Gardening

Following up on things

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I got to follow up on a couple of things this evening.

We hit 32C/89F today, so once things got cooler, I headed out to water the garden beds.

Yesterday evening, after letting the silicon sealant cure for more than 24 hours, I filled the rain barrel by the garden, so today was the litmus test. I’m happy to report, there were no leaks at all at the cracks in the barrel.

With the barrel set up in the shade of a tree, the water in it was actually still cool! But not cold, which I’m sure the squash pants appreciated. Some of the leaves look like they got shocked by the cold, the last time I used a hose to water them.

While watering the beets and carrot beds, I startled a little friend.

It even gave me a chance to get pretty close with my phone to take pictures, before disappearing. This is the first time I’ve seen one of the green tree frogs jumping out of these beds. Gosh, they’re pretty!

While there, I decided to check on my other green friend, in the chokecherry tree by the junk pile.

The caterpillar is still there – and noticeably bigger! If you look at the veins in the leaf to compare between the two dates, you can see he’s quite a bit longer. The colouring has smoothed out, too. I’ll have to check again over the next while; he might get as big as the ones I found when I was a kid!

I’m happy to add that I saw flashes if kittens while making my way between the garden beds. While I was checking on the caterpillar, Butterscotch even emerged from the spirea to say hello and let me pet her. :-)

I’m glad she didn’t move her kittens.

The next thing I’ll be following up on is how things go tomorrow! We’re headed to the city for my husband’s first appointment with the pain clinic. I’m glad it’s finally happening, though to be honest, I don’t have much confidence in how it’ll go. After all these years, I think I’ve gotten way too jaded, but between the 2 years it took for my husband to get a 14 page form to fill out, and what was in the form itself, I am already not impressed with this place.

Mind you, I don’t think I’ll even be able to go in with him. They said he’ll have to wear a mask to go in, without anything about medical exemptions – and he has several conditions that would apply! I already know wearing a mask triggers my chronic cough, so maybe we’ll both be able to get exemptions, but I doubt it. Another reason for my expectations to be very low.

Hopefully, I will be proven wrong.

The Re-Farmer

Planning ahead: when to harvest sunflowers

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This post is to follow up on a comment from My Home Farm about sunflowers. They’re doing some awesome things on their property and Victorian era house, so do head over to visit their website and YouTube channel!

On learning we were planting sunflowers, my mother had made a big deal about how the birds were going to eat them all. She had planted sunflowers in the garden in the past, and told me they never had a chance to get any, because of the birds.

Well, I know that isn’t quite true, since I remember as a kid, pulling sunflowers out of a head and eating them, inside the house. So we obviously managed to harvest at least one seed head! :-D

The sunflowers we have planted are intended to be used as bird feed over the winter, though we will certainly eat some of them ourselves. To do that, however, we need to be able to harvest and preserve the seed heads before the birds eat them off the plants!

In looking up how to do that a while back, I found this video.

After watching this, I am thinking that my parents may have left the seed heads out for too long, before trying to harvest them.

Any seed heads we harvest will be hung up in our basement to dry.

Right now, our giant varieties of sunflowers are still developing their seed heads. We haven’t had issues with squirrels or mice, but the deer do seem to enjoy them! Of the original planting of 2 varieties of giant sunflowers, we had about a 50% loss. Some simply didn’t germinate, but most were lost to deer. A third variety of giant sunflowers were planted to fill in the gaps, and almost all of them came up, with a few later lost to deer. It should be interesting to see if they will have enough of a growing season left to produce seed heads we’ll be able to harvest, too. We do intend to plant sunflowers again next year, including trying some other, unusual, varieties. We intend to plant more of each, with the expectation of losses, but will also try to fence things off to keep the deer away, too.

But first, we’ll see what we will be able to harvest, this year!

The Re-Farmer

Sad beets

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While doing my rounds this morning, with my usual checking of the garden beds, I decided to try and harvest some of the beets.

Our poor, sad little beets.

I could tell that a deer had visited last night, as pretty much the last of the larger beet greens are gone. I had been looking at them while doing my rounds yesterday evening, thinking about how they were the only ones left, and now they’re gone, too!

