We have a first sighting of Caramel’s babies! I thought they might be in the wood pile (which we thought was a junk pile, until we took the junk off the top), since I would sometimes see her disappear under it, but cats in general like to shelter under there.
As I was heading back to the house, I spotted a grey tabby by the opening under the tarp. When it saw me, it ducked under. For the briefest of moments, I saw an orange face peek out, then Caramel stuck her head out and stared at me. She seemed to be okay with my watching from where I was and came out. Her little grey one came out soon after, and then the orange one – which turned out to be orange and white – came out and stayed behind Caramel. I stayed long enough to see if any others would come out, but it looks like there are just the two of them.
As for things outside.
The water has been absorbed in some places, though everything is still very wet. I lifted the mosquito netting cover off the potatoes, since the elms are no longer dropping seeds, and over the chain link fence. I will leave it there for now, as the blowing of the netting should startle the deer away. Not that they’ll eat potato plants, but it might keep them from going into the yard and eating other things. I considered lifting the netting off the chocolate cherry tomatoes, too, but they don’t seem to be hampered by it at all, so I’m leaving it for now.
I took the cover off the bed with the German Butterball potatoes. They’re getting so big, they are starting to crowd against the netting. I set the cover on top of the old dog houses by the outhouse, for now. It’s pretty much the only place with enough for it, while also keeping it off the wet ground.
It looks like I will need to try planting the Seychelle beans again. Only a few have come up in one row, and none at all in the other. The seeds are a few years old and, between that and the weather we’ve been having, it’s no surprise if they don’t come up.
I did plant more of the Royal Burgundy bush beans. In fact, I had enough seeds to plant a row on either side of the original row, which has only one successfully sprouted bean plant coming up. I still have seeds left over, too. For some reason, I remember having only enough seeds to plant one short row, but these are the same brand’s seeds as before. I’ll have to check my seeds bin and see if I still have some left, after all. With only one bean successfully germinating (plus one more that broke ground and that’s about it), I figured planting two more rows on either side of the original row would hopefully ensure we have at least a few bush beans survive!
The water around the bed I was going to work on next has been mostly absorbed into the ground, and I considered working on it – but only for a moment. It’s 22C/72F out there, with a humidex of 28C/83F. I was not about to do that kind of work in full sun with this level of heat and humidity. I did do a bit of weeding, through. With the ground so wet, I could pull some of the weeds out, tap root and all. A bit of that was more than enough to convince me, turning new sod and shifting the remains of that bed over is just not something I should be doing right now! If I get out early enough tomorrow morning, though, I should be able to get it done and, if all goes well, transplant the last of the onions. Since I have so many, and this bed won’t have anything else in it, I should be able to get away with planting them a bit denser, too. It would be great if I could get all the onions, plus the last few shallots, in. It’s getting really late for onions. They really should have been planted in late May, as they prefer the cooler temperatures, but we shall see how they do.
Once that’s done, I can breathe a sigh of relief for a little while. Then I can look into seeing what I can do in the gaps where things that were direct sown didn’t come up, and replant where the spinach was sown. What little spinach came up and actually grew is now bolting in the heat! We never got anything to harvest, even out of those.
Maybe I’ll just plant more of the Uzbek carrots. I intended to plant a lot more carrots, but the beds are all full of winter squash and melons, which grow too big to interplant carrots under. I could have planted them under the tomatoes, but the onions needed to be transplanted – plus, the onions should help deter deer and other pests from the tomatoes.
Well, writing this just got interrupted quite a bit. A racoon was back in the sun room and had to be chased off repeatedly. We’re prepared to deal with it, once the opportunity arises. There is, however, a second one, and I haven’t seen both at the same time since last night.
For now, I’m going to enjoy watching kittens on the critter cam.
Oh!!! Did I just see a white kitten running by past a window??? It would be so great if the white babies came back, too! We were making such good progress in socializing those ones.
Ah, well. What will be, will be.
Oh… that’s a skunk I just saw walking by this time…
This morning, I was planning to work on shifting that last bed in the main garden area. I knew it would be wet, but figured it wouldn’t be too bad by then, since the rain had stopped so much earlier than forecast.
I didn’t real we got more rain overnight.
There is even more open water around the inner yard than every before. The ground is so saturated, it’s just got nowhere to go.
We’re supposed to get quite warm today, and tomorrow they’re now saying to expect a high of 28C/82F. The forecast now also says no rain until Friday. Which would mean, counting the rest of today, 5 days with no rain, and most of Friday, too.
I really hope this forecast is accurate!
I didn’t get to work on the low raised bed, but I did get to check out other things.
