Our 2026 Garden: one more bed prepped, and got a visit in

May 26, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

The temperatures continued to climb today.

I started things off a bit early, and it was still lovely and cool. My priority, after I did my morning rounds, was to water the garden beds before the heat hit.

I’m happy to say that I am seeing new sprouts in the rows of spinach, chard, turnips and radish in the main garden area. I checked under the boards in the trellis bed and saw what might be carrot sprouts, so I removed the boards. It’s hard to say for sure, as a lot of weeds were trying to come up under there, too.

I’m pretty sure I saw new sprouts in the cabbage and kohlrabi beds, too. I’m pretty sure I’m seeing tiny bok choy and beet seedlings through the mosquito netting, thought it’s hard to be sure. I didn’t see any this morning, but this evening, I’m sure I could see the first dwarf pea sprouts!

After I finished outside, I came in and had breakfast, then tried to go down for a nap before I planned to visit my mother, then pick up anything we needed before doing our first stock up shop, tomorrow.

It was a failure.

For some reason, both Butterscotch and Cheddar have decided that, when I lie down, they absolutely MUST cuddle my head. Aggressively. Then curling up right at my head to nap themselves.

That doesn’t count the other cats that like to settle on my hip, against my back or on either side of my legs.

*sigh*

Next time, I’ll try napping on the couch. The living room is a cat free zone.

I eventually gave up and got ready to head into town. Before I did, I noted activity notification on my bank app and checked.

My husband’s tax return, which is supposed to include my first Disability Tax Credit, came in.

It was short by about $2500.

Unfortunately, my husband still can’t log into his CRA account to see why. I’m going to have to wait until our tax prepared is back from holidays at the end of the month and phone her, because she can log in and see his account – and maybe find out why he can’t log in, himself. anymore!

My younger daughter never got her disability tax credit, either. She did her taxes herself.

Frustrating.

Anyhow.

I headed into town and realized my mother would be just starting her lunch, so I decided to go to the grocery store, first. I actually picked up some ground beef that was on sale. I haven’t seen ground beef for under $6 a pound for a long time, even with sales.

My visit with my mother was pretty good. As I was headed to her room, I spotted her in the dining room and popped in. We then went to her room for the visit.

She is so enjoying having a room – and a bathroom – to herself! She says being in the nursing home, compared to the TCU, is like night and day.

Of course, she still had things to complain about. With her medications, as usual. Apparently someone tried to give her her breakfast meds and supper meds at the same time? Then the count for her morning meds was off. She said she asked who was in charge of the medications and was told it was the pharmacy in town. I suspect the person didn’t understand what my mother was asking, but she now believes the pharmacy decides what medications she gets, at their whim. She then started going on about how the staff all think she is stupid, and everyone living there is stupid, and that’s why they are deliberately messing with their medications.

*sigh*

She had asked my brother for a radio and he’d given me one to pass on to her. I plugged it in and tried to find the station she told me the number of. There was nothing on either AM or FM (she didn’t know which is was; she doesn’t understand anything about AM or FM). Since I couldn’t pick up her station (though I could pick up others), she decided it was a bad radio and started asking me if an old radio that belonged to my husband when we were in high school – a ghetto blaster, which tells you just how old it is! – was still around. It is, but I told her, it still won’t pick up that station. I tried to explain again about things interfering with frequencies, but she decided it meant that the radio stations were the problem, for having “weak” signals.

Then I tried to show her the sliding switch that goes from off to FM then AM. She demanded “just show me what button to push”. I told her, it’s not a button. It’s a switch that slides, and showed her again; Off – FM – AM.

She got angry that my brother would give her a high tech radio that she can’t understand.

*sigh*

It was a shorter visit, since there really wasn’t much we had to talk about. Now that she is in town, I can visit her more often, anyhow. Before I left, I spent some time at the nursing station. I explained what my mother told me about the medications, and that someone tried to give her her breakfast meds and supper meds at the same time. She was startled to hear that and said she would look into it. She got out the medication binder and looked up my mother’s file, going over everything, which is basically the same that it was while she was at the TCU. She said they tried looking at my mother’s list to compare (the hand written one she makes after she counts her pills, with little diagrams), but it was in Polish, so they were trying to translate it. My mother had been promised a list of her medications and they were going to try to get it translated into Polish for her, too. I told her, my mother knows pre-WWII Polish; she would not be familiar with modern medical terms in today’s Polish!

As we were chatting, the nurse told me how so many of the staff were startled when my mother was transferred over. Many of them had cared for Baba – “grandmother” – which is what they called my aunt. My mother looks SO much like her sister did. My aunt passed away a few years ago, so for the staff to suddenly start seeing their Baba again was a bit of a shock until they found out they were sisters.

This nurse had just started working there when my father came to live there. I’ve had it confirmed that he was there for only 5 months before he passed away; I thought it was 6 months. She remembered my father, and I told her about how, when I phoned him every Sunday, he would go on and on about how great they were treating him, how well taken care of he was, and how much he liked the staff. She was so touched to hear that!

So far, my mother has been very nice to them. I hope that lasts! She has been saving the nasty comments about the staff for when we are there. 😕

It was a good chat with the nurse, and I expect we will have many more opportunities to talk now that my mother is there!

That done, I headed home, then stayed indoors to stay out of the heat. Unfortunately, it just kept getting hotter. I finally headed out at around 6:30, which is about when we hit 27C/81F.

The predicted high was 25C/77F.

We’re supposed to keep getting hotter, with the hottest day in the forecast being Friday, which they are now saying is supposed to hit 34C/93F.

The yard cats are laying in puddles all over the yard, in whatever shade they can find.

Bobert was looking adorable in the cat bed I tucked under the isolation shelter’s door box, to keep the weather out in the winter.

With the heat, I made sure to do the watering again. This time, I did watering in the food forest area.

I’m happy to say that it looks like the apple tree survived, in spite of the damage to the stem. A single branch with new leaf buds has shown up. The plum tree also has leaf buds showing up finally, but only in branches coming up just above the graft at the base. None of last year’s growth is showing buds. Neither are the mulberry trees. They survived their first winter, but it looks like they didn’t survive their second. The poor little highbush cranberry have free leaves showing, but they are still remarkably tiny, including the one that the deer did NOT nibble one. The silver buffalo berry bushes, which I don’t bother watering because there are too many, had been covered with what I thought were leave buds. It turns out they were not leaf buds, but flower buds! The leaf buds are showing up now. The sea buckthorn also have leaf buds unfurling.

After the watering was done, I started working on the larger of the two East yard beds that had not been prepped in the fall.

I first removed the two lengths of twine that went around the sides. Those were there to keep anything wrapped around the box frame from flapping in the wind too much, but they were in the way for working in the bed. I considered taking the box frame off entirely, but decided it wasn’t necessary and worked around it.

In the second picture, you can see the cleaned up bed. Unfortunately, while I was leveling the cleared soil with the hoe, I caught the line running across that helped keep the sides from bowing outwards at the joins. The wood is rotting and the screw eye got pulled right out!

Honestly, I’m surprised these beds have lasted as long as they have. I used lumber I found in the barn that had been sitting there for probably at least a decade before I found them. They were not in particularly good shape, but they were the best I could find for the job. I expected them to last about 3 years, maybe, and they’ve lasted twice that by now.

Weeding the bed didn’t really take that much, except that I found a remarkable amount of tree roots! Given where this bed is located, they would not be from the elm tree, but from the nearby cherry bushes.

I look forward to when we can make these into high raised beds. These beds are about a foot high, but it was still really painful to be bending to work in it.

Once the bed was clear, I took some plastic that was rolled up and set aside from previous uses in these beds and covered the soil to protect it from cats, until we can plant in it. I’m looking to transplant tomatoes into this bed. We have four varieties to transplant, and couple probably fit three varieties in this bed. We don’t have a lot of each variety.

