Last year, we grew the Montana Morado corn, from Baker Creek, which I thought was maize morado, or Kulli, from Peru. They turned out to be a US hybrid.
There was certainly nothing to object to about the corn itself, but once I learned about maize morado, I just got it in me that I really, really want to grow Kulli corn, here in the middle of Canada.
After much searching, I found a source that I could order from: Mary’s Heirloom Seeds.
This image belongs to Mary’s Heirloom seeds.
While the company is based in Texas, the corn itself is from the Andes Highlands. From what I’ve been able to find out, the Highlands have two seasons; summer (dry) and winter (wet). The temperature swings are more moderate than what we have. It’s a mountainous region, filled with microclimates, so it’s hard to know how to compare to the zone system we use in Canada and the US. With how hot and dry our summers can get, it may actually do all right here. It requires 120 days to maturity, so I will be starting them indoors, as we did with the Montana Morado.
The seed packets have only 25 seeds in them, so I ordered four, since I wasn’t ordering anything else. Even so, the cost of shipping wasn’t much less than the cost of the seeds!
As with so many other things, the main issue will be protecting the corn from critters. If we can manage that, I feel we will be able to grow this successfully, here. This is a corn that can be eaten fresh while young as a sweet corn, dried for a flour corn, used as a dye, and of course, used to make chicha morado.
I may not have made my shopping trip to the city today, but that didn’t stop me from shopping!
I have already placed my first seed order for next year’s garden from Vesey’s. That order is in, including a correction. We’ve got a monthly seed budget right now, so we will continue to place orders throughout the winter, for seeds, seedlings, roots and tubers.
For this past year’s garden, we ordered seeds from two places; Vesey’s, which is where we had ordered seeds for the previous year’s garden from, and Baker Creek; Rare Seeds. We were quite happy with both places. This year, I plan to order from other Canadian sources I found, but we still have items we wanted to get from Baker Creek.
This is the order I placed with them last night. All photos belong to Baker Creek.
I had already ordered onions, but did not have a red onion, yet. This is the Red of Florence onion; a long day onion (important when growing onions as far north as we are) that is a rare Italian variety, noted for its “balanced” flavour – whatever that means!
I like its shape, and think it would be a lot easier to cut!
The description says it can be planted in the fall or spring, but I doubt that applies to our zone!
This is the Black Nebula carrot, described as the darkest carrot they’ve ever seen, and it’s supposed to be exceptionally healthy. We already have a couple of other varieties of carrot we can plant, but I enjoy trying new types, and purple things did well for us in our 2021 garden. Plus, I consider carrots a staple food, so the more, the better!
As long as we can keep those groundhogs out!
Here we’re into something rather different – hulless seed pumpkins! I’ve ordered three different varieties, including two from Baker Creek. I really like pumpkin seeds, but hulled pumpkin seeds at the store is pretty expensive, so when I discovered there are hulless varieties, some of which can be eaten straight out of the fruit, I just had to give them a try!
I plan to try growing only a couple of each variety, so we can see which one we like best.
This past year, we got the Giant Rattle bread seed poppy, which we will be growing again from seed we’ve saved. Next year, we will find a spot for these Hungarian Blue, where they can self sow and be treated as a perennial.
Well, I couldn’t resist! Though we still have seeds, when I saw the Crespo squash was back in stock, I ordered a fresh packet. I was really impressed with how vigorously these grew, and how well they recovered after being repeatedly damaged by deer and groundhogs. If there had been enough growing season left after that, I’ve no doubt we would have had quite a few squash. We will try these again, and take precautions from the start, to ensure the critters don’t get to them!
That is it for our Baker Creek order this time. While I have loads of others in my wish list. Since we are ordering from several other places this year, and I am trying to focus on Canadian sources as much as possible, I don’t expect to be making another order from here.
We have a new visitor to the feeding station, today!
I haven’t seen grouse in the yard in quite a while, and whenever we did, they tended to be under some bushes or trees. This is the first time we’ve seen one at the feeding station!
Such a pretty bird, all puffed up to stay warm.
I think there was too much movement in the window, as it started to move away, but it did come back, and actually stayed at the feeding station for quite a long time.
I haven’t done my Critter of the Day pictures in ages. Usually, once we’re spending more time indoors, I start them up again, but they take quite a bit of time. I do very little post processing – maybe some cropping, or fixing the lighting, but that’s it. The main thing is to resize them so they don’t take up so much storage space on my WordPress account. Even after upgrading our account, I post so many photos, it adds up.
