A package I was expecting next week, came in today! Our first shipments of bulbs for fall planting.
Which the cats found very, very interesting…
That’s better!
Mostly. :-D
We’ve got 2 packages of Muscari (grape hyacinth) of 100 bulbs each. There are 5 bags of crocuses. I believe we were planning to mix these all together and plant them randomly. There are also an iris and tulips. We still have some on back order, including a fall garlic mix. The long term weather forecasts show no temperatures dipping low enough for frost over the next too weeks. Hopefully, the rest of the order will come in before things start to cool down that much again.
We had another frost last night, and today is going to be distinctly chillier. We’ve already had a smattering of rain, which is supposed to continue off and on.
Then, on the weekend, we’re supposed to go above 20C again!
The outside cats seem to be taking it in stride. In this weather, they will be growing in their denser winter coats.
How is this for a lovely family picture!
Starting from the top left, we have Rosencrantz’s baby. Next to her is the mystery kitten; I am unsure which mom she belongs to! Next is Rozencrantz herself – who as even been letting me pet her! Until the food is out, of course. :-D
Next in line is Tabby, then Little Braveheart (her head is hidden behind her mom), and finally, Junk Pile cat.
Junk Pile cat was the one kitten of Rosencrantz’s that we were unable to catch. Keith and David, with their leaky, glued shut eyes, were caught and treated and are now both indoors.
This means that Rosencrantz’s babies are siblings to Junk Pile, while Junk Pile’s kittens are the grandkittens of Rosencrantz. Which means Rosencrantz’s kittens are also the aunts/uncles of Junk Pile’s kittens! :-D
I did see Butterscotch around when I first came outside and started getting the cat kibble. I have put the container for her and her kittens at the side of the house, near the steps I have been seeing them play around most often, lately. She went past me as I was filling it. Later, as headed towards the old garden area, I could see her kittens, playing among the squash beds.
Which confirms that Butterscotch has moved her kittens again.
Across the road, to the neighbouring property! No one lives there, but there is still the house, barn, garage, and various sheds and equipment used by the current owner.
*sigh*
She has done this before, and when her kittens grew bigger, they did stay at our place on their own, but I don’t like that she and her kittens are crossing the road like that. That one is a main road, and gets a lot more traffic than the one our driveway leads to.
I really wish Butterscotch wouldn’t do that. :-(
The frost we’ve been having seem to have finally done in the sunflowers.
The leaves are drooping on all of them, and even the unopened seed heads are drooping. I don’t expect many of them will ever open, even as we warm up again.
With the ones that are already open, I’m sure they can better withstand the frost. The problem is, it’s too chilly for the pollinators. No pollinators, and the seeds will never develop. I’m hoping they will be out again as things warm up.
Not all of them are tucking down for the winter. The wasps on the tree outside the kitchen window – the tree we need to cut back in hopes of establishing an internet connection for the second satellite – is still buzzing. As chilly as it was this morning, I could see a few flying around, too.
It’s hard to know how much longer it’ll be, before we can safely cut that branch down. Meanwhile, we’ve already got our 90% data usage warning, with 2 weeks before the account flips. We’re still rationing our internet usage, but we’d have to basically stop using the internet almost completely, to avoid going over the limit. Our service won’t be interrupted, but we will be charged double per gig once we do.
I really hope taking that branch down works. The tech already checked everything and replaced everything he could, and it still got zero signal. If it’s not the branch blocking the signal, there’s really nothing else left to fix. Yet, if it was just the branch, we would have had at least an intermittent signal, rather than no signal at all.
Ah, well. We’ll find out, one way or the other, once those branches come down.
The frosts we have had didn’t quite kill off the cucamelons, but they are certainly beyond being able to continue producing.
There were still a few left on the vines that were big enough to withstand the frost, though!
They were still tasty, too. :-)
After taking down the yarn net I made for a trellis, I started pulling each of the plants up.
Which is when I found a surprise.
They have tubers!
When I looked up how to grow cucamelons, I found one site that said, if you lives in a colder climate, you could dig up the roots and pot them. Kept in a cool, dark place over the winter, they could be started indoors for better transplants in the spring.
I don’t remember the site mentioning the roots were tubers!
When I kept finding more, I decided I would try it.
