Gardening

Analyzing our 2024 Garden: alliums

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For the next while, I’ll be going through my old posts and videos about our 2024 garden, looking at how things worked out, and use that information to decide what we will do in our 2025 garden.

These are some things that turned out pretty different from our plans. Especially the tomatoes!

I’ll start, however, with the alliums.

Garlic, onions and shallots – how it started

The garlic, of course, was planted in the fall. They went where I had the space prepared and available, which was the old kitchen garden. The long, narrow bed along the chimney block retaining wall was filled, as well as the tiny raised bed along the south side. The short section of the L shaped wattle weave bed was filled, and the last cloved were planted down the centre of the larger rectangular bed, which still had tomatoes growing in it.

With all of these, I tried to plant the cloves a fair distance away from the walls of the beds. In planting garlic in raised beds previously, most of them disappeared, while the ones planted in ground in the main garden area did really well. My conclusion is that the ones in the raised beds simply froze. Even though they were well mulched on top, there was nothing extra insulating them around the sides.

The onions and shallots were started early, indoors. The yellow bulb onions were a variety called Frontier, which was new to us, along with a new variety of shallots called Creme Brulee. For red onions, we were going to try Red Wethersfield again.

With the seedlings, the onions and shallots did well, though the Red Wethersfield onions had a rougher time of it. In the end, though, we did have quite a few seedlings to transplant.

How it went

Hit and miss.

As with everything else, the garlic was delayed. In fact, it was so long before they broke ground that I started to fear we’d lost them all. As the season progressed, however, they did very well, and we got to enjoy plenty of garlic scapes when they finally appeared!

For the onions, I try to interplant them with other things in hopes that they will deter deer and other critters from eating the things they are planted with, or in some cases, just to fill in gaps.

With fewer Red Wethersfield seedlings, I tried transplanting them among the tomatoes in the old kitchen garden, then spread the last of the seedlings in the wattle weave bed.

The yellow onions were interplanted with tomatoes in the main garden area, before the last of them went into one of the newly shifted beds, filling a little more than half of it.

For some reason, I got it in my head that the Red Wethersfield were interplanted with the sweet peppers in the high raised bed. Those were the shallots. The last few shallots went into the same bed as the last of the yellow onions. I planted them at the far end of the bed, with a space in between, so there would be no confusions over what was where, with the space in between getting direct sown with summer squash.

The unexpected surprise, however, was all the onions we found while shifting and cleaning up various beds.

While reworking the long bed at the chain link fence, I found a number of onions that survived the winter. Those got transplanted to one of the low raised beds in the East yard.

As we were weeding and eventually shifting the beds in the main garden area, we ended up finding a lot of Red Wethersfield onions we’d planted the previous year, around the Roma VF tomatoes, that just disappeared. We assumed they all died.

In weeding and shifting the other beds, more surviving onions were found, and even a couple of shallots. All of these got transplanted into the newest low raised bed, where most of the Summer of Melons were transplanted. As onions are biannual, I was very excited by this, as it meant they would be going to seed, which we could collect for next year, instead of buying more.

All of these transplanted onions took and most of them did very well. We found ourselves with many onions blooming.

How the harvest went

More hit and miss!

With the onions that were allowed to go to seed, we found ourselves with many, many flower clusters. They bloomed and bloomed and bloomed!

They bloomed for so long, I wasn’t sure we’d get any finishing their cycle so we could have seed to collect! I did end up being able to collect quite a few flower clusters that had dried on their stems and set them to continue drying out in the cat free zone. I collected the last of them, some of which were still rather green, and set them to dry in the cat free zone, after we had our first frost, which onions can handle.

Every flower in those seeds heads have three seeds in them.

We got quite a lot of seeds, just from the first batch harvested. The second batch took longer to dry out, but they eventually did, and I was able to separate out the seeds. Which meant I have seeds from yellow bulb onions from previous years (Oneida, I believe), Red Wethersfield onions, plus some shallots from previous years (I can’t remember the names of the varieties we tried before, just now), all mixed together!

The Red Wethersfield onions we planted this year, though, were a complete loss.

The cats killed them.

The yard cats just love the garden beds in the old kitchen. They loved to go in between the tomatoes in the larger rectangular bed and just chill, or they would roll around luxuriously – all over the onions! Even when I tried sticking plastic forks into the soil beside them, hoping the tines would deter the cats, they just squeezed in between them and rolled around, anyhow. When I finally cleaned up that bed at the end of the season, I did find a few tiny survivors, though. I saved them, and they can be transplanted in the spring.

The yellow bulb onions and the shallots that shared the bed with them also had cat issues! They actually grew quite well, and we did get a couple of decent sized bulbs out of them. Those where the ones that didn’t get rolled on by cats! At least, not right away. We simply could not keep the cats off that bed, and they really, really liked to lie on the onions or roll in the soil. They didn’t kill the onions, but broke the stems, which meant the bulbs could not grow any bigger.

The shallots had cats rolling on them, too, but they had the extra problem of fighting for resources. While I tried to remove as many of the elm roots that invaded the soil, it doesn’t take them long to grow back, and they send their capillary roots up into the softer, moister soil. They will even force their way through the bottoms of grow bags, as we discovered last year.

The yellow onions that were interplanted with the tomatoes fared better, even though the tomato plants ended up completely overshadowing them. More on that when I talk about how the tomatoes did, in another post.

Still, we managed to get a decent harvest, which was cured and braided, and we now have plenty in the root cellar.

The real success, though, where the shallots that were planted with the peppers. I did not really expect to have a good harvest from them, but when I started reaching around the pepper plants to pull them, I found a lot of nice, big shallots!

These, too, we left to cure, then braided, and are now in the cat free zone, where we can access them more easily to use in our cooking.

Oh, and then there was the garlic.

Usually, they would have been ready to harvest in June or maybe July.

They weren’t ready to harvest until the fall!

We did have really good bulbs, though. Not the biggest, perhaps, but certainly not small. In fact, there were enough good sized bulbs to make them worth planting!

Conclusion, and plans for next year.

Things are going to be pretty different, next year!

One thing will stay the same, and that is the garlic. Those are already planted in the bed where most of the yellow onions were. After spacing them out, I changed my mind and started them at the north end of the bed, where the shallots were, instead of the south. The south end of the bed gets shade for longer periods of the day, because of the trees closer to the house. Starting from the north end means the soil will warm up faster, in the spring.

I was really, really happy with how the shallots turned out this year. We’ve struggled to grow shallots every year, but this year they did fantastic in the high raised bed, in between the sweet peppers. As for the red and yellow onions, it was disappointing that the cats did so much damage – especially for the Red Wethersfield onions. At least we got a harvest with the yellow onions!

BUT…

We have seeds.

Lots of seeds.

