So… today didn’t go quite as planned, originally. What else is new? :-D
But first, I want to share this picture.
This bed is the yellow bush beans. The green and purple ones look much the same. Even more beans have been sprouting, and it looks like we’ve got an almost 100% germination rate already! Even in the spaces where there are no beans sprouted yet, I’m seeing bumps and cracks in the soil, showing that something is trying to push it’s way through. Some were so close to the surface, they got uncovered when I watered them!
My original plan had been to finish the new corn block, so the Montana Morado corn could be transplanted, after I got back from helping my mother with her grocery shopping. Instead, I decided the lawn needed to be mowed, first. Not just because we haven’t mowed it yet this year (even with the rains we did get, it wasn’t all that overgrown), but because I wanted the grass clippings. Which meant using the push mower, with its collection bag.
I started off dumping the grass clippings into the wagon, with the intention of hauling the clippings to the garden beds where they will be used as mulch, but I realized the constant stopping and starting and hauling would take too long; particularly since the wagon can only hold 3 bag fulls. Which is more than the wheelbarrows, but still…
So I started dumping the clippings into the compost ring.
This is the clippings from just the south yards, minus two bag fulls. The compost ring was almost empty when I started.
My only concern with this is all the Chinese Elm seeds in there. Piles of grass clippings get shocking hot, though, so I’m hoping that will kill off at least some of the seeds. :-/
When I started on the East yard, I had to find some place else for the clippings, so they got added to the old compost pile. The one we haven’t been able to use, because when we started to dig into it, we kept finding garbage and branches. I think we got all the garbage out, except for maybe a few stray bits. Then when the East and North yards were done, and I started on the West yard, I had to start a third pile.
I didn’t get all the mowing done; a couple of areas just don’t have enough grass to mow, and I didn’t try to go into the trees at all, yet. I want to mow the areas around the old garden, and the new garden beds, more to keep down the poplars that keep trying to spread, and we need to do the parts of the old garden we haven’t put beds into, as well. That part is the most difficult, because it’s so rough. Last year, even at the highest setting, I still kept catching rocks and clumps of soil. In some areas, it’ll be easier to use the weed trimmer, which we can actually do, now that we have enough extension cords to reach all of it.
After the mowing was done for today, I took the plants back inside before going into the house, and noticed some of the squash are starting to show flower buds! They need to get into the ground right away, so they’ll have the nutrients, space – and pollinators! – they need. The girls and I were going to make a trip into the city tomorrow for some shopping they need to do, but that will be pushed back. Instead, I will be focusing on finishing that corn block and transplanting the Montana Morado corn, while the girls will be focusing on building the squash beds. The summer squash will have beds build where the sunflowers were planted last year, where the ground had been mulched. The winter squash will need to have beds built at the squash tunnel, too. The bottom supports and mesh will have to be done after they are transplanted. They will be planted on the outside, so can work from the inside to avoid the plants, if we have to. If we end up having more transplants than there is space at the squash tunnel, the extras will also be planted where the sunflowers were last year, in the section that runs close to where the squash tunnel is. The only thing we need to make sure of is to leave a gap where we can walk through while dragging the hose to reach the rain barrel.
I figure, by the time we’re done, we’ll be out of grass clippings again. :-D
Just a quick post about what I found during my morning rounds, before I have to head out. It’s a bit of a mix!
Before I go into this morning, though, here is the progress I got last night in the new corn block.
I got about 2/3rds gone turning the sod before stopping for the night. It was past 10pm by then – the temperatures were lovely, but it was starting to get too dark! LOL I am hoping to get it done today. The corn really needs to be transplanted soon.
This is what greeted me this morning, when I came into the dining room.
Cheddar and Keith, enjoying the morning breeze while watching the birds outside. :-D The cats just LOVE this set up.
The door is secured with cord, just in case. Although it is locked, sometimes it simply pops open on its own. Which is not a problem when the inner door is closed, but would be kitty disaster otherwise!
After feeding the outside critters, I started taking the plants out of the sun room. One of our disappointments was that one tray with 3 different gourds in it had not germinated. Still, I kept them watered, and have started to take the tray outside, too. This is what I found this morning.