So I don’t think I’ll be doing daily critters, but I will post some every now and then. I recently uploaded the files from the DSLR in the living room, and this one made me smile. I just had to share!
I can’t help it. I just love it when we catch tongue blehps!!! They always make me smile. :-)
In the last little while, the deer have started to show up at the feeding station during daylight hours almost every day, and the yards a crisscrossed with their tracks. Though we’re just seeing a few at a time, there are definitely a LOT more that we’re not seeing!
So pretty. :-)
At least they are, now, when there is no garden for them to get into! :-D
It’s been difficult to get a really good picture of the new addition to our outside cats, but my daughter managed to get one with the DSLR outside our living room window a while back.
The Distinguished Guest is such a beauty! Here, just looks like she’s all black, but she has a white blaze on her chest, making her more like a tuxedo.
She is still with us, though I haven’t seen her yet, today. In fact, I haven’t seen any of the outside cats. I had a rough night last night, so my husband was sweet enough to take care of the critter feeding this morning. I’m even postponing the city shopping trip to tomorrow. Hopefully, I’ll actually get some sleep tonight. We’ve brought the storage bins of Christmas decorations up, and the inside cats are having a blast exploring the new smalls and knocking things over.
One thing about feeding so many yard cats. Especially in the winter.
Sometimes, they make you feel really, really loved and appreciated!
In between trying to chomp my fingers. :-D
Butterscotch in particular likes to strrreeetttcchhh out for pets. Or stand in her back legs.
She’s so sweet, when she’s not vicious and mean! :-D
I had a small addition to my morning rounds, and that was to check on the van. I have a habit of leaving really, really early for things, and yesterday was one of those days that got me into that habit. I was just about to leave for my course, and the van wouldn’t start.
The battery was dead.
I don’t know why. It was working fine on Friday.
Well, my husband was a sweetheart and put it on the charger while I too my mother’s car to my course.
Having to pay expenses for two vehicles may be hard on the budget. Especially when one of those vehicles isn’t really mine, but out here, having a “spare” is pretty necessary. It’s not like we could just hop on a bus or take a taxi or something!
This morning, I made sure to start the van and check the battery level, and it was just fine.
Which is great, but it’s still a mystery that the battery would suddenly die like that.
Depending on how things go, I’ll be making our city shopping trip in the next day or two. We’re actually supposed go above freezing again, in a couple of days. It’ll be messy, but I prefer that to making these trips during a deep freeze.
Which, thankfully, is not on the horizon. The long range forecast are showing December will start to get colder at about the middle of the month, but even then, it’ll still be pretty mild for this time of year.
Still holding out hope that The Farmer’s Almanac will the the accurate one in predicting a mild wet winter for our area, and not the other long range forecasts I saw that predicted another severely cold winter. Either way, though, we plan to be prepared!
Including prepared to keep the outside cats warm and well fed. <3
Not even a glorious sunrise quite makes up for having to be heading out so early, on icy roads.
But it was worth it.
I just spent the day at one of the nearby towns, and am proud to say that I have officially passed my non-restricted firearms safety course; an early Christmas present from my husband!
I just have to mail in the form to get my license, which might take a few weeks, or a few months, to get processed and mailed to me.
Once I get that, I can legally buy any hunting-type long rifle or shotgun.
Now, I learned how to shoot as a child, and a lot of the rules we have now didn’t exist back then. There wasn’t much I had to “unlearn”, though. With the written test, I only got one answer wrong, and it was a silly one. It was a true/false shotgun question, and I am only slightly more familiar with them than I am with a muzzle loader! :-D I’ll be getting a prize in the mail, though!
The practical part of the test had me handling weapon types I’d only ever seen in movies until today. Thankfully, being unfamiliar with a weapon did not generally result in lost points.
One thing I found interesting, particularly as someone who lives in the boonies; as long as we meet some pretty basic, common sense safety precautions, we’re pretty much wild west out here. Especially if there is a concern about wild animals in the area. While the list of restricted weapons and ammunition is longer here in Canada, and pretty stupid (some are banned basically because they look scary, and there’s even an air rifle that reaches only 350fps that’s banned. My crossbow does over 400fps!), thanks to the gun registry being rightfully thrown out, as long as we’ve got our license and keep it up to date, there are not a lot of restrictions.
Granted, we don’t have the budget to actually buy a rifle any time soon, but once I get the license, at least it will be an option. We also want the girls to take the course, too, though for the cost, it would be just one at a time. Which is fine. As long as I’m not the only one in the household with the license.
