Gardening

More than expected

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Much to my surprise, it actually worked!

I got to bed “early” (which, for me, is anything before midnight), got actual sleep, and was outside and working while it was still cool out!

I even made sure to have breakfast before I headed outside, so that I could get right to work after finishing my rounds, though I did upload and check the trail cam files, first. Now that the weather is nice, I’m seeing our vandal going by fairly regularly, rubbernecking towards our place as he drives by on his quad. *sigh*

Anyhow.

My goal for the morning was to get the chimney block planters along the chain link fence ready to plant into, then maybe move on to the ones that form the retaining wall in the old kitchen garden. I thought I might have time to do both, before things got too hot for that sort of work.

Ha!

I should know better by now.

I took progress pictures and posted them on Instagram, since I don’t have the storage space to upload so many images onto Word Press anymore. I didn’t think to set up the tripod and take a time lapse video, as I do for other projects, because I thought this would be done quickly. I did consider taking the stills and making a brief video, with narration, but decided against it.

Let me know, though, which you would prefer. I know not everyone can see the images when I embed them from Instagram, without having to click on the embed area and go to Instagram to view them. Would you prefer a short video, even if it’s just a bunch of stills, and making a vlog post out of it? YouTube doesn’t have the storage limitations that WP does.

Anyhow… I have the slideshow here…

I remembered to take a “before” shot, too. There’s a bit of crab grass showing through the grass clipping mulch, but things didn’t look too bad. I figured, maybe an hour to get it done, give or take.

Then I removed the grass clipping mulch and tried weeding the first block.

At first I thought the soil was strangely compacted, but even using some tools to loosen the soil, it was still a struggle. There were quite a lot of roots in there… Way too many roots. I set the sifter up over the wheel barrow and started trying to lift handfuls of soil out, but it just wasn’t working. Finally, I just grabbed the entire block and tipped it off the soil.

Leaving behind a packed cube.

A cube filled with tree roots.

Yup. Just like with the grow bags near the row of trees my mother allowed to grow after she transplanted her row of raspberries, roots from the nearby Chinese elm had made their way into the growing space from below.

After that first one, I just pulled the next block over, without even trying to dig into the soil, first. The soil cube stayed behind, held in place by all the roots below. Others came loose with the block, as the soil was so filled with roots, it stayed packed into the block, even as the roots were being torn from the ground below, and I had to force the soil cube out. Then there was breaking up the blocks on the sifter, pulling out handfuls of roots. There were some crab grass rhizomes, but even they seemed to be choked out by the tree roots!

Now we know why all the vining gourds that we planted there last year, failed so miserably. They were completely choked out by invading tree roots.

While I was working my way down the row of blocks, there was something else that was unexpected.

The distinct sound of kittens, mewing!

One of the other mamas has had a litter, and it sounds like they are in the old freezer lying on its side in the junk pile. I didn’t see any of the mamas, though I did eventually see a black cat come out of that area. I didn’t think we had a black cat that was female. I certainly didn’t notice any that looked pregnant. Not even the one tuxedo that I figure is female, after seeing the boys going after her. Mind you, the cat I saw might not have been a mama. All the cats like to take shelter and climb around the junk pile.

After a while, though, I guess they all fell asleep, because I no longer heard the mewing.

Once the blocks were all moved off and the soil sifted, I did as much weeding as I could in the soil underneath where the blocks were, but there were just too many tree roots. The best I could do with a lot of them was simply severe them.

Then I took a rake to the area, getting rid of the weeds and roots, before leveling where the blocks would go. We’ve been saving our cardboard that’s suitable to use in the garden, so I took some of that and laid down a double layer. Hopefully, it will be thick enough to discourage the roots from growing up into the blocks.

The carboard got a soaking, but it takes a lot to saturate cardboard. I got it decently wet, then put the blocks back.

This is where I really appreciate steel toed shoes! After lining the blocks up first by hand, the final touch was to kick them into place.

I’ve gotten way too used to wearing steel toes all the time. Every now and then, I’ll be out somewhere, forgetting I’m wearing normal shoes, and almost break my toes kicking at something! 😄

Once the blocks were in place, I walked back and forth over them a few times, using my own weight to settle them into place, then took the hose to them. The blocks helped by actually holding the water and letting it start to pool, rather than running off the sides, allowing the cardboard to become better saturated.

The next step was to start amending the soil.

The wheel barrow was pretty full, so adding the peat and sulfur granules was done in batches; enough to fill a couple of blocks before the next batch of soil was amended.

Since the peat made for greater volume, there was soil left over in the wheel barrel after all the blocks were filled. Each block then got topped with a couple of handfuls of stove pellets to act as a mulch. The blocks got a watering, then left for the pellets to absorb moisture and start swelling, while I watered the potato bed and haskaps, nearby. The one “Mr. Honeyberry” haskap has all sorts of flower buds, with some of them even starting to bloom! The two “Mrs. Honeyberry” aren’t anywhere near that point.

