I did get messages back from the garage about the truck, but nothing about coming in. I’m not sure the problem is the sensor, after finding some oil on the ground in the garage yesterday. It was a while before I went out to move it today, so that I could check the oil levels, and see if there were any new oil stains under it.
There was. Just a couple of drops.
*sigh*
Oil levels were fine. I’m going to have to take a chance, though, and at least make a trip to the nearest Walmart. We’ve used the last of our canned cat food today, and the dry kibble is starting to get low, too.
It was a nice enough day that, after checking on the truck, I stayed out to clear some of the paths that got filled with drifted snow, after two days of high winds. Happily, the plows have gone by, so the roads will be clear. Things are supposed to keep warming up over the next few days, which is going to be quite a relief.
Of course, that makes me think of gardening!
The peppers and eggplant seeds that are set to pre-germinate aren’t showing any radicals yet, nor to I expect them to, this soon. Next on the list was things like tomatoes and herbs, but after watching the above video, I will just be doing the herbs, first. I sorted seeds I’ll be starting by how many weeks before last frost the packages recommend starting them. In theory, I could start the tomatoes in April.
I just really, really want to start more seeds! 😄
I realized it’s been a while since I updated about the onions. All four snail rolls now have seedlings.
They’re tall enough now that I raised the light a bit today. Should they get big enough to need “potting up”, they can be unrolled, more seed starting mix added, then rolled back up again. I made sure to leave enough excess length of the packing foam to accommodate extra width.
Just a little green growth to sooth the gardening soul, as winter drags on!
They are now potted up into Red Solo cups. This time, I remembered to use warm water when pre-moistening the seed starting mix. I had the heater running on the area I was working on, too.
With the space I had in the drain tray, I switched the paper towel the eggplant seeds were on into a smaller container. So far, nothing on the peppers and eggplant. This is definitely a first. Usually, the luffa have always been among the latest seeds to germinate. Before using the pre-germination method, I often had to start new seeds, sometimes twice over, before we finally had something germinate.
Now we just have to see if they will survive being potted up!
Before all the running around, getting my mother’s apartment empty before the end of the day, I made sure to turn on the lights and check on the pre-germinating seeds. It hasn’t been very long, so I really wasn’t expecting anything. So I was very surprised to see my first radicals! On luffa seeds, no less!
Two of the four seeds have germinated! This is really amazing. Last year, seeds from this same packet took forever to pre-germinate. They were the last things to do so. This time, they are the first!
So I potted them into a couple of Red Solo cups. I made sure to thoroughly pre-moisten the seed starting mix in the cups, first, but forgot to use hot water for it. The damp soil was pretty chilly, so I set them on the heat mat, with the heater running next to them for a while. I didn’t want to shock the little radicals with water while planting them!
We are still getting hit with the polar vortex. We’re not getting the storms hitting parts of the US, but as I write this, we’ve warmed up to -27C/-17F with a wind chill of -29C/-20F. We’re staying indoors as much as possible, and avoiding going out anywhere.
Which is frustrating, but I’ll get to the why of that, later.
First, the inspiration! This video showed up in my YouTube feed. I’ve never seen this channel before. Looks very informative.
We are fortunate to have the luxury of space in our garden – space that will be utilized for accessibility and mobility – but this video covers a lot of what we are planning on, including chickens and our food forest (in this video, it’s an orchard). Fencing the entire garden is not really an option for us, given just how big it is, and how many trees there are. Cattle panels are not an option, either. I keep hearing about how cheap they are, but maybe that’s a US thing, because every place I’ve looked, they are ridiculously expensive. I’ve had stucco wire recommended by my cousin. Those are a lot more affordable, but obviously, not as heavy duty.
I’ve been wanting to have chickens for quite a few years now, and intended to build a portable coop large enough for at least a dozen chickens. That just hasn’t been happening, for a variety of reasons. So we’re breaking down and are going to try to buy a small chicken coop, with an enclosed run, on a payment plan. It’ll only fit up to 6 chickens, which would be enough to keep us in eggs a bit. That can tide us over until we can build something larger and house meat birds, too.
All in good time.
Now for the updates.
My brother got a call yesterday.
My mother’s panel for a personal care home has been approved!
That was waaaaayyy faster than I expected! They must really need her room. 😁
It does mean that she is no longer covered by our health care system, and is being charged by the day as a long term care client, rather than a patient. Meanwhile, they will find a bed for her in a temporary long term care facility and transfer her, once that happens. I expect that to go relatively quickly, too, if only because they need to free up the room she’s in.
My brother has already cancelled my mother’s cable, and today he’s gone over to pack up the cable box to send back to the company, before going to the hospital. He found a fairly recent photo of our vandal to include on her file, so that staff know who to look out for, and wanted to get that over as quickly as possible.
Now we need to focus on clearing out my mother’s apartment – but don’t throw anything away!!
She is so attached to her material goods, even to the point that she wants to control what happens to some of them to the next generation. She doesn’t actually have anything of value, really, other than in her own mind, or sentimental value – and by sentimental value, I mean for me and my siblings, mostly, because she doesn’t seem to actually have sentimental attachment to anything. She quite happily destroyed things that belonged to both my late father and my late aunt.
I need to get to my mother’s apartment and start packing and cleaning, bit by bit.
Hence the frustration.
I intended to start this some time ago, but with the cold, and now the check engine light turning on again with the truck, I have been leery of going anywhere. We only have one vehicle, and if that breaks down, we are in serious trouble.
*sigh*
I just checked the temperatures again, and it’s actually gotten colder instead of warmer. It’s still a few hours before we’re supposed to reach the high of our day.
Tomorrow is looking to be less severe, though, so I might try to head over then. After tomorrow, the extreme polar vortex temperatures should be over, and we’ll just be dealing with normal cold again, and I should be able to head over regularly.
I don’t expect we’ll have it empty by the end of the month, but we might. It’s the bigger furniture that’s going to be an issue. The loveseat she has, which matched the sofa that’s still here on the farm, is broken, though not badly. It will likely be thrown out. The mattress and box spring will have to be thrown out, of course. The rest…
*sigh*
She crammed so much into that little apartment.
My brother and SIL assured me, we’ll figure it out.
At least I won’t have to worry about all my mother’s papers, pictures and basically anything fabric. That’s my sister’s problem. We will be dealing with her kitchen supplies, nic nacs and furniture. My brother and SIL can’t really take anything, other than the papers my brother needs to take care of my mother’s affairs as PoA. I doubt they’ve even finished unpacking themselves. Where they are now is meant to be temporary, as they’ve gotten on a list for a privately run supportive living apartment in a complex that was still under construction when they sold their acreage. The waiting list was already years long but, once there’s an opening, they need to be able to move quickly.
Nothing like the bone chilling temperatures of a polar vortex to get one thinking of warmer days in the garden!
Yesterday, I watched a couple of inspiring videos. This first one is from MI Gardener.
A bit of irony on this one, talking about how starting seeds too early can actually sabotage the effort. With our short growing season, a lot of things actually do need to be started indoors super early – at least for a growing zone like where he is – and we’ve already sowed our onions, trying out the seed snail method.