Of the three varieties, the dark red Merlins have managed to survive the most, and have the biggest beets. This is the bed furthest from the spruce grove, and the one that had the last of its big leaves eaten last night.

The yellow Boldor variety seemed to be a favorite of the deer! As you can imagine, they aren’t very big. In fact, some of the ones I picked are so small, I’m not sure they’re even edible. I’m not sure, but I don’t think they have a developed flavour at that size. I’ve never tried to eat beets that small, so I really don’t know!

The Chioggia, which is supposed to have alternating rings of purple and white inside… I was able to pick only three of them.

It’s looking like most of the beets are a write-off.

But at least we’ve got lots of sunburst squash!

Yesterday, I was going to try cooking in the fire pit, and had prepared things in foil packets. It was way too windy, unfortunately, so I just baked the packets in the oven. With one of them, I’d cut sunburst squash, and all 3 kinds of zucchini, into similar sized chunks. After tossing them in olive oil and seasonings, I wrapped them in several layers of heavy duty aluminum foil, sealing them tight. After baking them for half an hour at 350F, I cut open the foil, added dollops of butter, then put them back into the oven until fork tender. They turned out very well! I think they would have turned out even better, cooked over a fire.

Among the things we’ve learned since moving here is, when we do set up a permanent outdoor cooking area, we will have to make sure there is shelter from the wind! It’s frustrating to have a wonderful day to cook outside, but not be able to do it safely because of the wind.

As for the beets, I’m not sure what to do with them. There are so few of them to work with!

Any ideas or suggestions?

The Re-Farmer

How does the garden grow?

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Check out this sunflower!!

It’s just towering above the others! I figure it’s getting close to 7 ft tall. :-)

There are a couple of others that are getting really tall, too. Like this one.

You can really see the huge seed head developing on this one – and it should get much, much bigger!

But… something’s wrong with another tall one. It’s head is gone?

Nope.

Just fallen over.

It looks like some sort of grub got in there.

This is actually above my head, so I am seeing it better now, in the photo, than I could while looking at the sunflower. The head is still alive, so I’m hoping it’ll survive. It’s the only one that has this.

While going through the squash and harvesting some – the sunburst squash is very prolific! – I spotted an odd looking squash and took a closer look.

This green, bulb shaped squash is a sunburst squash! It looks completely different from all the others on the plant.

I left it, and look forward to seeing how big it gets, and if the shape changes. :-)

The girls and I have been talking about what we want to plant next year, and sunburst squash is definitely staying on our list!

The Re-Farmer

Time to move the compost ring

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When we moved here, the compost pile we’ve been using was already set up in a metal ring, near the old garden. It’s been pretty full for a while, and well past time to start another one.

Today, I decided to dig out the metal ring in preparation for that.

The first thing I did was use a potato fork to lever under it and loosen it from the soil, and clear away some of the mulch around it or things growing out from under it.

The ring is made of two pieces put together, and this is one of the seams that I cleared.

It’s held together with a combination of electrical wire and barbed wire (without any barbs).

Between my dad and my brothers, I think we ended up with a whole lot of scrap electrical wire available, because I’m finding it used for stuff like this, all over the place!

The barbed wire, however, is a new one. :-D Not that I haven’t seen it all over; just that it’s usually limited to jerry rigging barbed wire fences, so it make sense for them to be there.

It took some fighting with it, but I managed to get the wire unwrapped and back through the hole. Yay! I can move the rings now!

Or… not?

Ah. Of course.

Even though I’d lifted the ring out of the soil earlier, it wasn’t enough to reveal the second set of wires, holding it together.

*sigh*

The electrical wire was easy enough to get loose, at least.

Hmmm.

At this point, I got a pair of pliers.

A pair of pliers that also had wire cutters on them. Which I needed to use, after I unwrapped part of it. The wire ran under the ring itself, with no way to finish unwrapping it from this side.

Finally, it’s clear! I could leave the other seam as is, and lift the whole thing out from the compost pile.

I don’t actually have high hopes for the compost we’ll get out of this. What we added to it should be fine, but when I tried digging into it to turn it, earlier it the summer, I was still finding lots of wood (the summer before we moved here, my sister and her husband had piled pruned branches into it, with plans to burn it, until my brother pointed out that it was too close to an apple tree!). I also found plastic garbage and pieces of fabric rags. What else might be under there, I don’t know!