A single Ozark Nest Egg gourd has sprouted!
It’s way too late in the season, but when the time comes, it’ll be transplanted out and we’ll see how it does. Who knows. We might have a long summer this year.
Also, do you see all those seeds scattered about? They are EVERYWHERE!!! And this is why I’ve developed a hate-on for the Chinese Elm trees. We’re going to be fighting these in just about every single garden bed. :-(
While checking out the furthest garden beds, I had a bit of a disappointment.
Four Mongolian Giant sunflowers in one row had their heads chopped off. The one that had been eaten and pulled up before was in the other row, which originally had 13 transplants in it. This one had 11. So of the 24 we started with, we’re down to 19. At least the direct seeded ones are coming up, so we do have more. As long as they don’t get eaten, too!
My daughter and I had moved the trail cam over to this corner, but it’s not the wide angle camera, and I wasn’t sure if it caught this area at all. In fact, I was pretty sure it didn’t. So I shifted it and it now faces down the corn and sunflower blocks only.
When I checked the files, I found I was right. This row as off frame. I never saw what ate the leaves, but I did find this!
We had a raccoon pass through! Until now, the only evidence we had of raccoons here was the tip of a tail going past the camera when it was facing the tulips. It just wandered through, sniffing at some weeds.
The raccoon would not have been responsible for the sunflowers, though. I’m sure that was a deer. There was one other night time video, but whatever triggered the motion sensor was no longer in frame by the time it started recording. If a deer had jumped the fence nearby, it could have walked right past the camera and out of frame before it started recording. That’s the down side of setting it to video. It takes more time to start recording than just taking a still shot. I’m not using still because the shortest time delay between triggers is 15 seconds, regardless of whether it’s set to still or video. That’s a long gap, and much would get missed. At least with video, there’s that 15 seconds (or up to 1 minute, if I wanted to) of video to catch what’s going on.
Finding the damaged sunflowers was a disappointment, but I wanted to end this on a more positive note.
The honeysuckle bush in the old kitchen garden is looking amazing! It’s in full bloom, and absolutely dense in foliage and flowers. When we dug up along the house and laid down blocks and bricks to make a path, much of the soil that was dug up ended up around the bases of the honeysuckle and two rose bushes nearby. Between that and the extra watering they’ve been getting this year, they’re all looking better than ever. I’m very happy with how great they are doing this year! Even the little pink rose bush that got broken by something over the winter (likely a deer) is doing very well, after having the tree branch that was shading it pruned away, and a garden bed built up around it. There was just one stick of it left, but it’s now full of the biggest, healthiest leaves it’s had since we moved here!
So overall, we’ve had more increases than losses, so far! :-)
We managed to get outside for a bit more progress on the garden. One of the things I did was go through where we planted sunflowers last year, and dig out any remaining stumps. I am really impressed with how much softer the soil is. Well. When I managed to not hit any rocks, at least. ;-) I think using this area for the summer squash will work out. We just have to fight back the grass and weeds. :-/
Not yet, though. The new corn block will be the priority for transplanting.
This area has been covered with black tarp for at least 2 months. Almost, but not quite, enough to kill off the grass and weeds.
This area is remarkably rough, though. I had the hardest time mowing on this side, without hitting rocks or lumps of dirt. Partly because of this, I will be going things differently. I will actually be turning the soil here. Nothing extreme. Mostly just loosening it with a garden fork, while pulling out the larger roots and rocks. Once it’s loosened up, I plan to go over it with a thatching rake (we only have 1 thatching rate, and a bunch of fan rakes, so that’s the tool I’ll use! :-D ). That should pull up more roots, but mostly I want to level it off enough that I’m not tripping over dirt clumps every time I walk through!
I had gotten a start on loosening the soil at one end, when one of my daughters was able to join me. Together, we got to work on the squash tunnel.
We were able to get all the side cross pieces in place at the tops. A job that was much more difficult than it looks!
I may have mentioned this before, but… we’re a bit on the short side.
Oy, did that make a difference!