This year, we are trying the winter direct sowing. I ended up making a couple of different mixes of seeds, and included onion seeds in the shakers. In the last bed that got winter sown, it got shallot seeds added in, too. So we now have several beds already sown with onions and shallots. Being cold hardy plants, they should start germinating before the other seeds in the mixes do which, hopefully, will go a long way in keeping critters away when the other seeds start to sprout.

If they sprout.

We’ll find out in the spring!

There are still plenty of seeds left, so we have the option of starting some indoors as well, if we want, but I don’t think so. We do want to keep growing onions and shallots, and if the winter sown seeds don’t survive, not starting any indoors means none to be had at all. Their growing season is just too long. I will take that change this year, though.

Onion seeds are only good for about a year. I might end up giving the rest of the seeds away or something, so they don’t go to waste.

Once onions go to seed in their second year, however, they go to seed every year.

In getting the bed ready to plant the garlic, however, I found more onions and shallots that got missed. The bed that had onions interplanted with tomatoes now has summer squash winter sown in it, and I found more missed onions while preparing that bed, too.

The Summer of Melon’s bed that had the transplanted onions in it got half-prepped for the winter. Just the side that had the onions and bush beans. (The other half will wait until spring)

All of the onions that were in there, plus the others I found in preparing other beds, were replanted in the cleaned up half of the bed. I was even able to separate them out by colour, and found myself with half the bed now planted with Red Wethersfield, and the other half with yellow onions, plus a few shallots in the very middle, as a divider.

We should have plenty more onions going to seed for us next year, too!

In the end, for all the issues we had, I would say this was one of the best years for garlic, onions and shallots we’ve had yet.

I hold out home that, with the winter sowing, next year will be even better.

The Re-Farmer

Analyzing our 2024 Garden: doing things different with melons, squash and gourds

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For the next while, I’ll be going through my old posts and videos about our 2024 garden, looking at how things worked out, and use that information to decide what we will do in our 2025 garden.

Okay, I’m going to start with what turned out to be the largest category of food we grew in this year’s garden, as it really changed a lot for us. Oddly, that was because of how successful they started out!

One thing we had to seriously change up was how and what we started indoors. Last year, we were able to set up space in the cat free zone – aka: our living room – for the many trays and pots.

Too many trays and pots. We over did it.

That set up was no longer going to be an option this year, so we had to really consider what we would start indoors at all.

We also had a lot of issues with our large seeded starts, having to replant some things several times. So this year, we decided to try pre-germinating seeds. With large seeds, they were also scarified, first.

How it started

Let’s start with the melons.

We did still have some seeds left from previous years, but this year I decided to try the Vesey’s Summer of Melons Blend. We are still in the “try new varieties to figure out what we like” phase, though with this blend, we wouldn’t know what the varieties were. I figured we could look them up, once they ripened enough to be identifiable. The main thing was that the mix included early, mid and late season melons, for a more continuous harvest.

Which… didn’t quite work out as planned. More on that, later!

We also went with some we’d grown before; Sarah’s Choice and Pixie. We also added some Cream of Saskatchewan watermelon, a short season variety.

With the known varieties, I chose just a few seeds from each to pre-germinate. When it came to the Summer of Melons blend, not knowing what the varieties were, I started the entire package, which turned out to have 21 seeds in it. I figured there would be some losses, and we’d end up with less.

We ended up with a 100% germination rate on the blend, plus a near 100% germination rate on the rest.

That was a lot of seedlings!

It was much the same thing with the winter squash. We went with the wild bunch mix, skipping the other winter squash seeds we bought, and got another high germination rate using the pre-germination method. We also used it on some Crespo squash (a variety of Peruvian pumpkin), my last luffa seeds, some African drum gourds and the two free pumpkin seeds that are given out every year at the grocery store in my mother’s town, encouraging people to grow pumpkins for their pumpkin fest.

I am really, really happy with the pre-germination method, and will continue using it.

As for the summer squash, it was decided that these would be direct sown, rather than started indoors. I know my mother always direct sowed her zucchini here, and ended up with massive zucchini (she didn’t know they were supposed to be eaten while small), so I knew it could be done. My problem was, would the slugs destroy them, like the year before?

We ended up direct sowing the yellow Goldy zucchini in one of the chimney block planters by the chain link fence. In pots, we planted Magda squash (a pale green squash), Endeavor zucchini (dark green), and the new White Scallop pattypan squash seeds we picked up to try this year.

Later, when we found ourselves with a gap in a garden bed, it was filled with the last of our G Star pattypan seeds, and more Magda and White Scallops.

When it came time for transplanting, we had so many melons and winter squash, they filled four 18′ garden beds. A new growing area was added to fit the pumpkins and drum gourds, while the luffa went into the wattle weave bed in the old kitchen garden, where they had done so well last year, that we almost got a luffa to harvest! 😄

Oh, I almost forgot.

We also started Zucca melon seeds. That’s another experiment for me, as I’d really, really like to grow these massive melons. Then ended up being transplanted into a kiddie pool that got converted into a raised bed again. The Crespo squash went into a new bed in a completely different area.

The challenge

The first issue we had was having someplace to put the transplants. In the main garden area, my original intention was to expand with new beds that would eventually become trellis tunnels. However, the existing beds were in desperate need of cleaning up.

For a combination or reasons, including meeting mobility and accessibility needs, we will be making raised beds that are 4′ wide on the outside, with paths that are also 4′ wide. We also settled on them being 18′ long, and already had one new bed in those dimensions.

My daughter suggested that, since the existing beds needed to be cleaned up first anyhow, we should shift them into their permanent positions.

When we first made these beds, we basically eyeballed distances. They were roughly the same lengths, but slightly different widths, and some were crooked. The paths were not the same sizes either.

With some of the winter squash needing to be transplanted soon, we really needed to get at least one bed done quickly, and even had felled trees to prepare into logs to frame it with.

Of course, the job ended up being much bigger than expected.

Here is the start of the job.

Finishing it, however, had weather complications.

It eventually got done, but things were quite set back by the weather.

It took over a month to get the beds shifted, putting in transplants as we were able.

We did do interplanting as well. Peas and pole beans went in one bed of winter squash, corn in the other. The future trellis bed with melons planted in it shared the space with transplanted onions we found, and bush beans. The Crespo squash shared their bed with pole beans, too. I will talk about those in other posts, though.

How it ended

Late.

With the weather and late plantings, everything was set back about a month. The “Summer of Melons” blend didn’t give us any ripe melons until late in the season.

A trellis net had been added for them to climb and they grew pretty well. There were LOTS of melons developing, but it was ages before we could harvest any. In the end, we had to harvest most of then in an under ripe stage, before they could get killed by frost.

