Gardening

Some unexpected critter damage

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While doing the evening watering, I had found an unpleasant surprise.

The larger of our Crespo squash vines got a substantial portion nibbled off!

Unlike the summer squash, these don’t have spines on them that would dissuade being eaten. I am guessing this was done by a deer, but I really have no way to know.

It was just part of the one plant that was eaten; the other is untouched. The nearby Montana Morado corn was also untouched, and I saw no damage in any of the garden beds on this side of the house.

When the watering was done, my daughter and I rigged up the last three hula hoops to make a “fence” around the mound. The ground is so hard, we couldn’t push anything into it, so we had to use the pointed metal bar we found, to make holes, like I did to drive in stakes for the summer squash. After setting up the open hula hoops around the mound, we threaded some aluminum tart pans onto twine and tied them between the hoops.

While watering the haskap bushes, near the tomato plants on the south side of the house, I noticed something else. The bed we planted the haskaps in have a lot of flowers that grow quite tall before producing bright yellow flowers. We’ve pulled them up around the haskaps, but at this stage, they are taller than the bushes.

Except for some of them.

A whole bunch of them at one end of the flower bed have lost their heads! Given the height, this had to have been doing by deer. Looking more closely, I saw or were missing their tops on the south side of the flower bed. Which means deer have used the path between the flower bed and the new tomato bed.

No tomatoes were damaged, though.

My daughter had watered the old kitchen garden, so before I went inside, I decided to check it as well. I found more nibbled beets in the bed along the retaining wall. These area has different beets planted in sections, unlike the big bed where they are all mixed up. At one end is a type of beet that has lighter, all green leaves, without the red stalk and veins that the other types have. Only that one was nibbled on. There wasn’t a lot of damage, and I am wondering if maybe it was a skunk? It definitely wasn’t a deer, given the location and the netting nearby, and I would have expected the woodchuck to have done far more damage. There’s no way to tell.

At least the Epsom salt treated carrots nearby have no new damage to them.

The loan beet bed by the garlic was a concern for me. It’s recovering quite well from being thoroughly nibbled on by a deer. I trimmed the onion greens that surround the beets, so today I loosely laid the remaining piece of mosquito netting over it, like a row cover, with the short ends weighted down with some scrap boards. Hopefully, that will keep the deer out of it and the beets can continue to recover.

Thankfully, what damage we found this evening was relatively minor.

I’d much rather there was no damage at all, of course!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: time for a hair cut!

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It was a rough night for me, last night. Very little sleep, and the pain levels are just high enough to make any position uncomfortable after only a short time. Thankfully, my husband was well enough this morning to head out do all the food bowls for the cats, and refill the bird feeder, allowing me to postpone the rest of my morning rounds until later in the day.

Once I did get out, the first thing I noticed was the haze. I know we don’t have fires nearby, but we’re getting smoke. I’ll have to check the fire maps later, and see what the current status is.

The other thing I noticed was Junk Pile cat. Who looked at me and growled.

Now, why would she do that?

Because she had brought her kittens over, and they were around the cat shelter! I saw some furry little butts disappearing behind it, so I carefully went around, giving them lots of space, to check on the potatoes and grapes. I saw a little grey and white kitten run across to the storage out, while a little tuxedo squeezed under the cat shelter.

A tuxedo?

Yup. She had more kittens with her this time! There were at least three, possibly four. I was just catching glimpses of them, though later on I saw the tuxedo under a tree by the storage house, watching me from a safe distance.

I am so glad she’s bringing her babies over to the food bowls!! Hopefully, they will be moving into the inner yard now.

Before finishing my morning rounds, I got the hose going to refill the water barrel at the far beds. Unfortunately, it is still leaking. I’ll have to pinpoint exactly where, then empty it enough that it can dry and I can try sealing them again.