*sigh*

That took enough time for the stove pellets to swell to the point that the sawdust could be spread around a bit, before getting another thorough watering.

The very last thing to do before clean up was to return the support posts – they had to be hammered through the cardboard. We need to put something similar along the bed with the potatoes, so we can place netting of some kind over them. This will be to protect the beds and anything growing in them from being suffocated by the Chinese Elm seeds, when they start dropping in their millions.

What I thought was a job that might take me about an hour, ended up talking almost 3 hours – though I did take a hydration break, part way through.

By then, it was starting to get pretty warm, too; the perfect time to be done!

After that, my daughter and I headed into town. We had some parcels to pick up on the way home, but the post office closed shortly after I finished working, so we had to find extra things to do. That way, we could time our trip home for when it reopened again. We ended up going to the beach; something we haven’t done in at least two years! The lake is mostly clear of ice, but there were a few patches being blown against the beach by the winds.

It was all candle ice, and in places, you could hear it tinkling like wind chimes in the waves! I tried to capture the sound with my phone.

That area of the beach has quite a lot of rocks, making it our favourite part. We spent the entire time, trying to find interesting ones. We found quite a few, including some that sparkled amazingly in the sun. I tried to capture the sparkle in photos, but the camera just couldn’t pick up the glitter.

We had no problem at all, taking up the extra time we needed to, on the beach!

From there, it was a stop at the grocery store. I just needed to refill a couple of the big water jugs and get some eggs. My daughter had her own shopping list. That done, it was back home, with a stop at the post office to pick up a parcel.

Which turned out to be five parcels!

One was for my daughter, which arrived faster than she expected. A couple more for my husband arrived early as well, plus there turned out to be another with the courier company packages. I didn’t know anything about that one, but the store owner stopped me on the way out to give it to me.

There was one parcel that would have been great to arrive early but, alas, it isn’t expected until next week. My husband needs to replace the face part of his CPAP set up. He’s been able to replace the hose the runs from the machine to the face mask, and he was able to get new nasal prongs. The part of the mask he can’t get has the latex tubes that attach to the sides of the nasal piece. Over time, the latex starts to harden, turn yellow and, eventually, begin to crack. My husband tends to wait way too long before replacing them, so they’re at that point, now. The problem is, it’s not in stock, and hasn’t been for months. It’s starting to look like they’re not being made anymore. So he’s simply ordered medical grade latex tubes to attach to the fittings, which are still fine.

What he really needs is a new machine. Medicare doesn’t cover CPAPs. His insurance does, but it’s by reimbursement, so he’d have to have the funds to buy it first, then submit a receipt. Medicare does cover BiPAPs, though, which would be better for him, anyhow. For that, however, he needs to get a new prescription. It’s been so long, he’ll need another sleep test, first. Which his new doctor has started the process of getting done. When he was diagnosed with severe obstructive sleep apnea, we were living in this province (for the second? third? time) and he spent the night in a lab at the sleep research centre. They actually interrupted the sleep test after a couple of hours and put him on a CPAP, because they were afraid he would die on them. That lab is no longer there. I don’t know if it moved to another hospital or city or province, or simply no longer exists. Now, they usually do home tests. Which should be… interesting.

However he ends up getting tested again, he’s on a waiting list, and has been for a few months now. Who knows when he’ll finally get tested.

Until then, he has to find ways to make do with what he has and, right now, it looks like he needs to buy parts and pieces to replace the worn out ones. He can’t even use a different style of mask, as they are made for specific machines, and the fittings can’t cross over. At least, not with the machine he has now.

Hopefully, the tubing he ordered will fit. He did order some earlier, but it turned out to be the wrong size for the fittings. It’s something we can find a use for, though, so no loss there.

Meanwhile…

As I finish this up, we’re coming up on 6pm, and it’s still 18C/64F (the high was 19C/66F), with the humidex putting it at 22C/72F. Unless I look at my other map, which has us a couple of degrees Celsius warmer!

While talking to my daughter earlier about what needs to be worked on next, we were both rather depressed at the thought of getting the low raised beds in the main garden area clear. The crab grass is taking over with a vengeance and, in one of them, Creeping Charlie is also invading. The only way to really make a difference when it’s that bad is to either use an herbicide, or sift it all. Since we also need to amend the soil with peat and sulfur, sifting it would be the best choice. Which basically means, every one of those beds needs to be redone – and these are all beds we want to make into higher raised beds. My daughter suggested we just skip ahead to making the beds higher, if we’re going to have to remove all that soil, anyhow.