The winter squash were also late, but my goodness, they grew well! We ended up harvesting some that ripened on the vines and could be cured for winter storage, including one odd Crespo squash.

The last of them had to be harvested early, along with the melons, before the frost hit them.

The zucca melon in their kiddie pool raised bed were decimated by slugs.

The two pumpkins we transplanted did fantastic, and we got some decent sized pumpkins out of them.

The African drum gourd had a really slow start. Then they started blooming like crazy, with fuzzy little gourds forming all over. Some even started to get pretty big. None made it to first frost, though. If we had not had everything set back so much due to the spring weather, we might actually have gotten some gourds this year.

The luffa gourds in the old kitchen garden were set back dramatically. Last year, they had grown really huge there, vining their way up into the lilac branches above. This year, they barely got tall enough to reach the lilacs at all. The weather just set them back way too much. We barely even got both male and female flowers out of the largest ones.

The summer squash was also set back and did quite poorly. The ones in the pots had to be replanted several times. Unfortunately, even with adding barriers, the kittens found their way onto the pots and would often use them for naps, so that sure didn’t help, either!

The White Scallop patty pans did not make it at all. I gave up after replanting three times.

The Magda did okay, but we only got to harvest a couple of squash from them. The green zucchini did eventually grow and produce, but we had next to nothing to harvest.

The Goldy zucchini in the chimney block planter by the chain link fence produced some harvestable squash, but very few.

In the main garden area, between the onions and shallots, I was sure we’d get nothing at all. The Magda squash never did germinate. We did get a few of G Star patty pans, and they grew really well. There were even a lot of little patty pans developing. Unfortunately, with everything set back so much, we never did get many in a harvestable size before the frost killed them.

The White Scallop squash took so long to germinate, I was sure they’d died off, but we did eventually get two plants. It took even longer for them to start blooming and developing squash. We did have a few just big enough to harvest, at about 2 – 3 inches across, but the frost hit not long after they finally began to produce.

The big surprise and success was the Crespo squash.

We ended up with three surviving transplants, with one having a damaged stem after the bin the transplants were in got knocked over by cats in the sun room. They went into a new small raised bed near the compost ring. We’ve grown there before, but found the area gets soggy, so it was built up a few inches. That alone made a huge difference when the spring rains flooded everything out.

The Crespo squash absolutely thrived in that location. The vines spread so far, I had to train them to not cover the paths I needed open. Some vines grew into the cherry trees behind them, started to climb the branches, and even started to produce dangling squash!

Once again, though, the late start and weather delays slowed the development of squash. The very first one to grow got to a certain size and just stopped growing, becoming a darker green and staying small. Others, however, kept growing and stayed the pale green colour they are supposed to be. The largest ones developed the deeply fissured lumps and bumps this variety is supposed to get.

In the end, only one got to a size that I would consider fully ripe, with two others that got pretty close. With the oldest one included, we got four squash off those vines, though where were quite a few more little ones that never got a chance to get big before the frost hit.

I’m absolutely thrilled. I’ve been trying to grow these for years, and finally succeeded! I look forward to growing them again – this time with seeds saved from the biggest of them.

Thinking of next year

In general, I would say this year’s melons, squash and gourds were an overall success.

We did eventually end up with lots of melons to enjoy, though some had to be left to ripen off the vine for a while.

In the end, though, we basically planted too many. With the melon and winter squash mixes having such high germination rates, there were so many more plants than we intended.

Next year, we will do far fewer.

I’d still like to do Crespo squash again, or maybe try the Zucca melon in the bed the Crespo squash were in.

We got seeds for winter squash my daughter actually requested, though, and never used them. So next year, I want to try those. There is one variety my daughter chose because it’s described as an excellent soup squash. The other two are the Mashed Potato and Baked Potato varieties. I forget which one she actually asked for, so I got both.

I plan much the same with the melons. We will definitely grow melons again, and try another short season watermelon (we had only a single Cream of Saskatchewan melon show up, and it was about the size of a softball). At most, I am thinking only two varieties of melon, plus a watermelon, and only a few plants each.

As for the gourds, those continue to be my “fun” thing to grow. I want to get more luffa seeds from another source – I do want to grow some sponges! – and I want to grow large gourds for crafting purposes. Next year, I’m thinking of trying Canteen gourds again, as those are from a Canadian seed company that grows their seeds even further north than we are.

Conclusion

Aside from some drastic failures, such as the Zucca melon, or semi-failures, like the summer squash, I’d say this past year was a real success. Especially for the winter squash, though the melons did really well, too.

Next year, however, is already going to be very different.

I still had a lot of summer squash seeds from when I accidentally bought three collections instead of one. These included Endeavor Zucchini, Goldy zucchini, Magda squash and Sunburst pattypan squash.

For next year’s garden, we’re trying a winter sowing experiment. For summer squash, all the seeds we have – both old and new, zucchini type and patty pans – were combined, then scattered on a prepared bed in the main garden area. They got planted with some adjustments for spacing, then covered with a deep mulch of leaves and grass clippings for the winter.

In theory, once the snow melts and the mulch is removed so the warmth of the sun can reach the soil, and they should germinate once soil temperature is right.

With so many of these seeds being older, I don’t actually expect a high germination rate. Which would be okay. Otherwise, the bed will become overcrowded and I’d have to thin it.

All I’d really like is to finally get a good crop of summer squash.

Next year’s winter squash will be all new varieties to try, using seeds that were meant for this year’s garden.

We still have melon and watermelon seeds, so I don’t think we’ll buy new varieties to try next year. Same with the gourds, except the luffa. If I want to grow those, I will need to buy more seeds.

The main thing is that we will be growing fewer of them, so that they don’t end up taking over so much of the garden! There are quite a few other things that we were never able to plant simply because we didn’t have the space. Until we can get more progress on those new garden beds and trellis tunnels, we will need to be more selective on what we grow, and how much, for plants that take up so much space!

The Re-Farmer

Analyzing our 2024 Garden: what we planned vs what ended up happening

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For the next while, I’ll be going through my old posts and videos about our 2024 garden, looking at how things worked out, and use that information to decide what we will do in our 2025 garden.

So, to start, here is my post from 2023, where I review and reset my goals for 2024.

Boy, did things change. 😄

I first looked over our plans for perennials, our food forest and the fall garlic, which had already been planted by then.

The garlic hasn’t really changed. We’ve got next year’s garlic already planted – this time using garlic we harvested, rather than buying more.

The crocuses… that was an experiment that I’ll talk about more, later.

For fruit and berry trees, we just didn’t have the budget to buy more, but we did at least get the two Trader mulberry saplings transplanted. Of the other things we hoped to be able to do, getting everbearing strawberries were the only thing we managed.