My daughter held the cross pieces in place while I climbed the ladder to drill the pilot holes, then put in the screws. It was very awkward and painful for her – especially with her gimpy shoulder! – to try and hold the pieces steady until I had the screws in far enough that she could relax. Some of the uprights had shifted, too, so not only was she holding a cross piece in place, above her head, but sometimes holding an upright in place as well. The fact that everything was different sizes and shapes didn’t help, either. Doing this in 27C/81F heat, and winds high enough to blow over the step ladder, certainly didn’t make things any easier.
Also, we really need a power screwdriver. Driving in 3 inch screws manually, while someone else was struggling to hold the pieces together, was another thing that made the job more difficult than expected!
But we got it done!
It is still incredibly wonky, of course. Good thing it’s not intended to be permanent! We also didn’t use as many screws as I intended. For some joins, it was because the pieces were not of a size or shape to add more than one screw. With others, we just needed to get it in place and move on to the next, due to how painful or awkward it was for my daughter to support the cross pieces.
I now need to cut cross pieces for the bottoms. When I put those in, I will take the time to add extra screws were they are needed at the top. If necessary, I’ll add extra support pieces at the corners, but I think once we add the wire mesh for the vines to climb, that will help stabilize it a bit more, too. I’m actually not sure how we will get the mesh over the top.
Did I mention we’re short? LOL
At least it’ll be easier to put in the bottom cross pieces.
When we did as much as we could, I was ordered by my daughter to head indoors and out of the sun. Apparently, I was looking rather overheated!
So I am taking a bit of a break in the cool of the house. By the time I get outside again, more of the corn block I want to work on will be in shade, so that will help. I’m hoping to be able to get the corn transplants out by the end of tomorrow. We’ll see how it goes. I’ll be helping my mother with her grocery shopping earlier than usual, so that should work out.
Yesterday, one of my goals was to start on the lawn. We have yet to mow the lawn this year, but with how little rain we’ve had, it’s not really that overgrown. Other than some straw we still have left, we’re out of organic material to layer and mulch with, so it would be good to have grass clippings again. At the very least, I wanted to get out the weed trimmer and do the edges.
Then I got a phone call.
My mother was letting me know my sister was on her way to visit her, and they were planning to go to the cemetery, which is just a few miles away from us. They were planning to come here, after.
*sigh*
We had talked about this possibility just the day before, so I can’t say it was too unexpected, but I had advised against doing a cemetery trip when we were supposed to get so very hot again. She also knew that I like to have a lot more notice before visits, so we can be prepared. My mother actually sounded apologetic when she was telling me they were coming over, and added that she was good with not going into the house if we didn’t want her to. Which isn’t the problem, but whatever.
So the girls did a quick rush to try and prepare things, like making sure everything was clear from the sun room doors, though the old kitchen, to the bathroom (so my mother wouldn’t have to use the main doors, with all the little sets of stairs), while I quickly used the weed trimmer around the yard, between the main garden beds, and a few other places that I thought my mother might want to get at with her walker. I had thought to move the picnic table to a shady spot in the south yard, but my daughter reminded me that, when we moved it to where it is now, after it was painted, it was pretty rickety, so it probably couldn’t handle being moved so far, again. So she set up some camp chairs in the shade, and we used an overturned bin for a table. :-D My mother and sister had even brought some fried chicken, so we had ourselves a picnic lunch in the shade, before touring the yard and garden beds.
When they arrived, my sister passed me something my mother had for me. At her apartment building, they have garden plots available. My mother doesn’t do much gardening herself anymore, but she does tend the perennials that had been planted by some of her friends and neighbours who have passed on. The caretakers, unfortunately, have a habit of digging everything up at the end of the year, including a bush my mother described as having beautiful yellow flowers, followed by black fruit. She had no idea what it was; it was planted by someone who passed away some years ago. No one ate the berries, but it was lovely, and the caretakers dug it up and got rid of it. This spring, while tending some plants, she noticed that part of the bush had survived. Not wanting the caretakers to kill it off, she dug it up and put it in a pitcher with some soil. She wanted to give it to me to plant somewhere near the house. We have a grocery shopping trip arranged next week, and I was going to get it then, but with my sister coming over, they were able to bring it over early.