Once everything else was done, I came back outside to give the onions a hair cut. :-D

It was on one of the gardening groups I’m on that I saw someone post pictures of the green onions they had just harvested and bagged up for the freezer. I know it’s recommended to trim onions grown from seed, down to about 3 inches, before transplanting. I hadn’t thought about trimming them, other than to gather greens for the day’s cooking, before harvest. The gardener that posted the pictures said that trimming them meant more energy going towards growing the bulbs. If the greens start falling over, the onions stop growing for the season. I knew that last part, but it never occurred to me that the growing season could be extended by trimming. I’ve never grown onions before, and the onions my mother grew were left in the ground to come back, year after year, so I never saw her doing that, either.

The yellow onions sets that I bought locally got really large greens. I quickly ran out of space in my colander, and had to come back to do the bigger shallots, then the other onion bed. The red onions (from sets) and the other yellow onions (from seed) did not have as many large greens, but the colander still got pretty full again! All the greens completely filled our giant metal bowl. Thankfully, it has a lid, because the cats were VERY curious! It’s full enough that the lid is sitting on top of greens, but at least that cats can’t get at them. Onions are toxic to cats, but that doesn’t stop them from being very curious about them!

We’ll have a lot of washing of greens to do, and then they’ll be coarsely chopped. We will probably dehydrate a couple of pans of them in the oven, and the rest will get frozen.

We’re going to have enough to last us quite a long time! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden; summer sowing

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Finally! I got the summer sowing done, in all three empty beds. :-)

Before I started on that, though, I made another attempt at trying to keep the woodchuck out of our carrot beds.

I’d read the Epsom salts are a thing they don’t like, while also being good for the garden. We didn’t have a lot left, so one of the beds was a bit sparser. We shall see if it helps, any.

Then I got to work on the first empty bed. This is the one that’s slightly wider, and that I’d already started to prep, and sized the mesh cover for.

I laid the board down as something to walk on, when we tend it later. The piece of scrap wood in the middle is a divider. In the foreground, I planted the Bright Lights Swiss Chard, and on the other side of the divider are French Breakfast radishes, with two short rows of each.

The tool you see in the middle is what I’m using as a hoe. The metal is quite thin, compared to most garden tools. If anyone knows what that is called, I’d love to know!

The second bed got three things planted in it.

Towards the middle of the bed is one long row of Fordhook Giant Swiss Chard.

You know, I hope we actually like Chard. :-D

The row on the outside has Cherry Belle radish in the foreground, and on the far side of the brick is the Russian Red kale.

In the last bed, the Early Purple Vienna kohlrabi are planted on the outside, and Champion radish is planted on this inside.

Later in the month, these beds will have spinach and lettuces planted in them. The kale is a frost hardy plant and I’ve read it tastes better after being hit with a frost. I planted the radishes sparsely, as they can get quite big when allowed to go to pod. We can start harvesting the chard in less than a month, and they should be done before first frost. By putting the taller plants that will be there for the rest of the growing season on the west side, I hope that they will help provide shade for the lettuces and spinach, and we can maybe plant them a bit earlier, as long as the soil doesn’t get too warm for germination.

We will have to monitor all our beds frequently. In the last little while, we’ve seen quite an increase in grasshoppers. Some people in the local gardening groups I’m on have had major problems with them, and they seem to be slowly making their way north.

I admit, this one was rather cute. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this sort of colour before!! I find myself wondering if this is grasshopper albinism, or a species that happens to be almost white in colour!

With the seeds sown, I worked on weeding around one of the onion beds for a while, then dragged my aching butt over to the water barrel at the furthest garden bed to fill it. The spray plastic coating we’d used to seal cracks had started to come loose on the inside, so I went to pull it off while I was filling the watering can. A huge chunk peeled off, and the barrel promptly started to leak at one of the cracks. We still have a bit of the silicon sealant left, so last night, I patched the crack. It should be cured by now, and I wanted to refill the barrel with water. That was when my daughter came out to let me know she needed to pick up a parcel in the mail and go to the grocery store in town, so I set that aside and headed in. Not before I got her to help me position the adapted wire mesh cover.

I had deliberately planted everything in shorter rows, leaving a lot of empty space at the ends of the beds, because of the length of these covers. We set the cover as far to one side as we could, and I was happy to find the row lengths worked out just right. They are completely covered, and the cross pieces at each end are beyond the ends of the rows, so no seedlings will be squished.