For root vegetables and tubers, we did have the potatoes, which turned out different than planned. While we intended to skip things like beets, radishes and turnips this year, I had intended to plant a lot of carrots. Instead, we planted very few, simply because we never got the space to plant more.

The plans for onions and shallots were hit and miss, but we did get them in, with some bonus onions that I will talk about later.

We intended to scale back on tomatoes, but ended up with way more than planned! There were some distinct differences among them that I will have to note for the future.

With corn, peas and beans, that changed a lot. I had intended to plant many different varieties of beans, including shelling beans, but that just didn’t happen. Among the ones that did get planted, much went wrong. It was similar with the peas. As for the corn, we did plant one short season variety that actually did pretty well, under the circumstances. There are things I would want to change with growing corn that way, though, and while I’d like to plant another short season variety next year, we’ve already jumped the gun in other areas – more on that when I write about our winter sowing!

With peppers, herbs and greens, that was all over the place. We ended up planting more peppers than intended, and they did quite well, even if they were behind in maturity, like just about everything else was this year. We ended up planting very few herbs and had issues with the greens.

It was our melons and winter squash that really changed how our garden went this year, as we ended up with so many! Way more than expected, even though we ended up not planting some varieties at all. The summer squash, however, was a very different story. We did try a couple of gourds. One of my regular experiments that our spring weather did not give a chance to succeed.

We did manage two types of eggplant, with moderate success. We wanted to try salsify, sunflowers and possibly cucumbers for fresh eating, not pickling, but that didn’t pan out.

So many other garden related things ended up not happening. More raised beds, rebuilding the garden tap, starting a new garden shed build… none of that happened.

I’d hoped to start reclaiming garden beds in the main garden area from the previous year and continuing on the trellis tunnel builds. Instead, a priority was put on shifting the existing beds to what will be their permanent positions. That gave us longer, narrower beds, as they await the logs we need to harvest to frame them. We still managed to fit quite a bit into them, and the narrowing of these low raised beds made them easier for me to reach into.

All in all, this turned out to be a very different year than expected, with spring weather playing a major part in slowing down growth. Every year, we learn a little bit more about what we need to do to better protect our garden from the elements, with even the low raised beds turning out to be a major element that saved our garden.

And so, to start, here is our spring garden tour video for 2024, taken on what turned out to be a rather cold day!

I hope you enjoy this series of garden posts. Do feel free to leave feedback in the comments, too!

The Re-Farmer

Learning something new…

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While winding down for the night, I’ve been watching some videos, including this new one from MI Gardener; a resource I have recommended before.

This is an interesting video, since I fairly regularly see these concrete blocks being recommended to make raised beds. He lists the reasons he believes they should not be used.

I found it really interesting, and wanted to talk about some of them.

One of the first things he brought up was the weight. The ones he uses in the video are 8″x8″x16″ This is the size of most of the blocks we’ve been finding all over the place, though I think I’ve found some that are 10″x8″x16″

He also adds that they are cheap, and says they cost about $2 each.

So, of course, I had to look it up!

It turns out, one of these concrete blocks weighs about 30-35 pounds. The ones he’s using has flat ends. Some have shaped ends, and from what I found on the Canadian Home Depot page, they weight 42 pounds (19kg). The 10″ ones weigh 45 pounds (20.4kg).

I’d never really thought about how much they weighed. I found them heavy to carry around, but not that bad, really.

As for being cheap, interestingly, the 8″ ones are listed as just under $5 each – and are more expensive than the 10″ ones, which are just over $4 each. The last time I looked at their prices, at an actual store, not online, was a few years ago, and one 8″ block was priced at over $8 each, which shocked me. This was before inflation went nuts, too. Very odd.

This got me wondering, since we are using concrete chimney blocks as planters. So I had to look those up, too. I found plenty of links, but not one of them included a price. The closest I could find was an old image with a price on it, but the link was no longer active. Other than that, I found some on FB Marketplace were someone lists a whole bunch of things, not just chimney blocks, with a $4 each price listed. I don’t think that price was the same for all the wide variety of items listed, so I still don’t know how much they sell for here.

The chimney blocks we have are the standard square size of 16.75″x16.75″x7.62″

That measurement is so odd, I thought it would make more sense in metric, but not really. That works out to 42.5cmx42.5cmx19.35cm

What caught my attention was the weight.

Each one of those chimney blocks weighs 68 pounds (30.8kg)

So… I was lugging almost 70 pound blocks around the yard when I built the retaining wall and the chain link fence planters.

Okay, so weight was one of his reasons not to use them, but the other was height. They’re only 8″ high (slightly higher than our chimney blocks), making only 8″ of growing space.

I found that curious. His sample concrete block raised bed is on top of soil. Granted, it looks like the area was just leveled and has been driven over, so it might be compacted, but it’s still open soil, not a concrete pad or something. Any plants could send it’s roots lower. We have maybe 8″ of top soil – 10″ in a really good spot – before we hit gravel, clay and rocks. An 8″ high bed gives us about 16″ of growing space. We have been using modified hügelkultur, so the first couple of years would have sticks and branches at the bottom, so we don’t plant root vegetables in them right away.

I would find 8″ too low for accessibility reasons, and when I see people doing raised beds with concrete blocks, they are often two, three or even four blocks high. He talks about adding a second level, and demonstrates how easily the block spins around, since the base row is not perfectly level. He mentioned that people have suggested rebar to hold them in place.

I agree with him on the rebar. It seems almost counterproductive.

I’d just use concrete glue. AKA construction adhesive. It’s really cheap, one tube goes a long way, and can be applied using a caulking gun. Granted, that makes it permanent, but most raised beds don’t get moved around once they’re built, anyhow.

He makes a point about breakage being a problem, but not in the way he talks about. Where we are, we have temperature extremes. Pretty much all the concrete blocks we’ve been finding have been outdoors. Most of the chimney blocks we’ve used were stored outdoors since my parents bought this farm in 1964. Yeah, they have dings and chips, but they are still sound. The only blocks we’ve had actually crack and split where the two we put into the fire pit to hold old oven racks over the coals to cook on. It was exposure to high heat that lead to them cracking, not outdoor temperature fluctuations.

He mentioned that concrete is very porous, and that the edges of beds would need extra watering. True enough, though with our chimney blocks, there isn’t any centre space that would hold water longer than the edges. We still watered them as often as the other beds. We just have them more water. It’s been a few winters now for the retaining wall blocks long the old kitchen garden, and not one of them has cracked due to water absorption and the fresh thaw cycle. I’m not saying it can’t or won’t happen. Just that is hasn’t happened to us.

He then mentions that concrete absorbs a lot of heat. More so than even metal raised beds.

That may indeed be a problem in a lot of places.

Where we are, that’s a selling point! Even in the heat of our summers, it just makes them better for heat loving plants that might normally not grow well here.

