That whole “get outside early, before it gets hot” thing is just not working. After finishing my morning rounds, it was already 25C/77F, with the humidex putting it at 31C/88F! As I write this, it’s actually cooled down a tiny bit, but it’s going to go right back up again this afternoon.
One of the garden beds that has me a bit perplexed is the eggplant and hot pepper bed. I have not tried to replace the plastic around the box frame, that got shredded by the wind, so they’ve been exposed to the wind and temperatures like everything else beside them. That bed does get a bit more sun than the other two beside it. The peppers and eggplants, though, just don’t seem to be growing. This seems like more than transplant shock. They’re just stagnating, and I don’t know why.
Which makes what progress I am seeing in them a bit surprising.
As small as they are, I am seeing flowers opening up among both the Classic eggplant, and the Little Finger eggplant. There are flowers on the Cheyenne hot peppers, too, but I would almost expect that. These peppers were started the earliest. They should be big and bushy and have fruit developing by now, so having a few flowers appear is late for those. For the eggplant, though, would have expected flowers to appear after they’d gotten much better. Especially considering how large the fruit is supposed to get at maturity. The normal fruit size, even for the Little Finger variety, is bigger than the plants are now!
Aside from that mystery, I found a couple of ripe strawberries among the older plants in the asparagus bed. Yesterday evening, I’d picked a few from the bare root strawberries that were planted this spring, and the tiny strawberries grown from seed in the old kitchen garden. The strawberries in the asparagus bed are having the hardest time of it, because the deer keep eating the leaves, so anything out of there is bonus.
There are sugar snap pea pods developing, and I’d picked a couple last night. This morning, there was just one, ready to pick. I’m only picking these because, the more they are harvested from, the more they will produce.
The real bonus this morning was the garlic scapes!
Almost all of the scapes were ready to be harvested. Of the ones remaining, they should be ready to harvest in the next day or two. So we’ll probably have one last harvest, and then be done for scapes for the year.
We need to plant more garlic. 😄
The mint that keeps trying to take over the bed is managing to get into the raised rectangular bed with garlic, tomatoes, onions and shallots in it. Since I was weeding them out, anyhow, I picked enough for a day’s use.
It’s not much of a harvest, and this year, it doesn’t look like we’ll get much that can be harvested through the summer. The bush beans have been decimated by slugs, so I don’t expect anything from them anymore. They mature fast enough that I could replant, but there’s no point, unless we can get rid of the slugs.
I should pick up some cheap beer for slug traps. Even the last Zucca melon is getting decimated, and it’s of a size they normally wouldn’t be able to damage that much. There is evidence of slug damage on some of the melons and winter squash, and at least a couple of melons have simply disappeared, but they seem to really like the Zucca melon – enough to get up into that kiddie pool raised bed it’s planted in!
The shelling peas are of a size that they need to be trained up into the trellis netting. There are very few pole beans, but they are getting tall enough that trellis netting needs to be added on that side of the bed, too.
The hot pepper growth has been stagnant, but so have the bell peppers in the high raised bed. They’re not getting any bigger, though they certainly look healthy, small as they are, and some of them are starting to bloom, too!
Most of the tomato varieties are also showing blooms. The only ones that aren’t are the last San Marzano transplants. Considering how much later they were planted, that’s not a surprise. The ones planted in the old kitchen garden almost all have flowers and are getting tall enough we’re going to have to start clipping them to their bamboo stake supports.
Along with all that, we need to get the weed trimmer and lawn mowers out before the grass gets too tall again. We still have standing water in places, and the ground is still saturated in others, but we should still be able to get at least some of the mowing done. That will give us grass clippings we can add to some of the garden beds as mulch, too.
Also on the list it so finish assembling the log frame on the one low raised bed. I was able to accumulate more cardboard that I plan to put under the logs, first. So they’ll need to be rolled away, the ground under where they will go needed to be levelled off more, the carboard laid down as a weed barrier, then the logs rolled back and permanently attached to each other. I just plan to cut notches in the shorter end pieces to fit them over the ends of the side pieces, to set them snug against each other. I still have some broken pieces plant supports I got a few years ago. They were hollow metal tubes coated in plastic, and with so many rocks in our soil, they broke very easily. I’ve used some of them, already, on the current trellis bed. I used an auger bit on my drill to make a hole through the logs at the short ends, then drove the broken lengths of supports in, to hold them together. I plan to do the same thing when assembling the new frame. It needs to be done very soon, as the winter squash is starting to grow into the paths, and will soon be too big to move out of the way without damaging them.