None have germinated yet. I’m a bit concerned that our living room might be too cold for germination, and we aren’t able to set up a heat mat in there. Onions handle cooler temperatures well, but they still need a certain level of warmth for germination. Hopefully, I didn’t just waste a whole lot of seeds!
One of the things he brings up is the need to pot up frequently if starting too early. There’s a couple of things I would try to do, to get around that. One is to pre-germinate certain types of seeds (not really worth it for the tinier seeds). That way, they can be planted in the second thing I’d want to try, and that is to put the pre-germinated seeds into pots or tray cells that are quite a bit larger, so that they either won’t need to be potted up at all, or need potting up less frequently.
This next video is from Gardening in Canada.
This is more relevant to us, since she is in the same zone as we are, and I’m pretty sure her growing season is shorter than ours.
Here, she talks about planning out how many seeds to plant, if the goal is to save money on groceries for a family of four.
It’s a place to start when adjusting for individual needs. For example, my family likes to eat fresh tomatoes, but I can’t, so I’d be planting enough for three people, not for. However, I can eat processed tomatoes, so if I want to grow tomatoes for cooking, making sauces, freezing, canning or dehydrating, I would actually want to grow considerably more of, say, paste tomatoes.
Since we started gardening after moving here, a lot of what we chose to grow was to determine what we actually like to eat, and which varieties, as well as what will actually grow well here. We are still doing that, to a point, but have started to narrow things down.
With that in mind, I went through my seed bin for things to start indoors, to see which ones need to be started the earliest – as in, by the end of January, or early February. This is what we’ve got.
There is one thing that should be started before the end of this month.
Luffa. Yes, I still want to try and grow luffa! So that’s something I will set up to pre-germinate probably after this coming weekend.
Other things that I would start, probably in the beginning of February are:
Peppers – we have Sweet Chocolate, which the girls said was universally liked. I also got a new variety, California Wonder Bell, specifically because it was described as having thick walls, that I want to try. We also still have Sweetie Snack Mix that I’d like to try again. This past year, we had such healthy looking plants, but they barely managed to produce anything. I think they might work better in the sunnier location I’m planning to grow peppers in, this year. I’m thinking a total of 9 plants would be enough for our needs.
Caspar Eggplant – a new variety that I plan to grow in a 4′ square bed, where I should be able to protect them from the elements. I think 4 – 6 plants would do, which would also leave space for interplanting with something like onions, or maybe some herbs.
Golden Boy Celery – I’ve never grown celery before, so this one is a total experiment. I think I would shoot for enough to fill one of my large celled trays, which means 21 plants.
Thyme – I may or may not try starting these indoors. We have two varieties of them that are heavily mulched that I hope will survive the winter. Just a couple of plants is enough, though, so I might start more and interplant them with some of the vegetables.
The next batch are things to start in March or early April.
Herbs – tarragon, summer savory, oregano and spearmint are possibilities. I think I would rather buy oregano transplants, though. We do have some in our little herb bed, along with the thyme, that might survive the winter. Spearmint is something I would be growing in a pot to prevent spreading, if we grow them this year. Tarragon and summer savory, though, are definitely things I’d want to start. Once again, only a few plants would be needed, to I’d probably be shooting for two of each.
Flowers – according to the packets, this would be the time to start Cosmos and the black hollyhock we have. Last year, I direct sowed Cosmos and they did eventually bloom, though very late. I might try starting a few indoors, then direct sowing in spring, to see how well they do.
Tomatoes – we will be growing three varieties, for sure, possibly four, all of them new. One is the Orange Currant tomato, which will be my alternative to the Spoon tomatoes we grew last year. Spoon tomatoes have been the only tomatoes I can eat fresh without gagging, and I’m curious if the tiny Orange Currant tomatoes can be added to the list. We will also be trying the Blue Berry and Chocolate Stripes varieties. These three all look to be rather prolific varieties, so we’d probably only grow three or four of each variety. I’m still debating whether I want to also do the Manitoba tomato, which is the variety my mother used to grow here, when I was a kid. If I do, I’d probably grow more than the others, for both fresh eating and making sauces.
The next batch would be started in late April, early May.
Bi-colour pear gourd – a new one, and the only other gourd of the many varieties of seeds I have, that I plan to grow this year. They should be prolific, and I’m thinking three or four plants of these should be enough. They would be among my “for fun” things to grow.
Herbs – in this time frame, we could start the chicory, Florence Fennel and chamomile. I would actually want to grow quite a few of each, based on their uses. I could get away with starting a lot of them and not have to worry about potting up too often, since they would be started so much closer to our last frost date.
Then there are the last ones we would start indoors, in early to mid May, based on a last frost date of June 2, though the adjusted averages now say our last frost date is in the last week of May.
Melons – Sweet Siberian Watermelon, Tigger melon, Hale’s Best Jump cantaloupe, and both orange and green flesh Honeydew melons among the varieties I want to try (all but the green honeydew are new to us). We had really poor results with melons last year, with only three varieties. I’m hoping this coming year will be better. I need to decide: do I want to have two or three each of five varieties, or pick just a couple of varieties, but more plants each? Either way, I think I would be shooting for about 15 plants in total as my goal.
Herbs – caraway. I honestly don’t know how many plants I’d need to grow for our needs. We’d be growing them for their seed, and I have no idea how many they tend to produce. Will have to research that.
Cucumbers – we have three varieties to choose from; Eureka, which is dual purpose pickling or slicing variety, Lemon and Bushy. The Bushy variety is good for pickling and has such a short season, they could easily be direct sown. Where I intend to grow them doesn’t have room for a lot of plants, though they will be trellised, which will allow for slightly denser spacing. I’m thinking of doing the Lemon cucumber for sure, then maybe the Eureka. We’ve grown those in the past and they did surprisingly well under that year’s growing conditions and their location.
This last category is of things that, in theory, I can direct sow, but I would rather start indoors, given our past garden history. These would be started in mid May.
Pumpkin – maybe. I’m still on the fence about trying the “Cinderella” pumpkin seeds I got. If so, I’d be shooting for 2-4 plants.
Herbs – borage. I might just direct sow these. Or I could try both starting indoors and direct sowing. I’ve been warned that they can self seed and spread easily, so I would want to treat them like a perennial and find a place where I can allow them to self seed.
Winter squash – along with wanting to try the rare Arikara variety again, because I want to save seeds, we have the new varieties I want to try. Golden Hubbard, Black Futsu, Butterneck and Gill’s Golden Pippin. If I start 3 or 4 of each, that makes for 15-20 plants in total. Will I even have enough space for so many, and still leave room for the direct sown crops I’m planning on? The goal with these is to have plenty for winter storage, so I would want to have quite a lot. With starting these so much closer to our last frost date, and pre-germinating them, I shouldn’t have to do any potting up at all, if I use my deep cell trays or Red Solo cups right from the start.
Summer squash – I’ll be selecting from all new varieties this year, which includes Yellow Scallop, Green Scallop Bennings, Early Prolific Straightneck and Lemon. Last year, we tried direct sowing our summer squash and got next to nothing, so I want to go back to starting them indoors. We love our summer squash, so I’d probably shoot for 8 -12 plants in total. If I want to try all four varieties, that’s only 2 or 3 plants each. Which would be enough – unless something kills them, or they just don’t thrive. The last few years, summer squash has not done well for us, so I’d rather have more, in hopes to get at least something! By the time we would be starting these, I should have a better idea of what space will have and can decide then.