Which means, we need to shift gears and start harvesting more of those dead spruces. We currently have only two downed trees to process. We need more. Lots more, even if we’re just doing middle height beds, like with the trellis beds we’re working on. Those are only two logs tall, which means we need four 18′ logs for the sides and four or five (depending on the width) 4′ logs for the ends, per bed. With the largest of the dead trees, the bottom 10′, which would be too thick for a garden bed, will be set aside for the vertical supports for the outdoor kitchen we will be building (we need 10 of those). Depending on how straight and tall the trees we harvest are, that means 2 or 3 trees per raised bed. We need to rebuild… hold on… let me look out the window and count… five low raised beds. One of those has the onions growing in it, so that one won’t be done this year; it’ll just get weeded for now. So, four that need to be rebuilt. Plus the other 3 beds we need to make to make two trellis tunnels (two beds per tunnel). So we’re looking at a minimum 7 new beds at 2 logs high. If we assume 3 trees per bed, we’re looking at about 21 trees that need to be harvested. I’m pretty sure we do have that many dead spruces that need to be cut down; I’d counted 22 before we cut down the ones we’ve done so far, but there are a couple that have fallen on their own and are stuck against other trees that we probably could use, plus I’m sure there are others in an overgrown area we can’t walk through. If worse comes to worse, there are more dead spruces in the old hay yard. It’s further to drag the logs but, at that point, we can use the truck to drag them out.

Which means, weather willing, we need to start cutting down all those dead spruces in the spruce grove. If we focus on cutting the dead trees down first, then processing them to the sizes we need and dragging the logs over, building the beds themselves won’t necessarily take long. Prepping the spaces usually takes longer.

That electric chainsaw is going to get quite a workout.

Hmm… I wonder if I can talk to my brother into coming out with his gas chainsaw? He’s so busy with so many things, though, I hate to ask him. Especially since we’d have no way of knowing if the weather would be good on a day he can come out.

Well, I guess tomorrow, I’m getting the chainsaw out and making sure it’s working after a winter in the garage!

It’ll be good to finally get those dead spruce trees cut down. Then we can start transplanting new ones!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: sunroom progress

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

It’s done!

Sort of.

The half of the sun room we use as a greenhouse is now done, and we even have spaces for the cats, several of which have been quite happy with.

Especially Syndol. He loves that baby jail! I did have to add an extra board next to the closet door on the saw horses, though. I found one in the garage, just wide enough, and cut it to match the length of the closet door. The cage is wider than the door, and I didn’t want the cats jumping up on it, like they normally would, as it was a favourite place for some of them to sleep. One sawhorse is angled, to allow access to the shelf at the south window. Unfortunately, that extra board does get in the way, but we can work around it without risking knocking the sawhorse right over!

We’ve started to move more of the heat loving seedlings in, what with the thermometer in there reading almost 30C/86F! It didn’t actually feel quite that hot, though – the ceiling fan certainly helped – so I got out the temperature gun to do some spot checks.

The ceiling was right at 30C/86F, while the floor was 20C/86F! At table height, the temperature ranged from about 24-27C/75-81F, depending on where I aimed the gun. Overnight, we’re supposed to drop to 3C/37F, but the sun room should remain adequately warm.

With the evening sun coming through the West windows, I put the trays on the table for now, then gave them a misting with the hose. In the morning, I will move some onto the shelf in the south facing window. I’ll also bring the two remaining tomato trays. I might leave the onions in the living room, as they prefer cooler temperatures. The Summer of Melons tray could probably be moved, too. The last pot’s seedling showed up today, so all 21 seeds from that packet are now growing. They just have their seed leaves, but melons are heat lovers, so they’ll probably do better in the sun room than even in the aquarium greenhouse.

I was going to work on the other half of the sun room once things starting cooling down, but… well, things haven’t really cooled down, yet. To top it off, instead of getting to sleep early last night, I ended up awake most of the night, and I’m falling asleep at my computer right now. So my daughters will do what they can in there, later on. My older daughter has commissions to work on, but they should be able to get at least some clean up done in there, once things cool down.

As for me, I’m mightily resisting going to bed right now. It’s barely past 6pm, as I’m writing this, so it would end up just being a nap, and that would really mess me up!

I definitely want to try and get an early night and an early morning, though. There’s lots to do out there, before things get hot again. Tomorrow’s high is supposed to be 20C/68F again – and a couple of days from now, we’re looking at possibly 24C/75F, with things cooling down a little bit after that. Looking at the low raised beds this morning is downright depressing. We pull so many rhizomes out of them, every fall, but you’d never know it from all the crab grass popping up in them right now! It’ll be easier, once they get converted to higher raised beds, though some crab grass will still find a way through.

