The first photo was taken after I finished weeding, removing more soil, then leveling it off. There’s a short video next.
The remaining photos are of the stakes I prepared, to hold the deadwood walls in place.
I decided on doing half the stakes at about 24 inches. Closer to 23, really. I’m not too concerned about the length, since I’ll be driving them into the ground and can more or less level them just by hamming them in until the match. The hoops or whatever I decide on to support protective covers will be attached to these stakes. The other half, I went with about 18 inches. After cutting them to length, I used my handy dandy draw knife and a vice to create points. Then they all got de-barked.
I had gathered the materials for these in the fall, and they’ve been frozen in the garage ever since. Now that it’s warmer, they are very green, and some of them even have sap trying to run! It did make it easier to remove the bark, but these are really damp.
Because they are so damp, the ideal thing would have been to char them all over a fire. This would dry and harden the wood, and make them less prone to rotting.
It was too windy to get a fire going in the fire pit, though. Tomorrow is supposed to be even windier. So, I have them all laid out on the bench to dry overnight.
You’ll notice in the last picture there is a single piece of wood that’s different. I needed 18 stakes in each length, and I ran out of gathered materials while doing the shorter length. I was one short. I had a scrap piece of wood from another project that was about 19″ long, so I will be using that.
I will need to gather the materials to get the same number of stakes for the front wall, plus the ends.
Not today.
Having done as much as I could for the raised bed today, I got a few other things done. I’ve been watering the old kitchen and East yard beds, plus all the strawberries in the chimney blocks, and will be trying to do that daily, for now. Despite the fact that we have open water in low lying areas, the soil surface is incredibly dry. I should be watering in the main garden area, too, but I haven’t got enough hoses set up, yet.
After watering, I set the hose to start filling the rain barrel, so I can use a watering can and ambient temperature water, instead of ice cold well water. There was just a few inches of water in the rain barrel, and we won’t be getting any real rain for quite some time.
While that was filling, I finally got the tarp off the portable greenhouse, and removed the torn up original cover.
I had left the pots the luffa had been growing in, and discovered that they’ve been used as litter boxes.
*sigh*
The frame, despite being knocked half over and nearly told apart in one particularly bad wind store, is completely undamaged. It just doesn’t have a cover any more. If we’re going to cover it again, it has to be done in a way that can handle the weight of cats jumping on top of the roof.
Until then, I might end up moving the whole thing to a different location to get it out of the way, and to clean up under it.
The giant tarp that was covering it for the winter is now laid out and pinned to the ground. When I have someone to help me, or the wind dies down, I’ll fold it up and put it away properly.
That’s it. Garden progress for the day. Most of it was spent cutting, sharpening and debarking the stakes.
Tomorrow, Saturday, the dump is open for longer hours, so I plan to do that in the late morning, then I’m planning to visit my mother in the afternoon. The weekend is supposed to be cooler, and then things are supposed to warm up again on Monday, which is when I’m heading into the city for my appointment at the sports injury clinic. Somewhere in between that, I’ll need to go into the spruce grove and harvest more materials for this garden bed’s walls. I might have to go further afield to find enough material strong enough and relatively straight enough for the stakes.
Hopefully, it’ll be done soon, and I can focus on the remaining beds that need to be prepared for planting.
Today was a much nicer day, and I finally got some work done outside.
Today, I decided to work on the bed by the chain link fence. Mostly, because I want to use the bricks that are lining it for something else. Once we figure out where the chicken coop is going to go, I want to put the bricks under the coop frame, so that there is no contact between the wood and the ground.
The first image in the slide show above is the “before” picture. I’ve started nothing at this point.
Before I moved the bricks out, I went through the pile of maple lengths I gathered in the fall and cut a couple pieces to roughly 2 feet in length, then put them in the vice and used the draw knife to create points at one end, before debarking them. I set one at each end, inside the row of bricks. They aren’t all the way to the ends, though. The posts for the chain link fence are set in concrete, so I worked out how far the concrete extended, first, and used that to determine where to pound in the stakes. When the deadwood walls are built, the stakes will line up, front and back, so they can be used to support hoops or whatever I decide on to support future covers for this bed. Once the two stakes were pounded in, I removed the bricks and took them to where I am thinking the coop is going to go.
The next job was to remove the bulk of the weeds in the bed. It’s mostly crab grass, but there were also dandelions and – or course – elm tree roots.
*sigh*
I also found a bunch of shallots and a couple of onions! I planted shallots and onions along the edge of this bed for several years, but they’ve never been able to mature. Either that cats rolled on them, or the elm seeds smothered them. Yet they still survive!
I transplanted them into the winter sown cabbage bed.
I was able to get 2/3rds of the bed cleared before my body started to give out. I did remove a couple of wheel barrow loads of soil onto a tarp, and will remove more as I finish weeding the bed. This will make it easier to reach the back of the bed. There are currently boards all along the bottom of the chain link, to keep the soil from falling through. I’ll be adding pairs of stakes on either side of the boards, then adding deadwood on top of the boards to make a higher back wall. Once that’s done, I’ll do the front and ends to match the back in height, before returning the soil. I still have some sulphur granules, so I will probably mix some into the soil before returning it, to try and increase the acidity.
