Gardening

Our 2026 Garden: snow crocus blooming, and spring clean up progress

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Today was a fair bit warmer than yesterday and sunny, making up somewhat for the wind. After losing a day of work in the yard and garden yesterday, it was a perfect day to catch up. I managed to get a lot more done than I expected. The pre-sown and fall transplanted beds are now cleaned up. I even got some direct sowing done!

The warmth and sunshine brought out some lovely colour, too.

The snow crocus buds have been showing for a few days now, and today they finally bloomed.

While working, I took some video and some photos, but forgot to get before and after photos of all the areas I worked on. I might put together a series of short videos on the progress, rather than one long one, later on. For now, I don’t even want to think about it. I’m just too tired.

So, this is what I can show you now.

Whoops! How did that get there? 😂🤣 The cats are really loving that sunny pile of straw I put under the mock orange bush.

The first area I worked on is the trellis bed in progress. (click through to see the “after” photo in the next series of images)

This bed has a row of rainbow carrots down the middle, a variety of pea with a pink blush making a partial row near the trellis posts, and the other side and ends with onions meant for seed and deer deterrent – I hope.

I started with the carrots, since they were the hardest to reach. I think I might have seen a sprout or two, or maybe it was weed seedlings. I’m not sure. Once the mulch was off the row (the straw removed completely, the leave mulch below pushed aside), I covered it with boards to keep it damp. I’ll check it every morning and remove the boards when I see carrot seedlings.

Uncovering the peas was a pleasant surprise. There were quite a lot of seedlings!

I did the onions last and found quite a few, but also quite a few gabs. I might transplant some of my bunching onions that I started indoors to fill those, if nothing shows up.

Next, I uncovered where the flower bed was last year.

This took more than expected. I’d tossed the mulch on top of the Cosmos stems and meant to leave the root balls to compost in the soil. In the end, I had to dig it up a lot more because of a combination of creeping Charlie and elm tree roots.

*sigh*

When I collected seed from the memorial asters planted in the same bed, I did allow some seeds to drop, to see if they would survive and grow this year. I really hope some show up, because I still can’t find the packet I’d put the collected seeds into. Another packet is missing, too, but it’s the memorial asters that I really wanted to keep going. I’m quite unhappy that they’ve gone missing. There is only one area they could be, and there’s just no sign of them.

In the end, I did plant some collected nasturtium seeds at the sunny end, lightly covering that area with straw to hopefully discourage cats.

The next area I worked on was the asparagus and strawberry area.

I wasn’t going to uncover where the asparagus was planted, as they can grow through a mulch like this. There were only a few of the green asparagus (at the far end of the photo) that survived last year, but it’s entirely possible some of the purple asparagus might show up. Maybe. Who knows.

What I focused on was uncovering the Albion Everbearing strawberries I’d found and transplanted last year. As I found and uncovered surviving plants, I made sure to return some straw around them to keep the ground moist and the weeds at bay.

Next was the spot I’d found the surviving strawberry plants. I had done nothing in that bed last year; I just was never able to tend it. This year, I plan to grow the giant pod poppy variety I got seeds for this year.

The first thing I did was move the 4′ x 4′ wood frame out, setting it with the one near the compost pile that’s the same size. I plan to put them together to make that bed a touch deeper.

This bed took a lot more work. Which I did expect. I worked a fair bit outside where the frame had been, because there was so much creeping Charlie trying to work its way into the bed. There were, of course, plenty of crab grass rhizomes to clean up. Unfortunately, there was also quite a lot of tree roots in it, too. I couldn’t do much about them, as they were coming up from deeper than I was able to dig down to.

After this bed was done, I took a sustenance break, then came back with the poppy seeds, as well as the nasturtium seeds I planted in the other bed.

This bed had already started to dry out, and poppy seeds need to stay pretty much on the surface, so I filled a watering can and watered it first.

I look forward to when we can hook the hoses up again! It still gets too cold overnight right now.

There were fewer seeds in the packet than I expected, so they weren’t scattered as evenly as I would have liked. Then I used a rake to spread things evenly and just barely cover the seeds. This bed now needs to have some cold nights, including nights below freezing, for the seeds to germinate. The daytime highs for the next while are supposed to be similar today, or cooler, with a mix of sun and clouds. I’ll have to make sure to keep watering this bed, so the seeds don’t dry out and get baked.