Little by little, it’ll get done.

The Re-Farmer

Wind damage, and Our 2024 Garden: growth

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

The outside cats are most confused!

There are no food bowls in the sun room right now. I checked the critter cam a few times during the night, and would sometimes see a cat wandering around where their platform and cat beds used to be, seeming lost! This morning, there was a whole crowd of them, milling about, waiting for their breakfast. They were all over the baby jail, inside and out, but there are no beds or blankets inside it right now, either.

As I fed them, I counted only 17, though.

With yesterday’s high winds, while checking around the yard, I was surprised to find just a couple of fallen branches, and just one broken tree.

The trunk of a poplar snapped off and will need to be cleared out. There’s also a live spruce tree nearby that has been slowly falling over, but it’s been doing that for years now. I’ve been keeping an eye on it. The only reason it’s not on the ground already it because it’s leaning against another tree. The dead trees around it, however, are all still standing straight!

It looks like we won’t be getting any haskaps again this year. The one “Mr.” haskap is leafing wonderfully, and even showing flower buds. The “Mrs.” haskap that was purchased and planted the same year is barely showing leaf buds. The smaller “Mrs.” haskap that was planted the following year is actually further ahead, but is really small compared to the other two. There’s just 1 year’s difference between them, so it should be much closer in size.

We’ll see how they do this year. I keep saying we need to transplant them to a better location, but every time I talk about it with the girls, they are concerned that moving them would damage them too much. Considering how poorly they are doing now, I don’t see what difference that makes. For the length of time we’ve had them, we should be getting plenty of berries every year by now, but there’s just no possibility of proper cross pollination to happen.

Of course, I checked the bed with the peas, carrots and spinach planted. I think I might, maybe, possibly be seeing a carrot sprout or two, and there are no peas coming up yet, but we’re finally seeing spinach!

The garlic, meanwhile, is seeing an absolute growth spurt, in all the beds they are planted in!

Syndol was following me around this morning, and he is frustrating me to no end! He kept going into the garden beds as I was checking them. I’ll have to put something around the bed with the spinach to keep him out! We can’t put a cover back on it, because of the T posts set up inside, which will have netting set up for the peas to climb, later on. The tiny raised bed that has its own cover is closed at the ends, so cats can’t get inside. Instead, Syndol climbs on top and uses it like a hammock! He’s the only cat I’ve seen that does that, but I’m sure there are others. I have to put another support hoop in the middle, plus a cross piece at the top, because there’s no way we’ll be able to keep the cats from climbing it.

But not today.

Today, the focus is back on the sun room. First, the windows in the plant corner need to be cleaned, then the second light hung back up over where the makeshift table will be set up. After that, we can set up the plant table over the baby jail, and bring the cat beds and blankets back.

Washing those was quite the thing! We split them all into two loads, and both loads had to be washed twice. Actually, I think my daughter washed the second load a third time, during the night. The amount of debris that had to be cleaned out of the washing machine’s tub was rather shocking, too. Some of the bedding needed a lot of mashing and bashing, as the layers inside got all messed up and bunched up. There’s one large cat bed that was donated to use that I’ve just not been able to get flat and even again. I’m serious considering opening up a seam so I can reach inside and break up the filling. The cats hardly even use it, because gets so lumpy after being washed.

So that’s my main goal today. Getting the plant side of the sun room done. Then the tools and storage side can be worked on.

That side, I’m afraid, it probably going to have a lot more messes hidden among the stuff they’ve knocked about. Now that everything’s thawed out, there’s an unfortunate smell, and it has to be coming from somewhere on that side.

At least it’s got a concrete floor that makes it much easier to clean!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: it’s a start

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Taking a break from manual labour yesterday seems to have done the trick. My right arm is feeling find again. So fine, in fact, it makes me suspicious! 😄

Today, I was thinking to use the amended soil pulled from the bed the potatoes are now in and starting on the chimney block planters along the other section of fence. Once I got outside, however, I remembered that getting the sun room cleaned out and set up for the transplants is a higher priority.

The outside cats are not happy with me!

When we set it up for them for the winter, one side of the room was set up for them, the other side was set up to store our gardening supplies and tools. I did put a sheet of rigid insulation on the top of the counter shelf – the top is metal and would get quite cold on their little toe beans – and left them space to sit on the shelf between the two windows on the storage side.

They, of course, trashed everything. They even managed to knock the sheet of insulation off the counter and get it stuck between the counter and the broken and now single pane window it’s covering. Boxes of screws scattered all over the floor, plant pots and garden supplies knocked out of the shelf opposite the window… just a disaster.