Once it is done, I need to decide on how I want to add supports across the bed. I could use hoops, but I’ve only got so many of those. I could also add wood cross pieces at the stakes, permanently attached, but do I want something permanent? Even if it’s likely to hold the weight of cats better than hoops? Whatever I use will be supporting either netting or plastic or frost protection, depending on the time of year and what ends up grown in here. I need to protect the bed from being smothered by elm seeds, to keep the cats from getting under any cover, hold the weight of cats on top of any cover without collapsing, and be able to protect from deer.
Tomorrow is supposed to be even warmer than today. After that, it’s supposed to cool down for a couple more days, but it should still be nice enough to get work done outside. I hope to get it mostly done tomorrow, but I know I will need to gather more materials for the dead wood walls before I can finish it completely.
Once this is done, I’ve got just a few other beds that need to be cleaned up and prepared for planting, that didn’t get done in the fall.
Then I need to pull back the black tarp/landscape cloth/whatever it is, that’s over where we had winter squash a few years back and prepare it for the corn I will be planting there, this year. It’s been laying there for a few years, now, so any weeds and crab grass under it should finally be dead!
Lots of work to do, and not a lot of time to do it. I can’t believe we’re already a week into May. I can hardly believe we’re into May at all!
Not in the photo is Adam, who very enthusiastically took pets. No sign of Slick today, anywhere.
My goal for today was to start the 4-6 weeks before last frost date seeds. After going through them, I decided on some herbs, caraway, chicory and chamomile, some French Double Dwarf marigolds, some Early White Vienna kohlrabi I picked up, just in case the winter down bed doesn’t make it, and Bi-Colour Pear gourds.
I pre-moistened a bag of seed starting mix with hot water and had the heater going. That basement is way too cold for this, but it’s our only option this year. The six new seed snails got their own metal tray. The Bi-colour Pear gourds have fairly small seeds, so I went ahead and did a snail roll; for the squash, etc. with larger seeds, I will go back to using the planting trays.
All the rolls got topped with vermiculite after the seeds were sown and covered with soil, except the chamomile. Those seeds are so tiny, they got covered with vermiculate only.
Speaking of which…
My brother and SIL came out today to take care of some things and I was able to see them shortly before they left. They were out by the barn as we were talking and the pile with trees growing out of it came up. The trees are self seeded and need to go, as does the pile. I’d been told it was some sort of insulation under there.
My brother informed me that no, it is vermiculite.
We’re talking a truck load, and it’s been sitting there for at least 20 years. It used to be covered in taps and plastic, and I can still see some shreds of that, but over the years a thick layer of moss has grown over it, dead branches had been tossed on top and, along with the self seeded maples, there are a bunch of self seeded raspberry bushes growing on one side.
When my brother gets his old tractor with the front end loader going, he will help me move that pile out. It’s in the way, and I don’t want trees growing in this location; they would eventually block access to the barn. Now that I know it’s vermiculite in that pile, I might actually be able to use it in the garden!
If it’s still good. It’s not exactly “clean” anymore. Some patches got exposed and they’re looking pretty… moldy? We’ll see when the time comes.
Anyhow…
Once the new seeds were planted, the tray was set aside, and I removed the tray with the celery snail rolls in it so I could reach it. I got another metal tray out for the next rolls.
I got rid of the dead luffa entirely. Poor thing.
I decided to “pot up” the Russian Tarragon and Summer Savory seedlings into one snail roll. The tarragon looks pretty good, but I don’t think the summer savory is going to make it. We’ll see.
For this is part, I used what I had left in my bucket of sifted potting soil, which was still damp from when we used it last. The bucket had been sitting on the concrete floor, and the damp potting soil was COLD. I’m really hoping that doesn’t cause too much shock for the seedlings. I used it to “pot up” the four varieties of tomatoes by unrolling them, adding the potting soil, then rolling them back up again. I also potted up… I think it was the Crackerjack marigolds, but I’m suddenly drawing a blank on that.
The rest did not get potted up, partly because I was almost out of potting soil. The potted up rolls are thicker now, so everything is now on three trays, with the two big rolls of celery in a tray to themselves now. The celery is really big! They are a short season variety, and I probably started them too early for this specific variety.
Once the three trays were set back up on the shelf under the shop light, I returned the plant lights on one side, then set up the heat mat on the work table, in front of the shelf, where the second plant lights can reach. At least the new seed rolls will be a bit warm on the mat.
So that is finally done.
I didn’t try to get much done outside today; I’m very tired and hurting. It was a warmer day – our high is 18C/64F – though we also had high winds. We even got a smattering of rain.