I’m pretty sure it’s a currant, though my mother says it’s different than what we have here. My sister, who is the one that gave my mother the currants that are here, thought it might be a gooseberry. Whatever it is, I made sure to transplant it as soon as things started cooling down a bit. I picked a spot right near where we’d had our picnic lunch. There is a flower bed with white lilacs taking up about half of it. After it was cleaned up, a couple of years ago, we were left with an empty spot that I decided to take advantage of.
I scraped away the wood chip mulch we’d put in, first – it was about 3 inches deep – and started digging. I had to shift the hole a few times, after hitting tree roots, but after clearing out a few bigger rocks, I finally had a space I could transplant into. It was bone dry. We don’t water this bed regularly, but I have been trying to water the lilacs and a low growing plant with variegated leaves I like. From how dry the soil was, you’d never know it had been watered recently! So I filled the hole with water, then got a wheelbarrow load of new garden soil.
After transplanting it into the hole with fresh garden soil, I put back some of the mulch and gave it another thorough watering.
So we now have a new, unplanned, fruit bearing bush in the yard. :-) Hopefully, it will survive.
Backtracking a bit; my mother and I had talked about her coming out to see the gardens later in the season, when things were more grown in, but she got a bit of a tour yesterday. I did appreciate her very visible efforts to not say anything negative, which is usually the only thing she’ll say. I think it’s a generational thing, or maybe a cultural thing, but my mother seems to believe in NOT saying positive things. Like it’s somehow bad to compliment people or something. I suspect it has to do with believing it would lead to pride or something along those lines, though I doubt that’s in any way on a conscious level. She did, however, manage a backhanded compliment on how healthy the garlic looked! So that’s progress. :-D
She was not up to taking the walker to the furthest beds, of course, but my sister did, with her ever-present camera, and she got lots of pictures. It was a long day for my mother, so they left almost immediately after touring the yard. Going to the cemetery, then coming here, was probably too much for her. :-(
After I’d taken care of the transplant my mother gave us, I started hearing thunder. We’ve been having thunderstorm warnings for a while, but they kept getting pushed back. We were hoping to at least get some rain! I could see the storm clouds, and the wind was picking up, so I brought our hardening off transplants back into the sun room early, and we even shut down our computers, just in case.
We got nothing. Not even a spit of rain.
By 9:30pm, I finally went back outside to water the garden beds. The rain did finally come, but not until about 5am this morning.
When I headed out to do my morning rounds, it was still raining! A lovely, steady rain. I got completely soaked. :-D So no pictures this morning. ;-)
While checking the garden beds, I had some more unexpected surprises. The sweet corn is coming up already!! New shoots, in all three corn blocks. I also found more Hopi Black Dye sunflower sprouts, but also some Mongolian Giant sunflowers have already sprouted! Clearly, they are loving our heat wave. The bush beans, meanwhile, are coming up like crazy. The purple ones are still a bit slower in coming up than the yellow and green beans, but once they do come up, the sprouts seem to be leafing out faster than the others.
I’m finding it awesome that so many things we direct sowed is sprouting already. We haven’t even finished putting out our transplants, yet! :-D
Of course, while checking the garden beds this morning, I was looking for deer damage. When I’d watered last night, I tied some plastic grocery bags onto a couple of the stakes supporting the Mongolian Giant transplants, as a noisy deterrent. Happily, there was no new damage.
Then I checked the trail cam.
There was one file triggered during the night. Off in the shadows, a single deer could be seen, walking through! It looked like it was going down the path between the corn/sunflower blocks, and the pea/bean beds. It didn’t stop or pause, but kept walking towards the spruce grove.
Today, I’m moving the camera again. I think I know where the deer came in, but there are a couple of places they like to jump the fence, and I want to cover both possibilities, if I can, and see if there are any other areas they might be coming through.
We shall see what the weather does today. Today’s expected high is “only” 25C/77F, with scattered showers. Which means we will probably not be able to use a power drill, with its 300 ft or so of extension cords, to finish assembling the squash tunnel. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get the summer squash in, though we might have to prioritize the Montana Morado corn. At least the place they will be planted is right next to what’s left of the pile of garden soil. We might end up having to use soil from the pile in the outer yard to finish transplanting. The good thing is, we actually have that second pile!