Getting the room cleaned out is something that needs to be done in sections, as we can’t empty everything outside. The only thing that physically can’t be removed is the baby jail that used to be in my room, when we had Decimus and her kittens. We might be able to squeeze it through – I honestly can’t remember if we had to partly dismantle it to get it from my room to the sun room, which would take it through three sets of doors.

Mostly, though, it’s because of the weather. The wind is insane right now, and we’re expecting rain. There is a large system blowing towards us and, from the weather radar, it does look like we’ll actually get some heavier rain, though the worst of it looks like it will miss us.

The first thing to do was get the floor mats out, hose them down and scrub them as best we could. They’re not hanging on the chain link fence. I think they’re heavy enough to not blow away!

Then some of the cat bedding on the floor got moved out before I could detach the heat lamp and remove the platform we made for them. The platform was basically a way to store the screen door we made to fit the old basement doorway, which allows us to have cool air circulating from the basement during the summer, while keeping the cats out. That had a sheet of insulation attached under it, then we had another small piece on top, along with a couple of cat beds, so they weren’t trying to walk on the half inch hardware cloth.

Both the frame and the sheet of insulation got a hose down and a scrubbing!

More cat bedding was removed from out of baby jail. All the food bowls were taken out, as well as the heated water bowl. The extension cord to the cat house was also pulled in and wrapped on its hooked on the wall for storage, as we no longer need to heat the cat house or the other heated water bowl outside.

Bins that were knocked out of the shelf at the window had to be cleared our. Plant clips, tent pegs, trays… all sorts of things they pushed off the shelf, so they could sit at the window, had to be picked up. I’d dragged the folding table we made a while back, over, and a number of things are now stored under it to be protected from any rain.

After finally being able to clear the shelf away from the window, I could move the baby jail, and take the interlocking mats out from under it. Those also got a hose down and a scrubbing on the lawn, just in time for some rain to rinse them off. 😄

Of course, there were cat messes to clean up, but it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as it has been in previous years!

Still, the concrete floor did need some mopping up in a corner. We’re now at a point where we have to let that dry before we can continue.

For now, I’ve put the shelf back at the window, but we’ll need to pull it out again to clean the glass before we finish setting things up. I’ll also take the second shop light that’s in the living room right now and hang it back next to the one that’s in the sun room.

I moved the two trays of plants off the window shelf. The poor tomatoes. It looks like the cats have been walking all over them, to get to the open spot I left for them to sit in, instead of walking in the space next to the trays! We’ve lost a few, for sure, and they’re not doing anywhere near as well as the ones still inside. We had to move them out of the living room, but the overnight temperatures in the sun room were probably still to chilly for them, I think. The gourds, peppers and eggplant seem to be fine, though!

Since the interlocking floor mats are still outside and likely to get rained on again before they can finally dry and be brought in, this is likely as far as we can get for today. Last year, we rigged a table on the sawhorses using an old folding closet door we found in a shed somewhere, and we’ll be using that again this year. The saw horses are tall enough that it’ll clear the baby jail, so we’ll be able to leave that under it. Last year, we did allow the cats into the sun room while the plants were there, and they left them alone.

All the cat beds and blankets are currently being washed right now. When the time comes, we’ll set some up inside the baby jail for them. Who knows. We might even have a mama decide to have her kittens in there! Unlikely, but you never know!

After I took this photo, I gave the cats a light feeding, with no food or water bowls in the sun room at all right now. We also brought the mulberry saplings out of the living room and into the sun room. They really need to be in bigger pots, but they also need to be transplanted soon. We need to start hardening them off, and they could probably go into the ground, now. They are supposed to be a zone 3 tolerant variety.

It will be good to get the transplants out of the living room and into the sun room! We’re not starting anywhere near as many seeds indoors as we did last year – we were expecting to have a lot more growing space ready for them! – but it’s still pushing the limit as to what we can fit in the cat free zone inside. Unlike the cats outside, some of the inside cats would quite happily destroy all the seed trays, just for fun!

We definitely made good progress in setting things up on this side.

The other half of the room, however, is not going to be this easy, that’s for sure!

Ah, well. That’s what we get for being such sucks for the cats!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024… er… 2023 garden: We have survivors!

/ Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

I just finished doing my evening rounds – it is so gorgeous out there right now! – which gave me a chance to see how far my daughter got on the garden bed she was weeding.

Before I left this morning, she asked me which beds needed to be worked on, and if there were any surprised to watch out for, like fall plantings of some kind. I said no, we did the fall garlic in the old kitchen garden beds this year, and those were the only fall plantings we had.

The bed she started on is where we planted the Roma VF and Red Wethersfield onions, last year. The tomatoes ended up not very healthy, and seemed to get blight near the end, but the onions… they just disappeared. The seedlings I transplanted around the perimeter seemed to be doing well at first, and then they were gone. Not dug up. Just died away. So I definitely had plans for amending this bed, and we were most definitely not going to be planting tomatoes in it, again.