Meanwhile, the temperature and humidex is already starting to get hotter again. Our humidity levels are supposed to reach over 90% at times. I’m amazed we have an only 25% chance of rain this evening. I would have expected thunderstorm warnings. We do have a small system with storms in it passing us to the north, but not anywhere near where we are.
Well, summer is summer, and I’d better get used to the heat, if I’m going to get anything done.
The mosquitoes, on the other hand, are something I will never get used to!! Mosquitoes, horseflies, deer flies… they’re all just brutal this year!
It’s a hot and muggy day today! As I write this, past 3:30 pm, we are at 26C/79F, with the humidex at 31C/89F We are not expecting any rain, but with the heat and humidity, I wouldn’t be surprised if a thunderstorm suddenly appeared.
No storms, but we did have a power outage this morning! The power went out in the area for more then an hour. After it came back, I learned that the outage, which included several towns in the area, was due to a fire on a power pole. !!
I did get my morning rounds done before we lost power, checking on the babies and the garden beds.
I found a new female winter squash blossom forming! Hopefully, when it opens, there will be some male flowers open to pollinate it. I’m rather happy with how the winter squash is recovering from being transplanted.
The kittens are doing all right. As I was coming back to the sun room, I actually found Broccoli’s two babies had come around to eat. They ran off as soon as they saw me, though, and are really skittish.
I’m not sure what to make of some of the adults, though. Sprout, one of Broccoli’s calico babies from a couple years ago and sibling to Brussel, comes over for food, but she is not just skittish of me. She frequently growls and snarls at the other cats. I don’t remember her doing that before, but then, this is the first year she’s really been coming this close to the house for food, too. She’s not the only one, though. There’s a grey and white cat that I think it is a mama that is also snarly. This morning, a male that is all black except for a white blaze on his chest showed up, and he was growling and snarling at other cats, too, though with him, I got the impression he has not had food for awhile.
That was this morning. Yesterday evening, things seemed to be okay.
We had some power flickers due to storms, and I had to go back and forth between the house and the garage to reset the device we have for our garage security camera. WiFi isn’t reliable at the garage, so it’s plugged into a device that uses our power lines to send the signal, which gets converted to WiFi inside the house.
Some of the kittens are getting quite used to my coming and going, and don’t bother moving, never mind running away (unless I approach them).
Two of them ran off into the tall grass, while two of them just loafed on the driveway!
I left, then came back, and found just a black and white fluff ball still loafed on the driveway. I also saw a tiny black and white face peaking at me from the hole under the doors to the side of the garage we store the lawnmowers in.
I decided to see how close I could get to the one loafed in the driveway. As I got closer, it ran to the edge of the tall grass, then leaned against the grass to hiss at me. I came closer, and it rolled onto its back and hissed at me.
I picked it up and it lay on its back in my hand, and hissed at me!
Also, it’s a boy. 😂
A carried him over to the garage and put him down next to the hole under the door, where I could just see the legs of his sibling. Once on the grown, under the door he went!
So I guess that’s where Brussel has her babies now. Which she might have issues with, when we need to get at the lawn mowers.
I do hope she brings her babies to the house, soon!
Today, however, I saw no sign of them when I headed out.
I did not have plans to head out.
I got a call from my mother this morning. She started telling me about how she has stuff that she’s packing up and setting aside to go to my sister. Then she mentioned adding more things to her bag for the hospital – long story behind that I won’t get into here. Then she said she had stuff she wanted me to take to the farm. It took a bit of questioning, since she talks as if I already know the background of what she’s saying, but I eventually figured out that she is starting to go through her stuff, basically to give to people she things they should go to, after she dies or something. The stuff she wanted me to take was things like fabric (???) that she thought we could use, and if we don’t, then we can donate it to a second hand store. She started talking about she has so little room (true) and needs to get rid of stuff, so they can go to the farm…
I told her, we have too much stuff here already!