Unfortunately, we’re dropping down to a low of 2C/36F overnight, and that’s our high for tomorrow. Over the next few days, the highs and lows were be just over or just under freezing. Even when we start warming up by next weekend, those overnight lows are going to stay around the freezing mark. We aren’t expected to get warmer until the third week of May, and the long range forecast shows us still expecting lows below freezing at the beginning of June.
Right around our old last frost day, which is what I’m going by, rather than the updated average.
Tomorrow, I finally have my doctor’s appointment – the one I had to cancel twice because of the truck issues. I won’t be losing much by being out, though, as it’s supposed to be not only cold, but very windy, too. Over the next while, I’ll need to focus on cleaning up and preparing a few more garden beds, including the one at the chain link fence that is going to be redone completely again.
I have a strong suspicion our winter sown beds aren’t going to make it this year. There were a few things where seedlings had already emerged when I removed the mulch, but I can’t see them anymore. Not even in the bed I was able to cover with the 6mm plastic. I hope I’m wrong, but these are all things I can direct sow before the last frost date. I’ve even reordered a few things, so I can replant the same varieties in the same places, if they don’t work out. The soil surface is all so dry – and yes, I’ve been watering what I could. I’ve now got hoses set up at both the front and back taps, though I need to make sure the water is shut off at the house and the hoses are empty, so there’s nothing to freeze in them overnight.
Hopefully, even though it’s going to be pretty chilly for the next few days, I’ll be able to get some progress on the garden beds that need preparing.
Meanwhile, we’ll see what the doctor has to say tomorrow about the issues I’ve been having.
Normally, I would have gone into the city today for our first stock up shop. I’d forgotten what day it was when I arranged for someone from the hospital the TCU my mother is in to call me.
No one called.
*sigh*
I headed out to work on the chicken coop in the early afternoon. I had decided last night on how I would modify the coop to include roosts in front of the nesting boxes, if I could find the materials for it.
I did.
After taking some measurements (it was very awkward to reach where I needed to measure!), I dug around the scrap but useable lumber bits in the garage my brother gave me and found a 2×4 that was long enough. I cut it to the length I needed for the roosts with my miter saw, but was stuck trying to figure out how to cut it in half length wise. A hand saw would just take too long, and the old table saw we have stored in the sun room would have been too much of a pain to get out and use for just one cut. In the end, I got my jig saw out of winter storage and used that.
The down side is that I got a wonky cut out of it. When it came near the end, I flipped the board and restarted at the uncut end. Of course, it went wonky and I ended up with a jaggy bit where the cuts met. I ended up taking the pieces to the vice in the other side of the garage and smoothed the roughest parts with my draw knife. Then they got a sanding, just with some course sand paper, so the pieces were smooth on all sides, and the edges were slightly rounded. Should be much nicer on chicken feet!
While getting the jigsaw out of storage in the basement, I looked through the scrap we had there and found a leftover piece of wood that was the right width to use as uprights to support the roosts. I measured off and cut two 12″ pieces, then took everything to the coop to see how they fit. I found I needed to trim a bit on the cross pieces, then remembered that I needed two more upright supports. The remaining piece of wood was just shy of 2′ long, so I ended up cutting it in half and getting two pieces just barely over 11 inches long.
I also had a package of right angle brackets and used those to attach the uprights to the cross piece, though I did have to trim just a touch off the cross pieces for them to fit. Unfortunately, the angle brackets I had are dollar store cheepies, and the screws just did not want to bite! It almost took longer to screw on the angle brackets than it did to cut the wood to size!
I got them done, though, and have set them up inside the coop, in front of the nesting boxes.
I had to use a little household step ladder to be able to reach in and set one end in place, from above. Ideally, these should have been installed when before the end walls were attached, but I hadn’t figured out how to add the roosts inside, yet.
You can see the new roosts in the second and third photos of the slideshow above. At this point, I had to stop. The uprights need to be secured to the walls. Otherwise, they’ll just fall loose while the coop is being worked on and moved around. I’ll have to screw them in place from the outside.
After going through my collection of screws, I realized I didn’t have anything the right size. I will be going into the city tomorrow for the stock up trip I normally would have done today, and one of my stops is Canadian Tire for litter pellets, so I can pick up the right screws while I am there.
Which means there will be no progress at all on the coop tomorrow, nor probably the day after, as that is when I would be going into the city again for the Costco shopping. My daughter will probably be coming with me, so she won’t be working on it for me, either.
Thankfully, we don’t actually need it for quite some time, and by the time we can get back at it, the weather should be warming up again.
As I was putting everything away, I spotted these adorable ones.
They really love that pile of straw mulch I’d moved under the mock orange bush!
When doing the evening cat feed, I saw Slick. She didn’t show up this morning, so I was glad to see her. As I put food on the cat house roof, her favourite place to eat, she actually came over, purring, and wanting pets! Which I stopped to do, and made a point of trying to feel under her belly. I was hoping to feel and active nips she had, to get an idea of how many kittens she has.
I felt none at all.