I am quite happy. It was worth it, and allows us to eventually get one more type of tool needed for living out here.
On a completely different note, today is the first Sunday of Advent, and while I was gone, the girls were kind enough to bring the bins of Christmas stuff up from the basement. Time to start some cat-proof decorating! :-D
Oh, and on another completely different note, and one that I was actually kind of expecting.
I got an email from our vandal’s lawyer, rather late on Friday, wanting to talk to me on the phone. Sure enough, our vandal did NOT agree to the conditions, so we do not have our Peace Bond against him. His lawyer will call me on Monday (tomorrow) to tell me what happened, and to talk next steps. I expect he will suggest mediation, which is where our vandal and I sit down with a third party, who tries to get us to work something out. Which I would be willing to do, if we were dealing with someone rational, but we’re dealing with someone who can’t accept responsibility for his actions, things everything is everyone else’s fault, and believes he’s entitled not only to what’s on the farm, but to have complete access to everything here, any time he wishes, as if we weren’t living here – except that I’m supposed to invite him in for tea after he verbally abuses me and vandalizes stuff. So I don’t see that mediation would be of any use. Which would mean going to trial, and the earliest court dates that are being booked are a year from now.
Well, we’ll see what happens when I talk to the lawyer on Monday.
*sigh*
At least as long as this drags through the courts, our vandal is behaving and leaving us alone, even if he does sometimes still phone my mother and leave nasty messages about how horrible we are. Ah, well. It is what it is. We just go along the best we can, while this drags on!
I don’t tend to post pictures of the inside cats very often.
To be honest, it’s only partly because of how hard it is to get them sitting still long enough for a photo. It’s also partly because I’m a terrible housekeeper and the backgrounds are always a disaster! LOL
Every now and then, though…
… I can get some wonderful shots.
This old plant stand has become a favourite spot for the cats to sit and watch the activity at the feeding station outside.
Since we ordered SO many things for this year, and expanded how much space we were gardening in, I decided to go over groups of things in separate posts, in no particular order and spread over the next few days.
This is the last post in this series.
The utter and complete failures!
It was such a very difficult growing year this year. We had to deal with drought, heat waves, difficulty watering things due to the beds being so far flung, deer, groundhogs and a plague of grasshoppers.
Yet, we still managed to harvest food from our garden, and with some, we even had enough to freeze and pickle.
There were some things, however, that just didn’t work.
One of these was the Baby Pam Pumpkin.
I have no photos, because there was nothing to take photos of!
When we started these indoors, we only planted a few seeds, not the entire package.
They did not germinate. At all.
I highly doubt there was something wrong with the seeds. Veseys seeds have always been of very high quality. We had a number of issues with starting things indoors, and those were more likely the reason.
These little pumpkins were chosen for their short growing season, small size and their reputed excellent flavour. I think I’d be willing to try them again, when we start our other squash indoors. We already have so many others, though, it might be something we will try again further in the future.
Another fail was the Strawberry Spinach. These were broadcast in a new bed we made, near where the asparagus crowns were later trenched. They did seem to sprout, and then they disappeared.
Assuming the sprouts we saw were even Strawberry Spinach!
I want to try these again. This spot was chosen because they are known to self seed easily, and this could be a permanent spot for them. We’ve grown them before in a balcony garden, years ago, so I know we like them. I plan to get more seeds for this coming year. Once this bed was finally abandoned, it got very weedy, so in the spring, it will need a lot of clean up of as many roots as we can. It’s already got new garden soil on it, but a bit more won’t hurt. The seeds are so fine, a mulch might be too much for them, but perhaps if we cover them with the clear plastic we have, first, then with netting until the start getting big. Maybe that will work?
We shall see.
Then there was the Illinois Everbearing Mulberry.
We took a chance on this one. It was a zone 4 plant, but with a good microclimate and winter protection, I thought we could make it work. I remember my mother being able to grow things I later learned were zone 5, quite successfully, so I knew it was possible.
It started out so well, too! We had a wonderfully warm May, and Veseys sent it out when it was the right time of year for transplanting in our zone. Once transplanted, it took well and soon sprouted healthy leaves.
Then we got hit with that one really cold night in late May.
Our last frost date is June 2. Typically, that means hitting temperatures at or just below freezing. Maybe as low as -2C/28F or so.
If I remember correctly, we hit -8C/18F.
It was devastating.