These are the biggest ones that I found. After trimming away the vines, I filled a couple of deep buckets with peat (we still have most of a bale) and planted the a bunch. I fit about 9 tubers between the two buckets. That left a few littler ones that I decided not to bother planting.
The buckets are now being repeatedly watered, to get as much of the peat to absorb moisture as possible. Then, they will go into the old basement (where the cats can’t get at it!) for the winter.
The next thing to do was to prepare the retaining wall blocks. When I placed them last year, which you can read about here and here, I filled the bottoms with mulch, then topped with peat. As expected, everything settled a couple of inches, so they all needed to be topped up.
For that, I wanted to use the soil from the remaining tire planter, so the retaining wall waited for a bit, while I dealt with that.
Which will get it’s own post.
It turned out to be a pretty big job!
Once I had the soil, I loosened and broke up the peat layer, topped off all the blocks with soil, then watered them thoroughly, to help it settle in.
After giving each block a thorough soaking, my daughter and I made a dump run, giving the soil plenty of time to absorb the water and settle. Once back, I topped up the soil again, then gave them another soak.
The cucamelons are now all cleaned up, and the retaining wall is ready for whatever we decided to plant here next.
Oh, I almost forgot!
One of the other things we transplanted in the area where the surviving fennel seedlings.
This is the biggest and strongest of the 4 that survived.
I admit, all I did with them over the summer was water them. I suppse they’re still edible. If nothing else, I think the fronds can be used as an herb, and there are plenty of those! :-D
The only thing left in the blocks are the two with chives in them. I will be leaving them for now, but before winter, those will get topped up with soil, too.
When I headed out to do my morning routine, I had a rush of outside cats come running as soon as I opened the door! And who was in the lead?
Little Braveheart!
She ran right up to me. She still won’t let me pet her, but she’s coming the closest.
While in the sun room, filling a container of kibble at the storage bin, there was a crowd of cats going in and out, including Butterscotch, Potato Beetle, Junk Pile cat and her 2 kittens. When I felt a cat rubbing against my legs, I looked down, expecting to see Potato Beetle, who has been begging for attention these days.
Nope.
It was Little Braveheart! Weaving around my feet.
*melt*
The mystery kitten came out from under the cathouse again. That seems to be a favorite place now. I’m glad she’s willing to hang out so close.
Once he’d eaten his fill, Potato Beetle accompanied me for the rest of my rounds.
He did not want me to put him down, either! :-D
The biggest seed head on the mutant sunflower, with its 20 or so seed heads, is opening up quite nicely!
Once back inside and chatting with my daughters, I noticed a kitten on a side table. They are allowed on this table, but it’s also where the hard crab apple cider is sitting, and the kittens have been going after the airlocks. So I went to move her away and…
… noticed both airlocks were gone.
!!!!
I had checked the temperatures before heading outside, and didn’t notice they were gone. I guess it’s a good thing it’s been relatively chilly; they both read at 17C/62F this morning, while the ambient temperature is 16C/60F. They are both wrapped in a towel to keep the warmth of their own fermentation in, but at these temperatures, there’s not a lot of activity in the airlocks.
I found the airlocks, upside down, between the towel and the wall. The bungs were quickly covered with plastic wrap. The main concern is that we have a fruit fly problem right now, and we just can’t seem to get rid of them all. Another reason to be glad the cooler temperatures mean slow fermentation, I guess. They weren’t attracted to the open holes in the bungs! There were no fruit flies in the jugs. *phew*
They can’t have been without airlocks for long, but even so, could this be a problem? Will they be okay?
I have no idea.
We need to find a way to warm them up. For the mead, we used an electric heating pad, but there is no electrical outlet anywhere near where we have them now. We were thinking of wrapping something warm around them, like those microwavable neck warmers, but we don’t have any.
Hhmm… I could warm up a towel and wrap them in it.
*sigh*
Well, we will just have to keep a close eye on them and see how they turn out!
Yesterday evening, while doing my rounds and walking around the back of the house, I startled some babies!
Butterscotch seems to have moved her kittens from the junk pile to under the garden shed.
Her kittens are getting so much bigger and more adventurous, wandering further afield in the yard.
I suspect this has something to do with why Butterscotch as moved them. Wherever they are inside the junk pile, it must be getting a bit tight for her and the 4 of them to fit!