So, there we have it. A plan of action, more or less, for what we’ll be starting indoors, and when.
Now, I just have to set up our basement to fit this all, with enough warmth and light. I’d hope to get the aquarium greenhouses down there, and might still bring down the small one, but we just can’t figure out how to get the big one, with its stand, around the bottom of the stairs safely. We might be able to get the stand through, but the tank itself is a completely different story.
Today, I finally got around to starting our onion seeds.
Usually, I start onions by densely sowing them in trays. Onion roots can handle quite a bit of abuse. When it’s time to transplant, I just pull them apart as I go. The problem with that, is, the roots do get pretty tangled together, and there have been times when I’ve even had to use water to wash away the growing medium in order to get individual seedlings out.
This time, I wanted to try something different.
I’ve been seeing the “seed snail” method that got me curious. Basically, seed starting mix it laid out on a strip of something – plastic, cardboard, paper towel, etc. – and rolled up. Seeds are planted at depth at the top, covered with more seed starting mix, and it’s done. When it’s time to transplant, the roll is undone and there is less root disturbance when accessing the plants. If the plants need to be “potted up”, it can be unrolled, more starting mix added, then rolled back up again.
In looking it up more, I see people using this method for pretty much everything, including things with very large seeds that grow pretty big. I’m not so sure the method lives up to the hype for larger things in particular, but something like onions? It seems perfect.
The thing that I was most curious about was, the material used to make the roll. One article I read, which was not positive towards the method, used paper towel. I can’t imagine using something that practically dissolves in water, over time! Others described using heavy paper or cardboard. I don’t really have anything like that, in the size and shape needed. I’ve also found that using paper products tends to wick moisture out of the growing medium, away from the plants, and need more watering. Even with the biodegradable pots, I’ve found the pots themselves need to be kept wet, or they start drawing moisture away from the plants.
One thing mentioned as working well was the thin foam sheets used to wrap breakables for packing.
Did I still have some?
I quick look in a storage bin in the root cellar, and I found I had plenty!
So that’s what I used.
Before I started on that, though, I prepped the last of my seed starting mix from last year. It had quite a lot of pieces of wood and such, which would be more of a problem with a seed snail. I wanted to sift it, but didn’t have a sifter. In the end, I used a metal colander with finer holes all over, and sifted it into a giant mixing bowl.
I got quite a bit of larger material out. I also had some concern that I might not have enough sifted started mix for the project.
I had four seed options. There were our own saved seed, which is a mix of red and yellow bulb onions. Then there were the seeds I got from MI Gardener. Red Long of Tropea, which are very much like the Tropeana Longa onions we’ve successfully grown before. Red Wethersfield, which we tried but did NOT successfully grow before, and Red Beard Bunching onion.
I was at first thinking to do the bunching onions later, but they are 110 days to maturity, while the other two are 100 days to maturity, so I prepped four strips. I taped shorter pieced together for the length, then folded and cut them in half lengthwise. That resulted in two strips of about 31 inches, and two of about 29 inches long, and about 6″ wide.
That sifted seed starting mix was absolutely beautiful to work with! So soft and fluffy!
Each strip got a layer of starting mix about a quarter inch thick, laid out right to the edge of one end and the bottom. The top had about an inch empty, and the other end had about 8″ empty. I had my work surface covered with a repurposed clear garbage bag, which actually made it easier to roll them up. I could lift the plastic up against the base of the snail, to keep starter mix from falling out.
I prepped masking tape ahead of time. Four were labelled. After rolling up the snails, I used a black piece of tape to hold it together near the bottom, before tucking it into a bin. After they were all rolled, I sowed the seeds and added the labelled strips of tape to hold it together near the tops.
In the first picture here, the seeds are sown, more seed starting mix was set on top and every so gently tamped down to get rid of any air gaps. In the next picture, they’ve been topped with vermiculate.
Once topped with vermiculate, they got a very thorough watering with a spray bottle, then more water was added to the bottom of the bin they’re in, so they can be watered through capillary action, too. Last of all, the bin’s lid was laid on top to act as a moisture dome.
This was all done in our basement dungeon. I don’t have any of the grow lights, the heat mat, trays, etc. ready. I won’t need them for quite some time yet. So these went upstairs to the cat free zone (aka: the living room). It’s not particularly warm there, but warm enough. Plus, the window gets full sun only for a few hours in the morning, so we have supplementary light above.
It should be interesting to see how this method works out.
In the past, when densely sowing seeds in trays, I would usually finish off the package. This time, there are seeds left in all three packets – plus there is lots of our saved seed. So there is the possibility of trying again, if this doesn’t work, as long as they get started early enough.
Anyhow. The main thing for now is, the onion seeds are started!
After analyzing our garden for the past few days, I thought it might be a good idea to do one post with all my garden tour videos of the year. Our garden, and just a few of the yard cats!
No, I don’t expect anyone to watch them all in one sitting. 😂
All righty. Time to get my thoughts organized about how things went this year, and what I want to do next year.
When this post gets published, I’ll actually be at my mother’s place, doing some housekeeping for her and getting her apartment the way she wants it for Christmas. We’re already getting weather warnings for this weekend. Today’s high (Thursday) was -11C/12F. Wind chills at around -22C/-8F. Tomorrow (Friday, when this will be published) and Saturday, our highs are supposed to be -21C/-6F, but we are getting warning of wind chills dropping things to -40C/-40F. !!!!!
Then it’s supposed to start warming up again, up to a high of -5C/23F on Tuesday, before dropping again. There are no longer any predicted highs above freezing around Christmas, but we’re still expecting major swings in temperature.
I’m so glad the winter sown beds got that extra layer or straw.
Speaking of which, here are my final thoughts on how our 2025 garden did.
Winter Sowing
This was the big experiment this year. If it didn’t work, we would have had a very different gardening year, that’s for sure! The other part of the experiment was broadcasting mixes of seeds, some of them years old, which gave me the chance to restock with fresh seed, later on.
Two of the mixes were complete failures, but for very different reasons. The summer squash just never came up. If anything did sprout, they got rolled over by cats. Which is what killed off the “tall and climbing things” bed, and the winter sown flowers. I did see things start to sprout, but they didn’t survive long.
The root vegetables mix in two beds did really well, though one almost got chocked out by the insanely productive Jabousek lettuce seeds that were added. I’m even happier with the greens mix, having finally been able to grow kohlrabi, and those Swiss Chard were an excellent cut and come again crop.
In the end, if it weren’t for the winter sown beds that survived, we would have had a much less productive year! This is a major game changer for me, and I expect to keep doing this from now on. Not only did we get much earlier growth, but it saved me a lot of work in the spring.
The biggest problems
Cats.
I thought it would be the elm seeds, and they were definitely a problem in the expected places, too, but the yard cats were particularly destructive this year.