We’ve got some lovely flowers blooming in one of my mother’s flower beds.
This flower bed has lilies, roses and a current bush my mother had planted. These flowers are mixed together with another type, and are the first to start blooming. When these are done, the others will start blooming. I don’t think either were deliberately planted. :-)
While checking on the garden beds this morning, I found this.
One of the transplanted Mongolian Giant sunflowers was pulled up. With the leaves gone, I didn’t even see it at first. It was the gap in the spacing that had me looking for it.
Thankfully, it is the only one that was nibbled on.
I’m glad I moved the trail cam from the tulips to the garden. On checking the files this morning, I spotted a deer running by on the far side of the self-sown trees by the main garden beds. Something had startled it away, which is likely why there was only one plant eaten.
Right now, I’ve got the camera set up nearer the house, covering most of the main garden beds, with the far beds and blocks visible in the distance. We’ve got so many things around the main beds by the house, including the makeshift covers on the spinach, that I think they’re pretty safe now. I want to move it to cover the corn and sunflower blocks. I want to see where the deer are still coming in, to give me an idea of where we need to add deterrents. I think I’ll tie grocery bags to the stakes at the sunflowers to flap in the wind, too. It is very likely that the ones tied to the pea trellis are what startled the deer away, though there is no way to know for sure.
Today is not supposed to get as hot as yesterday – though previous forecasts had today being the hotter day, so who knows. We aren’t supposed to hit our expected high of the day until 7pm, though. Usually, the hottest part of the day is around 4 or 5pm. They’re also predicting thunderstorms tonight and tomorrow, and possible rain today. Looking at the weather radar, I’m expecting most of that to pass us by. I’m hoping to finally add the cross pieces onto the squash tunnel today, and maybe even find enough straight pieces to cut more for the bottoms of the frame.
Pretty much all of the squash, both winter and summer, that we chose are small varieties that mature quickly. The one exception was the Crespo squash. Of the 6 seeds we planted, one came up and got quite large. After we moved our seedlings from the aquarium greenhouses to the sun room, a second seedling sprouted.
That’s good enough for me!
As these are supposed to grow quite large, we decided they will get their own space. Near where we will be transplanting the Montana Morado corn is a very rough area; one of the worst areas from the shoddy plow job that was done before we moved out here. The plow had been turned in this tighter area, creating a particularly large lump of soil in the process.
I figured, we may as well take advantage of it, and turn it into a squash hill!
Yeah. That’s basically a dirt and crab grass hill my garden fork is stuck on. I’d already started to loosen the soil at the top of it. The grass is so tall, you can hardly tell there’s a hill there!
I used the hose and water pressure to soak and break up the soil, which made it easier to pull out vegetation and roots. And rocks, of course. There are always rocks!
It was also the first level of watering, and boy did the soil need it!
The next step was to layer on some straw, which got thoroughly watered while a daughter brought over our kitchen compost bucket. When that got added in, it got another watering. If we had other organic matter I could have layered on there, I would have, but this will have to do.
Hhmm. I neglected to take a picture of the next stage, which was to bring over a wheelbarrow full of garden soil to top up the hill. After creating a bit of a hole in the middle, that got another level of watering, then a bit more garden soil was added, to level it off. That got another watering in the middle. After the straw was added all around it, everything got another watering. The straw will help keep the soil from washing away, as well as keep down the weeds and help keep the soil moist.
Finally, the squash got transplanted. Since there was one plant per cup, they got dropped right in, with almost no root disruption.
I still had a little bit of the peat and soil mixture we used for the tomatoes left in the kiddie pool we used to mix it in. That got turned back into dirt soup, and was added around the seedlings.
To help with watering them at root level, I cut the bottom off of one of the distilled water bottles we get for my husband’s CPAP, and buried it top down in the middle of the squash hill. Another spade full of soil was added around the container, because it kept trying to float out of the hole it was buried in! :-D
The final step was to pull some of the damp straw up around the seedlings.