Which means that, with the wasp nest gone and the kittens elsewhere (though they do go back to the junk pile to play), I can continue cleaning up in that area.
Now, if only Butterscotch had been willing to move them to the other side of the house, where the food bowls and the old dog house are!
When topping up the kibble, I put one of the containers in the entrance to the doghouse. Recently, I was noticing a definite skunk smell in there, so yesterday, I lifted the roof, fluffed up the straw and left it open to air out for a while. I am trying to think of other ways to encourage the cats to go in there for shelter, but I think it’s going to take winter temperatures to finally convince them!
As for bigger things, look what I found this morning.
It’s the only one that got big like this!
It seems we had a light frost last night (there were no frost warnings), and some of the little squashes actually look a bit frozen. At this point, I don’t think they’re going to get much bigger. I will check them later today, and might just pick what’s left, then start cleaning up the beds in preparation for winter.
This morning, I got a shipping confirmation for part of the fall plantings we ordered. Unfortunately, the garlic was among the things that are back ordered, so they will be shipped later. Still, we will be able to get started on the varieties of flowers we will be naturalizing in the maple grove. I can also leave the beets and carrots in the ground a bit longer, while we wait for the garlic that will be planted there once they are harvested.
It looks like I’ll be able to accomplish more in a few weeks in the fall, than I’d been able to over the past few months, with this summer’s heat! :-)
I recently harvested the two biggest heads of sunflower seeds that were done blooming. They are now hanging in the basement to dry, where the birds can’t get at them.
As for the rest of them, we’ve got seed heads at all stages! Not all will have time to mature before the growing season ends, but we should still have a decent number of them to harvest and dry for the winter.
Click on the images to see larger sizes, though they are all 25% of the original size.
That one mutant sunflower, with all the extra seed heads developing, is one to keep an eye on! We might actually get a couple of seed heads mature enough to harvest before the end of the growing season.
While going through some of the photos I took with one of my daughters, she was suggesting I make some available for sale, in various forms. We’re still trying to come up with ways to be able to raise funds for things like a new roof, when I cannot get a job (for the new folks following this blog; as we are living on my husband’s health insurance disability payments, anything I earn would be deducted from his payments. If I were to earn more than his payments, he would lose his plan, which means no more coverage for his prescriptions). I was considering offering things up as fundraisers: all proceeds go towards replacing the roof, or getting yard cats fixed, or building a wheelchair ramp, etc.
So I’m putting the idea out there. If I were to, say, make photos available on, say, Redbubble, as prints, mugs, t-shirts, etc., would this interest you? I’ve had it suggested to put a donation button up, but I don’t like to ask for something for nothing. Other people use sites like Patreon, where there are rewards for different tiers. Of course, there are always affiliate links, like with Amazon, where the site would earn a commission. All proceeds would go to specific things, such as a new roof (long term goal) or getting yard cats spayed and neutered (short term goal) or building a wheelchair ramp (mid term goal), etc. It would have to be fundraising for a specific project, not an income for us. We would have to be very careful about that.
Today, we took advantage of the warmer weather and dug up our two potato beds.
The first one got done fairly early in the morning, before we headed to the city. Having already dug up a few of them earlier, I had some idea of what to expect, but I have zero experience with growing potatoes the “Ruth Stout” way.
I first pulled up the potato plants, then carefully used my potato fork to lift off, then “rake” the mulch away. Here, you can see some of the potatoes I uncovered in the process.
I also uncovered several chilled little frogs! I carefully moved them to the mulch by the squash, where they could warm up in the sun.
I also uncovered slugs.
I did not rescue them. ;-)
Almost all the potatoes I found were just sitting on top of the soil! Some took a little more raking away of the mulch to find, but not much more.
What had been rock hard ground when we started, the mulched soil was so much easier to work – even with all the rocks.
I took advantage of the situation and dug up the entire plot, so I could pull out as many weed roots as I could. The crab grass came out pretty easily. Then I hit a solid mass of roots near the surface, with a tap root of some kind that continued deep into the ground. I could not get it out with the fork! If I’d had the spade handy, I might have been able to cut through it, but since it seemed to be dead, I left it. It will be buried.
I did find a couple more potatoes in the process!