Then it was off to town with my daughter, with a quick stop at the post office along the way. I took advantage of the trip to pick up a few things at the grocery store and, as I was wandering down the aisles with the shopping cart, I suddenly realized I was getting the shakes and feeling dizzy. Usually I have to use the shopping cart as a walker because my knees will suddenly dislocate or a hip will give out, but this time, I was using it to not fall over. It took me a while to realize what was going on.

I’d forgotten to eat again.

*sigh*

I did have breakfast, but it was a small meal, and after I finished my last blog post, I headed straight out to work on the garden. It was well past lunch time by then. Had my daughter not come out to get me, I would have been out there for quite a while longer before noticing anything was wrong. Thankfully, I was able to grab something I could eat in the car while my daughter drove home.

Sometimes I’m an idiot, but I enjoy the work so much, I didn’t notice the time or how long it had been since I’d had anything to eat or drink.

I had been planning to go out again and do some weeding, or dig through some sheds to see what I can salvage to make another row cover, but I think that will have to wait until tomorrow.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: this morning in the garden

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I love how, every day, there seems to be something new or different in the garden!

While doing my rounds, one of the first things I do after putting food and water out for the cats (or like today, just water, as my husband was feeling good enough to go outside and do their food), is check the nearby potatoes.

They are so huge and lush, you can barely see the grow bags! Of everything we planted this year, nothing is doing as well as the potatoes.

Hopefully, that means we’ll have lots of potatoes, and not just lots of greenery!

Potato flowers are such pretty little things!

While checking the tomatoes, I tried looking for the baby tomatoes we’ve been seeing and had a hard time finding them. Then I found this “huge” spray of tomatoes I’ve somehow missed seeing all this time!

“Huge” being a relative terms, for the world’s smallest tomatoes! :-D

While heading back down the driveway after switching out the trail cam memory card, I had to pause to get this photo.

There are less of these flowers than last year, and they are blooming later. Like so many other things, they had been damaged by that one cold night in May, and it’s taken this long for them to recover. We don’t water down here at all, and we’ve had no rain, so it’s amazing to see them at all. Such resilient flowers!

I was weeding the big carrot bed this morning, which is rather difficult right now. I sometimes wonder why I bother, considering how much they’ve been eaten. I accidentally caught a remaining carrot frond while pulling up a weed, and pulled a carrot up with it.

I’m… kinda glad I did.

If they have this much root after all they’ve been through, there is still a chance for them! We won’t get any big carrots, and my hopes of having enough to can are certainly dashed, but we might still have something worth harvesting.

As for this little guy, I washed it off with the hose and ate it, and as small as it was, it was tasty.

So that’s encouraging.

I had another surprise waiting for me in the old compost pile nearby.

Amazingly, there are more mystery squash coming up, next to the stems of the chewed up ones!

Of course, nothing will come of them after sprouting this late in the season, but we might at least see them get big enough to determine what they are.

I find these two Hopi Black Dye sunflowers in the old kitchen garden very interesting. The bigger one was the first of the seeds we started indoors to germinate. That was after the ones we’d direct sown outside had already germinated. The smaller one, which has the label next to it, germinated some time later. Right now, both of these are bigger than the ones that germinated first, in the large beds. The difference, of course, is the soil. The other ones are planted in an area that has not been amended or planted in before, while these are in a garden we’d been working on for 3 summers already

As for the tall plant behind the smaller sunflower, we still don’t know what it is. :-D

I was happy to see that many of the poppies have seen quite a growth spurt, and the ones that were under rhubarb leaves are getting stronger.

Then there is this plant, nearby.

When we were preparing the bed next to the retaining wall, there was a compact plant growing in it. Unsure of what it was, other than “some kind of flower”, we dug it up and transplanted it between the rhubarb and the chives. It quickly grew from a compact, bushy plant to the tall, leggy thing you can see in the photo.

I also now recognize it, though I still don’t know the name.

Do you see those sprays at the ends? With the small round things hanging down?

When it starts blooming, this plant has lovely, delicate little flowers.