That’s when she suggested we could donate things to the second hand store. I wasn’t sure these would be things suitable for donation, okay.
I asked when she wanted me to come over.
Can I come over today?
…
So, that was my unplanned trip out!
I did stop at the post office first, though. Our reordered 4lb bucket of lysine is supposed to arrive today – but when I look at the tracking information, it says it’s still at a carrier facility in the US, and hasn’t moved since June 27.
It wasn’t there, but I just checked the tracking information again. It still says it’s in a carrier facility in the US, but also it’s supposed to arrive locally by 8pm today. ???
Anyhow.
Once at my mother’s, she at first basically ignored why I was there, as she kept going through her “important” papers. Which are basically all old newspaper clippings, printouts of photos of dead relatives, and various other papers that she considered of great historical value.
My poor sister is going to be getting all this stuff.
Eventually, I got her to tell me what she was wanting me to take to the farm.
Which turned out to be a storage bin she wanted me to dig out of her closet.
So we went through that together, and most of it we might actually be able to use. I did put my foot down when it came to taking an old bra. She said it could go to the second hand store. I told her to just throw it away!!
Then there was another storage bin to go through.
It was quite a mix of things. Pieces of fabric that she used to use as a cover for an old couch here at the farm – a couch our vandal stole while the house was empty. Old curtains that had been using in the living room window. Why would she even take those with her? The living room window is huge, and there’s nothing in her apartment they could have been used on! There were some table cloths that look like they were among those my late brother salvaged from a restaurant he demolished, years ago (a lot of the cutlery we still use now was from that one job!). One thing I was very happy to take was a lacy crochet table cloth. My mother crocheted it. I remember it being used when I was a child! That, to me, is a treasure! There were a few things from Poland, and some strangely old sewing kits material, crochet hooks and knitting needles. Apparently, my mother bought the sewing kit – woven box – for me. I have no memory of that, though I do remember the woven box. What I was really excited to see what the darning mushroom inside! I remember using it to darn socks when I was a kid. I’ve been wanting one for years, but they are rather hard to find, and the few I have found over the years are strangely expensive.
After going through the bins, she got me to grab a bucket that was full of yarn and other odds and ends.
Including the Bamboo Silk yarn I’d used to make a wheelchair shawl for my aunt. A shawl my cousin gave to my mother after her sister passed away. Which my mother undid.
I talked to her about that, trying to get her to understand how I had made this for her sister, and it was something she could have used herself, that would have reminded her of her sister, but she undid it.
I washed it first, she assured me.
???
Also, her sister is dead now, so it doesn’t matter.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I just…
…
no words.
I just have no words.
What makes it extra bizarre is that, here she was, spending all this time and effort to divide up her possessions to the family members she thinks they should go to, because she thinks she’s going to die any day now. She actually asked me what I thought about how much longer she’ll last. I told her I thought she had many years ahead of her, yet, and I truly believe that. Barring her doing something weird to herself again, like messing with her medications, she’ll probably outlive us all, even as her mobility and cognition decreases. She’s got the most amazing constitution.
But, she thinks she’s about to go any time now, yet still refuses to call an ambulance when she’s having the breathing problems she complains about. She did call my sister yesterday, knowing my sister works on Sundays, then hung up when, after complaining about burping so much (my mother has got it in her head that if she forces herself to burp, it makes her feel better, but she talks about burping a lot as if it’s something happening to her, rather that something she’s doing to herself), and my sister said people don’t go to the hospital for burping. My sister was so confused after being hung up on, she called me. I told her, my mother wouldn’t call me or my brother, because we’re both telling her that if she feels that bad, call an ambulance. This time, she tried my sister. But she won’t call an ambulance, and prefers talk about how she’s going to die any minute now.
*sigh*
So…
She was given stuff that belonged to her sister, including things that were hand made by me for my aunt, and she had no problem destroying them, but we’re all supposed to be falling over ourselves for the stuff she is “leaving” to us, most of which is important only to her, and a lot of which is literally just garbage, and expects us to keep them and value them long after she’s gone. As my mother set aside a stack of papers for my sister, most of which were printouts my sister made for her, at my mother’s request, I suggested that maybe she doesn’t need the empty, used envelop.
It’s not empty, I was told.