The end result looked like a 4×8 foot grave! :-D
When I finished pulling up as many roots as I was able, the mulch all went back – along with the potato plants that had been pulled up.
These are all the potatoes I got out of the one bed.
Also, note the one slightly darker potato with the arrow pointing to it. I’ll explain that, below!
When we got back from the city, I continued working on the second bed.
Once again, I was finding most of the potatoes on the surface of the soil as I pulled away the mulch.
These are all the potatoes I found, before I did any digging at all. Unfortunately, quite a lot of them had holes eaten into them. :-( After digging, I found maybe 5 more.
Speaking of 5, do you see those 5 darker potatoes on the side?
Those are the original seed potatoes! The other bed had only one. While they had stems and roots that I broke off of them, they are just as hard as the day I planted them. I found the remains of some other seed potatoes, all mushy and used up like one would expect at the end of the growing season.
I got two 3 pound boxes of seed potatoes, which gave me 3 row of 6 potatoes in one bed, and 3 rows of 5 potatoes in the other, plus an extra. That’s 34 potatoes – and 6 in total never grew more potatoes!
As with the previous bed, I dug it all up, finding a few more potatoes, a whole lot more slugs, and pulling out weed roots.
Would slugs be the cause of those holes in the potatoes?
This bed had quite a few more rocks near the surface that I got rid of, too. My fork was hitting many more as I dug down, but I didn’t try to get them out, since we will continue to build these beds up. The mulch and old potato plants went back over the soil.
I then took all the harvested potatoes and laid them out on the dry straw mulch between squash beds, so they can cure (is that the right word for it?) in the sun. Except for the tiniest ones, which will be cooked and eaten right away. :-)
I then had the 6 original seed potatoes. What to do with those??
Yeah. I planted them, almost the same way they were planted in the original beds. The only difference is that I did loosen the soil a bit, first. Not to bury the potatoes – there are so many rocks along this end, I could barely do more than scrape away the mulch on top! No, it was so I could push in the bamboo poles to mark where they are. Even then, I don’t think the poles will be able to stay up for long. I could barely get them into the soil at all. No matter how I shifted and searched, I kept hitting rocks just inches below the surface.
What will most likely happen is that the potatoes will freeze over the winter, and nothing will come of them. Another possibility is that they will be protected by the mulch and, as soon as it gets warm enough next spring, they will start growing and we’ll have early potatoes started.
We’ll find out next year!
As for now, the potato beds are put to bed for the winter. I don’t know what we will plant in those spots next year. We do intend to do potatoes again, but in a different location. We don’t want to entice the Colorado potato beetle by planting in the same location again. We didn’t see a single one this year, but one of my neighbours a mile up the road mentioned that his potatoes had been decimated by them! My parents always planted lots and lots of potatoes, and I well remember going through the rows, picking off the beetles or their larvae, and hunting for the eggs to crush. Even with several of us doing that every day, some years my mother had to resort to using a poison powder of some kind, to get them under control.
I’d really rather not have to deal with them at all, if I can avoid it!
As for the squash, for now I have stopped harvesting any more of the sunburst squash, though there are a couple of zucchini that are almost large enough to pick. I prefer them when they are quite small, but with the sunburst squash, I want to give them as much of the remaining warm weather as I can for them to grow. As I write this, past 6pm, we are still at 21C/70F. We are supposed to stay fairly warm over the period covered by the long range forecast, with no more frosts expected overnight. That should give our produce a bit more time before we have to harvest what we can, then prep for the winter – and next year’s gardening! :-)
Our first year gardening since moving here has been quite interesting, and quite the learning experience. We will, for sure, continue using the Ruth Stout method until we are able to start making the accessible raised beds that are the ultimate goal. The extensive use of mulch is making a very noticeable, positive difference in the soil, even after just one year. My mother may be disappointing in our gardening, compared to what she had here, years ago, but I’m happy with our progress so far! :-)
After seeing how great the sunflowers did, after last night’s first frost, it was time to see how the squash beds looked after a day of relative warmth.
You can see how all the leaves that got hit with frost have shriveled and darkened.
There is some hope, though…
For many (not all) of the larger plants, the leaves underneath are looking just fine, as are the little squashes. Even the pumpkins look like they’ll make it.
