Gardening

Another step forward, and don’t eat THESE berries!

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First, some adorableness!

When I came out to feed the outside cats this morning, I spotted these three. The tabby was curled up and asleep when I came over. I reached in to pet them, and the other two started purring before I even touched them! I got to pet the tabby while it was asleep, but once it woke up, it would not tolerate pets and ran off – though I did manage to pet him more while he was trying to get out of the bin and onto the shelf above!

As I was finishing my morning rounds, I decided to pick the potato berries from the large volunteer potato plant from last year’s potato patch. The frost has killed the plant off completely, which is interesting, because the potato plants in the grow bags are still undamaged by frost and barely dying off for the end of their growing season.

Potato berries are toxic, but these all should be full of potato seeds. I will do a bit more research on what to do with them, but during one brief search, I read that the seeds need to be fermented, much like tomato seeds. Which makes sense, since they are related.

For now, though, they are tucked away in the cat proof living room.

This morning, my husband had his meet and greet medical appointment with a new doctor. That went better than he expected, and he now officially has a new primary care doctor. The paperwork to transfer his medical files have been signed, and he’ll need to update the pharmacy and disability insurance company.

Some of the medications my husband is on are not at all familiar to her, so she’s going to be doing some research. We will probably do a follow up appointment with her in the near future, if only because some of the blood test results from yesterday are not in yet.

My husband was happy with her. More so than the interim doctor, that’s for sure. I had my issues. The first being, she was the only person I saw all day wearing one of those useless masks. After years of being surrounded by mask nazis, being treated like trash, and having an ever shortening list of places I could go without risk of being physically or verbally assaulted, either by customers or staff, spending so much time around a faceless person is still something that triggers anxiety. That we still have medical professionals, who should know about the mountains of data and research showing how wearing them are more harmful than beneficial, also immediately lowers my opinion of their competency. There were a few other things that came up when I asked questions about medication that are red flags for me, such as her response on my husband being on statins (he should not be on statins) or Ozempic (the side effects can be very… messy), neither of which have actually done anything to improve his health. But, this is a first time visit, and beggars can’t be choosers.

After the appointment, I did ask at the desk about any other doctors taking patients, which my mother in mind. It turns out that no, even this doctor we just saw is already closed to new patients. My husband is basically the last one. Not that I would ever make an appointment with her for my mother. She has a hard enough time with a doctor that is black (and has an accent strong enough to make it difficult for my mother to understand what she’s saying). This doctor may be the “right” colour but, in a passing comment, she mentioned her wife, and that would just be too much for my mother to handle!

The receptionist suggested I ask again in a few months about doctors taking new patients. Which is much the same situation in the other clinic. As much as I’d like to have the same doctor as my husband, since I go to all his appointments, anyhow, I’ll see if I can have the same doctor as my mother for the same reason. It’s just convenient to have the same doctor.

After the appointment, we were going to try and get my husband’s photo ID, since he has no up to date photo ID right now. Unfortunately, there’s a public sector union strike going on right now, so he decided against it. Even if we got the ball rolling locally, who knows when the processing will actually happen. So he decided to skip that – though I think the state of the streets might have had something to do with his decision. They are rougher to drive on than our gravel roads, and his back feels every bump!

Our daughter was a sweetheart and send money for take out. We were going to get Chinese food, but the place was closed today, so we ended up getting a whole lot of fried chicken, instead. It’s good, but we got less food for her money with that. Ah, well. It was still delicoius food that someone else cooked for us!

After we got home, I found a couple of messages from the financing company. I called her back and she told me everything is proceeding well. We have a conditional approval, and there are two banks vying for our file. She will choose the one that gives us the best deal, then negotiate the best contract for us. Meanwhile, we’re at the stage where we have to send in our ID, income confirmation, etc. She had tried to email us already, but the emails bounced back. Turns out she misheard part of mine, and had the wrong language spelling on my husband’s – pretty common problems with our emails, to be honest! 😄

One thing I’ve never heard of before is that they want an “ID selfie”. Basically, a photo of ourselves holding our photo ID next to our face. Which does make sense, with everything being done electronically, but it’s the first time I’ve heard of that being requested.