Well, I just saw her removing the contents and adding it to the pile of papers, but.. okay.
So the bucket of yarn and other items were combined with the other stuff in the storage bins.
Then my mother started talking about calling the lab to see if they were open, before I took her there.
I was taking her to the lab?
She had told me she was going to take the Handi Van to get her blood work done. She hadn’t done it yet, and since I was there…
Okay, fine. I put the bins in the truck, moved it to where she could wheel right up with her walker, prepped the foot stool for her, came back and…
She was still going through papers for my sister, and kept offering me juice or whatever… “sit down… have a rest…”
I told her, this was not a planned trip. I do have stuff to do at home. Oh, but you have helpers. I don’t have any helpers.
*sigh*
I did finally get her to set the papers aside, and focus on having her blood work requisition form ready, as well as her health card, so she wouldn’t have to dig for it once at the lab.
She really would have done better taking the Handi Van.
I had the foot stool out for her, but still had to physically help her get up into the truck. It’s much easier for her to get out – no foot stool needed – but getting in is so diffuclt.
That fact that she can get in at all is pretty amazing, to be honest.
The hospital the lab is in is just a few blocks away from her place. She was the only person there, so she got in very quickly. She only needed to give one vial of blood for the 5 things she’s being tested for. She asked about what she was being tested for, and the technician explained it – whether my mother didn’t remember me already explaining it to her after dropping off the form, or didn’t believe me when I did, I don’t know. When she mentioned one of the things being tested for was urea, my mother immediately launched into how this was a problem, and how she has just a few drops…
For the sake of the technician, I mentioned that, while that may be a problem, this blood test isn’t about that at all. Once the technician understood my mother was conflating different things, she made a point of saying that this was correct; the test results from this are about kidney function only.
I don’t think my mother got it, but that’s okay.
As we were leaving, I asked my mother if there was anything she wanted me to get for her while we were out, but the only thing she’s going to need to do is go to the bank, and I can’t do that for her. This trip already exhausted her, so it will wait for another day. Perhaps my sister will be able to visit during the week and can take her, using her car. That would be much easier for my mother to get in an out of.
Speaking of cars…
When I went in to reset the garage cam device, I noticed my mother’s car now has two flat tires on the driver’s side!
It hasn’t been used since the day I tried driving it and it started making a banging noise from the back.
I’ll have to use a hand pump on them. After discovering the leaking valves on our truck, it now makes sense to me why my mother’s car got flats so often. I suspect she has leaking valves, too. The other two tires look just fine. Which is good, because that side of the car is parked closer to the wall, so that the driver can get in and out without hitting a shelf against the opposite wall.
So that’s one of the things I was wanting to do today.
I think I’ll wait for things to cool down a bit more, though – and use lots of bug spray! We’ve been storing our bags of aluminum in the garage, in front of my mother’s car. Most of the cans are from cat food, so critters have been getting into them. Before I can pump up her tires, I will need to pick up and bag a lot of cans, first!
The cats have also been using the dirt floor as a litter all winter. With how much rain we’ve been having, we haven’t been able to clean it up.
They turn a remarkably bright green under those conditions.
So that’s going to need to be raked up, too. It’s still a bit damp for it, but it needs to get done!
The problem is, it won’t even start to cool down for another 3 hours or so, and the front of the garage faces south. Full sun and full heat!
*sigh*
It would have been good to get started before it got hot, but that’s when my mother called, wanting me to come over.
Well, I’m hoping the heat will be good for the garden. I was trying to remember how it was last year at this time, so I went looking at some of my garden tour videos for June and July of last year.
This was recorded on June 1, 2023
This is the one I recorded on June 16, this year.
Then there is the one I recorded on July 4, 2023.
We were much further ahead, as for as growth, at the start of July last year, than we are this year. We actually had peppers forming at the start of July last year! This year, only the hot peppers, which were started much earlier, are starting to bloom. The luffa are a lot smaller this year, too, even though they were transplanted at about the same time, and had a stronger, healthier start indoors this year. We also already had tomatoes forming by the start of July last year. Right now, we just have some of them blooming.
All that rain this spring has really set a lot of things back!