Which is very strange. I’m sure I would have felt something if she were nursing kittens. Either she just has one and the active nip was somewhere I wasn’t able to touch her, or … did she lose her litter? It’s really hard to know at this point. After she ate, she suddenly got strange on me again and moved away as I came close, even if it was to pet a different cat. As she moved around, I tried to see her belly fur, and still, nothing.
I don’t know what to make of it.
As I continued my evening rounds, I checked on the fruit and berry bushes. It’s too early to see if they all survived the winter at this stage. One exception is the silver buffaloberry.
The branches are absolutely covered with these tiny little leaf buds!
I may have made a mistake in not covering the trellis bed, with the peas and carrots. Peas are cold tolerant, but newly uncovered sprouts may not have been strong enough to handle the overnight temperatures we’re having right now. Some of the other beds, the rows got re-covered in leaves by the wind, which I’ve left, as it may be protecting any seedlings from the overnight cold. It’s too early to tell, even with the beds that are under plastic.
The colder temperatures are good for the poppy seeds I sowed, though. This is nature doing the cold stratification for me.
Hopefully, the winter sown beds will make it. If not, I’ll have a lot of free space to plant into, when things finally warm up!
I might just pick up more packages of certain new seed varieties I was trying, just in case…
Today was a fair bit warmer than yesterday and sunny, making up somewhat for the wind. After losing a day of work in the yard and garden yesterday, it was a perfect day to catch up. I managed to get a lot more done than I expected. The pre-sown and fall transplanted beds are now cleaned up. I even got some direct sowing done!
The warmth and sunshine brought out some lovely colour, too.
The snow crocus buds have been showing for a few days now, and today they finally bloomed.
While working, I took some video and some photos, but forgot to get before and after photos of all the areas I worked on. I might put together a series of short videos on the progress, rather than one long one, later on. For now, I don’t even want to think about it. I’m just too tired.
This bed has a row of rainbow carrots down the middle, a variety of pea with a pink blush making a partial row near the trellis posts, and the other side and ends with onions meant for seed and deer deterrent – I hope.
I started with the carrots, since they were the hardest to reach. I think I might have seen a sprout or two, or maybe it was weed seedlings. I’m not sure. Once the mulch was off the row (the straw removed completely, the leave mulch below pushed aside), I covered it with boards to keep it damp. I’ll check it every morning and remove the boards when I see carrot seedlings.
Uncovering the peas was a pleasant surprise. There were quite a lot of seedlings!
I did the onions last and found quite a few, but also quite a few gabs. I might transplant some of my bunching onions that I started indoors to fill those, if nothing shows up.
Next, I uncovered where the flower bed was last year.
This took more than expected. I’d tossed the mulch on top of the Cosmos stems and meant to leave the root balls to compost in the soil. In the end, I had to dig it up a lot more because of a combination of creeping Charlie and elm tree roots.
*sigh*
When I collected seed from the memorial asters planted in the same bed, I did allow some seeds to drop, to see if they would survive and grow this year. I really hope some show up, because I still can’t find the packet I’d put the collected seeds into. Another packet is missing, too, but it’s the memorial asters that I really wanted to keep going. I’m quite unhappy that they’ve gone missing. There is only one area they could be, and there’s just no sign of them.
In the end, I did plant some collected nasturtium seeds at the sunny end, lightly covering that area with straw to hopefully discourage cats.
The next area I worked on was the asparagus and strawberry area.
I wasn’t going to uncover where the asparagus was planted, as they can grow through a mulch like this. There were only a few of the green asparagus (at the far end of the photo) that survived last year, but it’s entirely possible some of the purple asparagus might show up. Maybe. Who knows.
What I focused on was uncovering the Albion Everbearing strawberries I’d found and transplanted last year. As I found and uncovered surviving plants, I made sure to return some straw around them to keep the ground moist and the weeds at bay.
Next was the spot I’d found the surviving strawberry plants. I had done nothing in that bed last year; I just was never able to tend it. This year, I plan to grow the giant pod poppy variety I got seeds for this year.
The first thing I did was move the 4′ x 4′ wood frame out, setting it with the one near the compost pile that’s the same size. I plan to put them together to make that bed a touch deeper.
This bed took a lot more work. Which I did expect. I worked a fair bit outside where the frame had been, because there was so much creeping Charlie trying to work its way into the bed. There were, of course, plenty of crab grass rhizomes to clean up. Unfortunately, there was also quite a lot of tree roots in it, too. I couldn’t do much about them, as they were coming up from deeper than I was able to dig down to.
After this bed was done, I took a sustenance break, then came back with the poppy seeds, as well as the nasturtium seeds I planted in the other bed.
This bed had already started to dry out, and poppy seeds need to stay pretty much on the surface, so I filled a watering can and watered it first.
I look forward to when we can hook the hoses up again! It still gets too cold overnight right now.