The pieces of wood frame on the left of the first photo are on the 4′ square bed that also needs to be done. By the time I finished the longer bed, I was too hot and in too much pain to do that one. Aside from weeding it – and that one has been infected by creeping Charlie – I will be adding the additional wood frame pieces to make it a bit higher, and can then add more soil into it. I’m planning to put the eggplant in here. It’s a small enough bed that I can add plastic walls around it, to protect them from high winds and create a semi-greenhouse around them.

I don’t know how much I’ll be able to get done over the next few days. I’ll be doing our city stock up trips and a vet trip in between. Shopping always drains me, so it will depend on how much energy I have left – and what my pain levels are at. At the very least, I plan to water everything in the morning, and again in the evening, because of the heat.

Once the city trips are done, I expect to be able to start the direct sowing, and then hopefully start transplanting soon after. Somewhere in there, I’ll be uncovering and reclaiming the area to plant our corn in.

A lot to do in a very short time!

The Re-Farmer

It’s finally done!!!

May 24, 2026 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Getting that raised bed at the chain link fence done has taken way too long!

I’ll get to that in a moment.

My brother and SIL have been out working on their caravan, and whatever else my brother was able to do outside as the weather allowed, this weekend and had invited me to join them for breakfast this morning. I wasn’t able to join them last time, but was happy to do be able to join them today. They took me to the single restaurant in our little hamlet. The last time I was there was two owners ago!

Before that, I was outside doing my usual morning rounds.

There are so many tulip flower buds, with one early tulip just starting to open up.

When it came close to the time we were going to meet up, I headed out to open the gate, then took advantage of the time waiting to check the fence line and see what else needs doing. I’m going to have to head through the area with loppers again, and trim away all the poplar that’s trying to grow back, among other things. Not a priority right now, though.

When I got back to the gate I saw they had parked in front of the house and were waiting for me there! 😄

I closed the gate behind their car after they drove through which, with all the rain we’ve had recently, was rather muddy. Which got us to talking about how badly that driveway needs gravel! My brother has his front end loader here, but it still won’t run, and he hasn’t figured out why, yet. Not that he’s had much opportunity to troubleshoot the beast.

We talked about the two trees threatening the house that will be coming down – when the arborists arrive will depend on the weather. It will be a while longer before the saturated ground is dry enough to hold the weight of their equipment.

It was great to catch up with them, and compare notes on things like Mom and our vandal, while enjoying a lovely breakfast. I really like what the new owners have done with the place. It’ s longer a bar with a small restaurant on one side, but a pub and family restaurant. Which is what the last owners had converted it to, but I never saw what changes they did. We did order take out from them a couple of times, but could pick our orders up without ever going all the way into the restaurant, so I never saw what they’d done with it.

After breakfast, they dropped me off at the gate, then headed out again to a hardware store. They were back before I was ready to head outside. I needed to get that raised bed at the chain link fence finished.

The walls are done, but it needed some preparation before the soil could be returned.

In the first image above, I’ve taken straw and stuffed it into all the gaps I could find in the front wall, as well as tucking some against the end walls, to prevent soil from falling in or through the walls.

In the second image, I’ve covered the bottom and sides with two layers of carboard. Then, using the fence to steady myself, I walked across the length of it, tromping the cardboard down as much as I could.

In the last image, I had started to saturate the cardboard. I went it down, tromped on it again, then repeated the process several more times while working on the next stage.

Preparing the soil.

I started by using a hoe to spread the pile out – and remove as many cat turds as I could find. The pile of soil was absolutely saturated and sticky like glue! I got it spread out though, and then scattered Sulphur granules over it. I then mixed it in with a hoe, and then by lifting the tarp to turn the soil over itself, from all sides.

Did I mention it was saturated?

Not only did that make it sticky, but heavy. Shockingly heavy!

Once mixed, I shoveled the soil into the wheelbarrow and started adding it into the raised bed. The soil was so sticky, I actually had to stop and scrape it off the blade of the shovel, because it was so coated, it was hard to push it into the pile of soil, and there wasn’t much room for it to pick up more soil, either!

The first thing I did was spread out a couple of wheelbarrow loads on the carboard, pushing it up against the sides so that the soil would hold the cardboard against the walls, and no soil would fall between the cardboard and the straw filled walls. It wasn’t as much of a concern on the back wall, since that was in protected by a layer of vinyl. You can see that in the first image.

Then, FINALLY, I could dump in the rest of the soil and spread it out as evenly as I could. Which you can see in the second image.

At this point, I couldn’t really stop for a break or anything like that. Even as I was refilling the bed, I was chasing cats out that were determined to use it as a litter box. After I leveled the last of the soil, I turned to get something, turned back, and there was another cat, starting to dig in the soil!!! It was Flopsy, so not a feral. He just started at me while I tried to shoo him away and didn’t run off until I was practically on top of him!

The bed needed to be protected right away.

For this year, the supports will be temporary, and I debated whether to use robs from the hoop kits, or some of the Pex pipe hoops I have. In the end, I decided on a hoop kit, because I wanted to use the clips, and on the new one because it had more rods left.

My original plan had been to use the pairs of taller vertical supports to secure the hoops to. Which I could have done, though this bed is so much narrower, I wouldn’t have wanted to bend the rods quite that much. However, it occurred to me that, for this bed, I don’t actually want hoops. Once those elm seed start dropping, they would gather at the back of the raised bed, along the chain link fence, and would get under that way. Also, the cats will climb on top and lie on it, and I would prefer to avoid that completely.

So I only attached the rods – connecting three rods together for each length – to the front supports, using little zip ties to hold them securely. The top of the rods were curved into the chain link fence, near the top.

You can see the rods in position in the first image above.

In the past, we tried protecting this bed with mosquito netting, and I still have the netting that was used, rolled up and waiting. The mosquito netting ended up acting like a sail in the high winds, with the edge pinned to the ground blowing loose constantly, and the whole thing flapping. So I decided to use the black netting we still have on the roll. I unrolled it on the other side of the chain link fence, which you can see in the next photo, so get the length I needed before cutting it.

Then came the hard part. This netting is folded into thirds on the roll. I needed it folded in half. After cutting the length I needed, I dragged it over to an open part in the yard and spread it out flat, with rocks to hold it in place at the corners, because it was fairly windy.

Which is about when my brother and SIL drove by on their way home, so we chatted for a bit before they headed out.

Then I messaged my daughters for help, and my older daughter !!!!! came out. A testament to how much better she is feeling!

Between the two of us, we got the net folded in half length wise, then straightened it out as best we could in the wind. Then we very carefully moved it into position, with the salvage ends set to go over the chain link fence, and the folded edge to the ground. This netting catches on EVERYTHING, so it took some doing to get it in position and straightened out as smooth and tight as we could. then I draped the salvage ends over the chain link fence at my end – at this point, the “catches on everything” was a help – and slowly made my way down the fence, pulling the netting over until I got to my daughter’s end.

At that point, I could finish off the rest myself.

The first thing to do was use ground staples to secure the folded edge to the ground at the base of each longer vertical supports the hoop rods were attached to. I started from the middle and working to the ends, pulling the netting tight between each support along the way. Once the bottom was secured, I went outside the chain link fence, lifting and pulling the netting to get it as snug as I could. I wanted as little slack as possible in between the hoop rods.

Then I went back and got the clips. Once again, starting from the middle and working my way out, I pulled the netting up and snug before clipping it to the middle rods, just above the connector. Then I went on the other side of the fence to lift and tighten the netting over the fence again. I repeated the clipping process again, this time adding clips to the next higher rod, above the connector.

Once the netting was secured to the rods, I grabbed some more ground staples and went back to the outside of the fence. I lifted and tightened the netting over the fence one more time, this time using the ground staples, woven around the chain link, to secure the salvage edges in place.

Last of all, I worked on the ends, rolling and tucking the netting until it was closed off, using ground staples to secure the bottoms to the ground, and the garden wire to secure the rest to the chain link fence.

You can see the finished product in the last photo. It’s very hard to see the clips.