Which then become some of the most annoying little burs, ever. It isn’t possible to go near one of these without ending up with masses of tiny burs stuck in your clothes, that are harder to get out than burdock! I’ve had some get so thoroughly stuck in my clothes, not only was I not able to get them completely out, but they managed to stay stuck after several washings!

After I took this photo, I pulled it up. Even though it is in the flower bud stage, it still tried to stick to my clothes!

It did not go into the compost, but into the fire pit for eventual burning.

If we ever get to light the fire pit this year. I suspect not.

While things have finally cooled down today – in fact, it actually got chilly last night! – and we are no longer getting heat warnings on our weather apps, we are now getting air quality alerts. There are a number of fires burning in our province right at the moment. I’d actually been smelling wood smoke for a while before we started getting the alerts, and with our heat and dryness, I was very concerned. None of the fires are near us, thankfully, but we’re still getting some of the smoke.

Today will be our coolest day for the next while, with a high of only 18C/64F so I will be taking advantage of it and getting things seeds sown in those empty spinach beds! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: today’s project, and new growth

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One of my goals for today was to modify one of the wire mesh covers for the main garden beds. I will be planting in this bed soon, and have set up the soaker hose in it for now.

I had one board left of what we used to make the long sides, and used it to make end pieces just over 3 feet long, so it will fit in the narrowest part of this bed. The lengths of hula hoops are woven through the wire and their ends are screwed in place. It’s still kinda floppy, but it won’t collapse completely.

We might still add chicken wire to the ends of the cover, to keep small critters out. Of course, it won’t stop the woodchuck, since it can just dig under it, but I hope to at least reduce the chances. I did see it briefly this evening, dashing under the garden shed when I came around the house. I have not seen any new nibbled on plants today, thankfully.

I have to go digging around to see if I can find more of this wood, so I can do the other wire cover as well. It’d be good if I can find enough to make a third cover, but I doubt it. We’ve picked over the area we found those boards in pretty thoroughly.

The board on the ground is something I found in the barn. This bed is a bit wider than the others, so I plan to lay the board down the middle, so that we’ll have something to step on, to make it easier to tend the bed.

Now that this has the end pieces, it will be easier for one person to move it aside to do weeding, then put it back again. It was the “put it back again” part that was the most awkward, without a second person to help.

If all goes well, we will have some radishes and chard planted in here tomorrow. :-)

The girls did the evening watering while I was doing this, and called my attention to something that I did not see this morning.

Our beans are showing flower buds!

So awesome! It looks like we’ll have more of the purple beans than the green or the yellow.

While flower buds are forming here, we have flowers blooming somewhere else.

This is part of the area at the edge of the spruce grove that I cleaned out this spring, partly to get materials needed to build the squash tunnel. With all the little trees and dead branches cleared away, they finally have enough light to be able to bloom. I expect this to happen more, as we continue to clean up the spruce grove.

When we first moved here, we worked out a plan: the first two years, we would focus on cleaning up the house and inner yard. In the third year, we would start on the outer yard, and then in the following years, we would start working on things beyond the outer yard, as warranted. In the first year of working the inner yard, we would clean up the maple grove, which we did. The second year of working the inner yard, we were to clean up the spruce grove. Then things happened, and we only got parts of it done. As time goes by, however, we’re realizing just how much bigger of a job the spruce grove is. This is now an area we’re going to have to chip away at, little by little, as we can. We need to work on the outer yard more, in the process. Particularly since we plant to build permanent raised bed gardens in the outer yard.

We still have a multi-year plan to get this stuff done. It’s just been adjusted quite a bit! Plus, with our starting to garden ahead of “schedule”, the time and resources we have available has had to shift, too. As much and things need to be cleaned up, and we have to get the junk hauled away, doing things that will actually feed us has become more of the priority. It was always the goal. It just went from a mid term goal, so a short term goal!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: photo bomb!

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I am so thankful that things cooled down overnight. The garden beds were watered thoroughly last night, and didn’t need to be done again this morning. It was all I could do to drag myself outside this morning. The past week or two has started to catch up to me, and the pain levels are getting pretty high.