What I won’t do again, and what I’m doing instead
Definitely not broadcasting mixes. That did give me a good idea of what could be successfully winter sown in our climate zone, though. Particularly with the drought, heat and smoke we got this year. This time, the winter sowing was much more planned out. The beds also got more thoroughly mulched before the hard frosts hit.
With that in mind, we’ve planted carrots, peas, spinach, chard, kohl rabi, cabbage, beets, and Hedou Tiny bok choi. Plus, of course, garlic. There were also lots of little onions found while cleaning up the old kitchen garden that got transplanted. Those might bulb, or go to seed. Either one works for me.
I will also have to make sure to put cat proof protective covers on pretty much everything.
I was also happy with having radish pods instead of radish bulbs. There is a variety grown specifically for their pods that I might pick up at some point but, for now, we quite enjoyed the proliferation of pods to snack on and do quick pickles with. You get a LOT more food from a single radish by eating the pods, too. Definitely for winter sowing, though, as I’ve read they taste a lot stronger when they are direct sown in the spring.
Transplants
This was a really hard year for all our transplants. The heat, drought and smoke likely played a big part in that, but in some beds, it looks like tree roots invading the beds also played a part. We got very little out of our transplants. The ones we started indoors that did best were the Chocolate Cherry and Spoon tomatoes, even as stunted as they were. The worst were probably the melons. The pepper and eggplant plants did rather well, but to so much for blooming and productivity. The purchased herb transplants, on the other hand, did great in their tiny raised bed!
The biggest problems
The transplants were something we could protect from cats rather well. In the end, it was probably a combination of drought conditions and those tree roots. Not a lot that was in our zone of control that we could have done anything about.
What I won’t do again, and what I’m doing instead.
I won’t winter sow onions again. Instead, I will be starting them indoors for transplanting. I had hoped they would at least grow enough to use the greens and deter deer, but most of them simply got choked out.
We will, of course, still be starting seeds indoors to transplant in the spring, but we need to set up a seed starting area and the aquarium greenhouses in the basement. If for no other reason than we need to clear space in the cat free zone, AKA the living room. Now that cats aren’t allowed in the new basement anymore, I can open up the “window” between the basements, near the furnaces. That should help more warm air from the old basement to flow into the new basement and equalize things. There is the “doorway” (a vaguely door shaped hole cut into the wall when the new basement was built) but no real air flow between the two basements.
As for what we can do instead, for better success with our transplants… I honestly don’t know. There isn’t much I can do about heat waves. There are limits to watering during a drought, and not just due to the lower water table. Our well pump still needs to be replaced, if we dare risk the foot valve, so the more the hose is used, the more wear and tear on the pump. In the end, it comes down to the weather, really.
As for the tree roots, we need to cut that row of self-seeded trees down completely, and ensure no suckers start coming up at the stumps. My mother was adamant about not cutting those trees down, even though I see signs that someone tried to at some point. Probably my late brother tried to get rid of them. I recall my mother laughing about how angry he would get because she would stick trees all over the place, making it hard for him to take care of things.
Now my oldest brother owns the property, though, and he is very much in agreement with getting rid of them. He had issues with where and how my parents chose to plant trees, too, and we’re both now dealing with the consequences.
Other than clearing those trees out, the only other thing we can really do is more raised beds. The higher, the better but, for now, even low raised beds help. Once the trees are cut down, I’m even thinking of putting a long, higher raised bed over where they are, to make sure they get good and dead. That would also reclaim the garden space lost to my mother allowing those trees to grow after she transplanted out the raspberries that were there.
As for the purchased herb transplants, those did quite well. I certainly won’t turn my nose up at buying transplants to supplement anything we start indoors.
Yes, I will still be trying luffa again! 😄
Spring Direct Sowing
These where the most affected by this year’s climate conditions of all. It was pretty brutal.
We direct sowed pole beans, bush beans, corn, carrots, peas and more summer squash. I’ll add potatoes to this list as well. I think the potatoes did the best, even though they never reached the blooming stage. The summer squash and two types of beans were the worst.
The biggest problems.
There’s only so much I can blame on the drought. We haven’t had much luck direct sowing summer squash in the past, either. Granted, last year it was slugs that were the big problem, and this year, we had lots of frogs taking care of those for us!
In the end, though, I think most of our issues were the same as with the transplants. Too much heat, drought conditions (even with watering twice a day) and so much smoke. Plus, tree roots.
What I won’t do again, and what I’m doing instead
I will have to find space for them, but summer squash will be started indoors again, for transplanting instead of direct sowing.
Beans and corn; there really isn’t anything I can do differently with those.
The peas did surprisingly well, but we need to ramp up our deer protection.
The carrots need less tree roots competing for space. Those have been winter sown in the trellis bed. If I plant more in the spring, I need to be strategic on where, to avoid those roots.
The chard I direct sowed were a complete fail. I have more varieties to direct sow in the spring, and those will go in earlier. I suspect it was partly too hot when they were planted, and the soil too compacted by watering.
Soil compaction is an issue. We need to add more organic matter to our soil. Preferably something like peat moss (Canadian peat moss is ethically harvested) that will also increase the acidity.
That might be another issue for everything. Our soil is so alkaline, and most things do better in slightly acidic soil. I’ve been amending with Sulphur, but it’s really hard to increase soil acidity. Especially with dark grey zone soil like ours, that leaches everything so quickly.
More high raised beds will allow us to control for that more, but this is the sort of thing that takes years to amend, even the slightest.
Food forest and perennials
Happily, we got quite a boost with our food forest this spring, adding a plum, another variety of eating apple more suited to our climate zone, new cross pollinating varieties of haskap and gooseberry. I remember we had gooseberry here when I was a kid and so loved eating them when they were really really sour! I look forward to eating them again.
The biggest problems
Deer. Drought. The insane number of rocks I find when digging holes to plant in.
What I won’t do again, and what I’ll do instead.
I won’t underestimate how determined deer can be, nor assume they won’t like something! I got spoiled by them ignoring the silver buffalo berry and sea buckthorn, though they did go after that one highbush cranberry, over and over again, last year.
In the spring, I’ll be making more wire mesh cages for the fruit and nut trees. The berry bushes seem to be okay.
I really need to find a place to transplant those grapes to.
Now that I’ve got the new strawberry and asparagus bed, I’m thinking of slowly turning that section over to perennials. Not next year, though. I have other plans for there, first.
Final thoughts
There were a lot of things out of our control this year, and some things I am just not sure what went wrong. Like with the red noodle beans.
With so many changes to our garden this past year, and not being able to reclaim spaces we’d planted in, in previous years, it really isn’t a typical year at all. We did have some surprise successes (peas, crocus) and big disappointments (no melons and almost no squash at all!).
At least I can call it a learning experience.
Here is the last garden tour video I did, where you can see the beds that are already winter sown.
Planning ahead to our 2026 Garden
Obviously, some of that is already in and done, with the winter sowing. We’ve got quite a head start to next year’s garden already.
Doing that meant I got a lot of seeds in advance. I took advantage of some big sales and replenished my stock from MI Gardener.
Here is what I got.
No, we aren’t planting all of that!
But we will be planting both old and new seeds.
My daughters and I went though my seed inventory to make some decisions on what we’ll be planting next year, outside of what I’ve already winter sown.