Imagine my surprise – and probably hers! – when I looked today and saw this.

All along the perimeter, Red Wethersfield onions are growing! There are so many crab grass rhizomes in there, my daughter has basically been digging them up and transplanting them.

I am totally amazed. Onions I thought had died off, with no evidence of them to be seen when that bed was harvested and the diseased looking tomato plants pulled for burning, had been there, all along, and survived the winter!

We started more Red Wethersfield onion seeds this year, too. I was going to give them one more try before giving up on them, at least for a few years. Now, it looks like we’re going to have plenty!

The bed is only about a quarter finished; it took my daughter a lot longer then usual, since she was both weeding and transplanting all the onions she was finding. Even through the crab grass growing around the edges, I can see more little onion bulbs pushing their way through!

Onions are biannual. Which means that these onions, if left alone, will go to seed, which we should be able to save.

What an awesome surprise!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: potting melons

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

We had pre-germinated seeds ready to put into pots, but I was almost out of seed starting mix, so it’s a good thing I ended up doing a shop today.

Of the four Zucca melon seeds in the container, two were starting to germinate. With the Cream of Saskatchewan Watermelon, four out of five seeds germinated – and two were getting almost overdue for planting!

At first, I thought four of five Sarah’s Choice seeds had germinated, but it turned out the one of the seedlings had gotten big enough that it dropped its shell completely! So we’re five out of five on those.

As for the Pixie melons, I could see a couple of seeds starting to open up, but they are not at all ready yet. They, and the two remaining Zucca melon seeds are set aside now, to give them more time.

I was originally going to use one of the large celled trays for these but, at the last moment, I decided to use individual 4″ cardboard pots. I don’t know how long it’ll last, but I used a marker to label the pots directly, before filling them with pre-moistened seed starting mix. With some of the Sarah’s Choice seeds, the roots had grown between the layers of paper towel and spread quite a bit, so I tore the paper round them rather than risk damaging the roots by pulling them through. I now have all of the pots in a tray over the heat mat, with water on the bottom for the pots to absorb, rather than absorbing water from the premoistened growing medium.

As for the Summer of Melons blend, all the pre-germinated seeds but one have fully emerged.

We now have quite a lot of squash and melon seedlings going! Hopefully, they’ll all survive transplanting, but we have enough that we can afford a few losses. What was that poem again? Four seeds, all in a row; one for the blackbird, one for the crow; one to die and one to grow! Something like that.

I’m glad I got at least one gardening job done today, without making my messed up right arm any worse. 😁

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: amending soil and planting the first potatoes! (video)

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Today, I was able to finally get to that bed along the chain link fence, and get some potatoes planted!

I must say, though; it really was hitting home for me, how much I need higher raised beds. The narrower bed did mean I could reach across it just fine, but my goodness, the whole process was painful. It didn’t help that I was working during the hottest part of the day! We reached our expected high of 16C/61F, while the “feels like” was 21C/70F, at the time I finally got inside. I think I spent about 3 hours on the job, including hydration breaks. I was definitely not going to push myself in this heat.

Yeah, I can hear you folks from the south, giggling at me. 😉😉

Once I was done, I even remembered to take more painkillers before settling down at my computer to upload the video files I took. It doesn’t take long for the whole body to stiffen up, and I end up hobbling around looking in worse shape than my husband, even on his worst pain days!! 😄😄

I still prefer it over housework. I must say, it was great to come in when I saw done, to a house that smelled like cleaners instead of cats! 😁😁 My daughter is awesome.

I had fun putting this video together, including picking music that much better fits me and what I like.

There’s even bonus Syndol, being incredibly snuggly, while I sat in the shade to get some rest and hydration.

The 10 day forecast has changed, yet again. We went from expecting more rain and cooler temperatures to heat and mostly sunny. Tomorrow, we’re now supposed to reach 20C/68F! Which means I need to make sure to get to work on the other beds earlier in the day, before it starts getting too hot.

Which means I should probably get to bed before midnight, for a change!

I hope you enjoy the video!

The Re-Farmer

Growing things!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

We finally have some warm and drier weather today! It’s already 14C/57F, and we’re expected to have a high of 16C/60F.

I think I counted 27 yard cats this morning, but they were running around so much, I can’t be sure. What was funny to see, as I was trying to count, was a skunk suddenly come running around from behind the storage house, just like one of the cats, going for the kibble house! Not the little one I’ve been seeing, but a big on. My guess, a pregnant mama. I scared her off with the hose, because I wanted to make sure the cats got the food first. I know she’ll show up later.