The main garden area was now done. I just had a few more mulches to move, but I neglected to take still shots. I really should have for one of them!

The fenced off area with the tulips, apple tree and saffron crocuses were next, as well as the retaining wall blocks. Around the apple tree, I just moved the straw a bit further from the stem, where the weight of snow had pushed it closer to.

Then I uncovered the saffron crocuses and was wildly surprised. There were so many crocus leaves! They were surprisingly long and mostly blanched yellow from trying to grow through the mulch, with some of them having actual green in their leaves. I was very impressed by how many I saw. Last spring, I uncovered them and found a few, but they sort of disappeared among the weeds as the season progressed, and I thought they’d died off – until I found some spent and frost damaged blooms, way later than was expected!

Next, I took the straw off the retaining wall, taking it over to the tulip patch. I lightly scattered the straw over the tulips, though the wind made that a challenge. Later on, I took extra straw from over the septic tank and made an extra thick later in placed I was 100% sure had no tulips planted.

The retaining wall blocks have mint, chives, and tiny strawberry plants I’d transplanted from the wattle weave bed. Under the straw mulch was a leaf mulch that I removed carefully. There were a few green strawberry leaves, but it may be that most of them didn’t survive the winter. I also didn’t see any green in the mint, but that might show up later. The chives, of course, were coming up just fine as I cleared away the dead matter from last year. Chives survive anything! 😄

Last of all, I went to the chimney blocks along the chain link fence. Those got the last of the tiny strawberry transplants. The straw on those was set as mulch around the nearby black currant bush, which I think might be old enough to produce berries this year. It’s doing really well for something that started out as a little stick in a jug of water my mother snagged from a bush at the apartment building she used to live at and gave to me. These strawberries also had a leaf mulch under the straw, and that was used to mulch under the white lilacs on the other side of the path, to try and keep down the grass and weeds in there.

Once again, it seems like a mix of strawberries that survived and didn’t survive. For both areas, it will be a while before we know for sure what survived or not.

All in all, I am very happy with the progress and how the pre-sown beds look so far.

After this, there are other beds to prepare, but I think what I will need to do is get those boxes of chicken coop parts and assemble it, first. We’ll be getting chicks near the end of May and will set up a brooder in the house for their first 4-6 weeks, but I still want the coop assembled as soon as possible, and the ground is now dry enough.

That done, I have several beds that need to be cleaned up, plus two that need some building up of walls. The bed against the chain link fence will be a priority. It will be a bit narrower and a bit deeper when I am done, and I want to make sure it can be covered and protected from both the elm tree seeds that will drop in their billions, and the cats. The kittens got under the row netting I used last time and completely flattened anything that I’d pre-sown in that bed, except some Jebousek lettuce and a few sad onions that had survived the previous winter. I’ve already got some materials for the deadwood walls I plan to make, but I know I will need a lot more to finish the job. It’s always surprising just how much material is needed to make a wall! I’m not even going to try doing wattle weave; the materials we have are just too bent up and inflexible for that. We do have an order of basket will that will probably be shipped out in may. It will be a few years, but we will eventually be able have willow switched that will work much better than the poplar and maple suckers we’ve been using. Even the willow we do have is a different variety and, while it works better, the willow switches are not as straight as the basket willow will be.

But first, the chicken coop!

Little by little, it’s getting done.

The Re-Farmer

Feeling thankful

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Today has been pretty chilly, compared to yesterday, but it was still warm enough to get stuff done in the garden. I’ll actually put together another video on how that went. Probably not today, though.

Before I headed outside, I had a rather alarming start to the day, when I tried to log into my computer.

I got this.

Yes, that’s cat hair all over my monitor’s screen.

I have never seen this particular warning before. I also couldn’t really fuss with it, either, as I needed to have my breakfast, then head outside to get the winter sown beds uncovered. So I got my husband up and told him what was going on and he said he would look at it while I was outside.

He had to go into my bios to reset it.

It turns out part of the problem is all the photos and video I’ve got.