While doing my rounds, I noticed one of the Ozark Nest egg gourds has reached a new stage of growth! :-)

Flower buds and tendrils have appeared. :-) The others aren’t quite there, yet. :-)

While the Spoon tomatoes had started to show fruit for a while, we now have tomatoes developing on the Mosaic Medley tomatoes. It should be interesting to see what kinds of cherry and grapes were included in the mix. :-)

This morning, I decided to go ahead and pick the biggest of the summer squash that we have right now.

Our first squashes of the summer! Two green zucchini and a Magda squash.

And a Nutmeg photo bomb. :-D

The littler bugger would NOT let me get a picture without him!

I noticed something interesting on one of the Crespo squash this morning.

All along the vine of the bigger one, these white shoots have appeared. Some are almost an inch long. There is nothing like this on any of the other squashes and gourds. I have no idea what they are.

If anyone knows what these are, I’d love to hear it!! My best guess is that, if these were on soil instead of over straw, they would root the vine to the ground.

Before heading indoors after finishing my rounds, I grabbed the twine and worked on filling in the gaps between the wire mesh of the squash tunnel.

I didn’t add twine all the way to the top. I figured, if we need to, we can add more later. Once done, a moved a few plants over to where they now have support to climb.

Quite a few plants are already starting to support themselves as they climb higher. Even some of the winter squash. A few of them did need to have a bit of twine looped around to lead them towards the trellis, rather than the path.

It should be interested to see how well the squash tunnel holds out, once things start climbing higher. This is not the strongest or most stable of structures, but I think it should hold.

Now that it’s no longer dangerously hot outside, I have quite a lot to catch up on. I’ll be seeing what I can scavenge out of the barn, too. That will still wait a little while, though. I have my court date this Friday for the restraining order against our vandal, but our province it still locked down. There was a slight easing of restrictions, so there’s a possibility the court rooms will be open, but while the rest of the world has moved on, our provincial dictators just don’t want to let go, no matter how many lives and businesses are destroyed for an illusion of safety.

Our vandal has been laying low, but we did happen to cross paths recently, as I was coming home from errands in town. I had to drive around him, walking on the road to our driveway, while turning off the main road. I never saw him on the trail cam files when I checked the next morning, so at least I know he didn’t try going into our driveway again. I did call my mother to remind her to check the call display before answering her phone. He was with someone else, and I’d smiled at her as I drove past, to show appreciation for them moving aside for me, and I was still smiling when I passed our vandal. He just stared at me, which is a change from his usual response of turning his back to me as I drive by. I think, because I was driving my mother’s car at the time, he didn’t realize who I was until then. Anyhow, from some of the messages he’s left on my mother’s answering machine in the past, if I smile while driving by, it’s because I’m laughing at him because I got the farm (I still don’t know why he thinks my mother gave me the property). Seeing me sometimes triggers him, and if he got drunk again, there was a good possibility that he would start calling my mother again, so I wanted to warn her.

Well, I think I’ve taken up enough time while writing this, and will try calling the court office again. I’d called earlier and left a message, but that last time I did that, they didn’t call back until the next day, so I’ll try again.

I am really tired of this whole mess. It should have been done with, one way or the other, more than 6 months ago.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 – and 2022 – garden: seed assessment

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Before heading out to do the watering, I went through our remaining seed packets to do a bit of planning.

First, there’s what’s left of things we planted in the spring.

To the right, we have the two types of carrots in pelleted seeds. I keep reading that we can still plant carrots this late in the season, and I had debated with myself about replanting the carrots decimated by the woodchuck, but really… what’s the point? It seems to have a special love for carrot greens, and until we get rid of the woodchuck, there will be no new plantings of carrots!

To figure out what we can plant for a fall harvest, I looked up our first frost date, which is Sept. 10, and worked out how much of a growing season we have left. Then I checked out the germination and days to maturity to see what we can plant now, and what will wait until later. We could plant the remaining Merlin beets, but we have so many beets planted, there is no need. The two types of beans could also be planted, but again, there is no need. Not in the photo are the remaining green peas, which apparently can also be planted this late in the season, but we won’t. If we wanted to, we could plant any of the summer squash, too, if we wanted to. All the seeds we will not be using this year got set aside for next year.