There is another element to using concrete blocks he doesn’t mention, and that is the effect on soil pH. I’d read before that concrete can help lower the pH, which would be great for our alkaline soil.

As I was looking it up just now, though, I found one article that said concrete can lower the pH, but that was it. Other articles, however, said that concrete will increase the pH.

Which is the last thing we need!

Given the smallish growing space inside our chimney block planters, it wouldn’t take much to affect the pH in the soil there. Granted, I did amend the soil with sulphur this past year, as well as with peat, but with our pH already at 8 or higher, it’s going to take a long time to adjust the pH even slightly lower. Getting it to be slightly acidic, which most of the things we want to grow do better in, will take years. Looking up what vegetables grow well in alkaline soil, the list is pretty long, but most of them have an upper limit of 7.5. If we can get our soil at least down to that, it would be good, but it is harder to lower the pH than it is to increase it.

Well, the mint I transplanted into some of the retaining wall blocks seems to be handling the high pH quite well, as are the chives. Our biggest issue, however, is roots growing in from below. With the blocks at the chain link fence, it’s the nearby elms that took over the soil in the blocks. In the retaining wall, it’s some sort of invasive flower we haven’t been able to get rid of. It’s almost killing off the mint, in some blocks!

So when it comes down to it, whether using concrete blocks for raised beds is a good idea or not really depends on a lot of things. Stuff he saw as negatives, are positives for us, or non-issues.

Would I use concrete blocks for a raised bed?

Probably not.

We’ve got all those dead spruce trees that need to be cut down that can be used. For other raised beds, I’m liking the wattle weave idea and want to build more, though it’s surprisingly hard to gather enough suitable branches to use for the weaving. If we did happen to have enough concrete blocks to make raised beds, there are other things I’d much prefer to use them for.

When it comes to gardening, it is such an individual thing. We all just have to figure out what will work for our own gardens in our own regional area and microclimate, and use what materials we have access to.

Hearing what works or doesn’t work for others and why can still be a huge help. Which is why I like videos like this one. Not only did I find what he had to say very interesting, it got me checking things out and looking things up to learn more.

And now I know how much those chimney blocks weigh, too!

The Re-Farmer

Of course, I’m thinking of gardening right now…

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It’s chilly outside, we’ve got snow on the ground… what better time to be thinking of gardening? 😄

It’s going to be time for me to do my 2024 garden analysis soon, and use that to decide what we’ll be doing next year, though some of that has already been decided with the pre-sown beds. I find myself wondering if the mild, wet fall we’ve been having is a good thing or a bad thing for those beds! The garlic will be fine. The direct sown beds are deep mulched, which means it’s possible for germination to be happening, which we don’t actually want to happen right now. The mulch won’t be enough to keep them from being killed off once the deep freeze hits.

Unless we don’t get a deep freeze this year. Two mild winters in a row? That would be a dream.

Meanwhile, this is the gardening video I’m watching right now.

I hope you learn as much from it as I am!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2025 garden! Seed onions and bed prep

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Today’s weather was pleasant enough that I was able to work on the low raised bed that will, eventually, be a trellis bed.

This is the bed that had the Summer of Melons mix along one side, onions that we found in other beds and transplanted for their seeds, and a few bush beans, on the other side.

Where the melons were did not need much done. The melon transplants were mulched with layers of cardboard, tree bark and grass clippings. Not much got through there, so all I did was pull the vines loose and spread them out on top of the mulch.

Where the onions were planted, however, was a different issue. There was quite a bit of grass growing among them – both crab grass and lawn grass! – along with the usual dandelions and other weeds.

I decided I would pull up the onions so I could weed more thoroughly, then transplant them back again.

Here is a slideshow of how it went.

In the first photo, I’d already started pulling up/digging out the first onions I’d found. Along the way, I found some of the seed stalks, and those got set on top of the melon vines. I even found a couple of seed heads that got missed.

Interestingly, there were even fresh, new onions starting to grow! Onions sure are hardy!

Once I pulled all the onions I could find (of course, I found others I’d missed, later on), I sorted them between red and yellow bulbs. The red would have been the Red Wethersfield onions that seemed to die off entirely last year, only for us to find them starting to grow again, when we prepared the bed this spring! The yellow are probably Oneida onions, and I think there may even have been a couple of shallots in there, too.

The seeds we collected are all mixed together, which means we’ll be getting both red and yellow onions growing in the winter sown beds.

The south end of the bed was the worst for grass and weeds. That was also where I transplanted a flower that might be a salsify. I was very curious to see what the root was like, as salsify is supposed to have a long tap root that tastes a bit like seafood. We got seeds specifically for that, which we never got to planting, but the seed company images only showed the roots, not the flowers.

Well, whatever this flower was – and it may well be a different variety of salsify – it didn’t have the long tap root at all. In fact, it had very shallow roots.

Curious.

I used a hand cultivator to weed most of the bed, stopping before I got to the end where I’d piled up the onion bulbs. Then I got out the garden fork and worked over things again, finding plenty more roots to pull out, while loosening the soil. All the grass clipping mulch was added to the melon vines on the other side.

When I got close to the other end, I paused to plant all the red bulbs, starting at the south end, in a double row. Some of the bulbs had divided into twos or threes, and those got split up for planting. These reached to about the middle of the bed.

Next, I moved the yellow bulbs aside, cleared the grass clipping mulch off the corner, and finished weeding and loosening the soil.

I uncovered a frog!

The poor thing was trying to hibernate in the soil. It barely moved when I so rudely uncovered it, and then just stayed there. I worked the soil at the end of the bed some more, dug a shallow hole for the frog where I knew I would not be planting the onions, then very gently set the frog in place and covered it with loosely with soil again.

Once the north end of the bed was ready, the yellow bulbs got planted in another double row, working my way to the middle – and there was just enough to reach the other onions! I marked the divide with a piece of broken bamboo stake.

This is way more seed onions than we will ever need, but that’s okay. These are being planted as protectors. Next spring, we might interplant around them; maybe with some greens or bush beans, or something like that. Whatever we plant, the onions should help protect them from the deer.

Once the onions were all transplanted, I raked up some leaves to mulch them for the winter, then raked the path around the bed clear. It’s not a priority for this fall, but eventually the path will be covered with cardboard, then a layer of wood chips.

Once that was done, I went into the overgrown area nearby to find the poplars I’d debarked to be used as vertical supports for the trellis and set them across the bed. They’re not the straightest, and need to have their branch nubs cut away, but … it’ll be rustic. Yeah. That’s it! Rustic. 😄

I’ve got eight of them that are debarked. They were to be lined up in pairs along two raised beds for the future trellis tunnel, but the other bed has yet to be constructed. If I use four on this bed, that means one at each end, two along the side, and they’ll all be six feet apart.