This is a new computer, which I got after my previous desktop died an ignominious death. When looking for another desktop, I was surprised to find that pretty much everything only had 500 Gigs of storage space. When I got my previous one, they all had at least 1T. I’ve been transferring files to an external hard drive as I am able, but it was already mostly full with data rescued from my old computer. Still, I needed to free up space on my computer; it’s slow going to transfer over USB, so I’d do things like one month’s worth of photos and video at a time.

In spite of that, after I uploaded the photos and video I took for my last gardening video, the files took up enough space that the computer just couldn’t process my log in.

As we were talking about it when I came in for lunch, my husband mentioned that he had a 2T hard drive on his old computer; we’ve kept both our old computers for salvage purposes. He wasn’t sure if my new computer had the ports for it, though. He got it out of his old computer to give it a try after I finished my lunch, and headed back outside.

It worked.

As soon as I was able to, I started transferring files. I was able to transfer all of our 2025 trail cam files at once, instead of one month at a time, in a very short time. Had I tried to transfer the 2025 fold to the external hard drive, it would have taken more than an hour. That one folder turned out to be what was taking up the most space.

I really need to delete more trail cam files, but I enjoy keeping files with, say, herds of deer going by, or cats – some we no longer have – running around. Of course, I also keep the files that show our vandal creeping around, too.

Moving that one folder almost doubled the available space I had.

From now on, all my photos and videos will be going straight to the 2T hard drive; something I used to do regularly, with my previous computer. I was able to transfer it all in mere moments.

My desktop is doing much better now!

Meanwhile, I was able to get a decent amount of work done in the main garden area. I focused on the garlic bed first, and found lots of garlic already emerged – and a surprising number of chard and spinach seedlings! They were trying to grow through two layers of mulch (first a leaf mulch, then the straw mulch I added later), though, so they were all very leggy. I don’t know if they’ll make it. That bed is now clear and protected by netting, though, so they at least have a chance.

The next bed I worked on has the radishes and turnips in it. This one has the two rows closer to the sides of the bed, with the middle open for what will probably be pole beans later on. There was a surprising number sprouts on one side – the radishes, if I remember correctly. This bed got covered with the 6mm poly I had order a couple of months ago.

By the time that was done, it was getting late, and my daughter was treating us to pizza at a place that opens at 4pm. We all got different 18″ jumbo size pizzas, which is enough to feed us for several days!

After the order was phoned in, I headed out to the truck but just had to stop to get this picture.

These three in particular just love the isolation shelter! With the cooler temperatures, I turned the heat lamp back on, too. That’s Furriosa, curled up in the hammock under the lamp.

On the way to town, I stopped at the general store and post office. I was able to pick up a 40 pound bag of kibble, along with getting the mail.

There was a surprise parcel waiting for me!

From there, I continued on to town, first stopping at the grocery store; my daughter had sent funds for a few things from there, to go with the pizzas, as well. Last of all, I got the pizzas, then headed home.

The truck smelled amazing.

Once everything was unloaded and put away, I opened up the package. It was from a dear friend that was a neighbour before we moved out here. Along with some things for the garden, and treats as “bait” for the outside cats, I found this, well wrapped in a tiny box.

How utterly precious! The teeniest most adorable bunny, ever!

And yes, I did scrub my hands after I was done in the garden. Honest. 😄

In between the stops I made while going to and from town, I got some messages from my husband. Out of curiosity, he looked up the price for the exact same SSD, 2T hard drive he scavenged from his old computer to install into mine.

It now costs $925.

Before taxes.

Out of curiosity, my husband looked up the invoice from when he bought it a few years ago.

Less than $250 AFTER taxes.

For the EXACT same hard drive. That’s on Amazon. No idea what the local prices would be, or if anyone even carries it anymore.

In the end, there was much to be thankful for today.

Thankful that my husband could get into my computer in the first place. Thankful he had a spare 2T hard drive, and my computer is now breathing easy again.

Thankful we didn’t need to spend almost a thousand dollars for a new one!

Thankful for the work I was able to get done in the garden today.

Thankful for my daughter treating us to pizza. Gosh, it’s been ages since we’ve ordered in pizza.

Thankful that I was able to get a 40 pound bag of kibble, right at our own hamlet’s general store and didn’t have to drive to towns to the north and south of us for one.

Thankful for a wonderful and thoughtful friend who sent us a delightful care package.