We had received the purple kale and purple kohlrabi as free seeds with each of our orders from Baker Creek. We ended up with two packs of kohlrabi seeds, but still have seeds in the one we did open. There are still kale seeds, too. These are both cool weather crops, and the kale can hand frost. While I plan to try kohlrabi again next year by starting them indoors, I’d forgotten we still had seeds. I’ve decided I will go ahead and plant the rest of the open packets of seeds, in hopefully better conditions, and actually get some growing!

The 3 types of spinach adn 4 types of lettuces will be planted, but not until the end of July.

Then there are these.

I’d picked up the radish seeds when I was last helping my mother with her grocery shopping. I intend to plant those as soon as possible; just a few of each. From what I’ve read, I should not expect to get bulbs developing in the heat of summer, and will be growing them for their pods.

The chard was something I picked up a few days ago. While waiting in line at the grocery store, I found myself next to a couple of boxes of seed packets, all jumbled together, instead of in their display cases. I rifled through them and found the two types of chard, which will be planted right away, too. I’ve read that they are tolerant of summer heat.

While going through the seed packets, I also picked these up.

Little by little, we intend to have an herb garden, likely in the old kitchen garden, so these are seeds for next year. Unless we want to try growing them in pots indoors, but I don’t imagine they’d survive the cats.

So we now have our first herb seeds, and more seeds to join the Yellow Pear tomatoes I picked up earlier.

The 5 day forecast has us back to around average temperatures for July, which means we should be able to catch up on things we’ve set aside because of the heat. But then, the forecasts have been so off for the past couple of weeks, I wouldn’t be surprised if the forecasts were completely off! Still, those empty beds need to have something planted in them, and it needs to be done soon!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: more critter carnage

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I went out to do the evening watering this evening, after trying to wait until things cooled down. When we were still above 30C/86F by 7:30pm, I headed out anyway, so I could be done before dark.

I started in the old kitchen garden, and this should have been my first warning.

When I had gone out earlier to apply the spray repellent, I made a point of spraying the edges of the beds and into the paths, where it would not be washed away by watering as quickly.

Nutmeg is sprawled right on top of where I’d sprayed. Clearly, he is not the least bit bothered by the repellent!

If you look to the bed on the right, you can see the stems of our nibbled on carrots. They were like that this morning, before I did the spraying. In fact, they were why I made a point os going out to apply the repellent when we were nearly at the hotted part of the day!

Meanwhile…

As I was finishing up in the old kitchen garden, I picked our first rhubarb of the season.

We could have picked rhubarb long ago, but we were thinking to do a crumple or a crisp with them, and no one wants to bake in this heat. However, I had other reasons to pick them.

We planted poppies in the new bed next to one of the rhubarb bunches. The only seeds that germinated are all near the rhubarb. While I was trying to weed them, I discovered there was more than we thought.

The rhubarb leaves were covering them, and preventing them from getting any sunlight.

So I uncovered them by picking rhubarb. :-D We’ll see if they recover, now that they are getting light.

After I was done watering the more southerly beds, I headed over to the main garden beds and started watering. When I had been there earlier, spraying around the carrot bed, I was noticing that they looked to be recovering quite well, with lots of new fronds. I made sure to spray a wide swath all around them, on them, and even on the wire mesh cover.

As you can probably imagine, I was must unhappy when I came back to this.

The entire bed is once again decimated. All of it, from end to end. Apparently, when I sprayed the repellent, all I did was season the fronds for the woodchuck!

I am so frustrated!!

I’ll be taking the wire mesh cover off. All it’s really doing is preventing me from weeding. Though I suppose there’s no point in weeding it anymore. I will, anyhow, but the chances of the carrots recovering just dropped substantially. We knew it couldn’t stop a woodchuck, but I thought it might not want to be under something, and potentially trapped, and at least the carrots in the middle would be ignored. Nope. Apparently, this furry beast had no problem being under a wire net for so long!