There were fewer seeds in the packet than I expected, so they weren’t scattered as evenly as I would have liked. Then I used a rake to spread things evenly and just barely cover the seeds. This bed now needs to have some cold nights, including nights below freezing, for the seeds to germinate. The daytime highs for the next while are supposed to be similar today, or cooler, with a mix of sun and clouds. I’ll have to make sure to keep watering this bed, so the seeds don’t dry out and get baked.
The main garden area was now done. I just had a few more mulches to move, but I neglected to take still shots. I really should have for one of them!
The fenced off area with the tulips, apple tree and saffron crocuses were next, as well as the retaining wall blocks. Around the apple tree, I just moved the straw a bit further from the stem, where the weight of snow had pushed it closer to.
Then I uncovered the saffron crocuses and was wildly surprised. There were so many crocus leaves! They were surprisingly long and mostly blanched yellow from trying to grow through the mulch, with some of them having actual green in their leaves. I was very impressed by how many I saw. Last spring, I uncovered them and found a few, but they sort of disappeared among the weeds as the season progressed, and I thought they’d died off – until I found some spent and frost damaged blooms, way later than was expected!
Next, I took the straw off the retaining wall, taking it over to the tulip patch. I lightly scattered the straw over the tulips, though the wind made that a challenge. Later on, I took extra straw from over the septic tank and made an extra thick later in placed I was 100% sure had no tulips planted.
The retaining wall blocks have mint, chives, and tiny strawberry plants I’d transplanted from the wattle weave bed. Under the straw mulch was a leaf mulch that I removed carefully. There were a few green strawberry leaves, but it may be that most of them didn’t survive the winter. I also didn’t see any green in the mint, but that might show up later. The chives, of course, were coming up just fine as I cleared away the dead matter from last year. Chives survive anything! 😄
Last of all, I went to the chimney blocks along the chain link fence. Those got the last of the tiny strawberry transplants. The straw on those was set as mulch around the nearby black currant bush, which I think might be old enough to produce berries this year. It’s doing really well for something that started out as a little stick in a jug of water my mother snagged from a bush at the apartment building she used to live at and gave to me. These strawberries also had a leaf mulch under the straw, and that was used to mulch under the white lilacs on the other side of the path, to try and keep down the grass and weeds in there.
Once again, it seems like a mix of strawberries that survived and didn’t survive. For both areas, it will be a while before we know for sure what survived or not.
All in all, I am very happy with the progress and how the pre-sown beds look so far.
After this, there are other beds to prepare, but I think what I will need to do is get those boxes of chicken coop parts and assemble it, first. We’ll be getting chicks near the end of May and will set up a brooder in the house for their first 4-6 weeks, but I still want the coop assembled as soon as possible, and the ground is now dry enough.
That done, I have several beds that need to be cleaned up, plus two that need some building up of walls. The bed against the chain link fence will be a priority. It will be a bit narrower and a bit deeper when I am done, and I want to make sure it can be covered and protected from both the elm tree seeds that will drop in their billions, and the cats. The kittens got under the row netting I used last time and completely flattened anything that I’d pre-sown in that bed, except some Jebousek lettuce and a few sad onions that had survived the previous winter. I’ve already got some materials for the deadwood walls I plan to make, but I know I will need a lot more to finish the job. It’s always surprising just how much material is needed to make a wall! I’m not even going to try doing wattle weave; the materials we have are just too bent up and inflexible for that. We do have an order of basket will that will probably be shipped out in may. It will be a few years, but we will eventually be able have willow switched that will work much better than the poplar and maple suckers we’ve been using. Even the willow we do have is a different variety and, while it works better, the willow switches are not as straight as the basket willow will be.
Today has been pretty chilly, compared to yesterday, but it was still warm enough to get stuff done in the garden. I’ll actually put together another video on how that went. Probably not today, though.
Before I headed outside, I had a rather alarming start to the day, when I tried to log into my computer.
Yes, that’s cat hair all over my monitor’s screen.
I have never seen this particular warning before. I also couldn’t really fuss with it, either, as I needed to have my breakfast, then head outside to get the winter sown beds uncovered. So I got my husband up and told him what was going on and he said he would look at it while I was outside.
He had to go into my bios to reset it.
It turns out part of the problem is all the photos and video I’ve got.
This is a new computer, which I got after my previous desktop died an ignominious death. When looking for another desktop, I was surprised to find that pretty much everything only had 500 Gigs of storage space. When I got my previous one, they all had at least 1T. I’ve been transferring files to an external hard drive as I am able, but it was already mostly full with data rescued from my old computer. Still, I needed to free up space on my computer; it’s slow going to transfer over USB, so I’d do things like one month’s worth of photos and video at a time.
In spite of that, after I uploaded the photos and video I took for my last gardening video, the files took up enough space that the computer just couldn’t process my log in.
As we were talking about it when I came in for lunch, my husband mentioned that he had a 2T hard drive on his old computer; we’ve kept both our old computers for salvage purposes. He wasn’t sure if my new computer had the ports for it, though. He got it out of his old computer to give it a try after I finished my lunch, and headed back outside.