I managed to get a decent picture of Junk Pile. She normally doesn’t sit still long enough. I also saw all four of her babies, though I only got pictures of three. They are spending most of their time in the sun room. Understandably, they are more nervous than before, and are quick to run under the shelf counter to hide.
As for Junk Pile, I was keeping tabs with the critter cam last night. I saw her nursing her babies in the sun room and being generally maternal.
Then I heard her start growling and attacking something in the opening of the tied off outside door.
She didn’t succeed in driving the racoon away, but she tried!
I went and chased it out. It had gone straight for the cat cage, where I like to keep some food for the kittens.
We have got to do something about the racoons!
There is still no sign of the white and grey babies, though I do see the mama every time I go out to feed them. I startled Broccoli’s two in the garden shed when I opened it to leave food inside for them. I probably shouldn’t do that, since I want them to come to the front of the house, but Broccoli stands guard over them and being very protect and, after what happened to the newborns, they are probably safter in there. Mind you, they aren’t quite so helpless, but still…
So I’ll be monitoring how things are outside today, and see how much things get absorbed. While doing my rounds this morning, I went to check the barn to make sure the top half of the back door didn’t get blown open again. The tall grass has been flattened by the wind in places, and my pantlegs were still soaked to above my knees. I was splashing through water the whole way. All around the house in the inner yard, I’m seeing water where I’ve never seen it before, even growing up here as a child. My brother, who would remember things much clearer than me, says the same thing. I still hope to get work done on that bed, since tomorrow – Monday – is supposed to get so hot, but it might have to wait until Tuesday. Wednesday, I’ll be making my first city shopping trip, then the second one on Friday, so I’ll be trying to get things done in between. If things dry up enough, my daughter might be able to do some mowing while I’m gone, too. At least in the parts we’ve managed to mow so far.
Looking at my posts from a year ago, we’re not that far behind. It was a year ago tomorrow that I got our last transplants in – however, I also had our direct sowing done by now, and this year we have barely any direct sowing to do.
We went a little nuts on the winter squash and melons this year. They need a lot of space.
If I can’t work on the bed, I should at least remember to plant the new purple bush beans seeds I picked up, to replace the ones where only one germinated.
Mostly, though, I want to get that last bed done so I can finish transplanting the onions! Once those are in, time will be less of an issue. It shouldn’t even take all that long, either, since it’s not full of creeping Charlie and the soil doesn’t need to be sifted.
Well, if not today, we should be able to get it done tomorrow.
The Dalvay peas seemed to just explode overnight, and almost the entire row is filled with pea shoots. The Yukon Chief corn has also seen quite a growth spurt.
The beans don’t seem to be doing well this year. I could explain that away for the older seeds, but the purple bush beans were fresh seeds, and there’s just one bean that has sprouted! Hopefully, more will appear in the next while, but if they don’t, some of them will get a second sowing or, if I’m out of a particular seed, something else will be sowed in place.
My main goal for this morning was to get those tomatoes and as many onions as I could, transplanted, and I’m happy to day that has been accomplished!
The first thing was to break up the clumps of soil that were hilled into the new bed location and pull out as many roots and weeds (and rocks) as I could. This bed was in so much better shape than the previous one, it didn’t take very long at all. From there, it was using the thatching rake to even out the hill of soil between the boards – the north send, where the bed was extended, had to have more soil spread into it – and level the top for planting. Of course, more weeds, roots and rocks were removed at the same time.
Then I brought the transplants over. There were seven San Marzano tomatoes left, including one that wasn’t looking very good at all. I also happened to have exactly seven bamboo stakes left, to use as their supports, which was nice. I pre-dug holes for them down the middle of the bed, as evenly spaced as I could eyeball it, then used the jet setting on the hose to fill each hole with water, and basically drill the water deeper into the holes. I want those roots to have water below them to encourage them to grow deep.
I removed the transplants from their cells into the bottom drain tray to make it easier to carry them around. That last tomato that looked the most beat up, though, didn’t come out with its soil, but broke off, instead. I could still see some roots on the stem, though, so I kept it. I just transplanted that one at the north end of the bed, closest to the trees. I don’t really expect it to make it, nor do I expect that end of the bed to do as well as the rest, because of those !%$@# elms.
The tray still had vermiculite topped soil in it from the tomatoes that didn’t survive, so I dumped all that into the drain tray, then put a bit of it around each of the tomato plants. I didn’t bury the stems deep – they didn’t need it – but I did plant them deep, so each one is in a bit of a hollow, so water will flow towards the roots and seep into the soil there, instead of flowing down the sides of the bed.
Once the tomatoes were in, I made a narrow trench all around the perimeter of the bed, except the north end, which doesn’t quite quite a much soil, still, so it’s basically a long U shaped trench. That got watered with the hose on the jet setting, too.