I mentioned that my husband does not have current photo ID, which may be a problem. He does have his old driver’s license, which is expired, but still a government approved photo ID. He also has his Metis card from when we lived in this province before. That has no expiry date, but I don’t think it counts as government approved. So for him, we got pictures of the fronts and backs of 4 different IDs, when only 2 are needed, plus a picture of him holding both his old photo IDs next to his face. I had to get one of those for myself, too. Then there’s the proof of income, which was his annual letter from the insurance company saying “yes, you’re still disabled, yes, we’re still paying you!” , etc.

So that’s all sent in. Hopefully, it’ll be enough. One bit of info I did include was that the vehicle will be in my name only; with all his medications and pain levels, my husband simply doesn’t drive. Even when he still had his license, he voluntarily stopped driving, long ago. That might also make a difference. It did with a previous company, and my husband’s name was removed from the application completely.

Either way, we’re one step closer to approval, and getting a replacement van.

Which we really, really need. The check engine light on my mother’s car has turned on again, plus I had to pull over at a gas station to top up the air in one tire. It might have a slow leak, and will need to be checked. I did a cursory check, myself, but could see nothing. I’m so paranoid about tires. We’ve had way too many problems with tires, on three different vehicles, over the years!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: frosty harvest

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I’m just going to post this photo for now; I took some video and will upload that later.

Until then, this is what I was able to harvest today.

We did get another frost last night. I was out doing my rounds early enough to see some frost still on the ground. Once again, there was no frost warning and, according to the official past 24 hours record, we never dipped below 6C/43F, while I know I saw 4C/39F on my app when I checked before heading out this morning.

I should get one of those high/low thermometers that have needles to mark the highest and lowest temperatures on the dial.

So for now, all the stuff affected by the frost has been harvested that could be harvested. I left the melons, because they look like enough of the vines survived for ripening to continue. We’re supposed to warm up over the next while, so that will give more time for things like the melons, peppers, Spoon tomatoes and the one eggplant to ripen. The other things, like the carrots and onions, can handle frost so they’ll be fine for quite a while longer.

Our gardening season is not done yet!

The Re-Farmer

Trellis bed progress

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I headed out to check the garden as the day warmed up, to get a better idea of how much frost damage there was. As things warm up, the damaged/dead parts turns a lot darker, which showed me that the tomato plants in the main garden area did get killed off. Not the ones in the old kitchen garden, though! The melon plants might make it. Lots of dead leaves, but not the entire plants.

Tonight, we’re looking at a low of 5 – 6C/41 – 43F which, if things go the way they have been, lately, may actually end up being 3 – 4C/37 – 39F.

The high for today ended up being 18C/64F. I took advantage of it and got some work done on the trellis bed. It was actually feeling too hot while I worked! This is where I stopped for the evening.

The first thing I needed to do was finish off the wall on the left. I rolled the top log off, then used a chain saw to try and smooth and flatten things a bit, mostly to get rid of odd lumps and bumps, then putting the top log back. I still ended up with some gaps, but those will be filled with pieces of wood from the inside

The next thing was to use an auger to match the size of the pieces of rebar I have. Thanks to my husband, I have a nice set of long auger bits for my drill. They’re a touch shorter than the rebar, so after drilling holes through both logs, I removed the top log again, then drilled further through the bottom log. Once that was done, the rebar got hammered through the holes in the top log until it came out the other end, which I could then use to position the top log back again before hammering the rebar flush with the top.

The base log for the other wall was already debarked, but needed some clean up to remove bits of branches and other lumps and bumps. Then I got out the garden fork and loosened the soil between the markers where the log would be positioned. I found a large rock in the process that would not move. Since it’s under a wall, I left it. Once the soil was loosened, and the worst of the weed roots removed, I spun the log around so that the wide end was facing the other way. The ground is a bit lower on that side. I should have laid the base log in the other wall that way, but didn’t think of it until I’d already positioned it.

This base log itself has a long bend in it. I made sure it was positioned to bow outwards. That will be taken advantage of later in the build. Once in place, I used the chain saw again to remove any parts that looked too uneven and lumpy, and trimmed a few branch stubs a bit more.

The top log then needed to be debarked and prepped. This wood actually took the knife a lot better, so I went ahead and shaved a flat strip, so it would lay flatter on the base long.