All in all, life it really good!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: clean up started, and an explosion of growth!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Today, I finally was able to head out and get working on the garden.

We hit 22C/72F and almost all the snow is melted away! I didn’t try to go into the main garden area yet, as I can see the paths between the beds are full of water, but I will need to remove the mulch on the pre-sown beds soon.

This morning, while doing my rounds and checking things different areas, I discovered new growth has emerged overnight!

All colours of our snow crocuses have emerges, and the tulip patch has dozens of leaf cluster emerging all over the area. They’re pretty spread out, so it was hard to get a good picture of them.

In the old kitchen garden, the rhubarb is also emerging, as are the lilies on the north side of the area. Last year, those never even bloomed. I hope this year will have better conditions for them.

In the morning, I focused on getting the old kitchen garden prepared.

I had helpers.

The fiberglass rods fit perfectly in the channels of the row netting I got from the Dollarama, last year. Hopefully, they will do better than the wires the kits came with. I thought I’d need two for the area I needed to protect from cats, but once I started setting it up, one turned out to be just barely long enough.

I hope I secured everything solidly, because I just know cats are going to be climbing on top. This netting is protecting the dwarf peas and garlic in the wattle weave bed. The rectangular bed with the beets and tiny bok choi now has its plastic cover. The herbs are also uncovered and it looks like the thyme and oregano, at least, survived the winter. I’m not as sure about the sage and lemon balm. Later on, that bed will need more clean up. In moving mulch in the wattle weave bed, I uncovered the tiny strawberries that still need to be transplanted, and they are looking pretty green. I also uncovered the walking onions, and they have clearly been growing under the mulch for quite some time. I took some time lapse and regular video of the old kitchen garden work that I’ll put together and upload later on.

That done, and a break for lunch, the next area I worked on were the East garden beds.

Well… sort of.

I first needed to work on the cover that spent the winter over the purple savoy cabbage bed. The hoops got somewhat crushed under the weight of snow. I added some cross pieces between hoops at each end. Then I needed to close up the open ends, so that cats can’t get under it.

I had some leftover pieces of half inch wire mesh and decided to use that.

I’m not sure if I regret my decision. It did the job and the ends are now secure, but good grief, it took forever! Most of that time was spent using needle nose pliers, which are also wire cutters. I had one piece large enough to cover one end, though corners needed to be trimmed off. I left wire ends to secure them to the plastic mesh on this cover. I sat there, bending wires, using the pliers to twist them around the plastic mesh, over and over. I even managed to stab a finger and bleed all over the place. 🫤 I think I spent over an hours, just working on one end.

The other end took longer. I had to join two scrap pieces together to be able to cover the space, but one piece was narrower, so there is a tiny gap at the top. Nothing a cat can get through, though.

All together, I think I spent at least 3 hours working on that cover!

Once that was done, getting the mulch off the pre-sown beds took no time at all, in comparison. These beds were first covered with leaves, then with straw after we got the round bale. I got all the straw off first, then used the twin marking the rows to remove the leaves by hand, leaving the leaf mulch in between the rows.

While doing the kohl rabi bed, I realized I was seeing tiny sproutes!

So that bed got the cover with the newly enclosed ends. The cabbage got the cover that was stored on the box shaped cover on the third bed. That one needs to be redone, but it’s at least something. It has no hoops, so if a cat jumps on it, it’ll cave in. The wire mesh on it isn’t as strong as I’d like, so it wasn’t really used. I’ll have to take care of that, if I want to better protect the cabbage bed.

By the time I was done, it was almost 6:30pm. I just checked the time stamps on my photos, and see that I spent almost exactly 4 hours working in that area, and most of that time was working on the one cover!

While I worked on that, my older daughter made sure I had something to eat when I came in, and got the laundry going. With the well pump issues, we are seriously behind on laundry and dish washing. My younger daughter is still not feeling good and has been asleep pretty much all day. With so much to catch up on, my older daughter has offered to buy us take out tomorrow. My husband has been craving pizza from a particular place in town that doesn’t open until 4pm, so that will be our supper. Until then, we’re going to be eating a lot of sandwiches. 😄

If all goes to plan, I’ll be uncovering the pre-sown beds in the main garden area, and prepping the area I am planning to sow poppy seeds in – the variety that is supposed to get pops the size a a baseball. The next few days are supposed to be cooler, with overnight temperatures at or below freezing, which is what poppy seeds need. Otherwise, I’d have to cold stratify them in the fridge, and I have no interest in doing that.