No cats are getting in there. No wind is going to blow it loose. With the netting folded in half, no elm seeds should get through. Plus, with the netting set up the way it is, it can stay there for most, if not all, of the growing season, depending on what gets planted there. To access the garden bed, I can lift the ground staples and, if necessary, remove the lower clips to raise the netting as high as I need.

It’s done.

It’s finally done!

Our temperatures are expected to go from one extreme to the other. The colder nights in the long range forecast into June are no longer expected to get as cold.

Which means I can start getting my transplants out.

I’m not hardening off this time. I just don’t have the cat free space to do it, without the portable greenhouse. I will be using the water bottle collars as protection for some things. For other, larger, transplants, I’ll figure something else out. The onions are the one thing that won’t need any of that, and they need to be transplanted so badly! The snail roll thing has been working a bit too well, in that respect. 😄

I need to get as much as possible done over the next two days, because after that I just won’t be home much. Wednesday is our first stop up shopping day. Thursday, I’ll be taking cats to the vet again, which means staying in the smaller city until it’s time to go home, unless I’m picking up chicks that day. I still haven’t gotten a call about those, so I’m guessing not. Then Friday is our second stock up shop. I will finally be home long enough to work in the garden more by the weekend, though somewhere in there I need to get a visit in with my mother. My brother left me with a couple of things for her that she wanted that I want to drop off, too.

Oh, and I still need to put together my May garden tour video. I took the video clips but just haven’t had a chance to sit down and put them together and edit them. I hoped to do it tonight, but it’s already coming up on 9am, and I am tired enough to go to bed pretty much as soon as I’m done writing this!

It feels so good to finally get this done!!!

It feels so good to finally have the weather we need to get outside stuff done again.

The Re-Farmer

Raised bed progress – almost done!

May 23, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I finally got that front wall done!

The rain came to a stop this afternoon, so I headed out and grabbed the draw knife so I could put points on the prepared stakes I’d made for the chain link fence bed’s deadwood wall. That did not take long.

With the rain we’ve been having, I took advantage of the soil being softer, making it easier to drive the stakes into place.

In the first picture, you can see I’ve laid out the sharpened stakes in the most open spaces between the current vertical supports.

These were all much longer than needed. Even with the softened soil, there was only so far I could drive them into the ground.

The second image shows all the stakes pounded into place. In the third image, I’ve taken the loppers to all of the new stakes, cutting them down to just a bit above the height of the deadwood wall.

The charred stakes are staggered, but where the inside stakes were places were not consistent in relation to the taller outside stakes. For the most part, the stake placement for of zig zagged across, but there were a few places where there were two stakes on the outside without a matching stake on the inside. So I decided to use some of the pieces I’d trimmed off that were longer, and set them in the gaps. They didn’t get pushed down into the ground too far, or they would have been too short, but I hand pushed them in to match the other posts in height, more or less.

I did end up having to rifle through some other leftover bits to find one last piece long enough.

After that, I used up all the smaller pieces of deadwood we gathered fall and tried to fill in as many gaps as I could. Then I grabbed the loppers and went back into the spruce grove to try and fine more that were thin and pliable enough to fill in more gaps. I ended up harvesting some younger poplars – gosh, those spread fast – to fill in more spaces. After a while, I decided an needed more height, so I went back into the spruce grove and went hunting. I was able to find some tall, mostly straight, cherry to use.

I plan to remove all of those cherry trees in the spruce grove. They don’t produce much, if anything, at all. We’ll keep the one by the house, as the house provides enough of a microclimate for it to procure lots of fruit. The rest can go.

But not today.

After cutting and trimming the straightest once I could get, I set them in between the stakes. Then I used twine to zig zag from stake to stake, pushing down the wall in places. I wanted to make sure the stakes – especially the extra lengths I added didn’t get pushed away from the middle, plus the twine will help push down the deadwood, reducing gaps a bit that way, too.

There are still gaps, though not as much. I have decided I will stuff straw against the front wall as a soil barrier, before replacing the soil I took out so I could start this project. Once the soil is back, I will use one of the hoop kits to attach to the taller takes, then put netting over the whole thing, to keep the cats out as well as the Chinese elm seeds then they start drifting. At that point, it will be ready for planting. I believe I will be planting winter squash in here, where they can use the fence as a trellis. This will likely not be the only place I transplant winter squash into, though.

We’ll see how the weather treats us over the next while!!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: starting melons, winter squash, pumpkin and cucumbers, plus updates

May 23, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

First, though, we got a few other things accomplished today.

Bug looks like she is doing quite well. She is eating with her usual enthusiasm and is moving like she’d never had surgery.

I did, however, make a confirmation.

We were pretty sure the mostly black cat in there was female, partly because the females have been so much harder to socialize. When talking to the rescue, I’d forgotten this one had been named Batman, and had told them this one and the black and white were unnamed. One of the rescue workers named this one Marta for the spay appointment.

Today, however, I was able to see dangly bits. She is a he.

Batman it is.

Unfortunately, part of the reason I could see dangly bits was because he seems to have diarrhea. His fur it all flattened along his back end. After what happened with Furriosa, I am bracing myself for getting bad news at the appointment. Granted, I still have no idea how we’re going to get them into carriers.

Meanwhile, poor Adam, having only recently lost a litter, is being chased by the boys already. It’s been raining all today and, when we were outing and abouting, I saw her trying to get a drink of water out of a puddle, followed closely by a tabby, her fur absolutely matted with mud.

Both she and Slick have not been showing up at much at feeding time, and when Adam does, she can’t stay long because the boys are too agressively after her.

*sigh*

One of the first goals of the day was to head into town to see my mother at the nursing home. My younger daughter came along to help me bring in my mother’s stuff I’d taken before her transfer. That allowed us to bring it all in, in one trip.

The last time I was here, it was to visit my aunt, and she was in a completely different part of the building. I must have looked pretty lost, because someone came right up to ask me who I was there to see! When we got to the right floor and started heading to the hallway, a guy gathering linens into a trolly saw me and told me he thought my mother was asleep.

We recognized each other from when my mother was still at the TCU! He works in both places. Most of the staff is rotates between various nursing homes and TCUs, but it was still quite funny to have someone who recognized me and knew who I was there to see, less than 24 hours after her transfer!

My mother woke when we came in and we put her stuff away where she directed us to. She has quite a nice room. Not as big as the single room she had at the hospital, but a decent size, and all to herself. She has a nice view of a park outside her window, and plenty of closet and storage space. My mother seems… not so much happier to be there, as relieved. There are still things to figure out as far as how things are done. My mother has gotten used to having her meals brought to her, for example, and here they encourage residents to come to the dining room to eat, if they physically can, to get them moving around as much as possible. There is a monthly calendar of events on her wall, and every day has three or for things going on, from sing alongs to physical activities, to church services and so on. They even have bingo, which my mother enjoys.

So we had a nice little visit before heading back out. Now that she is here, I can visit her more often, simply because I go to this town so much more often, and it’s closer than where she was before.

We are all so much happier with this place, not just my mother! It’s going to be so much better for her.

She was starting to have pain issues, as no one has applied Voltaren this morning, and she wans’t even sure if they had any (it’s not a prescription, so we have to supply it), so on the way out I talked to someone at the nursing station, asking if the doctor would consider getting my mother a prescription for the stuff that I have, which is the same active ingredient, but 5 times stronger, as Voltaren. She said they will bring it up with the doctor. With a prescription, we won’t have to keep track of her supply, and they’ll be able to order it in with her other medications.

Our next stop was the pharmacy to pick up the rest of my older daughter’s prescription, plus her sister and I found other things we needed to get for ourselves. My daughter hadn’t eaten yet and it was almost lunch time, so we stopped at the DQ for lunch, then got two more meals to go for my husband and her sister. A quick stop for gas, then a stop at the post office, where I was also able to pick up a 40 pound bag of kibble for the outside cats, then home.

After things were settled in and taken care of, my daughter and I headed back out and loaded my mother’s old mattress and box spring into the box of the truck. We FINALLY got them to the dump!