That didn’t quite work out!

While the top log is a lot straighter than the bottom one, when I put it in position, the narrow end of the top log, which is set above the wider end of the base log, was floating at least 8 inches above! After rotating the log until it finally set the most evenly, the shaved part was now on the top!

There were still some lumps and bumps in the way, though, mostly on the base log. The wood on that tree did not take to the draw knife well, so I used the chain saw to level it off some more, then made another matching flat area on the top log.

With the bend in the base log, though, the top log is lined up on each end, but almost completely off the bottom log at the bend! It wasn’t going anywhere, though, so I repeated the process for inserting the rebar, more or less matching where the ones in the other wall are set.

With the rebar holding the logs together, I used a board to line up and mark the ends for cutting, then removed the jagged ends of the logs. I had to be careful with the bottom logs, so as not to be cutting into the ground!

The two logs you can see set aside in the photo will at least partly be used to close up the ends of the beds. These beds are meant to be 18′ long and 4′ wide on the outside. With the ends trimmed, they are no longer 18′ long, but the end pieces will be used to make up the gap. It doesn’t have to be exact, but I’d rather they be a bit longer than shorter. With how the logs taper, I might have to find thicker pieces of logs to finish the ends and get that 18′.

Once the end pieces are in place and secure, I’ll start working on attaching the 4 vertical supports for the trellis, which will then get horizontal supports across their tops. They’ll be added after the verticals are in place. The ground is uneven, but I want the horizontals to be level. Since I’m not going to be digging post holes as originally intended, and just attaching them to the outside of a wall, I’m no longer going to be losing about a foot of height on these 7′ posts, so I will likely mount the horizontals at 6 1/2′ rather than 6′, then trimming off the excess height. When the second bed is built at the other markers, it will have matching trellis supports and, eventually, they will be joined at the top to create a tunnel.

If all goes well, we’ll make at least one more trellis tunnel set up in line with this one. My priority, however, is going to be making more high raised beds, once this is done. Mobility, reach and pain reduction while tending the beds are becoming more of an issue for me.

Not before this bed is finished, though, and that will include filling it and preparing it to plant in, next year. That means layers of carboard on the bottom, maybe some small branches, wood chips, fresh green material such as the frost bitten bush beans I pulled earlier today, grass clippings and topping it with some of that purchased garden soil we still have left. Last of all with be a grass clipping mulch to protect the soil over the winter.

The bed the Roma tomatoes were in needs to be prepared for the winter, and if I could at least make that into a high raised bed, that would make life easier for next year!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: No warning

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When I woke this morning and checked my weather app, just before it refreshed itself, I saw something I did not want to see!

2C/36F

Considering the time of that reading, it was entirely possible we had frost last night.

We had no frost warnings at all before I went to bed.

Not that we could have done much about it. All those support poles and trellises are great, but make it impossible to cover the plants. At least not with the material we have. The squash patch is just too big.

When I first started my rounds after feeding the outside cats (I tried for a head count and saw 26 or 27. I may have double counted one) and headed towards the gate cam, I was somewhat encouraged. Usually, even if we have a light frost, I would still see signs of it in the shaded areas along the driveway long after it melted elsewhere. I saw only dew.

Then I started checking the south garden beds. Everything looked fine as I made my way through. Even the Little Finger eggplant in the concrete blocks, and the Caveman’s Club gourd, seemed unchanged.

Then I saw the squash growing in the compost pile.

All the leaves were drooping.

Still, this area is a lot more shaded than others, especially in the mornings. The nearby beds of onions, carrots and the popcorn cobs drying on their stalks are frost hardy, so they were fine.

Going to the sign cam, I pass the Crespo squash patch. That spot doesn’t get shade until the sun is at its lowest in the winter, so even this time of year it gets the full morning sun.

The leaves were all drooping, and I think I might even have seen the remains of frost glittering on some stems. It’s done.

When I got to the main garden area, I was a bit more encouraged. The plants supported on trellises seemed to fair better. The melons did show some cold damage in areas, while others looked just fine. Even the tomato plants seemed mostly all right. Much to my surprise, all the pepper plants in their grow bags looked absolutely fine!