It worked.
As soon as I was able to, I started transferring files. I was able to transfer all of our 2025 trail cam files at once, instead of one month at a time, in a very short time. Had I tried to transfer the 2025 fold to the external hard drive, it would have taken more than an hour. That one folder turned out to be what was taking up the most space.
I really need to delete more trail cam files, but I enjoy keeping files with, say, herds of deer going by, or cats – some we no longer have – running around. Of course, I also keep the files that show our vandal creeping around, too.
Moving that one folder almost doubled the available space I had.
From now on, all my photos and videos will be going straight to the 2T hard drive; something I used to do regularly, with my previous computer. I was able to transfer it all in mere moments.
My desktop is doing much better now!
Meanwhile, I was able to get a decent amount of work done in the main garden area. I focused on the garlic bed first, and found lots of garlic already emerged – and a surprising number of chard and spinach seedlings! They were trying to grow through two layers of mulch (first a leaf mulch, then the straw mulch I added later), though, so they were all very leggy. I don’t know if they’ll make it. That bed is now clear and protected by netting, though, so they at least have a chance.
The next bed I worked on has the radishes and turnips in it. This one has the two rows closer to the sides of the bed, with the middle open for what will probably be pole beans later on. There was a surprising number sprouts on one side – the radishes, if I remember correctly. This bed got covered with the 6mm poly I had order a couple of months ago.
By the time that was done, it was getting late, and my daughter was treating us to pizza at a place that opens at 4pm. We all got different 18″ jumbo size pizzas, which is enough to feed us for several days!
After the order was phoned in, I headed out to the truck but just had to stop to get this picture.
These three in particular just love the isolation shelter! With the cooler temperatures, I turned the heat lamp back on, too. That’s Furriosa, curled up in the hammock under the lamp.
On the way to town, I stopped at the general store and post office. I was able to pick up a 40 pound bag of kibble, along with getting the mail.
There was a surprise parcel waiting for me!
From there, I continued on to town, first stopping at the grocery store; my daughter had sent funds for a few things from there, to go with the pizzas, as well. Last of all, I got the pizzas, then headed home.
The truck smelled amazing.
Once everything was unloaded and put away, I opened up the package. It was from a dear friend that was a neighbour before we moved out here. Along with some things for the garden, and treats as “bait” for the outside cats, I found this, well wrapped in a tiny box.
How utterly precious! The teeniest most adorable bunny, ever!
And yes, I did scrub my hands after I was done in the garden. Honest. 😄
In between the stops I made while going to and from town, I got some messages from my husband. Out of curiosity, he looked up the price for the exact same SSD, 2T hard drive he scavenged from his old computer to install into mine.
It now costs $925.
Before taxes.
Out of curiosity, my husband looked up the invoice from when he bought it a few years ago.
Less than $250 AFTER taxes.
For the EXACT same hard drive. That’s on Amazon. No idea what the local prices would be, or if anyone even carries it anymore.
In the end, there was much to be thankful for today.
Thankful that my husband could get into my computer in the first place. Thankful he had a spare 2T hard drive, and my computer is now breathing easy again.
Thankful we didn’t need to spend almost a thousand dollars for a new one!
Thankful for the work I was able to get done in the garden today.
Thankful for my daughter treating us to pizza. Gosh, it’s been ages since we’ve ordered in pizza.
Thankful that I was able to get a 40 pound bag of kibble, right at our own hamlet’s general store and didn’t have to drive to towns to the north and south of us for one.
Thankful for a wonderful and thoughtful friend who sent us a delightful care package.
Today, I finally was able to head out and get working on the garden.
We hit 22C/72F and almost all the snow is melted away! I didn’t try to go into the main garden area yet, as I can see the paths between the beds are full of water, but I will need to remove the mulch on the pre-sown beds soon.
This morning, while doing my rounds and checking things different areas, I discovered new growth has emerged overnight!
All colours of our snow crocuses have emerges, and the tulip patch has dozens of leaf cluster emerging all over the area. They’re pretty spread out, so it was hard to get a good picture of them.
In the old kitchen garden, the rhubarb is also emerging, as are the lilies on the north side of the area. Last year, those never even bloomed. I hope this year will have better conditions for them.
In the morning, I focused on getting the old kitchen garden prepared.
The fiberglass rods fit perfectly in the channels of the row netting I got from the Dollarama, last year. Hopefully, they will do better than the wires the kits came with. I thought I’d need two for the area I needed to protect from cats, but once I started setting it up, one turned out to be just barely long enough.
I hope I secured everything solidly, because I just know cats are going to be climbing on top. This netting is protecting the dwarf peas and garlic in the wattle weave bed. The rectangular bed with the beets and tiny bok choi now has its plastic cover. The herbs are also uncovered and it looks like the thyme and oregano, at least, survived the winter. I’m not as sure about the sage and lemon balm. Later on, that bed will need more clean up. In moving mulch in the wattle weave bed, I uncovered the tiny strawberries that still need to be transplanted, and they are looking pretty green. I also uncovered the walking onions, and they have clearly been growing under the mulch for quite some time. I took some time lapse and regular video of the old kitchen garden work that I’ll put together and upload later on.