This was not our only loss.

The greedy guts even eat the mystery squash seedlings in the old compost heap!

Obviously, I hadn’t sprayed the compost heap, but still… they weren’t exactly easy access in there, and were surrounded by all sorts of things the woodchuck never tries to eat, like the self-seeded raspberries that are also growing out of the pile.

I was really hoping to find out if they were from last year’s pumpkins.

Thankfully, nothing else was nibbled on, but this is damage enough!!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: how it looked this morning

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Apparently, we got rain last night.

I have my doubts.

Apparently, we got rain while I would outside, watering the garden, too.

That would have been nice, but all we had was hot, muggy, thick air.

*sigh*

One of the awesome things about gardening is how fast things can grow. We’ve got a whole bunch more summer squash blossoms, more squash growing (still no yellow zucchini, though), and the squash that started earlier could probably be picked right now. I’m going to wait until they’re a bit bigger, though.

I was very excited to see our very first WINTER squash blossom! Those are starting to get quite big. As we are able, we’re moving them to train them up the trellis, and some are sending out tendrils and looking almost ready to be climbing on their own, as are more of the melons. We’re going to have to go back with some twine to string between the sections of mesh and fill in the gaps a bit for the few plants that are under them. I had remembered to look for twine when I was last in the city, and found a huge roll of it. It should last us until next year! :-D

I am absolutely thrilled by the Montana Morado corn. This is the stalk that we are seeing silk on already. Pretty soon, it will have pollen, too! A few of the others are starting to show the little red bits, but they do not yet show corn silk.

We’re going to have to go in between these and “hill” the corn. With having to water so often, and not having a mulch, the water is eroding the soil at the base of the corn a bit. A couple were starting to fall over, so last night I worked the soil around their bases and secured them upright with it, but I want to do that with all of them. The ground here is so soft, though, we don’t walk in here at all unless we absolutely have to. I’d hoped to be able to add grass clippings for mulch, but with the heat and lack of rain, the grass hasn’t been growing.

There are just a few potato blossoms that are fully open right now, but I am seeing many, many buds!

Of course, I’m always second guessing myself about deciding not to “hill” the potatoes more. As determinate type potatoes, it won’t result in more potatoes, but the plants have gotten so tall, it feels like they should be hilled! :-D

When I got to the old kitchen garden, I found the end of the L shaped beet bed was nibbled on.

I did see the woodchuck run under the garden shed this morning, but I’m not sure it is responsible for this. I think the carrots in this garden were nibbled on more, but I’m not sure. The motion sensor light would cover that carrot bed and the section of this beet bed next to it, and should be startling off any critters, but the section in the photo has a lilac bush between it and the light, so it wouldn’t be triggered by anything nibbling on the beets here.

I did see a deer going by the garden cam when I checked the files this morning. They seem to be just walking through, and not even going very close to the garden, now that I’ve put up the stakes and twine around the corn, and rope along the back of the Dorinny corn and the pea beds. I find myself wondering if a deer might have nibbled on the beets, since the woodchuck doesn’t seem to like beet greens, but that would mean the deer coming right up to the house, and pushing its way through the asparagus ferns and rhubarb, and I just don’t see that.

The beet beds in the old kitchen garden did get the Critter Ridder granules, but I was finishing off the container in the area in the photo, so there wasn’t as much there. It obviously doesn’t work to stop cats, since yesterday evening, we saw Junkpile and her kittens in the beets by the retaining wall. :-D

I still have to use the new spray we got, but it’s supposed to be applied on dry surfaces, so I’ll have to wait until later in the day.

Or until tomorrow, if we actually get the predicted storm!

Wouldn’t that be nice? :-)

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: we have silk! and loving the new tool

/ Re-Farmer / 5 Comments

With today’s expected heat, I was out in the garden by 6am, and ended up staying out there for almost 3 hours, watering and weeding. The watering was started after replacing the connectors on three hoses.

I’m a goof, but it did work.

When I bought the connector repair sets, I got what was left on the display, and didn’t even think to look at the sizes. They are for 1/2 inch hoses.