For the onions, I chose the tray with the yellow bulb onions. I keep forgetting the name of the variety. It’s a good thing I record all this here in the blog! They are Frontier onions, noted for strong necks, consistent size and disease resistance. They are supposed to mature 100 days from transplant, which means I’m really late in getting these in the ground. Hopefully, we’ll have a mild fall, and the frost will hold off until October.
The tray I used for the onions was a vegetable party tray, divided into 4 spaces around the perimeter, and a shallow circle in the middle where a dipping sauce was kept. I am really liking this design. After giving the tray a thorough soak, to make it easier to separate the onions, I could just grab on section of onions and carry it with me as I went around the bed, pulling out and spacing the onions in the trench. I was able to finish off one section, plus another dozen or so transplants from another.
Once those were planted, I make more shallow trenched between each tomato plant and repeated the process. I was able to fit three or four transplants between each tomato, with enough space to fit five in one area. In hindsight, I probably could have planted the ones around the perimeter closer together, but what’s done is done. I wasn’t able to fit even half the tray of onions in!
The last thing to do was give the transplants a gentle watering, to settle the soil around their roots. It actually started to rain while I was doing this, but so little, I barely got wet.
When I looked at the forecast last night, it was saying we could expect rain for a couple of hours, starting at about 7 this evening. It is now saying the rain will start at about 5pm, and continuing until 1am! Today is Saturday, and the forecast says we will not have more rain again until late Wednesday night.
We shall see.
Now that the tomatoes are in (yay!!), there are the rest of the yellow onions to transplant, a few remaining shallots, and the Orange Butterfly Flower. I was going to try direct sowing some of that, but it just didn’t happen. I still don’t know where I want to plant them, since it has to be in a permanent location. I want it to be near the main garden area, but where I think would be best for them is going to see a lot of traffic and commotion as we build the frames for the beds.
The main thing, though, is the tomatoes are in. This bed will need to have mulch added around the sides, to keep the soil from being eroded, until we can get it properly framed.
This leaves one more bed to shift over. Like this one, the last one shouldn’t take very long, comparatively speaking. It’s more a matter of working around the heat of the day. From the looks of it, the entire bed could be filled with the remaining onion and shallot transplants. I might even have some left over.
Today, however, we’ve already reached our high of 21C/70F. It’s not even noon yet, which means we could still get hotter over the afternoon. Tomorrow’s high is supposed to be 22C/72F, and then we’ll get our hottest day on Monday, with an expected high of 27C/81F. After that, it should cool down a bit, but still remain in the 20’s for a while. Hopefully, we’ll have enough dry days to get the lawn mowed, and maybe even cut/process more logs to frame the beds. I might just go ahead and scythe in the outer yard a bit, tomorrow, so the hay can dry for a bit before being gathered and used as mulch. Grass clippings are great, but when green, wet clippings are dumped in a pile, the inside of the pile gets astonishingly hot. Then it gets all slimy, while the exposed grass on top dries out. Once the insides gets slimy, it’s not much use as a mulch and we just leave it to compost.
Meanwhile, it turns out we need to make another trip to Walmart. We’re almost out of kibble, and first disability check doesn’t come in until the middle of next week, when we do our first stock up shopping trip. The Cat Lady has said she’ll acquire some cat food donations for us, but they’re going to be in the US for a couple of weeks, so I don’t expect that anytime soon. They’re packing their bags now.
Well, time for me to get changed and head out to get kibble!
The mulch around it was flattened, too, in an almost perfect circle. It looked like a cat took a nap on it!
I lifted it up and found that it did not seem to be damaged. I found some short support posts that used to be part of a canopy tent frame that a tree fell on a few winters ago. I set one beside each melon. A cat could still lie on the mulch beside in between, but not on a melon plant – at least not without being right up against a stick!
Yesterday, I’d turned the raw sod on the next raised bed that needed to be shifted. I’d hoped the exposed roots would get to back in the sun, but instead, they got watered by the series of storms we got. I was going to my mothers, so I didn’t do any weeding, as it would have been too messy. Instead, I used the thatching rake to break up some clumps around three sides and level them a bit, then set out boards to mark where the logs will go.
Then I just used a garden fork to turn the soil from the bed in it’s old location, piling it into the new location. Against, I didn’t try to weed, so it went really fast. This bed was in so much better condition than the last one, with all that creeping Charlie in it! Once the soil was moved, I used the rake to level the edge, as well as the area where the bed was that would become path, before adding the last of the boards to frame around it.