I was happy to see Broccoli – she even let me pet her! We’ve started to do more frequent, smaller feedings, so that there’s something there when she is able to leave her kittens in her secret place and come eat. I was even able to get a glance under her and, from what I can see, she has 2 active nips. I think the largest litter she’s ever had has been 3 kittens. Hopefully, that will be the norm this year, and not litters of 5, 6 or even 8, like last year! At least most of them turned out to be male, though we did manage to get some female kittens indoors. There’s just one I can’t get at that I think it female. The other females are mamas from last year.

We really, really need to catch these mamas!! They are not cooperating at all. *sigh*

Oh, I just got some updates on the Wolfman this morning. He eye is healed up well, and there are potential adoptees coming to see him.

Much to my shock, Wolfman has taken to hissing, flattening his ears, and hiding, any time strangers come be. He also only lets their youngest daughter pick him up – he used to love being picked up! – and always hisses at the Cat Lady’s mother, who helps care for the cats. The poor guy must be so stressed out from, first, suddenly being taken to a new place, then going to the vet so often, then having to get his eye treated regularly. Poor baby. It’ll take time, but that just makes it harder to adopt him out. Especially when people coming over don’t even get to see him, because he’s hiding!

All in good time, I guess.

But I digress!

My morning rounds now includes checking the various growing things. There is still nothing showing up with the peas and spinach. Not the carrots, either, but carrots do take much longer. I’m surprised about the peas and spinach, though, even with the cooler weather we’ve been having. Hopefully, the seeds have survived and things will start sprouting as we get warmer days again. These need cooler weather to germinated, though, so… we’ll see!

We have more snow crocuses blooming, including our first – and so far, only – purple one. We have a few more yellow ones showing up. Mostly, we’re seeing the white ones, as well as the white with a hint of purple.

The grape hyacinths won’t be blooming for a while, but we are starting to see their distinctive clusters of leaves showing up all over the area they are planted in. My daughter’s tulip patch is also looking pretty good. I’m really looking forward to seeing what those “new” tulips that came up next to the saffron crocus turn out to be. I’m about 95% sure they are the Bull’s Eye tulips, but there was another variety planted there, too.

Oh! I’m remembering wrong!

It’s a good thing I’m journaling all this, here on the blog. I just looked up what I wrote about it, back in the fall of 2020. Only Bull’s Eye tulips were planted there.

We got them as a newly available tulip from Veseys, but they carried the variety for just the one year, I think. I suspect a lot of people did not have success with them. If I do a search, I can find other places that carry them, though, and they are listed as being zone 3 hardy. Well, we’ll see! It’ll be awesome if, after all this time, they actually show up! The idea that the bulbs would survive all this time, without any growth emerging, would be pretty amazing. Actually, I think some did show up that first spring, but the deer decimated the tulip patch, so for any tulips to show up after that is pretty amazing. It’s a bit of an eyesore to have the wire fencing around it, but there isn’t much choice!

More and more garlic is starting to come up, too! I’m quite happy to see them, after thinking most may not have survived the winter.

I’m not so happy to see how much crab grass is growing in the tiny raised bed, though. We pulled as many rhizomes as we could find at planting time, but it’s pretty much impossible to get it all. They’ll come back from the tiniest pieces.

I’m quite looking forward to having scapes to harvest!

After the garlic bulbs are harvested, which should be in late June or early July, this little raised bed is going to get refreshed and amended with the granulated sulfur and peat. We’ll be able to do that with the long bed against the retaining wall, too, as well as the short section of the wattle weave bed, as those will not have anything else planted with the garlic. The bigger rectangular bed in the old kitchen garden has garlic growing all down the middle, so there is room to plant other things on either side. I do hope to be able to amend the sides before we plant anything with the garlic.

Things are looking dry enough that we should be able to finally plant potatoes in the bed that’s been solarizing. The plastic is still there, but I don’t know how much solarizing actually happened, considering the rainy and overcast days we’ve had, since it was laid down. With the bed made narrower, though, it’s actually got more soil than the brick edging can contain. Since we don’t have the materials to raise the bed higher, yet, plus I want to work peat and sulfur into it first, it looks like I’ll have to actually remove soil from the bed. Which is okay. The excess can be used to top up the chimney block planters nearby.

So that’s my goal for today. Get that bed amended and planted with potatoes. I might actually be able to get both types of potatoes in there. We do still have Red Thumb and Purple Peruvians from last year that we could plant. They were so small, though, we didn’t really use them often. The fingerlings are also odd shapes, so getting them clean in preparation for cooking was not worth the bother. That’s why we still have some left! However, if we can increase the acidity in the soil enough, they might actually go much better. It might be worth trying, somewhere.

First things first, though. Gotta get the ones we bought, into the ground!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: 100% melons!

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I left the Summer of Melon blend of seeds until evening before planting them. By then, the last few seeds were sending out their radicles!

