would help. I’m happy to say that I did see a couple of seedlings trying to push their way through, but most show no sign of any germination. I keep second guessing myself about what we used to plant them in and all the things we did differently this year, thinking that maybe I’ve gone and killed them off somehow. :-/ It’s still just under a month before we can transplant anything outside, so there’s lots of time yet for them to germinate.
At least, that’s what I keep telling myself!
Oy. Today has been a really bad day for internet connectivity – as happens every time we have high winds. This post took forever to get done! Time to stop trying to do internet things for a while.
Hmm… I still have lots of my Mother’s Day pizza left. Maybe a late snack is in order? :-D
My morning rounds includes checking the various growing things, and I finally got a decent photo of my daughter’s tulips emerging!
The leaf mulch has made it hard to see them in photos, but at this angle, you can see quite a few! There are more, out of frame. We’re so happy they survived their first winter! :-)
This morning, I headed out to be part of a surprise for my mother. My older brother was able to acquire a nice scooter, and he wanted to bring it over for her to see and try driving. While getting her to test drive it, he was going to get her to a nearby park, where we siblings were planning to surprise her with a picnic lunch together.
The problem was, we weren’t sure where the picnic tables were, so we weren’t quite sure exactly where to meet. We also weren’t sure the park was officially open for the season, yet. People could walk in any time, of course, but the entry gates get closed to traffic in the off season. So I left early to check it out.
I think we timed it just right. Not only were the gates open, but there was a crew of people doing all sorts of maintenance and clean up started. I was so focused on looking at where the picnic benches were, I didn’t realize I drove right past my brother! He’d had the same idea I had, and come early to scope the area.
There were quite a few clusters of picnic tables, including a whole bunch under a shelter. There was one that was closest to the entry that we considered moving closer to some buildings, because of the wind. As we walked around, though, we realized there would be no point. The wind was swirling in all directions. There was no shelter from it, anywhere! It was a warm enough day, but we knew the wind would be an issue, so my brother was going to make sure my mother dressed warmly.
My mother loves her fried chicken, so my contribution for the day was picking some up. We were so early, though, I had time to play some Pokemon Go, first! :-D I didn’t want to get it too early, even though I had an insulated bag to keep it hot. I still ended up back at the park early. Which worked out okay, because I soon saw my brother and mother making their way down the road. It was fun to sneak around the building and wait for the opportune moment to step out and surprise her! :-D
My mother, being my mother, was determined to be miserable. She makes a big deal about not liking surprises (except for those times when she tells us how much she likes surprises…), so she was already giving my brother a hard time. She refused to get a warmer coat or a hat, and wouldn’t even put on shoes; she was wearing house slippers! Then she saw me, and that was another surprise she didn’t like. :-D But then we got to the picnic table and I started setting food out. It turned out she hadn’t had lunch yet, and … well … there as fried chicken and wedges to be had! :-D My sister had the day off, so she was able to join us, so that was one more surprise for my mother. By then she was eating, so she skipped being miserable. ;-) Among the things my sister brought was a big thermos of hot tea, and today was certainly a day for it! I’m glad I had my picnic backpack; not only did we have real plates and cutlery, but I had room for actual cups. If we’d gone the disposable route, everything would have blown away!
We managed to have an excellent picnic outside, even with the wind. Plus, we brought enough food that my mother would have enough for another meal or two. :-)
As for the scooter, because my mother has been waffling back and forth between wanting one, because her knees are hurting so much, and not wanting one, because apparently, someone has told her it would be too much for her to take care of (apparently, plugging in the charger would be more than she can handle?) and too much responsibility. So my brother made sure to tell her that it was his, he was not leaving it for her, but he wanted her to try it out and think about it. If she does decide she wants one, it would mean getting rid of her couch (which she doesn’t use, anyhow), and probably at least one shelf. Her apartment is very tiny, and she would need to be able to turn around with it in her living room. I know quite a lot of people who use motorized wheelchairs or scooters, and they tend to have very little furniture, so they had room to maneuver – and they had much larger apartments than my mother’s! She wouldn’t miss the couch, but she does love her little tchotchke!! And not-so-little ones. I forget. She’s even got a garden statue of an angel in her living room, and that thing’s pretty darn big!
But now that she’s had a chance to drive this one around a little, she can think about it, and decide what is more important to her; maintaining independence as her knees get worse, or her bulky furniture and bric-a-brac.
I do think she’ll eventually agree to taking it. Especially as we assure her that she just needs to plug it in to charge the battery; any other maintenance is stuff my siblings and I can take care of, for her. It’s not something to load up like her walker (I have ramps and can load it into my van, but it’s very hard for her to get in and out of it), but it’ll let her make runs to the shops in town as needed.
We shall see.