We have 3/4 in hoses.

No matter. The clamps they came with could tighten enough to properly seal them. They will do while I am on the lookout for the right size connectors.

The little flexible piece I got for the tap, to prevent kinking, leaks. In several places! I guess I got a cheap one, though there wasn’t much choice. It still leaks less than it did before. One of the leaks is at the tap itself. Every single hose we’ve ever hooked up to that tap, leaks there. I plan to replace the tap itself, eventually. Meanwhile, there is some very luscious growth happening around the blocks we have under the tap. :-D

When I headed out again this evening, I got to break in the new action hoe.

What a fantastic tool!

I first tried it in one of the onion beds. It did well, but the onions are planted in a three row grid, and it just didn’t fit in between them, so there wasn’t a lot I could do with it, there. Mostly, I used it in the space in the middle, where the purple kohlrabi failed to grow.

It was at the Mongolian Giant sunflowers that it really did the job!

The soil here has always been rock hard, and baked bone dry. Right now, the only soft soil is the layer we put down for each row, and that was just a few inches deep. That anything we’ve planted here is growing at all is pretty remarkable. This thing worked like a dream!

Now, don’t get me wrong: it was still really hard to work around the sunflowers.The soil in between the rows is even harder now, as we walk between the rows to water things. It wasn’t just the hard soil, but also the very fibrous roots from the plants that were already growing here, and now enjoying regular watering for a change. This hoe was able to cut through those roots, and the rock hard soil at the edges of the paths. I was then able to pull out the cut weeds and their roots, before hilling the loose soil around the sunflowers a bit.

I am very impressed with this thing! The tool I was using around the corn before worked well; better than a regular hoe, but not as good as the action hoe. It was one of the unusual tools we’ve found around the place. The head of it is shaped almost like a mattock, except… not. LOL The “hoe” part of it is longer and narrower than a regular hoe, and it has a two pronged spike on the other side that I believe is a weeding tool. I’ve never tried to use that end, yet. It works really well at cutting into the hard soil. Better than a regular hoe, as least. Unfortunately, it’s quite old, and the head sometimes pops off the shaft.

I was doing one last row with the action hoe in the next corn bed, when my daughters came out to do the evening watering. My older daughter had finished watering the beds closer to the house with the hose, and when she came to continue watering where I was working, she told me about something awesome she found in the Montana Morado corn.

Silk!

Our very first corn to start showing silk!

If these are going to be maturing so unevenly, we may need to hand pollinate the silk, just to make sure they do get thoroughly pollinated. It would be pretty hit and miss to rely on the wind to pollinate the corn, when there might be only one or two corn plants ready to be pollinated at a time.

I am so happy that this corn seems to be working out so well!!

Today is supposed to be the last day of our heat wave. After this, we are dropping to more average temperatures. The expected high had been 38C/100C for a while, then it went down a few times. By morning, we were forecasted to hit 34C/93F, which we did hit. I don’t know what the humidex was. The forecasts for thundershowers tomorrow have shown up, disappeared, then showed up again, several times today! As I write this, it’s past 11pm, and we’re still at 28C/82F. The overnight low is expected to be not much cooler, but we are also supposed to get some rain, too.

I’ll believe that when I see it. From the looks of the weather radar, any rain or storms sweeping through are going to go right past us, and hit the city. But if we get even a little bit of rain, I will be happy. Even with all the watering we’ve been doing, twice a day, things are still really dry. I could really see that while weeding. Even at the start of the day, which the ground still looked damp from the previous evening’s watering. While hand weeding among the beets in the old kitchen garden, I had the hose set to mist, so the water would make it easier to pull the weeds out by the roots. I’d already watered the bed before I started weeding, yet when I pulled up the weeds, I could see how dry the soil still was.

When we build our permanent beds, having some sort of watering system would be very useful. We do have sprinklers we can use, but I’d rather have something less wasteful, like a drip system.

But that is something to figure out later. For now, we make do with what we have, and right now, that means watering twice a day with roughly 300 feet of garden hose and watering cans! :-D

The Re-Farmer