From the muddy paw prints on them, the cats are going to miss them. 😄

My brother and SIL had come out while we were in town, working on their caravan, so we popped over to get caught up with them for a bit – not going in because our boots were muddy, so we didn’t stay long. My mother had asked for a radio and my brother had one for her, so he gave it to me, since we’ll probably be seeing her before they get a chance to.

Our visit done, we headed inside for the next thing on my to do list.

Starting the last of our seeds for transplants.

These are the things that get started about 3 weeks before last frost date. Technically, we are less than that, but the way the weather has been, I don’t expect to get most things transplanted until probably the middle of June, though things like the onions can handle going in now.

With such a short time for these seeds, I decided to use my new hex cell planting tray. This has 6 rows of 12 cells, so they are pretty small.

I decided that I would start 12 different things, and see how it goes!

The first thing we had to do was make space and move the full spectrum LED light fixtures aside, then set up a heat mat. While my daughter filled the cells with pre-moistened seed starting mix, I went through my seed packets to decide on what to start.

I decided not to try and start any summer squash and will direct sow those.

I went with four types of melons (we have seeds for quite a few more); Canary Yellow, Tigger, Sweet Siberian Watermelon and Hale’s Best Jumbo cantaloupe. In winter squash, I chose Golden Hubbard, Black Futsu, Butterneck squash and Gill’s Golden Pippin. I also decided to try the Arikara squash again, because it’s a rare variety I want to save seeds from. I also chose the Cinderalla pumpkin (Rouge vif D’Estempes). Last of all are two types of cucumber; lemon and Eureka. These are older seeds, but I have a request for cucumbers this year. I have another variety we got as free seeds that I almost chose as well, but we’re not big cucumber eaters and two varieties will be more than enough.

After the initial filling of the tray with seed starting mix, my daughter was a sweetheart and cut up a sour cream container for me, to make more plant markers, because I was down to two blanks.

She cuts much neater, straighter markers than I do!

While she was working on that, I wrote the names and details for each packet on the markers. She finished before I did, and I have a nice stack of extra markers now.

The initial filling of the planting cells all got gently pressed down, leaving enough space for the planting depths of these larger seeds. My daughter started with the winter squash seeds, gently scarifying them first. Once I was done with the labels, I started at the other end of the tray with the cucumbers, then melons.

So we now have 12 rows with six cells planted, each. Hopefully, we’ll get a decent germination rate. I’m rather concerned about that, as it all seems so cold down there, and I don’t know that the heat mats are enough to make up for it. Half the time, they don’t even seem to be on. I realize that’s part of the temperature control, but it still feels wrong.

I ended up moving a couple of snail rolls around, putting two of them with the last batch of seed starts.

The orange current tomatoes are not looking very healthy, so I thought they might do better back on a heat mat, with less taller transplants overshadowing them. I also moved the roll with both the tarragon and summer savory. I’m actually amazing they are both surviving! They were in rough shape before going into the snail roll.

In the next picture, you can see the rest of the snail rolls. Things are getting way too big and need to be transplanted. I can’t pot them up any more at this point. No space.

Things are supposed to get quite a bit warmer – and drier – over the next while. There are even 30C/86F days in the forecast! Tonight, we’re supposed to drop to 6C/43F, but after that we’re supposed to get overnight temperatures above 10C/50, with lots of sunshine. That should finally warm the soil up. Even in the first half of June, where we’re expecting overnight temperatures to drop, they’re still expected to be above 6C/43F, which is where it needs to stay above consistently for the soil to have a chance to warm up and stay warm.

We shall see.

That done, I was able to head outside and get other work done, but that will be in my next post.

See you there!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: protecting and preparing garden beds

May 20, 2026 / Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

We dropped to -3C/27F last night but, from now on, our days are supposed to be hot, and our overnight temperatures are expected to drop no lower than 7C/45F for the next while, though in the first 10 days of June, we’re supposed to have overnight temperatures barely above freezing.

I just realized. Today is the 20th. My day to do a garden tour video. It was still light out, so I quickly did that. I hope the videos turn out all right, because I won’t be able to try again until tomorrow evening!

With the next few days finally being hotter, my priority was to take off the plastic on the two raised beds and replace them with netting, so any seedlings under there won’t bake.

The first one to do was the smaller bed in the old kitchen garden, with the beets, bok choi, onions that will probably go to seed and the last minute addition of parsnips where the transplanted onions didn’t make it.

This time, I took the mosquito netting from the chain link fence above the blocks with transplanted strawberries. I knew this one was shorter than one of the lengths I have been using previously. It had been rolled up and secured with ground staples for quite a long time, so I took the time to unroll it and get rid of any accumulated leaves before dragging it part way into the old kitchen garden.

That netting is irrisistable to the cats.

Especially to my escapee, Bug.

The netting had been cut into narrower lengths from the original, the first year we used them, which meant this piece was the perfect length – but not quite wide enough to cover the raised bed cover. This cover is quite a bit higher than all the others, to accommodate for taller plants, but it means quite a lot more width is needed to completely cover it.

After removing the vinyl covering the frame, I made sure to give the bed a thorough watering from the rain barrel. I’ve left the soaker house, but laundry was started in the house, so I didn’t want to use the hose. Especially now that we know for sure that the pressure tank needs replacing. Thankfully, I had a nice full rain barrel, so everything got a thorough watering.

It was windy, so I had a bit of a struggle to get the first section of netting on and secured enough to overlap with the next section of netting I had ready. I was able to use garden clips, clothes pins and the one safety pin my daughter could find, to keep them together and close off the ends. The cats like to use this cover like a hammock, so it needs to be really secure. Hopefully, it’ll hold.

Before I started on this, I remembered to grab the soil thermometer from the basement and set it in the short side of the L shaped wattle weave bed.

The second picture shows the reading just before I went inside at the end of the day. The soil there is about 7C/45F. Tomorrow I will set it in other beds and see what they are at, too. Higher raised beds like this one should be warmer than lower ones, but this section of the wattle weave bed also gets a bit more shade than the lower raised beds in the main garden area.

Once this bed was done, it was time to move to the main garden area, and I brought along the hoop kits.

The first picture is of the new kit, which did end up coming with garden gloves. The weirdest feeling stretchy things we’ve ever tried on. 😄

The second picture compares both sets. The new kit’s rods are a half inch longer and a touch thicker, so the clips and connectors will not be interchangeable.

I haven’t even tried on the gloves that came with the first kit. It’s highly unlikely they will fit my hands.

Even the wire that came with the kits are different.

I was definitely looking forward to seeing how those gaskets would work with the ground staples.

Once in the main garden area, I double checked to make sure the roll of netting I had brought out a while ago was long enough for the 18′ bed, plus the height of the hoops, and it was. When it came time to deal with the poly and setting on the netting, though, it was a two person job, and my younger daughter came out to help.

This is how the bed looked, after I’d reworked the poly to make sure rain no longer pooled where the rolled up boards weighted the sides down, so no more worms would get stuck. Once we got the ends unsecured and the boards freed, we carefully shifted the poly over, then walked it to an open area and laid it out flat, using some of the boards to keep it from blowing away. Then I got my daughter to help me lay the netting over the hoops and secure it just enough that it wouldn’t fall off or blow away, before going back to the poly. It took both of us to fold it in half a few times, and then I rolled it up around the board the netting had been rolled around, and set it aside.

At that point, I no longer needed a second set of hands and continued on my own.

The netting didn’t have a lot of extra length but, even folded in half, there was quite a bit of extra width. I don’t want to cut it, in case we need to use it for something higher in the future.

I spent the next while making the netting fairly snug with clips before securing the ends and adding more clips to hold it in place. Then I tested out the new ground staples and gaskets.

