First, the cuteness!

Decimus has taken to wandering around and exploring the house, which gave me the opportunity last night, to get a good look at her babies. Three of them still have their eyes closed. The bitties are getting big enough that, after squirming their way out of the cat cave, they can squirm their way back in again, all on their own!

I was going to my mother’s this afternoon, so I was outside early to get some work done in the garden. I hoped to be out there before it got too warm, but we were above 20C/68F in almost no time at all. Ah, well. At least I got some progress!

We had very few melons germinate. Of the four types we tried (all short season varieties), there were no watermelon, only two Sarah’s Choice, three Pixie and four Halona. I had intended to transplant them into the new trellis beds, but the seedlings really needed to get into the ground.

So I made do.

I used the kiddie pool that has come in so handy over the past few years! We definitely need to get another one before the end of the growing season.

I punched some holes for drainage, then put a layer of grass clippings over the bottom. A couple of wheel barrow loads of soil was enough to fill it. The soil got a soaking, then a layer of grass clipping mulch, and another soaking.

Then I left it for the water to be absorbed and dealt with another problem. Overhanging tree branches! The row of trees my mother allowed to take up where she used to have a raspberry patch includes a bunch of Chinese elms. Around this spot, their branches were getting quite large and dense, and hanging down low enough that I kept getting my hat caught in them. I cut away quite a lot of the branches and some of the smaller trunks. The goal is to get rid of all of them, but that will wait until I can get out there with a chain saw. For now, I just needed to clear the area around our container garden area.

That done, I have the new bed one more soak, then got the transplants. The two Sarah’s Choice went into the middle, while the others were spaced around them. They’re a bit densely planted, so I wanted to make sure they could climb. I had picked up some more of those large plastic coated, metal stakes this spring, so I had enough to put six around the outside, plus one in the middle. I then used the broken canopy tent pieces that had previously been used to support the protective boards around the newly transplanted tomatoes, and some zip ties to attach horizontal pieces around the perimeter. Last of all, I added a couple of shorter plastic coated metal stakes across the middle, for the Sarah’s Choice melons to climb. If necessary, we can add another level of horizontal pieces higher up.

There is a risk that the plants on the outside will end up shading out the ones on the inside, but I hope this makeshift trellis will allow them to climb and still allow light through. When we grew the Pixie and Halona before, it was a drought year, and the greenery didn’t get very dense.

So those are finally in!

Once done, I left early enough to hit the post office before going to my mother’s. While at the store, I talked to the owner, and got the okay to bring our extra tomato and pepper transplants over tomorrow, as giveaways.

I’ve since come back from doing my evening rounds, giving the melons one more watering, to settle things in. In spite of the rain we had yesterday, I found the Crespo squash, the low raised beds, grow bags and the squash patch all needed watering! Some of the summer squash are coming up, but I think I will need to replant a few.

While transplanting the winter squash, I included some of the Jiffy pellets that did not germinate, just in case. Sure enough, a few of them have actually germinated, and the new seedlings are looking stronger that some of the transplants! The transplants should have gone into the ground earlier. There is one winter squash that has been lost, though, and from the slime off over the remains, I’d say it got eaten by slugs. We have a lot of frogs this year, but they’ve been hanging out in the low raised beds. We should set up some little frog shelters around the squash patch to encourage them to hang out and eat the snails!

I’m really happy with how the potatoes are doing. Even the Purple Peruvians, which were the last variety to emerge, are now showing flower buds. I even spotted a couple of Indigo Blue tomatoes forming!

The only problem I have is the cats! While watering the beds, a couple of them decided to lie in the ones I hadn’t got to, yet – right on top of the seedlings! They like to lie on the mulch, and don’t care if that has them lying across seedlings, too, the buggers! Some onions and turnips got a bit shmushed, but I think they’ll recover.

I will be quite happy to pass on all those leftover tomatoes. I’d hoped to get the rest of the Romas into the ground, but with all the delays that keep popping up, I don’t know that I’ll have anything built to plant them in fast enough. Once they’ve been passed on, I will be able to take more time to get it done right, and not have to rush. I’d still like to get it built in time to plant any really short season crops we’ve got, but at this point, I am willing to let a lot of the direct sowing we intended to do, slide for this year. I’m still debating whether to plant some pole beans with the Montana Morado corn. I keep waffling back and forth on that. We shall see.

The next few days will be modestly hot, so I hope to catch up on the outside work!

The Re-Farmer