I just went into the basement, where my seed bins are stored, to get my lists and diagrams. Since I was there anyhow, I went ahead and uncovered the window between the two basements. I’d covered it with a piece of rigid insulation and had poked holes in it to allow for some air flow, but it clearly wasn’t enough. Once that was down, there was a literal wind of warmer air coming in from the old basement! Wow!
So that will make a difference. I’ll have to keep an eye on the thermometer I’ve got over my seed bin. The new basement tends to stay between 10-13C/50-55F, all year. I don’t have a thermometer in the old basement, but it’s often warmer than the main floor!
I didn’t write a list the varieties we intend to plant yet, but have the seed packets set aside. We intend to grow fewer plants of more varieties in some things. The varieties will be listed in future posts, but this is what we’ve decided to grow this year.
To start indoors
Winter squash and gourds. The gourds are my “fun” thing to grow. Summer Squash. Melons. Cucumbers Onions – bulb and bunching Eggplant – hopefully, a variety my daughter is not allergic to! Tomatoes Peppers Celery Herbs Flowers
So… yeah, I’m going to need to make space!
That doesn’t leave much for us to direct sow in the spring!
Spring Direct Sowing
Corn – short season and not to short season Beans – pole and bush. If I have room, beans for drying Potatoes Flowers
Succession sowing
Peas Chard Spinach Carrots
One thing I will have for 2026 is more room to plant in. There is one bed in the old kitchen garden that took forever to re-work, but it is now ready for planting, and included supports to hold hoops or whatever I end up using to hold covers and protect the bed from critters.
The bed that was winter sown with tall and climbing things was a major issue and a complete fail. I did have mesh netting to protect from the seeds, but it couldn’t protect from playful kittens. I’ve been gathering the materials and will rework that bed, yet again. It will be taller, narrower by a few inches, and like the reworked bed in the old kitchen garden, it will have supports I can attached hoops or wire or whatever I need to cover and protect the bed from elm seeds and critters.
The plan so far.
Which, I’m sure, will change a few times before the garden is completely in!
Let’s start with the old kitchen garden, which is mostly winter sown. There is the short side of the L shaped wattle weave bed that is open. I intend to plant herbs there, including fennel, though we want that more as a vegetable than an herb.
The newly finished rectangular bed could have root vegetables planted in it, so I was thinking of more carrots. However, it might be a better place to plant summer squash in.
The open retaining wall blocks are now all filled with transplanted alpine or whatever they are strawberries. Those will be for perennials, since nothing else seems to want to grow in them.
I did the same with the retaining wall blocks by the chain link fence. Hopefully, they will survive the winter. It’s hard to say, being planted in concrete blocks, but all the chimney block planters did get mulched for winter insulation.
Once the longer bed at the other section of chain link fence is redone, I am thinking winter squash and/or gourds would be good to put there. They can be covered until they’re too big for cats to get into, can climb the fence, and are too spikey for deer to eat.
In the East yard, two out of three rectangular beds are winter sown. In the third one, I’m thinking a couple of varieties of tomatoes can go in there.
There is a 4′ square bed in this section, which will get white eggplants transplanted into it.
In the main garden area, one of the beds is sown with Daikon radish on one side, turnips on the other. Down the middle, I plan to direct sow pole beans.
The high raised bed will get bush beans.
In the trellis bed, the winter sown peas didn’t fill the entire row, so we will transplant cucumbers in the last couple of feet.
Of the three remaining 18′ beds in the main garden area, one will have peppers, celery and tomatoes. The other will get squash and/or melons. The third bed will get potatoes.
The area near where the new asparagus and strawberry bed is, is still covered with black plastic, which has mostly killed off the grass and weeds that took over what used to be a squash patch before. I plan to pull that back and use that area to plant two varieties of corn that mature at very different rates, so there should be no issue with cross pollination.
Further out is the area where the Albion Everbearing strawberries were. I plan to sow bread seed poppies in that location, as part of the plan to slowly convert that whole section to perennials, or self seeding annuals that can be treated as perennials.
What you’re not seeing in there is flowers or onions.
The onions will get interplanted all over the place. The bulb onions are saved seed, but the bunching onions are new, so those I’ll try to keep in one spot. Perhaps interplanted with the herbs in the old kitchen garden or something.
The space at the end of the high raised bed will have flowers again – hopefully including those self seeded asters – but I also intend to have both transplanted and direct sown flowers scattered all over, interplanted wherever I find the space.
Somewhere in there, I want to direct sow some of the saved Hopi Black Dye seeds.
If all goes well, I’ll have at least one additional trellis bed done, and we can finish our first trellis tunnel, though maybe not in time for spring planting. If my brother is able to get one of his tractors going and we start dragging dead spruces out of the spruce grove – maybe even cut more of the dead ones down – I will have the logs needed to continue building pairs of trellis beds and, if all works out, pairs of beds that will become polytunnels. Once the second bed for the first trellis tunnel is done, though, framing the existing low raised beds are priority. Those will be only one log high for now, while the trellis beds will be started at two logs high. I’ve got only so many dead spruces to work with, so building the beds up higher will be left after we’ve got all the beds framed out that need it. Over time, I’d like for at least half of the raised beds to be increased to match the high raised bed – 4 logs high. I’m finding that the perfect height for reach, and for my back. I do want to leave some beds lower for things that grow tall, like corn or pole beans. The trellis tunnel beds may eventually be increased to 3 logs high, but we’ll see.
Then there are the perennials and trees.
I’ve placed an order for some Manchurian Walnut, which is one of the few nut trees out there that are hardy enough to grow here – it’s actually hardy to zone 2b, which is what we are in Canadian. I could only afford to get one, rather than any of their bundles. It will be planted in the outer year. In the same order, I was able to get a bundle of five Bleu Basket Willow. Those will be planted beyond the outer yard, where they will eventually be coppiced and used to grow stems for everything from, yes, weaving baskets, to wattle weaving and even willow furniture, if we want. Over time, I plan to get two other varieties of basket willows that are different colours.
We might have to buy replacement Korean Pine, too. We shall see.
We’re also looking at other types of hardy fruit trees to get as the budget allows, such as pears, or varieties of cherry that actually grow and produce in our climate zone.
All in good time.
All done!
Well, there we have it.
In the end, 2025 was a really rough year for gardening. Yes, we were able to harvest and the winter sown beds made a huge difference, but nothing really reached its full potential, including the winter sown beds, as well as the surviving ones did. So many people in our region struggled with their gardens.
I know a lot of people have been going on about “survival gardens” or sharing those idiotic memes about how, if we all grew gardens instead of lawns, no one would starve. Hogwash. Obviously, I’m all for growing as much of your own food as possible, however you can manage is, and to be as self sufficient as possible. I absolutely encourage people to do that, every chance I get. Especially in these unstable times. But the hype and expectations I’m seeing out there are not helping. Years like this show exactly how little control we actually have when it comes to growing our own food. There are bad growing seasons like this, but even if you have an excellent growing season and your garden is doing great, one storm could wipe it all out. Or it could be destroyed by animals, insects or disease.
As the old saying goes, hope for the best, plan for the worst. There will always be things happening we have no control over, other than how we respond to it.