That done, and a break for lunch, the next area I worked on were the East garden beds.
Well… sort of.
I first needed to work on the cover that spent the winter over the purple savoy cabbage bed. The hoops got somewhat crushed under the weight of snow. I added some cross pieces between hoops at each end. Then I needed to close up the open ends, so that cats can’t get under it.
I had some leftover pieces of half inch wire mesh and decided to use that.
I’m not sure if I regret my decision. It did the job and the ends are now secure, but good grief, it took forever! Most of that time was spent using needle nose pliers, which are also wire cutters. I had one piece large enough to cover one end, though corners needed to be trimmed off. I left wire ends to secure them to the plastic mesh on this cover. I sat there, bending wires, using the pliers to twist them around the plastic mesh, over and over. I even managed to stab a finger and bleed all over the place. 🫤 I think I spent over an hours, just working on one end.
The other end took longer. I had to join two scrap pieces together to be able to cover the space, but one piece was narrower, so there is a tiny gap at the top. Nothing a cat can get through, though.
All together, I think I spent at least 3 hours working on that cover!
Once that was done, getting the mulch off the pre-sown beds took no time at all, in comparison. These beds were first covered with leaves, then with straw after we got the round bale. I got all the straw off first, then used the twin marking the rows to remove the leaves by hand, leaving the leaf mulch in between the rows.
While doing the kohl rabi bed, I realized I was seeing tiny sproutes!
So that bed got the cover with the newly enclosed ends. The cabbage got the cover that was stored on the box shaped cover on the third bed. That one needs to be redone, but it’s at least something. It has no hoops, so if a cat jumps on it, it’ll cave in. The wire mesh on it isn’t as strong as I’d like, so it wasn’t really used. I’ll have to take care of that, if I want to better protect the cabbage bed.
By the time I was done, it was almost 6:30pm. I just checked the time stamps on my photos, and see that I spent almost exactly 4 hours working in that area, and most of that time was working on the one cover!
While I worked on that, my older daughter made sure I had something to eat when I came in, and got the laundry going. With the well pump issues, we are seriously behind on laundry and dish washing. My younger daughter is still not feeling good and has been asleep pretty much all day. With so much to catch up on, my older daughter has offered to buy us take out tomorrow. My husband has been craving pizza from a particular place in town that doesn’t open until 4pm, so that will be our supper. Until then, we’re going to be eating a lot of sandwiches. 😄
If all goes to plan, I’ll be uncovering the pre-sown beds in the main garden area, and prepping the area I am planning to sow poppy seeds in – the variety that is supposed to get pops the size a a baseball. The next few days are supposed to be cooler, with overnight temperatures at or below freezing, which is what poppy seeds need. Otherwise, I’d have to cold stratify them in the fridge, and I have no interest in doing that.
With how warm today has been, I think most of the water in the main garden paths will be gone.
I’m so enjoying being able to get outside and working again!!
I have been seriously procrastinating with the seedlings in our basement set up. Today, however, my daughter was available to assist, and we got it done!
My daughter took on the job of sifting the rest of the bag of potting soil. She had to start a second bucket for all the sticks she sifted out, as the one I’d been using before was already 3/4 full. While she did that, I worked on making a whole bunch of strips for snail rolls, with a few extra strips, just in case.
Once the soil was sifted, my daughter thoroughly moistened the potting soil with hot water while I cleared all the trays of seedlings, the heat mats and the full spectrum lights. Everything was going to go on the shelf under the shop light. A shelf that sags in the middle. I did try to elevate the trays in the middle, but when I watered the bottoms, it would still all pool towards the middle, so anything on the outsides of the trays would end up with less water available. After some poking around in the old basement, I found a board to set across the top. It’s too short to be able to use heat mats under it, but I decided not to set those up again. Hopefully, they will be okay without them in our basement, where the ambient temperature is at least 5C colder than it should be for seedlings.
Once everything was cleared out and set up, the first things I wanted to “pot up” were the peppers and eggplant. They have been really struggling. Some new seedlings from a second sowing did start to germinate, but even some of those have already withered away.
I bottom watered the tray and had vermiculate on top, but there still ended up some algae growing on the surface. That’s not harmful to the plants, but it does suggest a moisture imbalance.
When it came time to transfer them, my daughter used a large spoon to scoop the seedlings out of the cells while I set them onto one of the strips, flattening out the seed starting mix they were in, then adding the moistened, warm potting soil to fill in gaps.
I had already transferred all the tomatoes, fennel and flower rolls into one metal tray – 8 snail rolls – and had room for two more rolls on there. In the end, there were only 5 surviving Caspar eggplant, and only three Sweet Chocolate peppers. I did have a full row of California Wonder bell peppers, though, and one of the cells had a two seedlings, so that gave us a very large and full snail roll to put into the second metal tray set up under the shop light.