Then I had a few things to do, before doing to my mother’s and helping her with her groceries. These days, she just gives me her list and I do the shopping for her, and put it all away. It was actually a pretty good visit, until just before I left. She’s started to talk about coming here to the farm for a visit. The problem is, she behaves so badly here, especially towards my family, they don’t want her here. She also has no interest in seeing what we’ve done here at the farm. She want to see reasons to tell us what we’re going wrong, tell me how terrible I am at taking care of the place (because I’m doing things differently than she did), and rag about what a terrible parent I am for keeping the girls tied to my apron strings (the idea that they chose to out here to help with the property, and their disabled father, just doesn’t sink in with her), and so on. I tried to explain to her about the problems with her behaviour. The truth is, I’d love for my mother to come and visit. I’d love to be able to show her the progress we’ve made, and talk about our plans. But that is not anything my mother has any interest in.
One of the things I’d showed her on my phone was some video I’d taken of the tree that fell on the outhouse, then of the swaying of the trees. She commented on all the “dry” trees (the dead spruces), and I said we need to cut them down. She asked if I’d talked to my brother about this and I told her, yes (I’d already told her I’d sent him the video), and that we’d be cutting down the dead trees. Then I corrected myself and said that it would mostly be my younger daughter doing that.
At which point, my mother started saying that using a chain saw was a “man’s job”, and she can’t do that. I told her, Mom, anyone can use a chainsaw. But that’s a man’s work! I should get my brother to do it!
So… we aren’t doing enough, because we’re not doing things the way she wants them to be done, but we’re also not supposed to be doing any “men’s work” because we’re female.
Well, at least this time, she didn’t go on about how sorry she feels for me, not having a man around the house.
I guess, because my husband is disabled, he’s not a man anymore?
She says awful stuff like that all the time, but when I tried to explain that people don’t want to be around her because of this, she twisted things around to make herself as the victim and me as the big meany.
Not a good way to end the visit.
I did have somewhere else to go, though. I’d made arrangements with a homesteading friend to buy some eggs. She wasn’t going to be home, so they were going to be tucked into a safe spot outside, where I could also leave the payment. I didn’t want the eggs to be outside in this heat for long – when I started writing this, we were at 23C/73F, with the humidex putting it at 28C/83F, and it was hotter where my mother lives than here – so I wanted to leave as soon as I could. I actually got there before my friend had left, so we even got to catch up for a bit – and she gave me extra eggs, because she needed the room in her fridge! 😄
I was considering whether or not I could continue on the bed once I got home, but there’s no way I can do that kind of work in this level of heat and humidity. It will wait until the morning.
Tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter by the afternoon, and we’re supposed to get more rain in the evening.
*sigh*
I’d really like just a few day’s break in the rain, so the ground and dry up a bit and we can try mowing some lawn again. At least the parts we managed to do, previously, since the taller stuff is just too wet. We’d need probably a week without rain before we could do anything about those areas.
Or a couple of cows to graze the outer yard for a week or two!
We really need some grazing animals! As long as we could keep them out of the garden beds, I’d be letting them graze in the main garden area. That would be good for the soil, too.
My daughter wants sheep, for their fleece, as she wants to spin her own yarn. I would like a couple of milk goats. That would be on top of the chickens I want to get!
We’ll get there. It might take a while, but we’ll get there.
For now, building up the garden beds is the main focus.
My brother and I were both saying how we don’t remember there ever being so much water in the yard before. Even when it flooded, a couple of springs ago, it didn’t get this bad. Yes, the flooding was more severe in places, but the ground didn’t get saturated right up to the house, and stay saturated for so long, like it is now! Every time it rains, the standing water returns, because the ground it just too saturated to absorb it. This, even though we have high drainage in our soil, what with it being basically gravel with a few inches of top soil.
Oh! I found an excellent picture of what our soil is like, at this web site.
This image belongs to Joselito (Lito) M. Arocena, UNBC and was taken in Edmonton, Alberta, but it’s exactly what we’ve got here, too. If there is any different I could find, it would be that we have more small rocks in between the second and third layers.
I keep hitting them with the garden fork or spade, while shifting the beds!
Yet another reason why raised beds are the way to go for our gardening!
For now, I just want to get these last two beds done, and get the last of the transplants in. If there’s room for direct sowing, that would be bonus, at this point.
My focus was on breaking raw ground and flipping sod in the area the bed will be shifted to. I’d only done about a foot at one end, last night. I was able to turn all the sod in the marked off area with only a few interruptions, like breaking up a cat fight! I was hitting a lot more rocks with the garden fork in this bed, compared to others! With so many, I only took the time to toss out the larger ones.
By the time it was done, things were starting to get hot, so I stopped there. The next step will be to move enough of the soil from the bed’s current location to be able to set out the boards marking where the logs will be. Then the soil will be moved to the permanent location.
For now, however, the turned soil will be left for the feed roots to bake in the sun. I’ll pull out the biggest ones as I continue, but most of the smaller roots should get killed off just from being exposed to heat and drying out.