While the plants are small, we will make sure to water the straw to keep it, and the squash hill, moist but once they get bigger, we’ll be able to deep water them at the roots, through the container in the middle, and avoid getting their leaves and stems wet.
The entire hill got another watering, and it was done!
I really hope this does well. I honestly have no idea how these will grow in our zone. In doing searches for it, I am just finding the Baker Creek seed listing, and my own blog posts!
I don’t think the needle on that thermometer can go any further. What do you think that’s at? 65C/149F? Closer to 70C/158F? I don’t think I’ve ever seen that thermometer get that high.
Of course, the weather apps didn’t show temperatures that high. One of them allows me to look at historical weather. Our average temperature for June is 22C/72F, and our record high for the month was 37C/99F, set in 1995. I’m pretty sure we did beat that, today. The average low for June is 12C/54F, with a record low of 0C/32F, set in 2009.
This is the thermometer in the sun room.
This is with the inner door open, the screen window in the outer door open as wide as it can, and the ceiling fan going at its highest setting, and it still got to about 37-38C/99-100F. There are still a few trays of seedlings (and cups of dirt I’m pretending to expect things to germinate, still) in the sun room while I take the rest out to harden off. The trays outside got misted several times during the day, but a bunch of the squash and melons were really droopy by the end of the day. For all the misting they got, they still dried out quite a bit, so everything got a thorough watering before they came in for the night. Except the corn. They get put back into their bin, without the outer cups, so I put water in the bin for them to absorb from below.
When the girls went out as things started to cool down, they checked on the netting over the lettuces and beets. They ended up flipping one side up over the other, because there were so many insects caught inside. Including several of these guys.
This snowberry clearwing moth decided to just sit there and chill instead of flying away!
We also had a visitor, as things cooled down.
Madam Stinky came over for a snack! Later on, we saw a second one in the kibble house with this first one. I am loath to chase any critter away from food when it’s not doing any harm, but it’s really not good for them, and there is potential for harm. I think they are both hungry mamas. It’s certainly the time of year for them to have babies. When I used the hose to spray them away, the second one, which is quite a bit bigger than this one, did NOT want to leave! It kept grunting at me and trying to go back to the kibble house, until the water finally drove it away.
They’ll be back tonight, I’m sure! :-D
Before it had cooled down enough to start the evening watering, I checked on the garden beds to see how they were handling the heat. Especially the new transplants. I’m happy to say that the tomatoes and sunflowers were doing just fine. Only the bunching onions were starting to get a little bit wimpy.
While checking other beds around the transplanted sunflowers, I spotted little bits of green and pink.
We have beans!!!
These were not there when I checked them this morning, but both the yellow and green bean beds had sprouts, some still carrying their brightly coloured inoculated seed covering. The Royal Burgundy didn’t have any sprouts, but when I came back later to water them, even that bed had sprouts just starting to break through the soil. I’m so excited!!!
While watering the sunflower transplants, though, I got an even bigger, more exciting surprise.
This is a Hopi Black Dye sunflower seedling! I had to check and double check to be sure. I marked the spacing to plant them with flags, which are still there, so I could use them to confirm that yes, these are in the right places and everything. Considering how long it took for just one Hopi Black Dye seedling to sprout in the tray, I am totally stunned that they are already sprouting after being direct sown, just 5 days ago! All I can think is that the seeds we tried to start indoors were just too cold to sprout, even in the warmth of the sun room. Now that I’ve started to take the tray outside, to harden off the cucamelons sharing the tray, we might get even more of them.
The heat may be hard on humans and animals, but some of our plants are just loving it!
Hopefully, the extra watering they all got will help the ones that maybe don’t like the heat quite as much. :-D
After the watering was done, and things had cooled down a bit more, I did decide to do one transplanting job done today, but that will get its own post. :-)
This is from a screen cap on my phone’s weather app. Just before 3 in the afternoon, and we’re at 35C/95F, and it feels like 38C/100F.
At least, that’s the data from the weather station this app is linked to.
This is the thermometer outside a south facing window.