With how warm today has been, I think most of the water in the main garden paths will be gone.

I’m so enjoying being able to get outside and working again!!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: “potting” up, and weather whiplash

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

I have been seriously procrastinating with the seedlings in our basement set up. Today, however, my daughter was available to assist, and we got it done!

My daughter took on the job of sifting the rest of the bag of potting soil. She had to start a second bucket for all the sticks she sifted out, as the one I’d been using before was already 3/4 full. While she did that, I worked on making a whole bunch of strips for snail rolls, with a few extra strips, just in case.

Once the soil was sifted, my daughter thoroughly moistened the potting soil with hot water while I cleared all the trays of seedlings, the heat mats and the full spectrum lights. Everything was going to go on the shelf under the shop light. A shelf that sags in the middle. I did try to elevate the trays in the middle, but when I watered the bottoms, it would still all pool towards the middle, so anything on the outsides of the trays would end up with less water available. After some poking around in the old basement, I found a board to set across the top. It’s too short to be able to use heat mats under it, but I decided not to set those up again. Hopefully, they will be okay without them in our basement, where the ambient temperature is at least 5C colder than it should be for seedlings.

Once everything was cleared out and set up, the first things I wanted to “pot up” were the peppers and eggplant. They have been really struggling. Some new seedlings from a second sowing did start to germinate, but even some of those have already withered away.

I bottom watered the tray and had vermiculate on top, but there still ended up some algae growing on the surface. That’s not harmful to the plants, but it does suggest a moisture imbalance.

When it came time to transfer them, my daughter used a large spoon to scoop the seedlings out of the cells while I set them onto one of the strips, flattening out the seed starting mix they were in, then adding the moistened, warm potting soil to fill in gaps.

I had already transferred all the tomatoes, fennel and flower rolls into one metal tray – 8 snail rolls – and had room for two more rolls on there. In the end, there were only 5 surviving Caspar eggplant, and only three Sweet Chocolate peppers. I did have a full row of California Wonder bell peppers, though, and one of the cells had a two seedlings, so that gave us a very large and full snail roll to put into the second metal tray set up under the shop light.

One thing about these thicker snail rolls is that it’s a lot harder to keep the soil in them, while they are being rolled up.

Next was the Golden Boy celery, which has already been “potted up” once. They now needed to be split up into two rolls. We were really surprised by how dry their soil was! For all the regular bottom watering I did, they were large enough that they’d needed more.

The leaves were all tangled up, so it was very careful work to unroll the celery. The soil was very full of roots. Between use, we carefully broke out half the celery and spread them out on a new strip before adding the moistened potting soil to fill the strip. It took both of us to very carefully roll them up without losing too much soil from the bottom. Once that was done, we had the space to finish unrolling the original roll, space out the seedlings and add more soil.

So we now have two snail rolls of celery, to go with four types of tomato, three types of flowers and the Florence fennel.

I considered putting the sad little herbs into a snail roll, too, but decided against it. As for the last surviving luffa, I’m not sure it’s surviving any more! It got pretty buried under the celery leaves. Well, we did get seeds for a different variety with a much, much shorter growing season – short enough we could potentially direct sow them – so if this last one doesn’t make it, we can try the new variety, instead.

Once everything was set up under the shop light, I supported the light while my daughter shortened the chain it’s hanging from, so it wouldn’t be too close to the plants. Especially the celery. The chain on that side was hung even shorter, to give them the space they need.

Which means we now no longer have anything under the grow lights. With the snail rolls, everything fit in the two trays. They got a thorough bottom watering, then a second one when we saw how quickly the water was absorbed. With how dry the celery was, I’ll probably give that tray another watering, later today.

The next batch of seeds are the 4-6 weeks before last frost ones. I don’t have a lot of those, comparatively speaking. There are a LOT that can be started in the 2-4 weeks before last frost category, but a lot of those can actually be direct sown, so I plan to be more selective about it.