On the one hand, I’m encouraged. On the other, it shows that if we’d been able to cover them, they probably would have fared much, much better.
Ah, well.
In other things…
Our trip to the cardiac clinic in the city turned out to be a waste of time, but that did result in us coming home earlier.
Yesterday, my younger daughter and I had gone into town. Since she needed to go to the grocery store and I didn’t, I popped across the road to the garage to see about my mom’s car.
It’s done!
In fact, he had stayed late on Friday to do it. However, the car had been sitting there for so long, the battery was dead! He had it on a charger and said it would be ready for pick up this morning. Since we were heading to the city this morning, I told him I could come in tomorrow morning.
With today’s changes in timing, we were able to zip into town before he closed for the day. We were going to pick up something else half an hour before he closed, so we went to the garage first. I paid the bill and got the keys, and we would come back later. It’s a good thing we did it that way, because by the time we were done, the garage was closed!
So we are now, once again, a 1 1/2 vehicle family (since I own half of my mother’s car! :-D ).
This is a relief, as we now have a back up vehicle if something ever happens to the van.
The guy at the garage did warn me, though, that the car might make some noises for the first while. Not only did the battery die from sitting so long, but the discs on the brakes are all rusted up again! He advised we drive it as much as we can, which I was already planning to do.
I don’t think I’m ready to drive it to the city quite yet, though. I want to take if for a few spins locally, first. Even if it’s just to the post office and back.
I’m happy to say that last night’s frost seems to have had no effect on the sunflowers at all.
The only leaves with frost damage that I saw were leaves that had first been broken by the high winds we had a few days ago.
Right now, we’ve got seed heads at pretty much all stages of opening and ripening!
The birds seem to have finally discovered this one. Based on what I researched, I should be able to cut this seed head off and set it up to dry, but in the video I saw that demonstrated this, the guy was able to easily brush off the flower heads from the seeds. That isn’t happening on this seed head at all! The ones that haven’t already fallen off on their own are still attached quite well.
The girls and I will be heading into the city tomorrow, but I might harvest this seed head after we come back. If not then, then the day after. I’m planning to dig up the potato beds as well. We’ll see how the timing of things goes.
Hopefully, tomorrow’s trip to the city will be more productive than today’s – but that will get it’s own post later!
My husband has an appointment at the heart clinic in the city today, so I was out a bit earlier to do my rounds this morning.
As I write this, it’s still only 1C (33F), with a “real feel” that has warmed up to -2C (28F) since I last checked. Our high today is supposed to reach 15C (59F), which is warmer than the last few days. We’re then supposed to go above 20C (68F) for a couple of days, before dropping back to the mid-teens, which is more typical for this time of year.
We don’t have what we need to be able to cover plants as large as our squash right now, so this morning was more about surveying the damage.
I will check them again, after we get back from the city. Some look like they’re completely killed off, but others might still make it through the rest of the season.
I’m pretty sure the pumpkins are a total loss, though.
This is the largest of them, and you can see where the frost was on the pumpkin itself.
This pumpkin hill is the one that’s the furthest South – which means that it gets more shade from the trees than the others. It isn’t much, but as you can see by the plant, it doesn’t take much, either. This plant still had visible frost on it.
The other two hills were pretty much clear of frost. The developing pumpkins don’t show signs of direct frost on them – but from the state of the plants, I think they’re likely complete losses, too. We shall see.
Remember this little birdhouse gourd, bravely blooming just yesterday?
This is how it looked this morning.
*sigh*
Well, this year was our year to figure things out, and we’ve learned a lot.
We will have to work on finding different ways to cover and protect our plants from late and early frosts. Especially since we do want to keep growing squash, which are more easily damaged by the cold. The beets, carrots and parsley are just fine. Even the cucamelons showed less frost damage than the squash, which surprised me.
Altogether, though, we did far better with our gardening this year than I expected. It really has been a successful year, for the circumstances!
You’d think, having grown up here and helped my mother with the gardening for my entire childhood, I would already know what is needed, but everything is really quite different than the garden of my childhood. Especially with my parents planting or allowing so many trees to encroach into the garden.
While we will continue to have garden plots in this area, my mind is already starting to look at the outer yard, towards the barn, for possible raised beds, polytunnels or greenhouses for vegetable gardening.