I did my June garden tour video in the middle of the month, so I will wait until the middle of the month before doing a July garden tour. Hopefully, things will have picked up at least a bit by then!
This has been a very different gardening year. Not only because of the weather, but just everything we ended up planting this year. I had so many things planned for that just didn’t happen. The balance between things that can be harvested earlier and throughout the summer, and things that get harvested all at once, is way off.
Next year will be different, again. Hopefully, we’ll have more progress on the trellis beds, and the area that was a squash patch last year will have new beds built into them, and we’ll have much more growing space.
The shelling peas planted in one of the winter squash beds are starting to get tall, so it was time to put up the trellis netting. My older daughter and I headed out early in the morning to avoid the heat.
It didn’t really work. 7am, and it was already feeling too hot!
The first thing we had to do was steal some of the lighter posts marking the 4′ distances for the low raised beds and attaching them to the tops of the bamboo stakes already in place, to support the netting at the top.
The netting wasn’t long enough, but we were reusing wire twist ties, and some of them were long enough to cross the distances at the ends. Later on, I’ll use jute twine or something to lace through the ends, so they don’t pull and sag too much once the weight of the peas are on it. We also made sure to leave a gap at the bottom for the winter squash vines to pass through. We don’t want any of those climbing! They would be way too heavy for this set up.
Later, we’ll at another trellis net on the other side, for the pole beans. The Seychelle beans planted in the gaps between the few carminate haven’t germinated yet, so it’s entirely possible we won’t end up needing it.
After that, it was just the usual morning rounds which, these days, includes cuddling as many kittens as we can convince to let us.
Right now, there is one white and grey that doesn’t run away and allows us to pick it up at any time. It even purrs. The tiny foundling – I think we’ll call it Button – needed no time at all to be okay with human contact. In fact, I have to watch my feet when it’s around! It is SO much smaller than the other kittens! It starts purring pretty much as soon as we picked it up, will crawl around on our shoulders, and when we put it down near out feet, it starts to rub on them.
I make sure to put it down near a food or water bowl as a distraction. 😄
I’ve made a point of adding water to one or two of the sun room kibble bowls to soften the kibble. I’m also seeing Junk Pile nursing the new baby. It appears to be in good hands!
I just came back from topping up the kibble outside, and Syndol was back and very hungry. I hadn’t seen him since yesterday evening.
When I paused to take a picture of Button, he wanted me to take his picture, too!
Oh, and today, I finally found a spot to transplant the Orange Butterfly flowers (milkweed) that have still been languishing in their Jiffy Pellets. Only three had germinated, and I had intended to direct sow more, but we just didn’t have a good place for it.
Well, since we didn’t end up planting poppies in where I’d intended, and yesterday, I buried Driver there, I figured it would be appropriate to transplant the butterfly flowers onto his grave. This bed can be a milkweed bed.
There are a lot of things that need to be done outside, of course – the list is never ending – but it’s going to have to wait. There are dozens of little thunderstorms blowing across the prairies right now, in both the US and Canada. I was hearing thunder while I was out, just a little while ago. Plus, as I write this, we are 26C/79F, with the humidex putting us at 30C/86F. I think the garden, in general, is going to like the heat we’re supposed to have over the next while. Much of what we planted this year prefers hotter temperatures. We’re supposed to keep getting hotter over the next few days and, a week from now, we’re supposed to have highs of 30C/86F. We’re supposed to have the storms blowing through today, plus a bit of rain tomorrow afternoon, but after that, we’re not expected to get more rain withing the 10 day forecast.
It took all day, with many interruptions, but I finally finished editing a video.
Then I had to figure out how to export it in a file size that was reasonable, without losing too much quality. A 16 minute video should not be 12 gigs!
I hope I found a happy medium.
Today’s video is actually sort of a part two. I posted a progress video a month ago. This one.
Today’s video shows the continued progress, getting all the beds shifted over, and the final plantings.
This job took so much longer than it should have! I am, however, happy with things as they are right now. It meant we finally got the last of the transplants in, and even did a bit of direct sowing.
I can’t say it was a good start to the day. I was awakened about about 3am, and the cats kept me from falling back asleep again. I finally got up around 7 to feed the outside cats, have some breakfast, then go back to bed for a few hours of real, honest to goodness, restful sleep.