The squash patch, unfortunately, was completely done in. Half the patch gets more shade than the other. In the heat of the summer, the plants that got more shade were doing better than the ones that got more sun but, right now, it’s the rows that get more sun that are looking less damaged than the others.

I’ll leave them alone for now, and see what happens over the next couple of days.

The old kitchen garden, much to my surprise, was fine. Even the luffa! The peppers here also showed no signs of cold damage, the Classic eggplant and all the transplanted tomatoes in their plastic shields seem completely unaffected. Even the Spoon tomatoes looked undamaged, and I was able to pick a bunch of them.

What’s frustrating is that there were NO frost warnings. I found a site that gives temperatures for the past 24 hours, and I did find it dipped to -2C/28F at around 6am – in the city! When I did a search for our area, plus the areas north and east of us, where I know there are weather stations, the lowest recorded temperature was 5C/41F Yet, my own app showed we were at 4C/40F at a time when the past weather chart was showing 7C/45F.

Today, we’re looking at a high of 17C/63F, with an overnight low of 6C/43F Those overnight lows have been consistently wrong on the high side. Which means that we’re not getting any of the frost warnings that would normally be set off, once the temperatures are expected to drop low enough, even as the real temperatures drop below that warning threshold.

Again, there’s not much we could have done, but we would have at least picked all the remaining tomatoes and brought them inside. Including the mostly green tomatoes still out on screens under the market tent.

As things warm up today, I’ll head back out and reassess the damage.

I’m not sure what to do about the winter squash. All those big, beautiful Pink Banana and candy roasters! They are not fully ripe, but if we leave them out and the vines die back, will they continue to ripen? We certainly won’t be able to store them for the winter, but I don’t even know how edible they are at this stage.

Well, I just found the answer to my own question.

So, in theory, we can bring them inside and lay them out to continue to ripen. Since they won’t store for the winter at this stage, we could cook them and freeze them, instead.

I don’t think that will work with the melons as well, but those plants might survive.

Unless we get another frost with no warning again.

We really need a polytunnel.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 Garden: September garden tour (video)

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Last night was our average first frost night, and there was no frost. The garden survives another night!

Check it out. 😊

May the frost hold off at least as long as predicted. Cooler night means things are slowing down, so if we’re going to get to harvest things, we need as much time as possible for it to fully mature.

The Re-Farmer

It’s a trap!

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Well. Sort of.

This is set up across from our driveway now.

It took forever to go through the trail cam video files this morning! There was a constant stream of activity triggering the motion sensor – and that’s just the stuff that it catches. There was clearly more activity, beyond the range of the motion sensor, that I could see happening in the background when something closer triggered the camera.

I was chatting with the Cat Lady this morning, and mentioned how all this activity would be driving away our missing cats. It probably isn’t helping bring that dog home, either. I was able to identify two pick up trucks, two minivans and a car, all involved in the search. She told me that it’s being shared all over Facebook right now. I haven’t seen anything, but I’m not in the groups it was being shared in. She sent me a screen cap. The group was a missing pet group for the city! That’s an hour’s drive away. Her thought was that the dog was probably stolen and taken up north. Apparently, that’s a common thing. I was able to let her know that the dog has been sighted here, so not stolen, at least.

I also shared with her my experiences with the owner, who was nice to my face, but not so nice behind my back. It probably never occurred to him that anyone would hear what he said about me, but all sounds from that direction really carry to the house, and the windows facing that way! My daughters hear way more than they would like.

I ended up sending an email to my brother that lives across from us through his wife (he doesn’t do tech very well. LOL), just in case they didn’t know what was going on. Their main driveway is a quarter mile up the road. The driveway across from us is just to the field, and they wouldn’t necessarily see or hear. I also mentioned our own lost cats, in the off chance they show up at their place. They are the closest home that’s occupied, and have plenty of their own yard cats. Butterscotch would remember their place. Maybe even Nosencrantz. It’s Marlee that would be completely out of her element, and we haven’t see any sign of her at all.

While talking about cats…

TTT has been at the small window in my room, squeaking away (what a strange, quiet meow she has!), wanting out. I’ve been trying to let her out of the room, but the kittens try for the door, instead. She’s so high strung, she backs off rather than goes through.