I’m glad we were able to get together today. Our province has decided to lock down even harder again, starting tonight at midnight. I’m not entirely sure why, but we were already listed as “critical” (even as our Schrodinger’s Virus numbers, which were never all that high to begin with, continue to go down as the season progresses). Not sure what word they’ve come up with to be scarier than “critical”. Anyhow, it was already illegal for more than one person visiting at a time – and even then, only because my mother lives alone, so she has an exemption. That was why we met at a park, though my mother’s apartment is so small, we couldn’t have all fit comfortably in there, anyhow. More than a few people have noticed that these intensified lock downs and restrictions happen right before every special date or holiday, regardless of what the actual data is, or that the lock downs themselves have been completely ineffective. I’m quite content to be a hermit, but for people like my mother, who thrives on social interaction, it’s making life more … well, like no life at all. Today’s visit will, I hope, provide a bit of relief from the malaise I’ve been seeing in her lately. She tried to be critical and miserable about the surprise, but I could see that she was really enjoying herself – even with the wind!
When I got home, it was early enough that I considered getting some more gardening in, but not only was it still quite windy, the girls convinced me to back off a bit. It’s a good thing I’ve got them watching out for me, because I have a terrible habit of overdoing things, then ending up out of commission for several days. :-D
So I made mocha chocolate truffles, instead. Not the best I’ve ever made, but good enough to satisfy a craving! I did accidentally make a double recipe, though. The recipe I was found called for 1/2 pound of one type of chocolate, and 1/2 pound of another. I didn’t have fancy chocolate, but I did have lots of chocolate chips that were suitable, so I broke out the scale. It’s in metric, and 1 pound total of chocolate is 2.2 kg, so I started weighing it out. It was an awful lot of chocolate, so I decided to do a half recipe. It wasn’t until I’d poured the hot cream into the chocolate to melt it that I realized I had it backwards. 1 kg is 2.2 pounds, not the other way around! I’d weighed out 1.1 kg.
Oops.
Thankfully, part of the reason I was making it was to use up the cream before it expired, so I just doubled the rest of the ingredients.
Today was the day to start planting our onions. I wanted to get the transplants out, to make room for the squash in the sun room, and get the onion sets in.
The plan was to have onions on either side of the kale that has already been direst sown, in the bed on one side, then plant the rest of the onions in the bed at the opposite end, with kohlrabi in the middle (those don’t get planted for another week). Deer don’t like onions, so we’re hoping that between those, and the flashy windmills, they will stay away from the things they do like, such as the spinach.
This is one of the beds we made last year, that we simply topped up with new garden soil. I realized that the soil was starting to wash away on the sides, so I brought over more logs to act as walls.
Thankfully, these logs have been sitting out for 2 years, so they’re quite dry and light.
I didn’t have any short enough to use as end caps, though. We’ll have to take care of that later.
Once the logs were in place, I brought over more soil to fill in the sides, so I’d have room to plant into, without anything collapsing down into the logs.
My younger daughter joined me when I was just finishing up the first bed, so she continued to bring soil to add to the sides of all the beds, while I brought more logs to shore up the other bed from last year, that didn’t have any yet.
We’d used up the smaller logs when we first starting building the new beds, so the more logs I brought over, the bigger they were getting! Which is good, I suppose, since these are deeper beds than the new ones.
My daughter continued adding soil to the beds while I started transplanting the Nostar onions we started from seeds. There were three very different sizes! The ones that were in peat pellets ended up being the largest ones, while the ones in the K-cups had started out larger, but did not retain moisture as well, until I moved them onto their own tray, where they could be watered thoroughly without drowning the onions in the pellets. Then there were the ones that were started some weeks later. There are still some seedlings in the cups they were sown in; I only took the biggest ones to finish off the row.
On the other side of the kale, my daughter and I planted a three row grid of the Red Karmen onion sets that arrived in the mail yesterday.
By this time, we were done for the day!!
This bed is where the rest of the onions and the shallots will be planted, with the kohlrabi to go in the middle. The bed to the left is the one that’s half-planted with carrots. A second variety will go in the other half as soon as possible.
Oh, I almost forgot. When I was doing my rounds this morning, I took another look at some of the old corrals and other things around the barn and outer yard, hoping to find something we could salvage and build raised beds out of. There was nothing! Everything out there is just too rotted out. There’s possibly usable material that was stacked in an old shed, but the shed has collapsed on top of it, so we’d have to remove an awful lot of stuff, just to see one way or the other. It’s such a mess, just getting into there to move stuff has a high risk of injury. It’s unfortunate, but there’s pretty much nothing to salvage at all, never mind to build accessible raised beds with. Ah, well. It was worth a look!
After putting things away, my daughter stayed out to tend other things while I transferred the squash to the sun room and set up the lights as best I could. They are long aquarium lights, so I can only set them up vertically along the shelf. It will be good when we can invest in some grow lights, that we can hand over each shelf. At least the sun room does get a lot of natural light through much of the day.
While I was working on that, my daughter made an exciting discovery.
The crocuses have started to bloom!
They are so tiny!!!
I wasn’t able to get a photo of the third type, which are purple and white.
I will have to make sure to check these tomorrow morning, so see how much they open!
My daughters are just thrilled to see them. I don’t think either of them expected them to survive February’s Polar Vortex, having been planted just this past fall. So they are really excited right now!
The Re-Farmer 