I think that might be too far apart.

If I add one more, that would have the posts at about four and a half feet apart. I think that will work out better. It’ll be easier to find straight (ish) horizontal cross pieces for that length, and the whole thing should be stronger This is expected to someday hold the weight of things like winter squash, so I don’t want to skimp on sturdiness.

Getting those up is not the priority right now, though. Before I work on that, I want to finish assembling the log frame around the low raised bed we put together this spring, and get that weeded. With the peas and beans on trellised on each side of that bed, I wasn’t able to weed around the winter squash, so it got very overgrown!

The next priority is clearing away the fallen spruce tree and the crab apple tree it fell on. That will require the chainsaw, though, which means waiting for a dry day. From the current forecast, that looks like the next two days, and then we get rain again for another two days. After that, I think it’ll just be too cold.

Which means the next two days is probably the last chance we’ll get to do some of the outside stuff. That will include moving the giant hose my brother lent us to use to divert the septic away from the house, if we had needed to, into the barn and covering the septic tank for the winter. I was still hoping to hose off the insulated tarp again, but it’s still damp. It would have been good if we could hang it on the clothes line, but it’s just too big and too heavy for that. Ah, well. It’ll still do the job. Technically, the tank doesn’t actually need to be covered, given how deep it’s buried, but I’d rather be safe than sorry! We’ve had another septic problems without potentially adding more.

At least now we don’t have to worry about the leak at the expeller anymore! My brother has also expressed great relief that it is finally done.

We’re managing to get quite a few things done this year, that will make next year easier!

Including planting one more garden bed with seed onions. 😊😊

This has been such a good day!

The Re-Farmer

Makin hay, while the sun shines!

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Or, in my case today, raking leaves and planting wildflowers!

This afternoon, we reached our expected a high of 8C/46F, with some lovely sunshine and NO high winds!

What a difference that makes.

We did get some rain this morning, but by the time I headed out after lunch, you couldn’t tell we’d had any.

My first job of the day was to rake up some leaves to mulch the wattle weave bed.

Not all of it. Just where the wild strawberries and herbs are growing.

This was the first time I used the pair of hand rakes my brother and his wife gave me. Now that they’ve sold their property, they are living in a townhouse, and have no need for gardening tools anymore. I don’t think these were ever used before!

They work really, really well! The only complaint I could have about them is the straps for the hands are on the small side. At least for broad simian hands like mine! 😄

Oh, gosh. I just realized what I caught a kitten doing in the other mulched bed in that first photo.

*sigh*

The next photo is the packaging for the hand rakes, though Instagram cut part of it off, even though I have it set to “original size” on the slideshow. The website says uncleweiner.com (not an affiliate link). A rather unfortunate name, but a good product!

Oh… gosh. They are located in Prince Albert. That’s… double unfortunate! 😂😂😂

In the last photo, you can see I had a helper when it came to mulching the Albion Everbearing strawberries in the main garden area. I put the chicken wire back over it to keep the leaves from being blown away but, as you can see, it doesn’t lie flat on the strawberry bed. Little Magda quite enjoyed going under there!

That done, I got another wagon load of leaves and started on the patch that’s been covered by the insulated tarp all summer.

After removing the old T posts and a board I’d put around the edges, to keep it from blowing away, I peeled off the tarp. That was unexpectedly difficult. All along the edges, Creeping Charlie had started growing on top of it. It turns out that some of them set their roots into, or even through, the tarp!

So the first thing I did was drag the tarp out to the front yard, where I have one hose still set up. The tarp was spread out to its full size. After hosing it down for a while, I went over it with a stiff bristle broom to get rid of the bigger debris, then used the hose to pressure wash it as best I could. It then got another scrubbing with the broom and a rinse.

For now, I’ve left it out where it is, to dry off as much as possible. Unfortunately, there are some holes in it. Some are tears from winds that happened a couple of years ago. Others were caused by weed roots pushing their way through and into the insulation layer! So parts of it now have water on the inside of the tarp. Not much I can do about that. I don’t have tarp tape, but I do have clear Gorilla tape, so I hope to at least patch up the bigger holes – if they are dry enough! Eventually, the other side will need to be cleaned, too.

That done as much as could be for now, it was back to the patch of soil it covered. In the second picture, you can see how it looked after the tarp was removed. Most of it does look dead but, along the edges, you can see white lines of roots extending into the what will be the growing area.

The soil needed to be loosened for the seeds, so I used the landscaping rake for that – and promptly found a roll of wire, buried in the soil! When we first moved here, this is where most of the chimney blocks and all the ceramic flues had been stacked, along with bricks and other odd things, and even garbage. We cleaned it up, but clearly missed this piece of wire!

The entire area got raked from the inside out, so as to pull the living roots out of the growing area, while also loosening the soil for the seeds.

As you can see in the next photo in the slideshow, the cats were very interested in what I was doing!

After the soil was loosened, I took the container of seeds shaken up in some seed starting mix, and scattered it evenly – I hope – over the area. Then I drew the back of the rake back and forth over the area to cover the seeds a bit.

While chasing away cats that figured this was a big new litter box, just for them!

Last of all, I scattered a wagon load of leaves over the entire area. This layer of leaf mulch is not as thick as on the garden beds. I was trying to more or less emulate how it would be, if leaves had fallen naturally on the ground. They will not be removed in the spring.


These seeds are a Western wildflower mix, so they should be able to handle the winter temperatures just fine. Any that succeed in germinating should have little problem growing through the light mulch.

The seed mix description doesn’t tell everything that’s in this mix. It just says “This mix includes Lupins, Poppy, Coreopsis, Flax, Blanket flowers and much more.” It should be interesting to see what comes up next year!

Image belongs to Veseys

One packet of seeds is supposed to be enough for 1000 sq ft. I used two packets. Technically, this means this area should be very densely sown. I’m not going to assume they’ll all germinate. We’ve tried to plant these plus an alternative lawn mix in areas nearby, and only some of them took – a year after they were sown! – and in only one area.

Still, if all goes well, enough of them will germinate that they will choke out any weeds that might otherwise spread into the area, and the wildflowers will spread their own seed further into the maple grove.

By the time that was done, it was starting to get close to sunset, to I moved on to things to go in the front yard. One of those was to clean up the flower bed the haskap bushes are planted in.

The first two photos in the above slide show are before and after shots. The dead flower stalks were clipped with loppers for a chop and drop. The old mulch I’d pulled off the garden bed at the fence was then raked on top along one side, and leaves along the other edges were raked up and added to the other sides. I don’t mind if the mulch reduces the number of flowers here. They get so tall, they cover the haskaps! Now, they are a mulch for the haskaps, and the lilac at one end.