I did the rest of my rounds quite late, and did get a few things done. As always, I checked on the garden beds. I remembered to bring along the Seychelle green pole bean seeds, to replant them because the Crespo squash. Since so few Carminate purple pole beans germinated, I planted some Seychelle in the gaps. We’ll see if there will be enough growing season left for pole beans! Assuming they germinate at all.
The Royal Burgundy beans that I replanted have quite a few sprouting right now – but only in one row. I’d planted two rows, on either side of the original single row, and there’s just a couple of those that survived. Now, there’s at least half a dozen sprouts coming up, but they area all in the row closer to the outside of the bed. The row closer to the middle has nothing. Very strange!
While going in and out of the sun room for my garden tools and whatnot, I got to see many babies.
The puffy one that’s asleep while through the cube wall is one of Adam’s tinies, and just too cute for words. It won’t let me near it. When it sees me, it immediately runs and hides. This tiny little fluff ball bouncing into the sun room. I want to scoop it up, so badly! 😄
Before heading inside, I gathered a bunch of rhubarb. This has been the best year for rhubarb we’ve had since moving here. The chives are looking amazing, too. We have quite a bit of cream cheese right now, and my daughters are talking about making a chives infused cream cheese spread. That sounds really good!
I’m trying to think of some way to put a barrier around the eggplant and hot pepper bed again. The plastic was completely destroyed by the wind, but I’m thinking what they might actually need is a bit more shade! They don’t seem to be growing much at all, and I think they’re getting baked. Which is odd, considering these are heat loving plants, and they’ve got plenty of heat. Both had done quite well int he wattle weave bed last year, and that bed is heavily shaded by one of the ornamental apple trees – both of which need more pruning, to open them up and let more air and light through. Honestly, I’d take them out completely, if they weren’t a food source for birds in the winter.
Anyhow, that’s pretty much the extent of my “work” today, and that was more fun than work. Sunday is supposed to be my day of rest, but it hasn’t worked out that way lately. We had to do as much as we could outside when there was a break in the rain, no matter what day that fell on. Now that those beds are shifted, and all the transplanting and direct sowing is done, I can get back to taking a regular day of rest. I seem to be really needing it, too. I had been planning to work on editing a video today, but for all that I did get solid sleep this morning, it’s been all I could do not to crawl back into bed all day! Even now, I can feel myself falling asleep at the keyboard. I don’t want to mess up my sleep cycle too much, though, and end up awake all night.
Anyhow.
The video editing will probably wait. It requires more mental focus than I can manage right now.
We’re supposed to get rain starting at about noon tomorrow, and continuing on through to 6am the day after. That would be as good a time as any to work on the video editing.
We didn’t get too excessively hot – our high was 19C/66F – which made a huge difference. As I write this, we’re at 17C/63F, with a “feels like” of 15C/59F. That’s more my kind of weather!
Best of all, we had a break from the rain. We should have another break tomorrow, and then it’s supposed to rain for another two days.
Still, we got enough sunshine to dry some things out.
Today, I wanted to get some direct sowing done – finally!
I decided to plant chard where the spinach is done. That required first removing the netting I set up that turned out to not be long enough to go all the way around the bed. Once that was cleared and put away, I pulled the sad little remaining spinach plants – I wish I knew why they did so poorly! – and weeded the bed. We don’t have a lot of carrots, unfortunately. The cats would go in where there was no netting to keep them out, and use that corner of the bed as a litter box, digging up quite a few carrots in the process. I’d hope to plant more, but it’s too late in the season for carrots, now. Of the overwintered onions that had been transplanted at one end, there are three that survived the transplanting, and they are starting to go to seed!
Speaking of seed, I had both Bright Lights (a rainbow variety) and Fordhook Giant seeds. The cats had gotten into them and chew through the packages, so now they’re all mixed up in the a Ziplock baggie. These are not new seeds, so it will be interesting to see how well they germinate.
Once the planting and weeding was done, I grabbed one of the new nets I picked up at a dollar store and set it up around the bed. I added a couple more support posts around the perimeter. These are salvaged from the frame of a canopy tent a tree fell on, so they all have screw holes in them. Very handy to string line through, to hold the netting in place and keep it from just sliding down the supports! The netting is wide enough that it can reach the trellis netting in the middle, as well as to the ground outside the raised bed. I didn’t bother fastening the netting to the middle, since it’s mostly to keep the cats out. Once the netting was in place, it got some ground staples to hold it down, since it kept wanting to creep back up!