I rather like them, though this bed had some issues. You can see them in place in the second image, where it’s holding rather well. On the other side of the bed, however, they pulled up very easily. The problem is the leaf mulch along the edges inside the bed. They add too much bulk for the staples to push through, and they tend to just pop up again. Later on, though, the mulch will be removed. Most if it, anyhow. Down the centre of the bed, I plan to plant pole beans. Along the outside, I will be transplanting some onions. The pole beans will need a trellis, so the netting and hoops will need to be removed completely. Hopefully, interplanting with onions will keep the deer from eating it all, after the protective netting is gone!

In the next image, you can see a little turnip seedling. There are quite a few radish seedings in the other row. It doesn’t look like any re-sowing will be needed at all.

The last image is the completed bed, seedlings no longer at risk of being cooked under the poly, and protected from cats.

Which led me to the next area. The high raised bed.

This bed had been prepared in the fall but, of course, it was catted. They love to roll around in the dirt.

It needed a bit of weeding, plus I grabbed a bucket of the compost my brother brought for me. After using the hand cultivator to loosen the soil and pull the weeds, I incorporated the compost into the top couple of inches.

For this bed, I used the new hoop kit. One of the big differences is the metal connectors, while the other kit has plastic connectors. I have a bit of concern that the metal ones might rust.

In both beds, I made hoops 4 rods long, which means there is a connector right in the middle. You can see the metal connector in the next image. The image after that, you can see a plastic connector from the other bed I’d just finished. It’s a bit hard to tell at that angle, but the plastic connector is slightly bent. In fact, all down the row, the plastic connectors are bent enough to make it look like the hoops almost have a point in the middle. So… definitely a point for the kit with the metal connectors, and a point against the kit with the plastic connectors.

Before adding the netting, I needed to add a length of twine across the top to keep things in place. The problem was, how to secure the twin at the ends? With the lower raised beds, I use a ground staple to tack them down. That is not an option with this bed.

Bonus towards having a raised bed made of logs.

I found some short lengths of broken bamboo stakes and jammed one between logs at each end. That gave me something to secure the ends of the twin to.

They also came in handy, to hold the netting in place while I set it out. This netting gets stuck on EVERYTHING. I could at least take advantage of that to keep it in place at the ends, while getting the things set up and snug. Ground staples are holding it in place on the sides, and I was able to use the twine to secure the gathered ends, which you can see in the last two pictures.

I had enough energy left to do one more section.

I’d already cleaned up the section at the north end of the high raised bed, where we grew flowers last year. I even tried direct sowing some nasturtiums, in the off chance they’d grow.

They did not.

I failed to protect the bed.

So… Some more clean up, and then more hoops, twine and netting.

The netting that had been over this area last year was now on the high raised bed, so I needed to find another short piece. I took a quick look in the garden shed, disturbing a raccoon sleeping on the wheeled garden chair seat. It woke up and groggily moved away. The only netting in there, though, was a huge piece that we’d set around the entire trellis bed last year. So I let the raccoon be and looked elsewhere. I found a piece that was the perfect length and used that.

This time, I tried something different to secure the sides of the netting. I had a couple of full size bamboo stakes handy, and I rolled them up in the netting, then used ground staples. The bamboo isn’t long enough to reach end to end, but it’s long enough to make the netting more secure than the staples alone.

Now I don’t have to worry about the cats rolling all over the bed and messing in it. I’ve got cosmos and nasturtiums that will be transplanted into here as soon as the temperatures allow.

By this time, I was starting to hurt pretty bad, so that was my limit for the day. Hopefully, I’ll get more ready tomorrow. Specifically, I hope to get the potatoes planted in one of the beds that is already prepped and still under plastic. I’d hoped they would be solarized somewhat but, from what I can see along the sides, it’s more like a greenhouse, even though the plastic is flat against the ground. I can see dandelions blooming in places, under the plastic!

Tomorrow, I need to get my husband to the lab for some blood work (he wasn’t up to it, today), then I plan to visit my mother, since I’ll be taking cats to the vet on Friday. With our longer days, I should still be able to get more garden beds ready in the evenings. I also checked on the stakes for the chain link fence garden bed and they’re feeling nice and dry under the sun, so I hope to get points on those and that bed finally ready and covered, before the Chinese elm seeds start to fall!

Little by little, it’s getting done.

The Re-Farmer

One step closer on the garden bed construction, and an update

May 19, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I wasn’t expecting to get much done outside today. It’s been a damp and chilly day – the sort of overcast day that makes me want to crawl into bed and sleep for a week. Tonight, we’re supposed to dip below freezing for one last time.

Hopefully.

The first thing we had to do today was head into town and to the pharmacy, where my older daughter got a file set up and her prescriptions mostly filled. They didn’t have enough to fully fill one of them, but they’ll have the rest in a day or two. Meanwhile, she has enough to last for a fair bit longer than that.

One of the meds turns out to be covered by our province’s health care system, and the other was very cheap, which was a pleasant surprise. Once we were done there, the girls wanted to hit the grocery store and picked up a few things. On the way home, we stopped at the mail where my garden hoops kit was waiting for pick up.

There was also a letter from the health care system for my husband that turned out to be a “hey, you need to get your blood work done” reminder. He’s had his requisition form for months, but we weren’t able to do it either because the truck was in the garage for most of two months, or he was physically unable to make the trip into town.

We’re planning to do it tomorrow morning. Hopefully.

Later in the afternoon, after I went out to do the outside cat feeding and do my evening rounds, the weather had improved enough that I decided to try and find more materials for the chain link fence raised bed. I was looking to get about 18 stakes for the front wall, plus the side walls needed three smaller, thinner stakes. Going through the spruce grove, I found enough poplar, maple and cherry suckers with straight sections strong enough for stakes. I had two left from earlier, that I’d used to mark where the wall would go after the bricks were removed, so I collected enough for another 16 stakes for the front wall before going back Cutting the longer pieces down to equal length, I had enough slightly shorter lengths left over that I only needed to fine one more poplar sucker long enough for two stakes.

Then I spent the next while debarking them.

The shorter ones for the ends of the bed were narrow enough that I could easily make points with the utility knife I was using to debark them. For the longer ones, some are thicker, so I’ll use the vice and a draw knife to make point on those ones.

You can really tell in the picture, which lengths are the cherry wood!

They are all freshly cut and very green, so that are also very damp. I’ve left them out to dry out a bit. When I check on them tomorrow, I’ll have to decide if I should use them as is, or if I should char them like the others. If the soil weren’t so rain soaked right now, I wouldn’t be as concerned, but we’re looking as possibly more rain over the next few days.

We shall see.

So that’s my progress on the garden bed for today. Tomorrow, things finally warm up and are supposed to keep warming up to the point of getting actually hot – at least for our region – within the week.

Which means replacing the plastic covering two garden beds with netting, and keeping an eye on the isolation shelter. They will still need the heat lamp for one more night, and tomorrow, I’ll need to make sure to turn it off when the morning feeding is being done. If it gets too warm in there, even with the mesh walls on the bottom uncovered, I’ll set frozen water bottles in with them to help cool things down.

Now that I have the second hoop kit, I should be able to set them up over a couple of beds in an almost permanent basis, and still have enough left over to temporarily cover others. This is in addition to the Pex pipe hoops I already had. The goal is to be able to cover any individual bed with some sort of protection, until I can build more removeable covers for most of them. We need to frame out more raised beds in the main garden area with logs, and build more trellis beds, before I can focus on more covers. The hoops will do just fine until then.

Not a lot of progress today, but it’s at least one step closer to getting that chain link fence bed done!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 garden progress, surprise worms, and home!

May 18, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I must have been way more exhausted than I thought.

The night before was one of those nights were I just didn’t sleep. Not restless or busy brain or pain, just… awake. Until about 4am.

Last night, I decided to try going to be early. I was in bed and messaged my daughter in the hospital, asking how she was doing, shortly after 8:30pm.

I fell asleep before she answered me.

When I woke later, needing to de-cat myself so I could go to the washroom, I checked the time, expecting it to be 3 or 4am.

It was barely past midnight.

I figured for sure I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep again – and then I was awakened by cats crashing around in my room. Sure enough, it was about 5:30am, which is about when Ghosty goes into desctructo mode to wake me up and feed them.