I’m actually starting this post on Wednesday night, and scheduling it to publish in the morning, so when I say “today” at any point, it will actually be “yesterday” when it gets published.
I have just spent most of today outside.
After doing the morning routine, I started to shovel, while the snow was still light and fluffy. I got the paths around the house and to the feeding stations, around the fire pit, to the wood piles and even to the compost pile before I finally stopped and headed inside. My daughters, sweethearts that they are, had a hot breakfast waiting for me when I came in, though it was closer to lunch time than breakfast by then!
I completely forgot that I needed to go into town today. One of my husband’s meds is a “controlled substance” so he can only get refills when they are almost out. He called it in on Monday, and the pharmacy had to order in the refill, which was ready for pick up today. He did not have any left for tomorrow, so this wasn’t something to get delivered. They *really* cut it tight with that stuff.
I wanted to talk to the pharmacy anyhow.
It was shortly past noon when I headed into town. Props to the poor pharmacist assistant that was helping me out! It took some doing to figure out if they could even do what I was asking.
For my daughter and I, who share a doctor, requests have been sent to update our refills, so that we can fill 3 months worth (slightly less for one of my daughters’ meds, as we’re coming up on the cut off date for her pharmacare coverage). I’ll get a call when they have a response. Some of the items have to be special ordered in.
On looking at my husband’s file, though, we just won’t be able to do it. He’s got the injections, for starters. Yes, he has a medication fridge, but they would be past their “best before” date before he finished them. Bubble packs are only done 4 weeks at a time. No more. Some of his meds are also controlled substances and they are not allowed to dispense more than a month’s worth at a time. Potentially, we could talk to his doctor about changing that, but since he can’t get 3 months worth for most of his meds, there’s really no point.
Hopefully, we will won’t have a winter that will leave us snowed in or whatever. Yes, my brother has his snow blowers out here, but there are “tricks” to starting them, and I don’t know what they are. He’s got snow clearing equipment that are much larger and get pulled by a tractor, but his tractors need work.
Thankfully, this truck can handle deeper snow than our previous van could, but we’ve had so many weird and unexpected issues crop up, I really don’t want to take too many chances in winter. Of course, meds can be delivered, but if the roads are such that we can’t get out with the truck, the delivery driver sure as heck isn’t going to make it with his car! Nor would we want him to even try.
After getting as much of that straightened out as possible, I let them know that my credit card on file to pay for anything not covered is now listed as “lost”, so it won’t work anymore. She took the information out of our files completely and, once my replacement card comes in, in 3-4 business days, I will give them a call with the new information. Then I got my husband’s single refill that he needed before picking up some gas (prices went up to $1.199) and headed home.
It was still light out, but I knew that wouldn’t last, so as soon as I got everything settled, I was back outside. This time to break out little Spewie.
We put that little electric snow blower (I think it’s actually considered an electric snow shovel) through so much more than it was made for!
I used it to clear out a large enough space in front of our garage for the truck to be able to back up, turn around, and go into the inner yard. I didn’t go down the driveway to the road, though. At one point, I was hearing something odd over the sound of Spewie. It turned out to be our vandal’s tractor going by. I couldn’t see if he was driving it, or his wife. I was going back and forth and basically ignoring it, but saw that he’d actually parked the tractor in a spot where I could just see it through the trees, so something was going on, within view of our driveway. So once the area in front of the garage was done, I switched to working in the inner yard. At one point, I heard the tractor again and, when I later came out to switch out the memory cards on the trail cams, it was gone. I’ve checked the files and he (or his wife) never got close enough to trigger the motion sensor, so that’s just fine. I only care what happens at our own driveway.
So there is still about half the driveway, through the gate to the road, that needs to be done, plus a couple of paths in the outer yard. By then, I was getting really cold, even with my (old and ratty, but still really warm) down filled coat. I did quickly take care of feeding and watering the outside cats, since I was still dressed for outside, and did my evening rounds before calling it a day.
Definitely a pain killer day. I might even be taking extra anti-inflammatories before going to bed. I can already feel my joints stiffening up and getting painful. I don’t feel any of that while I’m working outside, but once I’m inside, in the warm and settling down, my entire body starts to stiffen up and hurt. Hopefully, I didn’t over do it and I’ll be able to walk normally tomorrow.
I seriously considered skipping working on this post, but it really shouldn’t take long. I’m not going to spent too much time looking for old photos, etc. for this one. I’m just too tired.
So, without further ado, let’s start analyzing our perennial and food forest items.
The New Stuff – asparagus, strawberries, walnut, plum, apple, gooseberry and haskap.
I’d picked up some new varieties of asparagus, since our first bed turned out to be in a very bad location. I also wanted to try some new strawberry varieties. I’ve tried the white strawberries before, but they never grew.
Those ended up going into a new bed I made for them but, unfortunately, it took so long to get to planting them, I really didn’t know if any would make it. If I’d known it would take so long, I would have stored the bare roots differently to keep them going, but I really did expect to get them in the ground sooner. I made sure to pre-soak the bare roots before planting and hydrated the soil before and after planting.
In the end, none of the strawberries made it. Much to my shock, four out of five Jersey Giant asparagus showed up. Even when one got rolled on by a cat, in spite of the protective garden stake it was growing against, it sent up a new shoot! No sign of the Purple Passion, though.
Opal Plum, Haskap, Apple and Gooseberry
I was very excited to find a self pollinating variety of eating plum through Vesey’s that is hardy to zone 2! I also picked up a cross pollinating pair of haskaps, since the first ones we planted just aren’t thriving. Then, at a homesteader’s event, I was able to pick up an eating apple sapling (I’ve already forgotten the variety and don’t have the energy to look it up), a gooseberry bush and black walnut – a 1 yr sapling, plus seeds.
In the above picture, the Opal Plum is on the right, the apple on the left, and the gooseberry in the middle. We had to say goodbye to our elderly cat, Freya, this year, and we buried her where the Opal plum is now planted.
The plum got more protective fencing around it, along with pinwheel distractions, but that wasn’t enough, either. We ended up having to add chicken wire around it, too. The deer really wanted those plum leaves!
The new leaves stayed until well past several frosts, too.
With the drought and heat, I did make sure to water everything regularly during the summer. The old rain barrel we had set up there now leaks near the bottom, so I took advantage of that. I set it up between the apple and gooseberry. While the barrel was being filled with a hose, I used a watering can on everything else. By the time everything else got watered, the barrel would be pretty much full, so I just left it to leak. That basically gave the apple and gooseberry a slow, deep watering of about 40 gallons.
The area we’re planting the food forest in gets full sun all day in the summer, and absolutely baked. Something we have to compensate for, until things get large enough to provide their own shade on the ground below.
By the end of the year, everything seems to have survived. Now we’ll just have to see if they survive their first winter!
The black walnut, however, went much further afield.
The above image is what I got at the homesteader’s event; the year old walnut is the one in the pot. The wrapped ones are the gooseberry and apple. Then there’s the bag of walnut seeds, already cold stratified.
The sapling got planted first. The walnut went into the outer yard, well away from other things, due to the juglone from their roots. It took me way too long to get to the seeds, though – long enough that some of them pre-germinated!