I also snagged a couple of bricks and broken pieces of sidewalk blocks from the pile in the foreground. I keep thinking the catio is going to blow away, now that it’s wrapped in plastic for the winter. A corner of the plastic did tear off in yesterday’s winds, so that got tacked back into place, and there is now a weight on each corner of the roof.

I finally got around to laying out the hoses, to get the kinks and twists out. Once they moved, I was able to get to the old basement window to clean it up, then switch the summer window for the winter one. There was more to clean up than usual this year. The kittens have been using the area in front of it as a little box. 🫤 The window is now clear, though, and has a cover leaning over it. Eventually, we will pick up a window well and cover for around this window. The window wells are pretty affordable. The covers can sure get expensive, though!

That cleaned up and done, it was time to roll up and tie off the hoses. I ended up using a garbage can, laying it on its side over a hose, then rolling it with the hose around it. Doing it that way prevents the hose from twisting and kinking, though in these cooler temperatures, any kinks that were in the hoses when I laid them out were still pretty bent up when they were rolled up. Those are now ready to set aside for the winter.

Aside from finishing cleaning the insulated tarp, this is it for winterizing on the south side of the house. Tomorrow, I’ve got some things I want to get done in the main garden area. Our high is expected to be only 4C/39F tomorrow, but the day after is now expected to hit 9C/48F. I might wait for the warmer day before breaking out the chain saw to clean up the dead spruce tree that fell on the crab apple tree.

How much I get done tomorrow, though, may be up for debate. I felt really good while working outside, but once inside and sitting for a while, all my joints are stiffening up. Including my hands. I’m having a heck of a time typing right now. I forgot to take painkillers before I started this post.

Hopefully, I will finally get a good night’s sleep, and that will help. What I’d really love is have a hot soak in the tub, but it’s not worth the risk of injury, trying to get in and out. Sitting on the bath chair in the shower just isn’t the same, though!

Ah, well. It is what it is!

Whatever happens tomorrow, it felt great to be working outside, and I’m quite happy with the progress I was able to do while I had the chance!

The Re-Farmer

Getting things done!

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Today was a really lovely fall day! We reached a high of 12C/54F this afternoon, making it perfect to get things done in the garden.

But first, the cuteness.

I managed to get a picture of Eye Baby this morning. Not a very good picture, but the best I could get! He just will not stay still long enough for a photo.

His one eye is still looking weird, but it is SO much better than it was! I honestly expected him to loose the eye.

I have no idea how much, if any, sight he has in that eye. There is no difference in how he manages, compared to the other kittens.

He needs a face wash, but now that we’re not grabbing him every evening to give him antibiotics anymore, he has no patience for that sort of thing!

My first goal of the day was to finish clearing the raised bed I’d taken the netting and supports off of, yesterday. I got the T posts out, then worked on weeding it.

It needed a LOT of weeding.

When I got to the seed onions, I pulled them out and set them aside until the bed was cleared.

Once the bed was cleared, the seed onions got transplanted again. There was four of them, including two bulbs together that I split.

After the frost did in the lone ground cherry that showed up in this bed, I found there had been a whole bunch of berries hiding under the foliage. They had been completely hidden until then! I’d gathered those up and set them aside, earlier. Today, I decided to go ahead and plant them in the area next to the onions. I just took the berries, still in their casing, and shoved them in like they were garlic bulbs. If there are any viable seeds and they survive the winter, they should do all right. This end of the bed gets more sun than the other one, so they’ll have a better chance at having a full growing season.

Or, none of them will make it, and I’ll plant something else there.

In the next photo of the slide show above, you can see the entire bed was mulched, with grass clippings. I have the end with the seed onions and ground cherries a thicker mulch, while the rest of the bed was just lightly covered, to protect the soil, more than anything else.

The next bed to work on was the eggplant and hot pepper bed. That bed was mulched with cardboard around the transplants, then grass clippings, so not a lot of weeds got through. With this bed, I just did a chop and drop with the dead remains of the eggplants and pepper plants.

Hmmm… the photos are not lined up the way I set them when I uploaded them to Instagram!

Anyhow…

In the second photo, you can see the yellow Mason’s line I used across the middle of the cover. It had been bowing out. The box frame is the same size, so I used that as my guide as I pulled in the side of the cover frame. I didn’t bother doing anything to the wire mesh, as I plan to replace it with something stronger at some point. This wire mesh is just too bendy.

With this done, my next job was to go through all the stakes and supports I’d gathered together. It took quite some time to organize them. We have metal stakes in two sizes that got bundled up, making use of the garden twist ties that had also been set aside for next year. The bamboo stakes were sorted by height and, for some of them, thickness before being bundled up. The smaller, broken pieces were tucked into a bucket in the garden shed, as they are still useful as supports.

Then there were the hoops and wire fences and other odds and sots that got organized and bundled. The remaining ties and clips were organized as well. We have one of those rolling seats – we found it when we were cleaning the new part basement of the house – that got lubricant added to various places before that got put into the shed for the winter, too.

That old garden shed may be dilapidated and falling apart, but it’s still managing to be useful! It would be good if we could finally gets started on building a replacement next spring.

With everything finally sorted and put away, it was time to work on the cat house. The first thing was to set up an extension cord through the window of the old kitchen. I’d put hooks up last year so we could run the cord above our heads, rather than across the floor, with another outside, keeping the cord snug into the corner of the door frame, so both the inner and outer doors could still open and close without damaging it.

There is a fair bit of excess cord that we usually kept tucked to one side on the ground. This time, I got a utility hook I’d picked up for something else, only to find something better, later on, and used that. So now the excess length is neatly wrapped up on the side of the kibble house, instead of laying on the ground.

As for the cat house itself, my younger daughter did the bulk of the cleaning. After getting the roof open, my job was mostly to make sure it didn’t drop (highly unlikely, but possible) while my daughter clambered inside. There was a large crocheted blanket on the floor, on top of some high density foam mats I found in the barn. It’s too heavy to wash in the washing machine, so we set that aside. The last time we were able to wash it, we used the kiddie pool, but that now has drainage holes in the bottom so it can be used as a garden bed.

I plan to get more. They are very handy.

For now, it’s set aside.

The two cat beds in there were pretty torn up. I don’t know if they’re worth washing, or should be just thrown away. They ended up in the shelf shelter for now.

We decided not to return the litter box. The cats just kicked the litter pellets all over and made a mess, but didn’t seem to have actually used it much.

After sweeping up the inside, we added the two new cat beds that were donated, one at each of the larger windows. The insides of the windows all got washed, too.

The heat bulb was plugged in and tested, as was the smoke detector. We also added a small cat blanket we had in the sun room.

The cats were very, very interested in what we were doing, this whole time. When it came time to close up the roof, we had to be very careful, in case a cat decided to jump up at the last moment!