Looking at the forecast, we’ve got some more weather whiplash expected. Winter still does not want to let go! Today, we are now expected to reach a high of 15C/59F (it’s 8C/46F as I write this), shortly before noon), but the overnight low is supposed to drop to -7C/19F. At midnight, we’re supposed to start getting snow. Tomorrow we’re supposed to get a mix of snow and rain all day, through to the next morning.

The weather system that’s hitting us is mostly going to pass to the north. They are looking at potentially several inches of new snow. This is actually really good. Everything is still so dry u[ there. Every bit of moisture is needed, so this year’s fire season isn’t as bad as last year. There will be fires. There always are. Between any moisture we get, and the fact that last year’s insane number of fires probably cleared out a lot of deadwood, hopeful this means very fewer fires, and only little ones, this year.

The highs for the next two days are supposed to be -3C/27F. After that, we’re supposed to get back above freezing, and soon reach double digit Celsius highs. Before the end of April, we’re even expecting to reach 20C/68F, and once we’re into May, the long range forecast has us getting as high as 24C/75F It’s the overnight lows that are the thing, though. Last year, May had all sorts of hot days, but the nights remained cold, so the soil never got warm enough for transplants until the middle of June. Even then, it might still have been too cold. Our transplants really struggled last year.

Hopefully, our winter sown beds will do well. After the next couple of days of cold, and any snow we get on the beds melts away, I should be able to remove the mulches on at least some of the beds, so the soil can thaw out faster. I can set the vinyl over the cover in the old kitchen garden to create a little greenhouse. That bed has the beets and tiny bok choy in it, along with the little onions I’d found while preparing the bed for sowing. I have more vinyl I can potentially use on one of the other covers on a 9’x3′ raised bed to create another little greenhouse. Plus, once I can access the main garden area, I have the hoops and 6mm poly I’d ordered and can use to set over one of the other pre-sown beds to speed things up a bit. Or just to warm up one of the other, empty beds, faster. We shall see how things look, once the snow has melted enough to get to them.

Little by little, it’s getting done.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: seedling progress

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

One last update, and I am done for the day!

I am so tired.

This morning, I checked on the seedlings in the basement, as always, and had a bit of a surprise.

The first picture in the slideshow are the tomatoes, hollyhock and fennel. They are doing quite well! I’m very happy with what I’m seeing there.

The next picture is the leggy herbs, the sad little luffa, the celery that should probably be “potted up” and split into two rolls! – the marigold and cosmos.

The last picture has my surprise.

I’d rotated the trays just a couple of nights ago, so with the peppers and eggplant, the eggplant row is now in the foreground, and the California Bell Peppers are in the back.

There are three new seedlings in California Bell Pepper row, that weren’t there yesterday. There’s even at least one new seedling in the Sweet Chocolate pepper row in the middle!

Those poor eggplants are struggling, though. At least two have just withered away.

It’ll still be at least a week before I start the next back of seeds, but I might just re”pot” the eggplant and peppers into snail rolls before then. I’ll just need to sift more potting soil again, first!

We definitely have some things struggling, but over all, they seedlings are doing remarkably well for being in a rather poor environment for them!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: more tomatoes, and the fennel is up!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Today ended up being a home day. Yesterday wiped both me and my daughter out completely, so we’ve been in recovery mode. Tomorrow, I will need to go out to do the last of our Easter shopping and errand running, since so many places will be closed.

When I checked on my seed starts last night, I had a lovely surprise. The first Florence Fennel seeds had emerged! I could see at least a couple of Blueberry tomato seedlings, too.

By morning, there were more.

They are hard to see, but in the first photo, there are both Blueberry and Chocolate Stripe seedlings emerged.

The second photo shows an explosion of Orange Currant and Manitoba tomato seedlings.

The third photo, you can see more of the hollyhocks, including a couple lifting up their seed casings. I’ll keep an eye on those and see if the seed leaves need help getting out. The other roll has quite a few Florence Fennel seedlings showing, and I expect I might even see more by the time I check on them again this evening.

I added more water to the trays and realized it was time to “graduate” out of the plastic tray for the mixed stuff, onto a stronger metal tray. Moving the herb seedlings was the most delicate. These were sown into 5 cell trays, but the tarragon had only three cells with seedlings, so I removed two of them. The compostable material was breaking apart, anyhow. The summer savoury looks so long and spindly. I’ll probably end up buying transplants for those, but we’ll see how they do for now. Then there’s the sad little luffa!