This morning, she was on my bed and accepting pets. Sort of. She spins and moves around so much, it’s really hard to pet her! However, I was able to pick her up and, while the kittens were distracted, take her out of the room. She’s been out before, but not for very long. It went rather well, so I just put her down and watched for a bit.

She’s still out.

We’ll see if she wants to stay out for good! I may be down to just the kittens in my room.

While doing my rounds this morning, I took some footage for a garden tour video, so that will be my project for today.

What I really want to do, though, is go for a nap. The kittens are actually sleeping right now. I might be able to get some sleep for a change!

Nah. Too much work to do!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 – and 2024! garden: planting and transplanting

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This morning, before I intended to continue working on the trellis bed, I wanted to transplant those volunteer tomatoes into the old kitchen garden.

Yes, it’s September, and our average first frost date is the day after tomorrow, but if the frost holds off long enough, they just might have a chance!

It was also a good time to amend the bed the Irish Cobbler potatoes were in. After removing the remaining mulch and loosening the soil (and finding a few tiny potatoes that got missed!), I worked in a bag of cow manure. I also noticed a couple of spaces in the walls where the grass clippings used as chinking was gone, so I found some scrap pieces of wood to put over the gaps on the inside.

Once the bed was prepared, I went and dug up the volunteer tomatoes. I don’t even water that bed anymore, so the soil was very dry. None of it stuck to the roots at all! I laid them out gently on one of the baking sheets we use to transfer seedlings in and out while hardening them off. Those are so handy! We need more of them, but Costco no longer carries them. They are SO much more expensive, elsewhere!

Anyhow.

I had seen one volunteer tomato had died; all it’s leaves just shriveled up for some reason. I left that one, but I still ended up digging out 9 tomato plants! All but one of them are where we’d had Spoon tomatoes planted, 2 years ago. I kept track of the one that came up where cherry and grape tomatoes were planted last year, and the year before.

I’d already given the bed a fairly decent watering, but once I knew how many transplants I had, I dug a hole for each of them, then gave each hole a deep watering. As for the transplants themselves, I trimmed off the lowest leaves and buried the bare stems all the way to the first set of leaves.

I happened to have exactly the right number of plastic rings that had been used to protect the peppers, etc. in the wattle weave bed, so those got put around each tomato plant. These will not only protect them from overnight chills, but from rambunctious kittens, too!

At this point, my alarm went off, reminding me that the post office was open again after lunch. I have a subscription on lysine for the outside cats, and it was in. When I got there, however, I had a pleasant surprise.

My saffron crocus bulbs were in! When I checked the tracking, it was telling me the package would arrive on Monday, so this was a pleasant surprise.

It also changed my plans for after I finished with the tomatoes.

Since we had to pull up all the Roma tomatoes, I had a lot of bamboo stakes available. I pushed in a pair of them inside each plastic ring. These will keep the wind from blowing them away – and the cats from knocking them about – and if the weather holds long enough for them to survive, they will be supports for the tomato plants, too.

I also had the soaker hose that had been used on the Roma tomato bed. It’s pretty long, though, so I was able to run it back and forth and around every plastic ring, using tent pegs to hold it in place on the curves.

Last of all, the mulch got returned.

It’s ridiculously late to be transplanting tomatoes in our area, but I wanted to give them a chance!

That done, I could move on to the saffron crocuses, which needed to be planted right away.

These are actually a zone 4 plant, and we’re zone 3, so they went into the same protected area we have our zone 4 apple tree, and where the girls planted tulips. This area has a mishmash of wire surrounding it, to protect them from the deer.

There are 20 bulbs in the package, and the need to be planted 4 to 8 inches deep, and 3 inches apart. I was originally intending to plant them in a 4 x 5 bulb block, in an area I was pretty sure there were no tulips growing, but after poking around with a garden fork, that went out the window pretty fast. The area is so full of large roots!

I ended up being able to start a longer trench, so I went with 2 rows of 10 bulbs, instead.

The instructions specifically said to NOT amend the soil with manure of fertilizer, to water them when planted, but to not water them again unless it was drought conditions.

In clearing out the soil, so many weed roots were removed that there was hardly any soil left. I would have to get soil from the remains of the truck load of garden soil in the outer yard we bought a couple of years ago.