So I did.

It was starting to get light out, but I went back to bed, expecting to not be able to fall asleep again, but I tried anyhow.

I opened my eyes and three hours had passed.

So I quickly got up and got ready to do my outside routine, which I always get done before I have breakfast. Especially when I end up going out later like this, because I know the outside cats would be quite hungry.

After feeding the cats I did my morning rounds, which includes checking all the garden beds. We had a “wintery mix” all night, and it was still raining. The sump pump has been going off, so the garden bed in the old kitchen with the vinyl cover, were I’d added the soaker hose, was being watered from below. The hose from the sump pump drains into a hole under the raised bed wall closest to the house, but it doesn’t go far, so it usually overflows into a path as well, but enough gets under the bed that it makes a difference.

When I got to the poly covered bed in the main garden area, I saw that water had collected in pools at the sides, where it’s weighted down by boards wrapped in the excess poly, again. Enough that, at one end, the weight was pushing the supportive hoop deeper into the ground and pooling more. So I was going to fiddle with the corner so that the water could rain into the bed when I noticed something odd.

A worm.

Two worms…

Ten?

Handfuls????

For some reason, all along the boards, on both sides, there were masses of earthworms in the water. In some places, I could see worms that had somehow managed to squeeze up the outside of the boards, under the poly. There were so many of them, I gave up trying to just drain the water. I unrolled all the boards and straightened out the poly, draining all the water away and taking out every stray would I could find. Amazingly, most of them looks like they were still alive, too!

Unrolling the poly required loosening the secured ends and removing the clips. When I rolled the boards up in the excess ploy again, I did it from below (which is much more awkward!) and in such a way that the poly now wraps completely around the outside of the raised bed’s log frame.

I was just finishing securing the second end when my daughter came out, asking if I could hear my phone or not.

I could hear nothing over the sounds of the poly as I fussed with it.

My older daughter has messaged us. She was free. Knowing it would take a while for us to get there, they told her to let us know first, and they would start the discharge paperwork and go over her prescriptions.

We had already prepped a back seat in the truck yesterday, and I decided to bring my walker along, just in case, which meant securing it in the box of the truck with some Bungee cords, so it would slide around as we drove, and we were soon on the road. Neither of us had eaten yet and it was past 10am by then, so we stopped at the next town to get a bit of gas, some beef jerky to tide us over, and a couple of energy drinks.

As we were driving in, I saw a gas station we would pass on the way out with gas at $1.729. We had gotten gas at $1.849, but most places in the city were $1.809. I decided it was worth getting more gas on the way back.

One of the things we asked my daughter was to find out where the pick up zone was, as I figured there was no way it was at the doors we’d gone in through when we visited.

It was those doors.

With my younger daughter to rubber neck for me while I was driving, she spotted the curb cut that passed as the entrance. Once we pulled in, I still couldn’t figure out where to park; at the doors was a fire lane, so no stopping at all. My daughter spotted some parking spots that looked like part of the patio, but the signs on the back wall said “permit only”. There was a truck sitting in what looked like the middle of the patio area, surrounded by several large, kidney shaped raised flower beds. That turned out to be where only 3 drop-off zone parking spots were, which I had to back into, because there was no room for me the truck to turn in. Thankfully, the “permit only” parking spaces were empty, because I had to pull into one of those to have room to back up.

Half hour only, paid parking only.

At least this time, I could use a machine in the lobby to pay for parking, rather than use a frickin’ website.

My daughter went ahead to get her sister while I took care of paying the parking, then waited in the lobby area for them. My older daughter was looking so much better! She was walking normally again, and she looked so happy to be leaving. She’s been stuck either sitting or lying down for the past week, with tubes and wires hanging off of her, so just being upright and moving made her feel better, too.

Once we had her settled into the truck, we headed out of the city, stopping to fill the tank at the one gas station with the lower price that I’d seen. Our next stop was going to be the pharmacy in town, so she could get a file set up and fill her prescriptions. Most of it will be vitamins.

I forgot, though.

Today is not Sunday. Today is a holiday Monday.

It wasn’t until I saw the empty parking lot at the pharmacy that I realized that. They were closed.

Which means my daughter won’t get her meds for the rest of the day.

We’re going to have to get back tomorrow, as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, my daughter was absolutely craving a meaty burger. The hospital food was good, but had no seasonings. Especially lacking in salt – and we don’t normally use a lot of salt in our cooking at home!

So we stopped at the DQ and got her a triple burger. Red meat, fat and salt – all the things she needs right now! 🍖🥩🧂🥓🍔

Actually, we all got triple burger meals to bring home. Can’t leave my husband out of the treat!

Once everything we settled and done, and it was time to feed the outside cats again, I stayed out to check on things and see what I could get done. Which is when I realized we had completely forgotten to turn on the shop lights over the seedlings (to make up for where the LED lights can’t reach), so I headed down to the basement, where I found a lovely surprise.

Our very first bi-colour pear gourd has emerged!

The second picture is the early White Vienna kohlrabi I started, just in case the ones outside don’t take. So far, only the chamomile has not sprouted yet.

That done, it was time to head outside.

It had stopped raining, though everything is still very wet, so there was only so much that could be worked on after the cats were fed. I was able to get back to that raised bed at the chain link fence, first securing the vinyl strips protecting the back wall that got pulled up by the winds. Then I started laying out the deadwood I’d stripped of bark along the front wall. It turned out I had enough stripped pieces to cover the bottom from end to end, so I no longer needed to strip any others.

Here is how it looks, as of now.

I actually went into the spruce grove to try and find more long, straight pieces, and found a few poplar that weren’t too wonky. I still have a pile of what we collected in the fall, but they are too short to set between the stakes.

I need more stakes. If I’m going to use skinny, short pieces to fill in the gaps so the soil won’t fall out, I’m going to need a lot more stakes.

They won’t need to be as tall as the ones that will support any hoops or whatever we use to hold protective covers, and I won’t bother charring them. That will have to be a job for another day, though.

I will also need to make stakes for the ends. With how narrow this bed is now, it will be a lot easier to do those, and I can use the shorter, but much more flexible pieces we collected in the fall.

One that’s all done, I can finally return the soil I removed.

Which will need to be sifted, because the cats have been using the pile as a litter box.

*sigh*

Once the soil is returned, that bed it doing to need to be covered with netting immediately, or the cats are going to be all over it. Not just to use as a litter box, but they love to roll around in loose soil.

I’ve actually ordered another hoop kit with fiberglass rods. A different kit from last time. This one doesn’t come with little gardening gloves (well… little for my simian hands), but it does come with ground staples – ground “nails” they call them – with “gaskets”. The fiberglass rods are 16.5inchs long, and this kit has 60 of them, plus the connectors. These connectors are metal instead of plastic, so I’m curious to see which ones last longer.

I had been trying different materials to make hoops, and things like the Pex pipe work well, but for the price, I’m getting a lot more hoops out of these kits than out of the Pex pipe. Plus, the lengths can be adjusted as needed; just use the connectors to add more rods. Whereas once I’ve cut the Pex to size, that’s it. I’d have to get pretty creative if I want more length.

Once I have more of these hoop kits, I will be adding them to the bed along the retaining all in the old kitchen garden that I finished last year, and probably just keep the hoops on the bed, even if any covers are removed. With this bed, I want the supports to be permanent, while also making it easy to work in between them. I’ll try it with these hoop kits first and see how it goes. Since they are fiberglass, they’ll handle weathering well.

As it is right now, that front wall is pretty much the same height at the back wall. Once I accumulate more stakes to better secure it, I might increase the height a bit while also filling in the gaps with thinner material. We’ll see.

I was debating what to plant in this bed. With the chain link fence right there, anything that climbs would be ideal. Maybe some winter squash. Once they are big enough that any protective cover can be removed, I won’t have to worry about the deer eating it, like they do with things like peas and pole beans.