It’s free!

Plenty of roots were hung up on the wires at the seams.

After talking about it with a daughter, I think we will move this over a tree stump near near where the old wood pile used to be. The stump itself is in the way of things, and having a compost on top of it will encourage it to break down faster. Once the ring is in place, I’ll use it to burn some of the stuff I’ve been clearing out of the edge of the spruce grove. Things like thistles and spirea don’t belong in the wood piles we’re planning to have chipped. Before, I’d put them in the fire pit, but there’s so much of it, plus we’re actually using the fire pit for cooking, now. Some of the saplings I cleared away from around the tree stump are already growing back, so starting off with a burn will ensure those are killed off, too.

I hope I can find a better way to close up the ring than using those wires, though.

The Re-Farmer

First sunflower!

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No, none of our giant sunflowers are blooming, yet. In fact, we didn’t even plant these ones.

Bird seed and deer feed we’ve been leaving at one end of a flower garden have been sprouting. Much of it is in the grass and gets mowed, but right under the platform feeder, we’re letting them grow.

I was surprised to see a sunflower blooming this morning. They are all really quite small plants! From the seeds I’ve seen in the mixes, I expected them to grow much larger.

Another sunflower will be blooming soon! The oats beside it are from the deer feed.

Then there’s whatever this is. Millet, maybe? I don’t know.

There are some other plants that I find myself looking at and wondering; is that from the bird seed? Or is it a weed? :-D

For now, I’m leaving them. We’ll find out soon enough!

The Re-Farmer

What shall I do with you, today?

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Zucchini and sunburst squash I gathered this morning.

Yesterday, I made a sort of hash, first browning potatoes, cubed small, in butter, then adding leek and frying until softened. I cubed sunburst squash, a green zucchini and a grey squash (the lighter coloured, kinda striped, kind of zucchini; our grocery stores label them as grey squash). Once those were cooked until soft, I added seasonings and maybe half a cup of whipping cream. It turned out awesome!

I’m out of cream, though, so I think I’ll just pan fry them in butter with leek.

The Re-Farmer

Full bloom

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A patch of my mother’s flowers that she still constantly asks about is now in full bloom.

These are all about 3 feet tall. Can you make out the two markers hidden in them? That’s where the haskap berries are planted. The flowers are actually cleared away from around them, and they’re still hard to see! :-D

Does anyone know what these are called? I’ve tried using Google Lens on my phone, but the possibilities it offers up have included things like a type of coneflower, and even dandelions!

These pictures were taken yesterday, with the top one taken just as it was starting to rain. By the time I was out again and took the second one, it was bright and sunny again. For all the thunder and winds, we didn’t get much rain at all. More than we have in a while, to be sure, but it’s a good thing I needed to empty the patched rain barrel by the garden, because I still needed to water the squash beds.

I would really like to know what it is about where we live that pushes storm systems away. Watching the weather radar, the storm did not miss us. It passed right over. My mother told me they had a solid downpour at her place, yet we had only a light rainfall.

Microclimates can be strange and perplexing things!

The Re-Farmer

Ripening

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The grapes are looking so great!

Our first summer here, when we found the grapes among the overgrown spirea, the ripe grapes were barely bigger than the seeds. I was still excited, because… we had grapes! And they made great jelly (this from someone who does NOT like jams and jellies), and still tasted great, straight from the vine.

This year, they look massive in comparison. I am really looking forward to seeing how they are when fully ripe!!

The Re-Farmer

Just One

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This year, I’ve been allowing various things to come up in between the sidewalk blocks by the sun room, instead of taking the weed trimmer to them, to see what is there.

Quite a lot of flowers have come up through the cracks and crevices between the rain barrel and the clothes line platform. Most of them are either the purple bell shaped flowers we’ve got all over the place this year, or a taller plant with bright orange-yellow flowers.

Then, there is this one.

And it is just one. A single stalk with a single flower! I can’t see any other part of the plant.

I don’t know what this is, other than something from the allium family.

What a beautiful little surprise. :-)

The Re-Farmer