Once that was down and the crates returned to their place under the counterweight, my daughter and I worked on the rain barrel. It was full of water, so we used the watering cans to empty it until it was empty enough to tip over and drain completely. It’s now set on its side in the old kitchen garden for the winter.

By the time that was done, we were starting to lose the light and time to call it a day. The outside cats got their evening feeding (even though it was really just late afternoon) and we were done with outside stuff for the day.

The next while is supposed to be cooler, though were are still expected to get a few days as warm as 7C/45F or 8C/46F. We might actually get some rain tomorrow afternoon/evening, but otherwise, it should be clear. While the main things that needed to get done are now done, there is always more to do. Right now, my goal for tomorrow is to move the insulated tarp aside and sow the wildflower seeds over the area beneath.

Anything else we manage to get done around the yard and garden at this point is just bonus.

I’m really glad to have been able to take advantage of what will probably be our last actual warm day of the year!

Little by little, it’s getting done.

The Re-Farmer

Finally! Our October garden tour video

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I had intended to do a garden tour video in the middle of October. Instead, I didn’t even get to recording videos until the last day of October – only to not be happy with the results and did it again in the morning.

Well, better late than never!

This video is much shorter than my summertime videos, that’s for sure!

Let me know what you think!

The Re-Farmer

Finally got it done

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What a difference a magnet makes.

This morning, I was able to load the truck up with bags of aluminum for the scrap yard. It was late morning, as I waited for the rain to stop, first.

I fit in the 10 large bags I loaded last time, when the truck’s onboard computer started blaring at me, plus three more smaller recycling bags of cans from the house. I still have three large bags that I need to sort through with a magnet.

In the second photo of the slideshow above, you can see the return I got for the cans.

Last time, the weight was also just over 200 pounds, but had mixed metal in with the aluminum.

We got about $17 and change last time.

Basically, having a few non-aluminum cans mixed in last time cost us about $100.

Lesson learned!

We still have all the old batteries that can be brought in, but my brother has had to shove so many things into the barn, they’re inaccessible right now. My brother will be coming out as he is able, to organize things. So those will wait until spring. I’d hoped to get the scrap guys in this year, but until my brother can move things around, they can’t even get at some of the old vehicles anymore.

Ah, well.

After dropping off the aluminum, I headed out to the nearer Walmart to pick up a few things my husband requested. I hoped to meet up with the Cat Lady, as she has cat food, a scratch tower and cat bed donations for us. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to meet me this time. Hopefully, we’ll be able to connect next week. Her husband would like to have the stuff out of their car! 😄

She also hopes to be able to get some spays booked for us, soon. She will let us know the dates as soon as she has them.

Now that we have the truck back, we’ve got another outing tomorrow that’s been put off – a trip to the dump! After that, we need to winterize things around the house. The insulation that gets set around the base of most of the house has been brought from the barn, but we need to clear out leaves and other debris, first. That will require the catio being moved away from where it is now.

The catio sides will get wrapped in plastic for the winter. I am thinking a good place to set it up for the winter is near the shrine, for the cats that are shier.

I put the latch on the isolation shelter ramp/door. It will just need a carabiner to keep it closed – something racoons shouldn’t be able to open. I also prepped some plastic to go around the mesh enclosed lower level for the winter.

We will need to attach something sturdy across the middle, under the roof, to hang the clamp lamp heater from. After much consideration on how to get power to the isolation shelter, I’ve decided we won’t be able to set it up near the other shelters by the house. There’s just no practical space for it. So I am thinking of setting it up under the kitchen window, where the catio is now. There is an outlet around the corner of the house that it can be plugged into. We could plug in a heated water bowl, too.

There are other winterizing things that will need to be done. The forecast has us being fairly warm over the next while, even reaching highs of 10C/50F over the weekend. After that, we’re getting to where the daytime highs will be closer to freezing, and even dipping below.

It’s still relatively mild for this time of year, though. We haven’t had any blizzards – it’s not unusual to have a blizzard in October, so this is good. Especially if we’re going to be keeping cats closed up in the isolation shelter to recover from spays. Yes, it has insulation in the upper level, and passive solar with the window. Yes, the bottom level will be covered in plastic. Yes, we will even have a heat source in there. It’s still not the same as being inside the sun room, or the cat house!

Once the winterizing is done, it’s back to cleaning up the garden beds and, if all goes well, finish assembling the new log framed raised bed, now that I no longer have to worry about harming squash vines.

That should go relatively quickly, since the bed walls are just one log high. I’m still holding out hope that I’ll be able to start on the permanent trellis supports, but those will be more complex to assemble. They have to support themselves until the matching raised bed is built, and they eventually become part of a trellis tunnel.

Those are the plans, anyhow!

We shall see how far we actually manage to get.

Oh! I just realized, I haven’t mentioned how the Crespo squash turned out!

The squash was roasted plain, so we could try them in different ways. I first had a chunk as a savoury side dish, just adding some butter and salt and mashing it up on my plate. I quite liked it. Then, I had another piece, mashing in a bit of butter again, along with brown sugar, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg. That was also very good, though I think I liked it as a savoury dish better.

The description for the seeds described Crespo squash as a particularly delicious variety of pumpkin. I’ll be honest, here. While I quite enjoyed it, it doesn’t compare to, say, the Red Kuri, Candyroaster or Pink Banana squash we’ve grown before. However, I’m not entirely sure the Crespo squash reached full maturity, given how much green there was under the flesh when we cut it open. Plus, some types of winter squash taste better after being in storage for a while. I would definitely want to grow it again, but if we could only choose one or two winter squash varieties, I would choose something else.

I had started a tomato sauce in the crockpot and decided, since it was handy, to include some of the roasted squash. This sauce included San Marzano tomatoes ( I had enough that there was no room to add more tomatoes from the freezer), with maybe two Forme de Couer in the mix, plus a yellow bell pepper from the ones ripening in the living room, a few shallots, and the pieces of roasted squash. It was seasoned with salt and pepper, plus dried sage, thyme and basil. Last of all, I added a splash of Krupnik (not an affiliate link) – simply because we happen to have some right now.

When the tomatoes got to the stage where I could blitz the whole thing with the immersion blender, it was left to cook down overnight to thicken it, though we would dip into it to use with our meals every now and then. Before I started writing this post, I decided it was thick enough to jar up. By then, we had enough to fill two 750ml jars, plus one 500ml jar. Once they are cool, they will go into the fridge to use right away.

My taste buds are far from refined, so I honestly couldn’t tell you if adding the squash or the booze made any difference! 😄

As for the rest of the roasted squash, I can hear my daughter in the kitchen right now. She’s making pie out of it!

I’m really looking forward to seeing how it turns out!

The Re-Farmer