I’m hoping to get this bed done and the last tomatoes transplanted, fairly quickly. This afternoon, we’ll be heading out to get birthday pizza. Along the way, we need to go to the Purolator drop off in my mother’s town. Our 4 pound bucket of lysine is in! Tomorrow (Friday), I’ll be going to my mother’s to help her with groceries, which usually takes up most of the day. The forecast now says rain on Saturday, but not until the evening.
Still lots to get done!
The Re-Farmer
ps: I was about to publish this, when I saw movement on the critter cam. Was it the mama going to the babies?
No!
It was a racoon, looking for kibble!
I used the critter cam to shoo it out, only to see a skunk run past the sunroom door after the racoon ran out.
I got a late start to the day, unfortunately. I just didn’t get to sleep until sometime past 3am.
What got me going was nothing pleasant, though. The septic pump was running and not shutting off again. I checked the filter, and it was running dry, so I shut it off. After priming the filter and turning it back on again, it just drained the filter and kept running dry.
We’ve got an old garden hose with a missing male coupling set up in the basement, just for times like this. It’s hooked up to the cold water tap that the washing machine used to be hooked up to, before the laundry set up got moved upstairs. Every now and then, I run it through the drain in the floor, towards the septic tank. There is a bottleneck it always hits, roughly under the basement wall. It takes some wiggling and shifting before the end of the hose can get through what opening is left. Usually, from there, it’s clear to the tank. Lately, though, it’s been hitting another barrier. This morning, I wasn’t able to get through it with the hose. When testing out the septic pump, though, it was working as normal again, so I left it.
I’ll get back to that, later!
Once outside (and after playing with any kittens that would let me!), I started on transplanting shallots with the peppers in the high raised bed. I kept forgetting to do that, and I didn’t want it to be forgotten again!
I considered doing the yellow onions, instead – none of those have been transplanted, yet! – but decided against it. They will form larger bulbs than the shallots, and I figured they would do better with more space than the shallots need.
One thing about the cover being sized to fit the box beds in the east yard: the frame is narrower, but longer, than the high raised bed. Which means there’s contact with the logs in only 4 small spots. This meant I didn’t have to worry about squishing any of the transplants when I put it back on. This cover has fencing wire on it, and a larger mesh. I am hoping that, as the peppers get taller, they can grow into the fencing wire arch, which will support them, while their growing habit should still leave enough light and air for the shallots to grow.
We’ll see if this actually works out!
With those done, the next priority was getting the Zucca melon in, and for that, I had to set up the kiddie pool as a garden bed.
We used it to grow melons last year, so it already has drainage holes in the bottom. I added a fairly thick layer of grass clippings on the bottom. This should act as a bit of a sponge to hold water, before it finally drains out, as it breaks down.
For the soil, I “stole” several wheelbarrow loads from the last bed that needs to be shifted over. The alternative was to push my way through the overgrown grass to the pile of garden soil in the outer yard with the wheel barrow, and sifting each load.
The soil in this bed just needs weeding, not sifting, and most of the weeds had deep tap roots. Aside from the tree roots and a bit of crab grass, it didn’t take long to weed the soil after it was loosened with a garden fork, then shoveling it into the wheelbarrow, where I could get any other weeds and roots I might have missed.
I had to remind myself not to fill the wheelbarrow as much as usual. The soil is still quite moist, making it a lot heavier than usual. All that meant was that it took three loads instead of two, to fill the kiddie pool deep enough.
Finally, the zucca melon could be planted! These can grow melons up to 60 pounds in weight. If they actually grow this year, they should need take up a lot of space! Last year, they were in the bed where the bare root strawberries went last year. The plants never thrived, and what melons began to from, started to rot and die before getting more than 6 or 8 inches long. After prepping the bed for the strawberries, I now know that bed was being choked out by elm roots, too. This won’t happen with the kiddie pool as a raised bed. Last year, the pool was set up and the end of one of the beds I’ve been working on, quite close to the elms and maple. When I cleaned it up in the fall, there were no tree roots in it at all, unlike the fabric grow bags! So hopefully, this year, the Zucca melon will actually have a chance to grow and thrive!
Once that was done, it was time to go inside for lunch. As I was eating, I realized I was hearing the septic pump … and it wasn’t shutting off!
So I hid my food from the cats and headed for the basement. After priming the filter a few times, and it would still run dry, I tried pushing the hose through the floor drain again.
It did not work out very well at all.
First, I couldn’t get past the nearer bottleneck. After much fighting, I finally got it through the opening, but then it hit the second bottle neck, and that was it. It would not go past and into the tank.
Unfortunately, to do this, I was absolutely killing my left arm. Yes, I’m mostly ambidextrous, but if I need to do anything that requires a higher level of control or strength, I use my left arm. It was absolutely brutal on my damaged elbow.