I marked off spots for all of the seeds, but aside from the ones that pre-germinated, only one more got planted, on the grave of little Kale, a kitten that didn’t make it this year.
It was some time before the pre-germinated seeds broke ground.
Then, of course, the deer happened.
*sigh*
They only got the year old sapling, though, eating some of it. It did recover and start growing back. One of the saplings from the pre-germinated seeds also got disappeared by something. Not just eaten leaves, but the entire sapling, gone. I even dug around and there was nothing in the soil. Whatever got it, pulled it out by the roots. I’m not sure that’s something a deer would do!
The one planted over little Kale never showed up, and there are several other seeds that we just never had a chance to plant. Maybe they’ll survive another year? I don’t know.
In the spring, the current black walnut saplings will get chicken wire around them. I hope to get the last of the seeds planted, too. If they won’t make it, at least it’ll be easier to plant something else in their locations, later on.
If I remember correctly, it’ll be about 10 years before we get walnuts, if they survive that long. Normally, walnuts would not have enough season for the nuts to fully ripen out here, but these are from a nursery in the same growing zone as we are, so these might be better acclimated. Even if they don’t get a chance to fully ripen, they can still be used as a dye and, if they survive another 20 or 30 years, the trees could be potentially harvested for their wood. The last I looked, a fully mature black walnut tree could potentially be worth about $250K in lumber.
I probably won’t be around, by then! 😄
That’s it for the new stuff this year, and I was very happy that we were able to get so many new things for the food forest. It basically put us a few years ahead of what I had expected to be able to do. Assuming they survive!
The Old Stuff: Korean pine, rhubarb, walking onions, grapes, haskap, sunchokes, asparagus, strawberries, wild Saskatoons, strawberries, mulberry, silver buffaloberry, sea buckthorn and crab apples. Plus, surprise raspberry and saffron crocus!
Let’s start with the Korean pine.
Okay, we’re done.
Yeah. Nothing.
These were planted a few years ago. They were 2 yr old saplings, and from what I’ve read, they grow slowly in their first 5 years, then shoot up and grow quickly. Which should have started last year.
We have three of the original 6 left, and they did not grow at all.
It’s entirely possible I’ve been watering dead saplings.
Rhubarb.
We have two areas in the old kitchen garden with rhubarb that predate our living here. Usually, the one in the south corner does well, while the one in the north corner does poorly. This year, however, I pruned back the ornamental crab apple tree in that corner, allowing more light to reach the peppers bed. That meant more light for the rhubarb in that corner, too, and they did really well this year!
We had plenty to harvest for baking, and even enough to freeze.
I do think it’s time to transplant these, though. Maybe not next year, but now that we have the new asparagus and strawberry bed in the main garden area, I’m thinking we can plant more perennials in that section, slowly over the seasons.
When we first moved here, there was a single walking onion that kept coming up, only to get knocked down or broken by something, fairly early on. One year, I managed to protect it long enough to form bulbils. I planted those along the tiny raised bed, and they’ve been going great there, ever since. This spring, they were already growing as soon as the snow was gone!
As for the original, it never came up again.
We use the walking onions for their greens. I didn’t want them to start “walking” too far, though, so we harvested bulbils for eating, too. The remaining bulbils, I made sure they ended up in the area I want them to grow in, against that little raised bed, rather than spreading into the yard and in areas we have other things planted. These guys are very strong and did very well this year. The poor growing conditions we had this year didn’t phase them at all!
Grapes
We still haven’t transplanted these! I have not decided on a good new location for them.
This year, they did rather well, in spite of the fact that I kept forgetting to water them!
These caterpillars showed up again this year, though not for long.
We got a lot of grapes and they were probably the biggest we’ve seen since we unburied them from the spirea that had grown over them. Still smaller than they probably should be (we don’t know the variety, but they are probably Valiant). We ended up not harvesting much, though.
Here you can see some of the grapes we included with a harvest of Spoon, Sub Arctic and Chocolate Cherry tomatoes, herbs, Custard beans and a single Royal Burgundy bean, walking union bulbils and nasturtium seeds.
Mostly, though, we just snacked on the grapes whenever we were puttering around the yard.
Then, they were all gone.
Given the lack of damage, I’d say the birds got them. Which I didn’t mind too much, this year. When we do finally figure out where to transplant them, protecting them from birds and raccoons is going to be a priority!
Haskap
*sigh*
The original haskap we planted – two “Mrs. Honeyberry” and one “Mr. Honeyberry” are in a bed near the chain link fence. This year, as in previous years, the “Mr. Honeyberry”, which is much larger, leafed out and bloomed ealier.
One “Mrs. Honeyberry” that was planted the same year did show a few flowers and even had a berry or two. This spring, it looked so dead, I wouldn’t have been surprised if it never got any leaves at all. The second “Mrs. Honeyberry” was planted the next year and, while it gets leaves, it hasn’t been getting any bigger, and didn’t bloom at all this year.
The “Mr. Honeyberry” is self pollinating, and we did actually get almost a handful of berries this year. Probably the most, since we planted them, though not by much. By the end of the season, odd brown patches starting showing up on the leaves. I hope they didn’t end up with some sort of fungal disease!
They just don’t seem to be doing well in this location. We should have bushes covered in berries every year by this point, and it’s just not happening.
Which is why I bought two completely different cross-pollinating varieties. Varieties that should both bloom at the same time!
Sunchokes
These have never grown to the point of blooming, but we still get tubers out of them. They are not supposed to be affected by things like heat and drought that much, but they were much smaller this year than in previous years. I think the smoke, plus the elm tree near them needs to be pruned back again, contributed to that.
In the end, I only harvested part of the bed, leaving the others to keep growing as long as possible. They didn’t seem any smaller, even though the plants were! The unharvested tubers should mean a lot more plants for next year.
At least it didn’t happen until almost the end of the growing season. They’ll be fine over the winter.
Asparagus
Next to the sunchokes is the old asparagus bed. Though we didn’t have the flooding in the area we have had in previous years, I really didn’t expect anything to come up. These were planted long enough ago that we should have been able to harvest plenty of spears, every spring for the past two or three years, but it’s just not happening. We did have a few surprise spears show up, though, which I just left alone.
One of them, however, was a massive, thick asparagus spear that quickly grew into a huge fern, and went to seed.
I now have asparagus seed collected, and am looking to try planting them next year. The new purple asparagus we got this spring didn’t survive their delayed planting, so that would be a good spot to try planting seeds next year.
Albion Everbearing Strawberries
We planted these last year, and they did surprisingly well in their distant bed, though the deer got at them, too. This year, that bed was thoroughly neglected. It did have chicken wire over it, though, and some of the runners survived. After it became clear the new varieties I got did not survive their delayed planting, I dug up all the Albion Everbearing strawberries I could find – which was a surprising number of them, considering the conditions – and transplanted them were the failed strawberries had been. One of them even bloomed and produced a couple of berries! If they survive to next year, though, I expect to see more strawberries. I’ll be in a better position to maintain them in the new location, too.
Saskatoons
Some of you might know these as serviceberries.
These grow wild in several areas in our spruce grove. Most of them quickly get some sort of fungal damage? Insect damage? I’m not sure, but it renders whatever berries develop, inedible.