Looking at the forecast, we’ve got one more cooler day, with a couple more nights of frost, then thing things will warm up substantially – but we are now getting rain forecasts starting the day after tomorrow and continuing for the next 5 days! At least, that’s what the weather app on my phone says. Not so much the one on my desktop. Hopefully, it’ll be nice enough that I can get the last beds prepped that weren’t done in the fall. I don’t mind the combination of heat and rain. Better than the usual drought!

Meanwhile, I’m hoping to get our seed potatoes into one of the main garden beds that were prepped last fall. They could have already gone in by now, but it can still wait for a while longer. At this point, other than things like other varieties of peas I’d like to try, and seeing if I can get some onions transplanted, most things can’t get done until possibly the second week of June!

Weather willing.

Little by little, it’s getting done – and this year, we really need to have a good gardening year, because the grocery prices just keep getting worse.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: more direct sowing, cuteness and an update

May 17, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

First, let’s start with the cuteness!

Today has been a chilly day, with the possibility of rain – rain that has held off until just now, as I can finally see drops hitting my window. When I was done outside and coming in through the sun room, I spotted this cuddle puddle. Havarti, Gouda, Flopsy and Curtis, all crammed into one cat bed!

I didn’t get outside to start anything until mid afternoon. I had expected to be going into the city today, to bring my daughter home from the hospital. They weren’t sure of a discharge time, but said they’d know by 11am. Then they suggested my daughter stay one more day. She said no. 11am came and went. At one point, talking to my husband, I suggested they were delaying letter her know until it got too late for us to drive in.

Sure enough, well past 1pm, we were informed my daughter was staying another day.

She has been chatting pretty continuously with her sister, and they have a theory. While talking how she would continue treatment at home, she said she preferred oral medication – not because she had issues with injections, but because she would have to travel to get them, and we tend to get snowed in, in the winter. It seems they didn’t quite get it and she had to explain that there are times when we literally cannot get out of our driveway, and that we are in the boonies. She now thinks they believe we are far more isolated than we are, so they want to keep her at the hospital as long as possible. They’re not too off base. We’re not in a fly in community or anything, but getting places is simply impossible at times, so having to do something like travel to the city for injections when she can get meds delivered, or get 3 months worth of meds at a time, the choice is easy.

Whatever the reason, they’re not saying she will be coming home tomorrow.

Again.

So there is that.

Since we were no longer going into the city, I decided to head outside and do as much as I could before the predicted rain. Thankfully, the rain held off.

I started by working in the garlic bed.

In the first picture, the protective netting has been moved to the top of the hoops. Once it was secured, I checked the rows and did actually find some little sprouts, trying to grow. More chard sprouts than spinach. Which turned out to be a good thing, because I didn’t have a lot of the yellow chard seeds left. I used my bamboo stake to make furrows between the sprouts I could see, then sowed the seeds. I ended up grabbing a different variety of spinach than I’d originally planted, but that’s okay.

Frustratingly, as I was sowing the seeds, I had two cats show up among the garlic, checking out what I was doing!!

Once done and well watered and I was setting the netting back, I made a point of giving the ground staples a bit of a twist before pinning it down, so make sure it was extra snug, lengthwise. The cats can’t get under the netting, but they can still jump on top, and I wanted to make sure there wasn’t any slack. Which is in the last picture, but with black netting over dark soil, you really can’t tell.

So that’s two more things resown.

Next was the rainbow carrots.

I removed the protective boards and took a close look. There wasn’t a single carrot sprout, anywhere. Other things were trying to grow under the boards, but no carrots.

The number of seeds left in the pack was not as much as I expected. I suddenly can’t remember if I bought more or not. No matter. I still managed to fill the row, though a few spots might be a bit sparse. The seeds did not want to fall evenly, and it didn’t help that the wind was picking up!

After a solid watering, the boards were set back, and that was it for resowing the winter sown seeds that didn’t make it, or only partially made it.

The pea seedlings are looking surprisingly good, considering they did die off, but are recovering. I’m going to have to find a way to cover this bed with netting to protect them for the first while, or the deer will eat them all.

The first image above are the peas. The second one was taken through the 6mm poly over the bed sown with white turnips and daikon radish. The image is of daikon radish sprouts. Most of the plastic is covered with condensation inside, but there were a few slightly cleared spots, and I could see sprouts in both rows.

Once that was done, and the rain hadn’t started yet, I had time to sit down and continue debarking the deadwood that will go on the bottom of the new wall in the chain link fence garden bed. For lengths we cut last fall, they were remarkably viable. Not sprouting new leaves, like the maple suckers I’d gathered last year, but they’d definately start growing if they have long enough contact with the soil under the wall they will be part of.

I didn’t finish all of them, but got most done before it started to get too cold and I headed inside. Hopefully, I will have a chance to work on that again, soon, and finally continue working on that garden bed! At least I got a bit of progress. Every little big helps.

Little by little, it’s getting done.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: direct sowing four beds

May 16, 2026 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

So May has been just all over the place, this year. This morning, it was snowing. We have frost advisories for tonight. It’ll be almost a week before things really start to warm up again.

This has had an unfortunate affect on our winter sown beds. Most of what germinated did not survive the temperature fluctuations, after the mulch was removed.

What was sown in them, however, was all cool weather crops that can be direct sown before our last frost date, as soon as the soil can be worked. Which means, we still have time.

I started off in the old kitchen garden, with the bed that has clear vinyl over the wire raised bed cover that my daughter helped me move aside.

The first picture in the slide show above was before I stared doing anything. You can see a row of onions along the south wall that are doing well – but the ones along the north wall are pretty much gone! I think the one on the south were partially shaded by the wall, keeping them slightly cooler, while the ones inside the north wall had no respite. I should have propped up the cover to allow air circulation on the hotter days, but there was no real way to do that.

Which is why the first thing I worked on was the walls of this bed.

There were a number of stakes that were high enough that the cover got hung up on them, and I spent some time hammering them deeper. The top logs aren’t particularly straight, and one of them is quite a bit narrower at one end than the other. I secured them better, while also using straw to fill the gaps under them, as well as to make everything more level. I ended up using leftover pieces from the stakes I’d cut for the in-progress garden bed at the chain link fence and most more stakes to further secure the walls.

You can see the end result of that in the second picture.

Once that was done, I spent some time removing more of the leaf mulch remaining. Even with the vinyl over the cover, wind got in and blew things around.

After clearing the rows, I re-sowed the Hedou Tiny bok choy and the variety mix of beets. I had considered getting one of the snail rolls of onions from inside to add along the north edge, but changed my mind. I had picked up a packet of parsnips at our local general store – because I just could not resist buying more seeds! – and sowed some of those, instead. I think I’m the only one in the household that likes parsnips, so we don’t need a lot.

That done, I watered everything from the rain barrel right away. Then I grabbed the soaker hose I’d brought over and hooked it up to the garden hose to test it out. It was working fine, so I laid it out between the rows, making sure the right end was set up at one corner, where the hose could be screwed on without having to take off the cover.

This soaker hose is quite long, though, so after pegging it down between the rows. there was enough length left over to go along the walls around the entire bed.

Once it was set up and pegged down, I hooked up the hose and left it going while I worked on the next area.

In the wattle weave bed, I’d planted some Tom Thumb dwarf peas along the back, and transplanted garlic and a few onions along the front. After removing most of the mulch when things started to warm up enough, I made sure to set netting over it, to keep the cats out.

I don’t know if any of the peas germinated or not, but when I moved the netting aside and cleared away excess leaf mulch, I saw no sign of pea sprouts at all. The package has only 25 pea seeds, so I planted the entire package. I do still have an extra of this variety, though, that could be succession sowed somewhere else, if I want. We have other varieties of peas, though, so I would probably go with something different.

The garlic was doing fine, and most of the transplanted onions are showing growth. In the green plastic collar, the mystery flowers I found and transplanted into this bed are coming up nicely, too. Once the peas were planted and watered, I just needed to slide the netting down the hoops and peg them down again. Those fiberglass hoops I used in place of the wire the kit came with are working out really well.