I finally gave up, left septic pump off, and headed back upstairs. The fact that I hadn’t finished eating and was still very hungry did not help!
After cleaning myself up and finishing lunch, I went back at it, this time with a daughter. I still couldn’t get the hose through at the floor drain, and neither could my daughter. We ended up getting the tool kit so we could open the access pipe, instead. Normally, these can just be opened with a special screw cap – bronze, in our case – but that is fused in place. The entire top needs to be removed, and that’s held in place with screw clamps around strip of rubber and… some kind of finely corrugated metal that I think is aluminum.
So we got that pulled off and tried again with running the hose through. It worked much better, this time! We got through the first bottleneck fairly easily, and it was only a bit more effort to get through the second bottleneck. Finally, we were able to push the hose all the way into the tank!
At which point I went outside and opened the lid to take a look.
Do you know that it’s very hard to see anything when looking into a dark tank in bright sunshine? Meanwhile, I was being totally paranoid and holding my glasses against my face every time I tried to lean over and see. Finally, a cloud passed over the sun, and I could see!
But what did I see?
Well, I could eventually figure out where the float was. There’s a lot of gunk floating at the top, but I could see a couple of spot with flowing water in them – that would be water from the weeping tile, since no one in the household was using water at the time. I got my daughter to try wiggling the hose around, but I still couldn’t see it. It was somewhere under the gunk.
What I think is happening is, as the pump runs and the liquid level drops, the float is probably getting hung on something. Something that running the hose through manages to knock loose, finally allowing the float to drop and trigger the pump to stop running.
As I closed up the tank and went back inside, my daughter kept working with the hose. She could actually feel when she managed to knock something out of the way. I turned the water on, and she kept at it for a while. The septic pump turned on while she was doing this, and we could see water flowing through the filter, so this was now running as normal.
After she was done with that, I took over and ran the hose in the floor drain, towards the weeping tile under the new part basement floor. We know the weeping tile in the north corner is somehow messed up. Plus, we get tree roots growing through. We could see the water turn silty while I pushed the hose, with the water running, as far as it could go.
Once that was done, I decided to not bother tightening the cap on the access pipe again, since we will likely be running a hose through there, instead of the floor drain, regularly. So my daughter put away the tools and headed out while I closed things up and hung the hose back up where we store it. There’s quite a bit of water on the floor, with all the rain we’ve been having, the floor is damp or flooded in places, even with all the fans and blowers running.
Our electric bill is going to be brutal. With the equal payment plan, I won’t be surprised of the monthly payments don’t jump quite a bit, and not just because they’re increasing the price per kw, either.
That all took way longer than it should have, and I was very frustrated.
My husband, meanwhile, helped the only way he could… and I’m torn about it.
He used his Amazon credit card to buy me a commercial level drain auger, so we won’t be fighting with a hose. I don’t know that it will clear the nearer bottleneck, though. I fear that is the cast iron pipe collapsing, and that running an auger through would damage it more. That would really mess us up, since repairing that would probably require breaking through the concrete floor in the basement, and excavating between the basement wall and the septic tank outside, to replace it.
*sigh*
I don’t even want to think of it.
That done, and the water flowing through properly again, I needed to destress.
For me, that means manual labour! Yay!
I headed back outside (topped of the cat food for the evening, played with a kitten…) and to the garden.
We had reached the hottest part of the day by then, and I realized I’d forgotten about the melon bed. We have a few small piles of straw mulch from last year that I raided.
The Zucca got watered after transplanting, of course, but after the mulch was laid down, I gave that a good soaking, too. I had considered putting a jug in the middle for watering, like with the pumpkins and drum gourds, but using the kiddie pool as a raised bed, with the grass clipping base, makes that unnecessary. It will take a while for water to drain, so the Zucca roots should find all the water they need before it finished draining.
I soaked down the mulch on the other beds, too.
Last of all, I started working on shifting the next low raised bed. That meant breaking new ground where the bed will be shifted over, and turning the sod, first.
I didn’t get very far. It was just too hot!
So I’ve left it for now.
My current plan is to try going to bed early, and hopefully actually falling asleep, so that I can get an early start tomorrow. This bed should go much faster than the last one, as it’s nowhere near as weed filled. I want to get at least a few hours in, in the morning. It’s supposed to get a lot hotter than today, in the afternoon. Which makes it a good time for us to do our combined birthday/father’s day pizza night, courtesy of my older daughter.
Based on the current forecasts, we’re supposed to get hotter every day until Monday (it’s Wednesday, today), but not get any rain until Saturday evening. After Monday, it will cool down a little, with no other rain in the 10 day forecast.