Yeah. The thermometer is “only” labelled to 50C/122F, and the needle has passed that. It looks like it’s close to where a 60C/140F would be. Certainly past where a 55C/131F would be.
This thermometer is mounted on a white wall, so there’s no reflective heat from any dark surfaces, but it’s also in full sun, so it’s probably reading a bit high. Still, this is what it would feel like if someone were insane enough to be out in the sun today.
Before I headed out to do my morning rounds, we had already hit 25C/77F. By the time I was done, it was already 30C/86F! Thankfully, there was still a breeze and some shade, so it didn’t feel too bad.
I made a couple of discoveries in the garden this morning, but before I get to those, I’ll back track to yesterday evening.
I used the cut off strip of mosquito netting left over from covering our lettuces and beets, some dollar store hula hoops, and lengths of old hose to cover part of the third spinach bed. This is just until we can make a wire mesh cover for it. I also took the trail cam from the tulips and moved it to overlook most of the garden. The only critter I saw in the files this morning was Nutmeg. :-D
After setting the netting up, I moved on to the far beds and blocks to water them. The water in the rain barrel is usually cool, but it was quite warm by the end of yesterday’s heat! On the plus side, it meant being able to use the watering can instead of the hose, and not shocking everything with cold well water, for almost everything. As the water level dropped below half, I started to refill it while still using the watering can, so it would be just cooler water instead of having to switch to the cold hose to finish watering.
I had company.
Rolando Moon has a thing about drinking from puddles! Once the water was absorbed by the soil, she decided to roll on the damp soil, then just hung out. I guess it’s nice and cool. At least she tended to stay in the middle, which is more of a trench for water, as the beans are planted on the sides. No beans are coming up yet.
Nutmeg was also hanging around. I caught him lying across some pea plants, chewing on the trellis twine! The little bugger! :-D
When I checked everything this morning, things were still damp and didn’t need to be watered, but I also spotted a whole lot of these…
The radishes are sprouting! The one in the photo is of the daikon type radishes, but I was seeing sprouts for the watermelon radishes in all the rows they were planted in, too. I was aware that radishes sprout quickly, but I’ve never grown them before, so this was a very pleasant surprise. They most certainly were not there when I was watering last night. :-)
Then I found another lovely sight.
The first potato leaves have emerged through their mulch! There are the purple fingerling potatoes. Sifting around in the mulch in the grow bags, I found other shoots coming through the soil, but these are the first ones to break through and leaf out. :-) I really look forward to seeing how these do in their grow bags.
We have a whole lot of squash transplants ready to go out, but I’m starting to rethink what to do with the summer squash. The plan was to make more beds like with the beans and peas. However, we have that long arc where we’d planted the sunflowers last year. In removing some of the old grass clipping mulch to use under some new beds, I couldn’t help but notice how much better the soil is, underneath. It’s still rocky, but we basically have a long row of soft soil, bordered by concrete hard soil. I’m thinking we should take advantage of this. It will need far less amending than starting new beds. I’m also planning to try staking the summer squash this year, but with our without stakes, deer don’t like those prickly squash plants, so it could act as a sort of fence for the rest.
I sorted through our transplants while hardening them off, and we have a lot of nice, strong melons. Between those and the winter squash, and the two types of gourds that successfully germinated, we might not actually have room for it all on the squash tunnel. So I’m thinking we can plant as much as we can fit of each type at the squash tunnel, then whatever is left over can be planted in other areas. Without trellising, these should spread out quite a bit over the ground, and we’ll be able to give them lots of space, and we would just need to haul soil over to make hills, rather than beds. This would allow us to compare how well they do, between left to grow on the ground, or up a trellis.
What I might end up doing is getting the Montana Morado corn done, first. They are doing very well, but will start outgrowing their cups soon. Since the toilet paper tube pots didn’t work out, I’m really hoping they won’t suffer from transplant shock too badly. In zone 3 gardening groups. I’ve read from people who warn against transplanting corn completely, because they don’t handle it well, to people who say they do it all the time, every year, and have never had issues. I suspect type of corn can make a difference, and I seem to be the first person in all of these groups to try and grow purple corn in our zone!
The Re-Farmer 