That done, it was time to go to the main garden area, and the last bed that got shifted over. The empty space between the shallots and the yellow bulb onions needed something in it!
The white patty pan and Magda squash that was planted in pots in front of the house did not germinate, so I replanted them there. I also grabbed the G-star pattypan seeds, and planted all three varieties between the onions and the shallots. I used broken bamboo stakes to mark were I’d planted pairs of seeds. I hadn’t pre-soaked them or scarified them, so I made sure they got a deep watering. Then I raked up some of grass clippings and used it to mulch around where the seeds were planted. Then I dampened the mulch, too!
I completely forgot that I wanted to replant the Seychelle pole beans by the Crespo squash. I can do that tomorrow. It’s really late for pole beans, but I’m going to take the chance.
Aside from that, the garden is now finally all in! There are no other beds to plant things in. That will be our next focus: build more beds for next year! Especially the trellis beds. Plus, of course, harvesting more dead spruces to frame all the beds.
Once that was done, I tended to the tomatoes in the old kitchen garden. I didn’t bother taking pictures, since it’s hard to see. They’re starting to get big and bush, and starting to flop. So I grabbed some jute twine and wove it around the pairs of bamboo stakes at each tomato plant, and the tomato stems in between. That was more finnicky work than I expected! The leaves are so dense the jute twine is mostly hidden, but it’s doing its job, and holding the vines up between the support stakes.
I also took some video of the raised beds that got shifted over. I’m planning to do a progress video. I was going to do it tonight, but I’m falling asleep at my keyboard, so I think I’ll call it a night, and work on it tomorrow.
All in all, it turned out to be a decently productive day! Not bad for it starting out as such a bad pain day, this morning. Not bad at all!
I was very happy for a pleasant breeze to cool me down while I was working. I got the last of the bed turned and weeded, the boards laid out to mark where the log frame will go, and the soil evened out and leveled off as best I could.
Since I was wanting to finish off the onions and shallots, I decided to work in a grid instead of rows. I marked off 5 rows lengthwise first,, about 3 or 4 inches apart, then made cross rows, also every 3 or 4 inches apart.
Once the lines were marked out, I used the jet setting on the hose to drive water into all the marked lines. It makes it messier to transplant into, but it evens out the soil and gives deeper moisture for the roots to reach for.
After that, I just laid out the transplants where the lines crossed, starting with the yellow bulb onions at one end. I got to about half way down the bed, maybe a little more, before I finished them. Then I planted the shallots at the opposite end. Last of all, I used the grass clipping mulch I’d removed earlier today, to scatter a light mulch around the transplants.
I was very happy to see that this left me an open space where something can be direct sown. I’ll go through my seeds to see what I’ve got that will mature in less than 2 months, since we basically just have July and August left for a growing season.
This is really late for onion transplants. My intention had been to interplant them with other things, but that doesn’t really work out with the winter squash and melons, since those will get bigger and overshadow the onions. At least I got some in with the tomatoes.
We shall see if the weather holds long enough for all these onions to fully mature!
I’m now going to let my self breathe for a bit. I have some direct sowing to do, including where the spinach was planted, and that’s about it. After a break, I’ll get back to working on the trellis beds. Hopefully, we’ll dry out a bit and the winds will die down, and we’ll be able to harvest more logs for the raised bed frames. The forecast of rain to start this evening and continue for about 4 hours has changed. Now it’s saying we’ll get some rain for about an hour, around 10pm. On Friday, though (today is Tuesday), they’re still saying rain all day, starting about 5am Friday morning, through to 1am on Saturday morning. Aside from the brief rain we’re supposed to get tonight, though, we’re not supposed to get any rain at all until Friday.
I might actually be able to do some mowing! How exciting!
In starting on the last bed that needs to be shifted, I broke up and somewhat leveled the ends and one side, so I could lay out the first boards. The bed that is being shifted had quite a lot of grass clipping mulch around the edges to try and keep the weeds at bay – or at least easier to pull. In the previous bed I’d done, I worked the grass clippings into the soil as it was shifted, but this one had enough that I removed most of it, instead.