We shall see.
We’re in the final stretch to get things in the ground! For transplants, it’s just those last few San Marzano tomatoes, the yellow onions and a few shallots, and the Orange Butterfly Flower. Those have to go somewhere where they can be treated as a perennial, and I’m not sure where that will be just yet!
For all the garden plans we made over the winter, we’re basically flying by the seat of our pants right now.
Our forecast had changed to rain starting last night, continuing though today and tonight, no rain during the day tomorrow, but rain again at night.
Well, all of that seemed to just hit us at once, last night!
It started off gentle enough, to I left our remaining transplants out, but let my daughter know they were out there. When she heard the downpour, she ran out to bring them in.
They were still there, this morning. The mama may have wanted them in the cat house, but they definitely prefer the cat cage in the sun room!
It was looking like I wouldn’t be up to working on that next bed today, last night. I had to get someone else to put the bath chair in the tub so I could take a shower. Then, as I got up from my office chair and walked across the room, I got hit with a Charlie Horse. I ended up needing one of my daughters to assist me for the next while, until I could finally crawl into bed.
In the end, it’s a moot point. There is no way we’re going to be doing much of anything in the yard or garden today.
The paths around the garden beds are all full of water, including around the beds that still need to be shifted. The melons I planted last night seem to have handled the battering just fine, as did everything else, which I am most thankful for. In fact, of the stuff that got planted earlier, just about everything is growing really well. The only exception is the struggling spinach, really, and that is a different issue completely. Spinach has been really hit or miss for us. Either it does really great, or not at all.
So we shift our goals for today.
With Father’s Day and my younger daughter’s birthday being in the same month, my older daughter is planning to treat us to a pizza night, later this week. We were also going to do an extra trip ahead of that, as she has other things she wants to get (like heat and eats for those hot days when no one is up to cooking), and I’m planning to get a cake of some kind. Probably a cheese cake, as that’s the birthday girls’ favourite. 😊
So we will be doing that trip, today. We’ll be heading to the nearer city, so I’ll be taking advantage of that to combine errands.
We are supposed to get a bit more rain this evening, then on rain for three days, then rain all day on Saturday. Hopefully, those three days will be enough for us to get more done in the garden, and get those tomatoes and Zucca melon transplanted!
Since moving our here, we’ve had drought, heat waves, flooding, and now spring so wet, we’ve now got more water in the yard than we did the spring we flooded! At least roads are being washed out.
As far as I know, anyhow!
Well, it is what it is. We’ll just have to deal with things as they come. What else can we do?
I don’t know why Instagram now cuts the sides off my photos, even though I select the wide image function.
I got about half way through the bed, sifting the soil, when I stopped for a break that ended up taking longer than I intended. Which is okay. It gave the soil I needed to move time to dry out a bit. Sifting damp soil is a lot harder and heavier. I’m amazed my home made soil sifter is still surviving the abuse!
By the time I was done fighting with my garden tour video and getting it uploaded, it was quite a bit later before I could get back at it. Thankfully, today has been cooler, with a pleasant breeze. I was greatly appreciating that!
The last bit of soil that needed to be worked on was the worst. This was the section full of creeping Charlie, and I was digging up and tossing large clumps of it. In the end, by the time I finished sifting the last of the soil from the old bed location, there wasn’t enough left to finish the new bed location. I ended up “stealing” soil from the last bed that will be worked on.
By then, it started to rain, but it was just a gentle shower, so I kept at it. Once the bed was done, I brought over the melons. I’d already gone through them and sorted them by type. I kept the Zucca melons aside, since they get huge. I’m thinking of using the kiddie pool as a raised bed, just for them, and setting it somewhere where they can spread.
There were a total of 16 melons to transplant, and I decided to dedicate the entire bed to them. I don’t know that we’ll be able to trellis them, since they will need stronger trellises than what we’re setting up for the beans and peas. If we end up not being able to add trellises, they should have room to spread on the ground and into the paths, if need be.
So this bed now has two rows of eight melons in it. As with the other squash and melons, I planted them slightly below grade and made hills of soil around them, so water would flow towards the plants rather than run down the sides of the bed and take the soil with it. The rain had pretty much stopped by the time that was done, so they got a good watering, too.
The bed still needs a mulch added to it, but it’s getting late, so that will be done tomorrow, when I will also started working on the next bed. That one needs to be shifted a lot, too, but it’s not as weedy and isn’t infested with creeping Charlie like this one was, so it should go somewhat faster. The hard part will be breaking the sod in the new location – and I don’t have anymore carboard that can be put over it, before shifting the soil on top.
This bed is where the last of the San Marzano tomatoes will finally be planted. There aren’t a lot of those left to transplant, so there will be room for other things.