Near the house, however, we have some that produce good berries.
Once again, we didn’t really harvest them, but did snack on them, while we could. I also tried to prune away things that were growing back and crowding them out, and I cut away all the chokecherries that were crowding them. We don’t need that many chokecherry trees, that’s for sure. With the drought, the Saskatoon berries weren’t as big and juicy as they could have been, but they were still quite good.
Then they all disappeared.
Birds.
At some point, I’d like to buy specific varieties of Saskatoons for the food forest area, but for now, we are just fine with the wild ones.
Mulberry
These had a mixed up start. When we got them, it was two 1 year saplings instead of the one 2 yr sapling we ordered. They had run out of the 2 yr ones, so they were sending out pairs of 1 yr old saplings instead.
They were so small, we ended up potting them up and keeping them in the house that year, then planted them outside the following spring.
I’m happy to say, they survived their first winter, but seemed to struggle by the end of this season. I’m really hoping they survived their first drought! We’ll know for sure, in the spring.
Sea Buckthorn.
We have two survivors of the original five planted. This year, they seemed to do quite well, in spite of the conditions. They’re supposed to be quite hardy to the prairie weather, and they seemed to demonstrate that this year.
I still don’t know if we have two females, two males or one of each. It might be another year or two before we can figure it out. We’ll know when they finally start blooming. Which was not this year.
However…
Silver Buffaloberry
We saw our first silver buffaloberry berries this year!
I don’t think a drought year is a good time for tasting these. They were quite bitter and unpleasant.
These are being grown as a privacy screen, and if we don’t like the berries, they should be enjoyed by the birds, so no loss there.
Highbush Cranberry.
Now, onto the highbush cranberry.
Aaaannnd… we’re done.
Yup. Another one that didn’t seem to do anything this year. They got leaves, but did not get any bigger at all, even though they were among the things that got regular watering. Not sure why they’re not growing, though several possibilities come to mind.
Crab Apples.
With our weird spring, one of the crab apple trees never really bloomed and had almost no apples on it. That tree doesn’t have edible apples on it, anyhow, and gets left for the birds and the deer.
Of the ones that did produce, this one matures first.
They are small but, once ripe, they have really delicious sweet apples. Once again, we didn’t deliberately harvest much of them. I made sure to gather an ice cream bucket full for my mother. As the season got colder, I started to shake some of the branches so the apples would fall to the ground for the deer to eat. That way, they would have no reason to break any branches, trying to reach the apples.
This tree produced larger crab apples that mature about a month later than the first ones. My mother go a bucket full of these, too. She was quite happy with both types!
Then, one morning, I found a branch and been broken. It didn’t have enough apples on it for it to have been the weight of fruit to break it, so it was most likely a deer trying to pull off an apple. The broken branch didn’t die, though, and the apples remaining on it continued to ripen! I’ll prune that away in the early spring, when I can get a ladder to it.
Liberty Apple
This zone 4 variety, planted in a sheltered area, has so far survived our zone 3 winters. It’s still too young to produce fruit, though. It’ll be probably another 3 years before we get to that point. We just need to keep it alive!
Now, we have a couple of surprises.
Royalty Raspberry.
We’d ordered a 3 pack of these a couple of years ago, and planted them in the food forest area. They actually stared to produce berries their first year, which should have happened in their second year. The next year, only one survived. Barely. This year, I thought for sure they were all dead.
Then one showed up.
It never got bigger than a few inches, though once I found it, I made sure to water it regularly. We’ll see if it survives to next year.
We did have plenty of regular raspberries from before we moved out here, most of which have taken over the old compost pile near the main garden area. Those were often part of my breakfast, while doing my rounds!
Then there was an even bigger surprise.
Saffron crocus
I got some saffron crocus corms that are from a Canadian source, but they are still zone 4. We’re zone 3. I figured if we buried them deep enough and mulched them well enough, they might make it. The instructions specifically stated not to water them (I cheated this year), and we were to expect them to bloom in August. They are also supposed to spread quite a lot from season to season.
We planted them two falls ago. Their first year, we saw their greens pop up, but couldn’t keep them free of the weeds in the area, and soon couldn’t even find their leaves anymore. I figured they were a lost cause.
Then, this spring, they showed up again! I did try to keep the area weeded, but eventually, the greens just disappeared again. Considering these were an experiment I didn’t really expect to succeed, I figured we could just cut our losses.
Then we had our septic tank cleaned out in November, which is quite late for us. While that was being done, I was on kitten duty, making sure none came to close to the open tank. A couple of them were hanging out in the fenced off area where we have the Liberty Apple, tulips and the saffron crocus planted.
Much to my surprise, I spotted new crocus leaves. From quite a few areas. They had clearly been expanding.
This is about two months late! There was one flower that had fully bloomed before getting hit by frost. Nearby was a second flower bud that never opened.
We actually had a single saffron crocus to harvest a whole three saffron threads from.
Since then, this bed has been heavily mulched for the winter.
We might actually get saffron crocuses again, next year! Hopefully, not so late as November. 😄
Final analysis
Most of this stuff is long term planting and it’s still too early to know how they are doing. It may be years before we see anything from them.
Others, like the rhubarb, walking onion, Saskatoons, we just need to leave them be, though I do want to eventually transplant the rhubarb to a better location.
It’s been unexpectedly difficult to get things going in the food forest. Which is a big deal, when it can take 10 years before something starts to produce food!
Also, we really need to get on top of putting protection around our new food forest stuff. The dollar store tomato support kits we got seem to have been enough for most of the new things, but even the larger version was not enough to protect from the deer.
It’s a good thing I still have quite a bit of chicken wire left.
Over the next while, we intend to continue to plant more fruit trees hardy to our zone, more berry varieties and so on. I’m also looking to try planting things near or around stuff in the food forest area to help them out. I’ve been reading that planting garlic around fruit trees, for example, can deter deer. There are also “guilds” of things that can be planted around them. Even things like winter squash can potentially be planted around them, to help shade the soil and keep critters away. Things to consider as we expand these areas.
We are slowly working on building trellis tunnels attached to pairs of raised beds. I am thinking that, as we keep expanding the garden beds, we can start building pairs of raised beds closer to the food forest area, with poly tunnels over them, instead of trellis tunnels. This would allow us to expand what we can add to the food forest. For example, one of the tree sources I use has paw paw seedlings available. They are zone 5 and would normally not survive our winter. The area I’m thinking of adding polytunnels to gets a lot of sunlight, so even in winter, they would be considerably warmer, giving things like paw paws a chance to survive. We might not be able to grow, say, citrus, but having such structures would really open up what we could potentially grow.
It might take a few more years before we get to that point, though. Unless I’m able to harvest a lot more of those dead spruces to build raised beds with faster, with the help of my brother and a tractor to pull the trunks out of the spruce grove. We shall see.
So, that’s our perennial and food forest for this year. I’m really hoping the new things we got will succeed. It was a rough year for the food forest, too, it seems. We even lost a couple more silver buffaloberry, though that started out as a pack of 30, so there are still lots to form our privacy hedge.
It’s slow going with this stuff, but it will be worth it in the long term.
The Re-Farmer 