With the month having been so warm, we had things blooming all over. Most of the lilacs, the crab apples, chokecherries and Saskatoons were all blooming. Even the highbush cranberry I uncovered in the spruce grove the year before had flowers.
That was it for the lilacs blooming, and we got no fruit. Even the grape vines, which hadn’t even started budding yet, were set back.
Unfortunately, we had completely forgotten about the mulberry tree. If we had remembered, we could have done something to protect it from the cold, but we didn’t. I’d read that, when hit with cold, mulberries can drop all their leaves, but then grow them back and recover. I held out hope for months, even continuing to water it during the drought. I even thought there might be a possibility that it would make a come back next spring.
All possibility of a recovery ended just a little while ago, when I discovered that even the remaining stem was gone, having been eaten by deer.
That poor little tree.
Since then, I have found a nursery that has a cold hardy, white mulberry available. It was an accidental discovery on their land, and that parent tree has survived temperatures of -40C/-40F. It’s a lot more expensive then mulberries at other nurseries, but no other place has any this cold hardy.
We plan to order one, as soon as we can squeeze it out of the budget. Mulberries are known for producing a LOT of berries; enough for our own uses and what we can’t reach, the birds can enjoy. Another reason I want to get a mulberry tree is because of my mother. She shared stories with me of a mulberry tree they had in Poland when she was a child. A huge tree, bigger than their barn. When I found out that mulberry trees were available to grow in Canada, I just had to give it a try.
Hopefully, the next one we get will survive!
Another failure for us was the Chinese Pink celery, though that is entirely my fault. I didn’t pay enough attention to the instructions. It wasn’t until we were starting other things indoors that I realized these should have been started in January or February, not April!
We did actually get seedlings, and I even transplanted one little bunch, but nothing came of it.
I am still very curious about these and would love to try them again.
Maybe not right away, though.
Ah, the radishes.
I ordered a couple of varieties for my younger daughter. Daikon and Watermelon. These were interplanted with the corn. The Daikon radish in particular is known to help break up hard soil, which would have been quite beneficial in that area.
It was very exciting when they started to germinate! We were seeing them all over.
Then they disappeared without a trace.
A while later, there was some late germination, but those disappeared, too.
I have no idea what happened to them. We weren’t having problems with insects at the time. Birds, maybe? I just don’t know.
It was quite disappointing.
Then, later on, I decided to try again, this time with seeds I picked up at the grocery store.
Oh, I completely forgot about the chard!
It was not a failure. At least not the Bright Lights chard. As a fall planting, they grew very well, but we didn’t eat a lot of them. They weren’t a big hit with the family, and we didn’t really know what to do with them. They sure handled the frosts well! The second variety was a fail. Only two plants survived the grasshoppers. Barely.
As for the radishes, they got decimated by the grasshoppers. In the end, all we got was this.
Two French Breakfast radishes, which were left to grow because I was after pods, not roots.
We got neither.
I do plan to try radishes again, but very different ones. I’ve found a source for tillage radishes – they can grow many feet long, and are used as more as a cover crop, because they do such a great job of “tilling” the soil, and are left to decompose, further amending it. They can also be used as a forage crop, so planting them away from the house could be useful in luring the deer away. I’m also looking at picking up some sugar beets to try. They also help break up the soil, can also serve as a forage crop – or we can actually try making our own sugar from them. Our province used to be a major producer of sugar from sugar beets for many years. I figure it’s worth a try, at some point.
We have a couple more complete failures here. The Early Purple Vienna kohlrabi, and the Russian Red Kale.
These were both free seeds from Baker Creek. I really like kohlrabi and tried planting White Vienna the year before. Of all the seeds I’d planted, only 4 survived, and only 2 got large, but none ever got a chance to form their bulbs. The final killer was flea beetles.
This year, we didn’t even get that.
As cool weather crops, both got planted the earliest, but as far as I can tell, none germinated. I even tried planting kohlrabi again, as a fall crop when the radishes, lettuce and chard were planted.
Nothing.
Now, I don’t mind the kale not working. I’m not a big fan of kale, though I did enjoy kale chips that we’ve made in the past. I’m willing to try different types and maybe find that I do like them, after all.
Kohlrabi, on the other hand, is something I really enjoy, but only buy rarely as a treat. I’d love to be able to grow my own. The problem is, I don’t know why they failed this year. I can’t even be sure if they germinated, or if something ate all the seeds. Or maybe they did germinate, and something ate all the sprouts?
I have no idea.
But I really, really want to grow kohlrabi!
I think, if I have the space for it, I will try starting some indoors. Maybe transplants will survive!