Hmm… I should probably set up the kiddie pool and fill it with soil for the Zucca melons, first. They need to be transplanted more urgently than the tomatoes. That means sifting several loads of soil from the pile in the outer yard.
Once the transplants are in, I hope to be able to do some direct sowing, still. It’s getting really late for that. Our first frost date is September 10, so we’ve basically got July and August for things to grow, since if I plant things within the next 7-10 days, they will take the rest of June just to germinate.
What we don’t have a lot of is stuff that can be harvested throughout the summer. I’ve got three types of beans planted, and the very first Seychelle bean was sprouting this morning. The sugar snap peas are going to be awhile before there’s anything to harvest from them. The spinach is doing so poorly, I’m thinking of taking them out completely, and planting some chard or something, instead. I think it’s getting too late to plant more carrots, but I’ll check the information on my packages to be sure.
What I will likely do is direct sow more summer squash, since right now we just have some in pots. They haven’t germinated yet. Since summer squash gets harvested while still quite small, planting them in late June should be okay. As long as I can keep the slugs away! I haven’t actually seen slugs yet, so hopefully, we won’t have a bag year of them, like we did last year.
We shall see how things work out! Hopefully, we’ll even get weather that will allow us to harvest more dead spruces and build the frames around these beds, and maybe even continue the trellis beds, by fall.
Much work to be done.
It’s a good thing I love this kind of work! Even if I do have to pain killer up for it.
Speaking of which… time to do that, before this broken old body starts to seize up! 😄😄
I apologize for the image quality. I had to reduce it to get a reasonable file size. Even so, it took way too long to upload. When I first started, it said it would take 35 minutes, so I lay down and closed my eyes.
Two hours later, I checked on it, and it said 88% and 5 minutes left. Half a minute later, it said 89% and 19 minutes left… wtf??
But, here it is! A tour of our garden, such as it is so far.
We had short, fast downpours throughout the night. It never really cooled down, though. I was hoping to get out early again but, at 5am, it was already 18C/64F, and still blowing like crazy. Things have calmed down a bit – still very windy, but the sun is out. All the areas that had finally become just wet, rather than filled with standing water, are once again filled with standing water. I’m glad we got as much mowing as we did. It’s going to be a while before we can try again.
When I came out this morning, there were plenty of cats eager for food, at least. The poor long haired cats are just soaking wet. I didn’t see any kittens at the time, though. When I finished my rounds and was coming around the laundry platform, when a single, wet little kitten climbed out from under the platform and onto a step. I’d left a bit of kibble there, and it seemed to be sniffing for it.
This is the kitten that has been the most willing to be cuddled, so I picked him up and did just that, so warm it up. He was a bit nervous about being carried around until I set up a small bowl of kibble in the cat cage and put him beside it, at which point he started chowing down!
Over the next while, I kept looking for the other kittens. Yesterday, it seems the litter was down or 3, so I was concerned it was now down to one. He was okay with running around and playing in the sun room, at least, and I kept an eye open for any others.
With the soil being far too wet to continue working on the garden bed, I decided to make recordings for a garden tour video, in spite of things looking a mess and being half done. After I finished that, I paused to pull some burdock coming up from under the cat house – and startled a baby! The two other kittens were inside the cat house! That makes me so happy. The cats haven’t been using it much, lately – it probably gets pretty hot and muggy in there at times like right now. The kittens were happily playing in the entrance, though, so I brought the other one over and they immediately started all horsing around together.
As I write this, we’re now at 21C/70F, with an expected high of 22C/72F. The winds are supposed to die down this afternoon. We should get a break from the rain for today and tomorrow, though we’re supposed to get more the next evening. Hopefully, that will give use the time we need to finish those beds and get the last transplants in.
Either that, or I’ll have time to put the garden tour video together, at least.
Looking out the window right now, we definitely aren’t getting the break from the wind, yet! I’m honestly amazed I found only a couple of fallen branches. The box frame over the eggplant and hot peppers is tied down and holding, but even the plastic around it is still there, though the bottoms keep getting pulled loose and need to be weighted down again. I’ve given up tacking down the mosquito netting at the chain link fence. They are well secured at the top, to the fence itself, but the ground staples keep getting yanked out, and most have disappeared. Bricks used to weigh the bottoms down just get flipped off. This netting lets water through, but the weave is still fine enough that they are more like sails than nets. They still do the job of keeping the elm seeds off. Those, at least, are almost done their season.
On the plus side, our water table may finally be recovered from all those years of drought that started before we moved out here! I’m not sure where to find that out. Plus, this is normally fire season. I’m quite liking not having to deal with smoke for weeks at a time!
There’s always a trade off of one kind or another, both good and bad. We just hope to have more good than bad!
The Re-Farmer 