The Golden Boy yellow celery, however, is going fantastic! It’s getting too tall to fit under the shop light. The marigold and Cosmos are doing very well up there.

After transferring everything to the metal tray, I could remove the plastic one, then poured the water I’d added earlier into the metal tray. The shelf sags slightly in the middle, unfortunately. I’ve added some sheets of cardboard under the heat mats in the middle, but it isn’t quite enough to make up for the sag. Ah, well. I just have to be careful to make sure that roll with the celery doesn’t dry out too much.

Normally, I would take these off the heat mat completely, but the basement is too cold, which means the soil is even colder. The metal tray will diffuse the heat better than the plastic, and the water on the bottom will also help equalize things – in theory, anyhow! Before, I had tried using a heater and staying in the basement while it was running, but between the heat mats and the shop light I’m running out of places to plug things in. The basement has three outlets in the entire space, and only two of them can be reached from the table. With the third one, though, I’ll be able to plug in a fan to get some air moving to help strengthen the stems. It doesn’t need to be very close to do the job.

So that is our seedling progress today, and I’m very happy to be seeing so many tomatoes. Especially with the ones where I’d used up the entire packet of seeds and have no spares! I was starting to wonder about the Florence Fennel, too.

Pretty happy with how things are going, considering the rather poor set up we’ve got this year.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: graduation, and new sprooooots!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

First up, some good news in progress that made it worth being up way too late again.

At around midnight, I was contacted by someone from the new rescue. Some spaces are opening up, and she was wondering what friendly yard cats might be available to take in for fostering and adoption?

She had a few in mind from pictures I’d sent before, but requested more up to date photos and videos that she could show to potential fosters. My daughter and I did that while doing the morning cat feeding. Unfortunately, a couple of times when I thought I was taking video, it turned out it wasn’t recording. Instead, I had a second or two of video of our feet or whatever, taken at either end of what was supposed to be a video for the rescue! We have a whole bunch of adult males in particular that are so friendly, it’s almost impossible to get still shots of them, as they are all over each other, trying to get pets.

So I will have to try again later today. If all goes well, we might be able to have our tiny girls that are friendly, but still too small to spay (even though they are almost a year old) be taken in. Or Sir Robin. Sir Robin desperately wants to be an indoor cat! I haven’t even seen some of the adult feral females in a few days which, unfortunately, means they may well have just had kittens somewhere in their hidden places.

Tis the season.

Speaking of the season, here is how our seedlings are looking.

Two snail rolls have graduated to the upper level and are now under the shop light, giving them a few more inches of space that I couldn’t give them with the gooseneck light fixture they were under.

The Golden Boy celery is thriving since being “potted up” to the snail roll! That poor little luffa is getting its true leaves, but is looking pretty sickly. The summer savoury is looking very leggy and weak, but the tarragon – the very few there are – are looking stronger.

The second picture is of the eggplant and peppers tray. Those seedlings are looking very sad and weak, and there are so few surviving. I’ve already resown them, but I won’t try again. They are short season enough that I might try direct sowing, instead.

With how few there are, I’m seriously considering “potting them up” into a snail roll. I could easily fit them all into a single roll, with room to spare. I’m just not sure how well they’d handle being transplanted. It can’t be much worse than they are doing now.

In the other snail rolls, we have more growth.

In the first picture, you can see quite a few more of the hollyhocks now. There are still two or three seedlings disguised as vermiculite in there.

In the next picture, you can see a second Orange Currant tomato is up – plus there’s another elbowing its way up that I didn’t even see until I looked at the photo, later.

It’s the same in the next picture. I could see one Manitoba tomato had emerged, but looking closely in the photo, I can see the stem of another, pushing it’s way up.

Still no sign of anything in the Chocolate Stripes or Blueberry tomatoes, and still no Florence Fennel visible.

All in good time.