After removing the top 4 inches of weed roots and dirt, I loosened the bottom with a cultivator tool, then gave the trench a very deep watering. Then I loosened the soil some more, tried to level it off a bit, and watered it some more!

After that, I went and sifted some garden soil into the wheel barrow to fill the trench, before getting the bulbs.

I did not expect them to be so…

…hairy.

The bulbs got laid out in two rows, 3 inches apart, then buried. I ended up needing to get a second small load of soil to cover them well. They got about 6 inches of soil, maybe a bit more, on top. It will, however settle over time. Compaction is another concern. I wanted to give them a final watering, but not with out a mulch, first!

Thankfully, we still have lots of grass clippings handy for mulch!

Once a thick layer was in place, I gave it another deep watering. I wanted that new soil, which was quite dry, to be moistened. The mulch is great for keeping the soil below moist, but if the clippings are very dry, they actually prevent moisture from getting through. The top will get wet, but the bottom – and the soil below – says dry. Kinda like how thatch works. So I made sure the mulch itself was very wet, all the way through, so that the water could moisten the soil, too.

Given the temperatures we can hit over the winter, these will need more protection before the ground freezes, as well the apple tree. It’s already sheltered and protected from the north and, now that the dead and dying trees are cut away, it gets full sunlight and warmth. Still, extra protection will be good! When the leaves fall, we can use that to mulch the entire area. In the spring, though, the mulch of the crocuses will need to be pushed aside, leaving only a light layer to protect the soil. The alternative would have been to plant them in pots and bring them in every winter, and frankly, I have no interest in doing that. It’s hard enough to protect our house plants from the cats! They’d just love some big pots of soil to dig in. 😄

Once the mulch was in place, I spread out the soil that had been removed as evenly as I could, and that was it.

We now have tomatoes transplanted that, if they survive, will be for this year, and bulbs planted for next year! These crocuses boom in the fall, so it will be quite some time before we know we will have any saffron to harvest.

I’m pretty excited to find out.

From the Vesey’s website:

Bulbs typically triple their flower output year over year. A package of 20 bulbs should produce enough saffron in the first season for the average family to enjoy sparingly.

Triple their output every year? That would be amazing!

But first, they have to survive our winters!

The Re-Farmer

Warming up, and a morning harvest

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While doing my morning rounds, I make a point of looking at the squash blossoms to see if any need to be hand pollinated. With the chilly nights we’ve been having – we dropped to 6C/43F last night – I’ve been finding bees in the flowers, curled up and covered in pollen.

Not this morning!

These bees had made their way out to warm up in the sun!

You can even see how wet their “fur” is. That’s not from rain. That’s from the morning dew!

I am so happy to see so many bees this year. They got hit really hard the last two springs, and it’s good to see them recovering.

I also got a small harvest this morning.

We’ve got so many tomatoes inside already, waiting to be processed, and I still have the unripe Romas sitting on screens under the market tent, until we have room to move them indoors, but when they’re ripe, they’re ripe. They need to be picked!

Then there was just one, lonely zucchini. 😁 Which I’m quite happy with, since we almost had no surviving zucchini at all, this year!

With the overnight temperatures dropping lower than forecast, I find myself wondering if we should gather all the tomatoes and bring them in to ripen. We’ve got a couple of nights coming up that are now predicted to drop to 6C/43F overnight. Considering that we’ve been hitting that on nights we were supposed to drop to only 10C, it has me concerned. Sunday is the 10th – our first average frost date. We’re supposed to have a high of 18C/64F that day, and an overnight low of 6C/43F. The next day is supposed to have a high of 17C/63F, with no change in the low. After that, things are supposed to warm up again. Depending on how the forecasts change, we might be trying to cover the tomatoes, peppers and melons. There’s no way we can cover the squash bed. It’s just too spread out.

So many things depend on the weather right now. For things like the winter squash, peppers – only the Sweet Chocolates are far enough along to have ripe ones to pick – and our one eggplant that’s trying to grow fruit right now, a frost would mean no harvest at all. The carrots, onions and purple potatoes would be fine, at least.

Well, we shall see when the time comes. Just praying for the frost to hold off long enough for things to finish ripening, though even chilly nights will slow things down.

I know the bees would sure enjoy the warmth hanging around longer!

The Re-Farmer