Then it was time to start loosening the soil that needs to be shifted, weeding as I went along. It has been taking longer than I expected. I’m shocked by how far from the trees I’m fining elm roots. They have reached pretty much all the way to the end of the bed! I’m not trying to pull them all out, since the bed it going to be raised higher than before, but I could get some of it. Particularly the roots that would get caught up in my garden fork as I loosened the soil!
I suppose it would have been better if the soil in this bed got sifted, but it’s still too wet for that and would just clog up the hardware cloth.
I got maybe a third of the bed weeded and partially shifted before I had to stop for breakfast and hydration. I’m not looking forward to going back out. It’s about 9:30am, and we’ve already reached our expected high of 19C/66F. While my weather app says the humidex is also 19C, when I’m out in the full sun, it sure feels hotter, even though the morning sun is just barely reaching above the spruces while I’m out there! The winds are picking up again, too, and I swear I heard thunder in the distance. There are no storms in our forecast. We’re expecting showers starting around 7pm. It’s actually supposed to start cooling down a few degrees from now on. I think I’ll actually give myself a couple of hours before heading outside again. Now that I’ve got the big stuff done around the bed, the rest shouldn’t take long, and I should be able to get most, if not all, of those onions transplanted when it’s cooler, and before the showers start.
The rest of the garden seems to be holding out well. I’ve removed the mosquito netting that was over most of the melons in the first trellis bed. They are starting to get big enough that they need the extra room. All the other transplants seem to have gotten over any transplant shock and are starting to grow noticeably bigger and stronger. That zucca melon that I found looking smushed, however did not survive, so we’re down to just two of those, and they both look strong and healthy.
I still feel like I’m behind on everything in the garden, but things do seem to be managing all right so far.
The sugar snap peas are starting to bud and bloom. I’m a bit surprised, because the plants are not very big, but there it is!
I also spotted the first summer squash show up; a green zucchini. I was planning to sow more after I finished with the low raised beds in the main garden area. We shall see if any others germinated over the next while. I may not need to re-sow all of them, after all.
The mock orange at the laundry platform now has a few flowers blooming. There are so many buds, it’s going to be a mass of white flowers soon, but for now, it’s just a few scattered around. It’s a shame this was planted where it was. It’s gotten big enough that it gets in the way when we want to use the clothes line. That and the platform needs maintenance and a paint job. We need to transplant it, and I want to find a nice sunny location that will really showcase it, because it’s so gorgeous once it starts blooming.
I like that there always seems to be something starting to bloom, right around when other things are finishing their blooming season.
I should probably prune it off for now, so that more energy should go into the plant itself getting bigger, but it’s just one of three plants blooming, and it looks so pretty.
We do still have a lot of standing water all over, but the area around the garden bed I needed to work on was much improved. Still very wet, to be sure, but at least workable.
The weather forecast predicted a quick thunderstorm and rain at about 8am, so I was out there by about 7. There was a good chance the tiny storm on the radar would miss our location entirely, so I wasn’t too concerned. Mostly, I wanted to get things done before it got too hot – and things were getting hot pretty fast!
The main thing I wanted to get done was to break and turn the sod in the new area. That ended up taking a bit longer than expected. The wet ground did make it a bit easier to remove some of the bigger tap roots and rhizomes. This area, however, turned out to have a lot more tree roots under it – most of which were deep enough to leave alone, but shallow enough for the garden fork to get hung up on them. It also has a lot more, and bigger, rocks. Again, a lot were deep enough to leave after the sod was turned, but in many places I couldn’t push the fork into the ground without having to fight to get around rocks.
But that part is now done, and I left it to go in for breakfast. It’s supposed to be very hot today, so I don’t mind leaving the exposed roots to bake in the sun. The stalks from corn that was grown here last year were still around, so those are going to be buried when the soil that needs to be moved, gets shifted over.
I had the hardest time falling asleep for some reason, but woke up at 5am, so I’ve only had 2 or 3 hours of sleep. I can barely keep my eyes open right now.
Napping through the hottest part of the day is probably a good idea, anyhow!
The Re-Farmer 