Final analysis:
In spite of the complete failures, and all the other challenges we had in the garden this past year, I’m still pretty happy with it all. I heard from so many others that lost their gardens entirely, so we have much to be thankful for.
Plus, all those challenges now, means we have a better idea of what we can do in the future, whether its by focusing on hügelkultur beds and mulching as a way to conserve water during drought conditions, to knowing what critters we need to protect our food from (the groundhogs were an unexpected problem!), and so on. We’ve learned a great deal.
Which means that even the failures are really successes, in the end.
Since we ordered SO many things for this year, and expanded how much space we were gardening in, I decided to go over groups of things in separate posts, in no particular order and spread over the next few days.
There were a few things we planted this year that we won’t know how they will do until next year, at the earliest!
The first of these are the wildflower mixes.
Now, what we should have done, under better circumstances, was clear out our chosen locations of all roots in the fall, loosen the soil, then plant the seeds in the spring.
Ha!
No.
We just don’t have the equipment for that. Especially for the areas we would be planting them.
This is one such area.
Can you imagine going over this with a tiller, then clearing out all those roots, as recommended? Especially since there are a lot of tree roots in here; I had to go over the area and cut them away before I could mow it.
This is outside the property, and technically not our responsibility to keep clear, but my family has kept it from getting overgrown for as long as I can remember. Inside the fence from here is where we had our corn and sunflower blocks this past summer.
This is where the package of Western Mix seeds went. They didn’t get broadcast until there was no possibility of early germination. Normally, that would probably have been around mid September, but it ended up being at the start of November! I put the seeds in an old bulk-size spice shaker with some soil, gave it a shake to make sure they were well mixed in with the soil, and scattered it not far from where we had just installed the new sign. In the photo, that would be basically right where I was standing to take it. I didn’t want to spread the seeds too close to the fence line, so we wouldn’t be walking on flowers while tending to the fence.
In theory, when the snow melts in the spring, they will germinate and this area will have wildflowers growing in it. The purpose is to attract pollinators, and to make it so we no longer need to mow here at all. The ultimate goal is for almost this entire area, all the way to the driveway, to be filled with native wildflowers.
We shall see how it works, some time in the spring!
This is where the alternative lawn mix went. The area was raked clear of leaves, raked again to loosen the soil (it’s almost bare soil in between the rows of trees, with some crab grass trying to grow in it), the seeds scattered the same way I did with the Wildflower mix, then the leaves were returned as a mulch.
As with the other seeds, I expected to do this in the middle of September, not the beginning of November.
Hopefully, when the snow melts and the soil warms up, we’ll have all sorts of things growing here. If it works out, we’ll get more of these seeds and use them in other treed areas that are difficult to maintain, but we don’t want to leave to become overgrown again.
Then there are my Christmas presents from my husband.
Fungi!
More specifically, spores for morels and giant puffballs.
Morel mushrooms are native to the area, but I have never seen any in the home quarter. I remember finding them in the unoccupied quarter that is rented out for pasture, even though it’s probably at least half trees, plus a pond and marshy area. It’s highly unlikely we’ll have a chance to go morel hunting out there, so being able to inoculate an area inside our yard is definitely preferable! This location was chosen because the instructions recommended several different types of trees to spread the spores under, but the only one that grows here is elm. After checking out a number of videos on how to grow morels, I built this bed for it, with carboard to keep the crab grass out, and inoculated layers of wood shavings and hardwood pellets.
The spores for the giant puffballs needed a couple of days in water with molasses first. The instructions said to pour the liquid over grass, and I chose this area between the rows of elms, because it’s not easy to mow or keep clear.
Puffball mushrooms are also native to our area, though I’ve never seen the giant varieties. These guys are supposed to get so big, you can cut them into steaks.
The thing with these is, we will have no idea if it worked, until something pops up, and that could potentially take years!
At least they didn’t cost much when my husband ordered them on Amazon. Over the years, we plant to get spores from other types of edible mushrooms to inoculate trees and logs. Recently, I went over the wish list I’d made of different mushroom types on Amazon, and the prices are almost 10 times what they were before! I even tried comparing like-for-like by finding the same Morel spores my husband had ordered. The price increase was really shocking!
There are other places to get mushroom spores, however, and I’d rather not order from Amazon, anyhow. Whether or not these work out, I still want to get other types of mushroom spores over the years to try. Types that are either hard to find in grocery stores, or that are just way too expensive to be worth buying.
A very different way to grow food, but a fun one to try!