One thing about these thicker snail rolls is that it’s a lot harder to keep the soil in them, while they are being rolled up.
Next was the Golden Boy celery, which has already been “potted up” once. They now needed to be split up into two rolls. We were really surprised by how dry their soil was! For all the regular bottom watering I did, they were large enough that they’d needed more.
The leaves were all tangled up, so it was very careful work to unroll the celery. The soil was very full of roots. Between use, we carefully broke out half the celery and spread them out on a new strip before adding the moistened potting soil to fill the strip. It took both of us to very carefully roll them up without losing too much soil from the bottom. Once that was done, we had the space to finish unrolling the original roll, space out the seedlings and add more soil.
So we now have two snail rolls of celery, to go with four types of tomato, three types of flowers and the Florence fennel.
I considered putting the sad little herbs into a snail roll, too, but decided against it. As for the last surviving luffa, I’m not sure it’s surviving any more! It got pretty buried under the celery leaves. Well, we did get seeds for a different variety with a much, much shorter growing season – short enough we could potentially direct sow them – so if this last one doesn’t make it, we can try the new variety, instead.
Once everything was set up under the shop light, I supported the light while my daughter shortened the chain it’s hanging from, so it wouldn’t be too close to the plants. Especially the celery. The chain on that side was hung even shorter, to give them the space they need.
Which means we now no longer have anything under the grow lights. With the snail rolls, everything fit in the two trays. They got a thorough bottom watering, then a second one when we saw how quickly the water was absorbed. With how dry the celery was, I’ll probably give that tray another watering, later today.
The next batch of seeds are the 4-6 weeks before last frost ones. I don’t have a lot of those, comparatively speaking. There are a LOT that can be started in the 2-4 weeks before last frost category, but a lot of those can actually be direct sown, so I plan to be more selective about it.
Looking at the forecast, we’ve got some more weather whiplash expected. Winter still does not want to let go! Today, we are now expected to reach a high of 15C/59F (it’s 8C/46F as I write this), shortly before noon), but the overnight low is supposed to drop to -7C/19F. At midnight, we’re supposed to start getting snow. Tomorrow we’re supposed to get a mix of snow and rain all day, through to the next morning.
The weather system that’s hitting us is mostly going to pass to the north. They are looking at potentially several inches of new snow. This is actually really good. Everything is still so dry u[ there. Every bit of moisture is needed, so this year’s fire season isn’t as bad as last year. There will be fires. There always are. Between any moisture we get, and the fact that last year’s insane number of fires probably cleared out a lot of deadwood, hopeful this means very fewer fires, and only little ones, this year.
The highs for the next two days are supposed to be -3C/27F. After that, we’re supposed to get back above freezing, and soon reach double digit Celsius highs. Before the end of April, we’re even expecting to reach 20C/68F, and once we’re into May, the long range forecast has us getting as high as 24C/75F It’s the overnight lows that are the thing, though. Last year, May had all sorts of hot days, but the nights remained cold, so the soil never got warm enough for transplants until the middle of June. Even then, it might still have been too cold. Our transplants really struggled last year.
Hopefully, our winter sown beds will do well. After the next couple of days of cold, and any snow we get on the beds melts away, I should be able to remove the mulches on at least some of the beds, so the soil can thaw out faster. I can set the vinyl over the cover in the old kitchen garden to create a little greenhouse. That bed has the beets and tiny bok choy in it, along with the little onions I’d found while preparing the bed for sowing. I have more vinyl I can potentially use on one of the other covers on a 9’x3′ raised bed to create another little greenhouse. Plus, once I can access the main garden area, I have the hoops and 6mm poly I’d ordered and can use to set over one of the other pre-sown beds to speed things up a bit. Or just to warm up one of the other, empty beds, faster. We shall see how things look, once the snow has melted enough to get to them.
The first picture in the slideshow are the tomatoes, hollyhock and fennel. They are doing quite well! I’m very happy with what I’m seeing there.
The next picture is the leggy herbs, the sad little luffa, the celery that should probably be “potted up” and split into two rolls! – the marigold and cosmos.
The last picture has my surprise.
I’d rotated the trays just a couple of nights ago, so with the peppers and eggplant, the eggplant row is now in the foreground, and the California Bell Peppers are in the back.
There are three new seedlings in California Bell Pepper row, that weren’t there yesterday. There’s even at least one new seedling in the Sweet Chocolate pepper row in the middle!
Those poor eggplants are struggling, though. At least two have just withered away.
It’ll still be at least a week before I start the next back of seeds, but I might just re”pot” the eggplant and peppers into snail rolls before then. I’ll just need to sift more potting soil again, first!
We definitely have some things struggling, but over all, they seedlings are doing remarkably well for being in a rather poor environment for them!
The Re-Farmer 