Tomorrow is the last business day of the month – payday – so we are expecting to do our Costco stock up trip in the city. I’ll see what they have for seed starting mix. I only got one bag and it’s pretty small. I might only get four seed snails out of it. I won’t be starting more seeds for a couple more weeks, but I will probably be starting more. Costco carries the big Pro Mix bags, which would last me for the rest of the seed starting season. I might have to sift it before using it. I haven’t heard people talking about needing to do that with their seed starting mixed this year at all, though, so it might not be an issue. I might need to get more potting soil, too. I still have some but, with so much material getting sifted out, I don’t have as much potting soil as it appears in the bag! Any time I pot something up, I would be using potting soil rather than seed starting mix.

We really need a better set up for starting seeds indoors.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: new sproooot!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

After all the running around we did yesterday, today has been mostly a recovery day.

It’s also been a day of reminders to get that doctor’s appointment rebooked, now that we’ve tested the truck out and it seems to be holding out fine.

But first, the cuteness!

My husband has to be really careful before sitting on or getting into his hospital bed. Big Rig all but lives in it, burrowing under his covers, with just the tiniest bit visible. In this case, just her nose was visible, until I got right down to mattress level!

She’s such a giant slug of a cat!

Anyhow…

Today, while checking on the seed starts in the basement, I found another first.

You can just barely see in the first image above, our very first tomato seedling. This one is an Orange Currant tomato. Hopefully, that means we’ll be seeing more tomato seedlings coming up over the next few days.

The next photo in the slide show above has the Crackerjack marigolds (left) and Cosmos (right). These are starting to get tall enough that I will soon move them up to the shelf under the shop light. The tray the single luffa, herbs and the celery that was transplanted into a snail roll has room for at least two, potentially four, snail rolls, depending on how thick they are. I might end up taking everything out of that plastic tray and setting them on another metal baking sheet, like what these snail rolls are on. Less space on the tray, but it can hold the weight of those seed snail rolls.

In the last photo, you can see the hollyhock seedlings. It looks like only three, but there are four more seedlings hidden in the roll. The seed leaves are still encased in the seeds’ outer shell, so they look a lot like the vermiculite. There are two near the centre seedling with the green of their stems just barely visible. There are two more in the outer part of the roll, center and left of centre. Honest!

I didn’t take any pictures, but the pepper and eggplant seedings are not looking particularly good. One of the eggplant seedings simply died off. It was right in a corner cell, on the far side of the tray, and I suspect it was just not warm enough for it there, even with the heat mat under the tray. With so few survivors, that’s a lot of wasted space in the tray, too.

In hind sight, I’m now thinking it would have been better to do those in seed rolls, too! Chances are, they wouldn’t have been eaten by mice or whatever it was that killed most of them, either.

Ah, well. Live and learn!

I’m just happy to see my first little tomato seedling. This variety might even be a type of tomato I can eat raw, like the Spoon tomatoes. We shall see!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2026 Garden: a seedling explosion

/ Re-Farmer / 1 Comment

My goodness! When seedlings start to germinate, some of them do it incredibly quickly!

Last night, checking on the seed starts before going to bed, I spotted a single marigold seedling that had emerged. I could also see a hollyhock elbowing its way up.

This is what I found this morning.

On the bottom right are the Cosmos that had already germinated. There are 11 seedlings – I think I planted only 12 seeds in there.

On the bottom left are the marigolds. I counted 7 seedlings, 6 of which there had been no sign of at all, last night.

Above the marigolds is the hollyhock roll. At first, I could see just the one seedling lifting its head (these are the seeds that the instructions said not to cover at all). When I looked closer, though, I could see three more little green elbows.

Still no tomatoes or fennel, but I’m not expecting to see any of those quite yet. Heck, I wasn’t expecting to see the flowers emerge this quickly!

Hopefully, this is a good sign for the garden this year. From the amount of snow we have on the ground right now, we should at least get a good start before the heat hits and everything dries up. I believe we are supposed to have drought conditions again this year. Which is actually the “normal” for the prairies.

Meanwhile, I watched this video from Self Sufficient Me this morning. I really find videos like this the most inspiring – the ones where things have gone all “wrong”!

Granted, an overgrown jungle like that would never happen here. We’re more likely to have everything baked and dry. Still, it comes down to the same thing: having a bad year is not being a “failure” or a “bad gardener”. It’s just a bad year. Things will never be perfect.

If we waited for perfect conditions and the “right” circumstances, we’d never accomplish anything – in the garden, or in life!

The Re-Farmer