I had to be careful with some of the bigger ones, and their roots has made their in between the layers of paper towel.

All 21 of them got planted into the larger cell trays we’re testing out this year. Even the last one that just started to germinate. While I made sure to plant the seeds so they were not completely buries in the seed starting mix, the vermiculite added to the top does hide most of them. Which should be fine. They’ll still get light, and it’s so light, it won’t hinder their growth at all.

To make room in the aquarium greenhouse, the last tray of Wild Bunch winter squash got moved into the mini greenhouse frame at the window, and the remaining containers of seeds set to pre-germinate were moved over to that side of the aquarium.

Getting the tray with the planted seeds in it is always a pain, though. These trays are a bit longer, and the aquarium has a support running across the middle. The tray needs to be carefully tilted to get it in. It means waiting until after it’s set up before adding water to the bottom tray. The freshly planted seeds did get misted with a spray bottle, after the vermiculite was added, and the seed starting mix was pre-moistened, too, but once it’s on the heat mat, things will dry out quickly. The smaller celled trays we used before – the ones designed for the small Jiffy pellets – had openings in two corners, where water would be poured through. These larger celled trays fit the same base trays, but are quite a bit taller. Normally, that gives space to add water to the base tray from the side, making use of the gaps between cells. That can’t be done with it set up in the aquarium, so I had to move the tray of cells off to the side, add water to the base, then put it back.

I need to find a better way to do that. We have a funnel that is long and flexible that we use to put drain cleaner/maintenance stuff into the washing machine drain pipe. I think that would be long enough to work. The next time I’m at Canadian Tire, I’ll see if I can find another one.

I might be planting more in the next couple of days, though! The watermelon seeds look like 4 out or 5 have germinated, and the Sarah’s Choice melon seeds just sort of exploded. None were germinating when I checked this morning, and now all 5 are sending out little radicles! Even the Zucca melon seeds look like they will soon germinate. Nothing on the Pixie melons yet, though. When it comes time to plant those, they can all go into another of the large celled trays that I have. If the 100% germination rate keeps up, that will be another 10 melons, 5 watermelons, plus the 4 Zucca. That will leave a couple of cells to spare, which will make it easier to keep track of them.

Oh!! While doing a quick search to get the link for the Zucca melon, I found an article about some people in the Canadian prairies, like us, that successfully grew them! That’s encouraging, considering we’ve had I think 2 … or is it 3? … failed years with them. Last year was the most successful, but the developing fruit all suddenly started to rot on the vine, and I don’t know why.

Well, we’ll see how they do this year. Hopefully, we’ll have 30-100 pound/14-45kg melons this year!

The Re-Farmer

Broccoli is first, and growing things

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I was a bit later than usual when I came out to feed the yard babies, so there was quite a crowd.

I immediately noticed Broccoli’s back end was looking bedraggled.  As she milled about, eating ravenous, I could confirm.

She has had her litter.  Possibly just hours before. 

She has her “nest” somewhere in the outer yard, so we likely won’t see them until they are old enough to bring them to the kibble houses. 

*sigh*

This would be the first litter of the year.  Out of the 33, at most, that we see, I have been able to spot possibly 5 in total that look pregnant, including Broccoli, with one tuxedo I think might be female and is probably pregnant, plus the tiny fluff ball that hangs put in the sun room that I think is female, but is from the youngest litter from last year.  I’m working on socializing her, but have had little success.

Why are the ladies all the most feral ones?

We are also getting a regular stinky kitty visiting.  A very small skunk, too, and only by itself.  The cats are completely indifferent to its presence!

On a different note, while doing my rounds this morning, I’m see8ng more snow crocuses blooming… but not very many plants. Hopefully, more will cone up.

Speaking of which, my daughter’s tulip patch has lots coming up, including a surprise.  I found some working their way through the mulch I moved aside from the saffron crocuses.  I planted them there because the tulips planted nearby didn’t make it.  At all.  Now, after at least 2 years, there are tulip leaves visible!  These should be the Bull’s Eye tulips, with their unique blossoms.  Hopefully, they will actually bloom, and we can confirm that. 

We had lights rain, off and on, yesterday, and should be getting more, today and tomorrow.  The weekend should be clear-ish then a couple more days of rain.  Which would be great, if it were more than just a fine mist that just makes surfaces damp.  We could really use some good downpours.  We are still being affected by the strong El Nino, though, so our area is unlikely to get much. 

Today, my main goal is to plant the summer mix melon seeds.  I gave them a extra day in their containers.  In checking the others last night, I saw my first watermelon seed germinating. 

If the seedlings remain as successful as the pre-germination, after transplanting, we will have a massive amount of winter squash and melons this year!

The Re-Farmer