After that was all done, I messaged my daughter to help me put the raised bed cover back on. I turned off the water and moved the garden hose first, to remove the tripping hazard! The last image shows both beds, all covered up again.

The cover fits a LOT better now. No hanging up on stakes, and no weird gaps under the frame that I had to fill with boards or rocks or pieces of brick, to make sure no cats got in, and to keep the wind from flipping the whole thing over. I was better able to tuck the excess vinyl under the edges, so nothing should catch on the wind. The boards I’d used along the edges before were no longer needed, so they went on top, to weigh down the vinyl and keep it from billowing in the wind. The pieces of wood I used before kept getting blown off!

I will keep that vinyl cover on for a few more nights. Then I will replace it with mosquito netting, so it doesn’t get too hot under there, while still protecting the bed from cats.

That done, I moved to the garden beds in the East yard. I worked on the cabbage bed and the kohlrabi beds at the same time.

The first thing was to remove their covers. As you can see in the first photo, the leaf mulch got blown all over the rows I’d planted into. I cleared away excess leaf mulch and, in the process, did find a few tiny seedlings.

In the second image, you can see I also found a friend!

When it was clear enough to start sowing (which you can see in the third image), I used a bamboo trellis stake to create a furrow, and did my best not to kill off the few seedlings I found in the process. Hopefully, they will survive.

Once the kohlrabi and cabbage were all re-sown, they got a thorough watering from the rain barrel, and the covers were set back on.

I debated whether I should find some plastic to cover them for the night, since we are expecting frost, but these are meant to be sown before last frost, so they should be fine.

At this point, I was done for the day. The next things I need to re-sow are the spinach, chard and carrots. I’m pretty sure the daikon radish and white turnips don’t need to be re-sown, but I’d have to lift the poly to be able to see just how many have made it. The greenhouse poly is semi-transparent, with condensation on the inside, so it’s really hard to tell.

This will wait for another day. Hopefully not tomorrow, as I would love to be making the trip into the city to bring my daughter home from the hospital!

This weekend is the May long weekend – Monday is Victoria Day – which is when a lot of people traditionally finish getting their gardens in. Not where we are, though, and certainly not this year!

I’m happy with what I was able to get done today, though. It feels so good to be working in the garden again!!

The Re-Farmer

Yes, more snow, plus updates and moving the chicken coop

May 16, 2026 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

*sigh*

Woke up this morning to falling snow.

It didn’t take long for things to warm up enough that the snow on the ground melted away, but it was a bit longer before the snow turned into a light rain. Yes, we need the moisture, but we also need warmer temperatures! Especially overnight.

We were able to message with our older daughter, who is still in the Women’s Hospital in the city. There was a possibility that she might come home today. They were asking her how far away she lived, so they knew she needed some advance notice before the discharged her. They were waiting on some test results, first, though.

They didn’t get the results until about mid afternoon.

She didn’t come home today.

They’re changing her meds a bit, and are saying she might come home tomorrow.

She is just itching to get out of there!

It wasn’t until late afternoon that things warmed up enough to make working outside more pleasant. As a bonus, my brother and SIL came out to work on their set up. My younger daughter and I went over to their caravan to say hello and visit for a bit, and I got to show off my new wheels.

Before my daughter went inside, I got her to help me with a couple of things. One was to take off the vinyl covered garden bed cover in the old kitchen garden, and move it completely aside. I’ll do a separate post on garden progress, next. Then I showed her a location I thought would work out for the chicken coop that looked the most level. It’s where I’ve been trying to get wildflower mixes growing, but the cats keep using the loose soil as a litter box, or to roll in, killing off anything that might have germinated. She agreed that it looked like a good spot, so I gave it a through raking while she set the ramp up in the coop, so it wouldn’t drag sideways on the ground while we moved it.

Moving the coop was a real pain. Aside from both of us being rather broken, we can only pick it up by our fingertips. Once we’re more settled with it, I’m going to find some way to modify it, so we can move it around more easily.

We set it almost where I wanted it to be, and I worked on the rest. I wanted to set the coop on top of the bricks that used to line one side of the low raised bed I’ve been slowly redoing, but I wasn’t sure if I had enough. I loaded the wheelbarrow and started by laying them out along the back of the coop, just to see how many were needed for the length of it.

It turned out to be 10, with the last brick turned at a right angle.

Once I worked that out, I set the bricks out as straight and even and tight against each other as I could, before very carefully lifting the coop, one end at a time, on top. Then I immediately set bricks under the front corners, just to level it.

It turned out I had another 10 bricks in the wheelbarrow, so a prepped those before getting another load for the sides. I don’t know where these bricks were re-purposed from, but I made sure to use the ones with no, or almost no, mortar still stuck to them. There was more raking and leveling and careful placement, but I finally got it done – and had extra bricks.

The first image above was taken after the coop was moved. I didn’t open the door to let the ramp down until all the bricks were in place.

The next pictures show how the bricks were laid out, including the extras I set along the back and sides. I wanted it on bricks so the wooden frame wasn’t touching the ground. Yes, it’s painted, but it would still end up damaged by moisture and rotting faster.

What I’m not sure of is if anything would burrow under it to get at the chickens. Raccoons and skunks are both known to kill chickens. Ideally, we would set wire mesh around the outside edges by about 2 feet. Which is something that would have been done before setting the coop on bricks. We still need to figure out about securing it. With the wind storm we just had over the past couple of days, it was fine, and that location was more exposed than this one. It might be fine as it is.

Something to consider, still.

I’m glad we finally got it moved and set up on bricks, though. We can figure out the rest later.

Meanwhile, here is a beautiful Lady Adam, and I am rather perplexed by her.

I know Adam has had kittens, but she has been staying around the house a LOT for a mama that just gave birth. She has allowed me to feel her belly, while she’s on the cat house roof, eating. At first, it seemed I was feeling at least three active nips. Maybe more. Then, I was able to feel two, full and swollen with milk. The last time she allowed me to feel her belly, they weren’t swollen anymore. That could mean that she’d nursed her babies before coming to the house for food, but she is always around the house. Even more than usual. Does this mean she lost her litter? Or has she abandoned them? We have no way to know, without knowing where her “nest” is.

I don’t know what to make of it.

As for the cats in the isolation shelter, we are having zero success in socializing them. When we open the windows to give them their cat soup and fresh water, Bug is the only one that tolerates contact. Furriosa glares at me before moving out of reach. The other two just run away, as soon as I open a window. They aren’t even tempted by squeeze treats!

I did change out their litter box today – since I have to open the ramp door to do it, it has to be done quickly, so none of them escape, so I quickly remove the dirty litter pan and immediately replace it with a freshly prepared on, then quickly close up the ramp door. I’ve been able to add more toys for them as well, though I’ve yet to see them actively playing with any of them.

When it comes time to get them to the clinic – Furriosa is to be done first – I honestly don’t know how we’re going to manage it. We might be able to get Bug into a carrier, but the others will not allow us to touch them. How are we supposed to get them into a carrier, if we can’t reach them? Especially if they go into the lower level.

*sigh*

And these are among the friendliest, most gettable females.

We have got to figure something out.

Anyhow.

After I was done with the chicken coop, I worked in the garden for several hours and got good progress done.

Which will be in my next post.

See you there!

The Re-Farmer

The Re-Farmer

Sometimes, you need to go back, to go forward.

Gardening

Our 2026 Garden: one more bed prepped, and got a visit in

It’s finally done!!!

Raised bed progress – almost done!

Our 2026 Garden: starting melons, winter squash, pumpkin and cucumbers, plus updates

Our 2026 Garden: protecting and preparing garden beds

One step closer on the garden bed construction, and an update

Our 2026 garden progress, surprise worms, and home!

Our 2026 Garden: more direct sowing, cuteness and an update

Our 2026 Garden: direct sowing four beds

Yes, more snow, plus updates and moving the chicken coop

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