Gardening

Trellis bed progress, and we have a soot sprite

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Since I ended up driving around again today, once I was home to stay, I took advantage of the cooler temperatures and calmer winds to work on the trellis bed.

One larger base log was ready. The next step was to use a garden fork to loosen the soil from one marker to the other. Aside from pulling out as many weeds and roots as I could, I was also able to use a hoe to try and adjust the soil height. The log is, of course, wider at the base, plus the ground has a slight dip at one end, so I brought loosened soil from one end to the other, to try and make it to the log would be more or less level once on the ground. Plus, with the loosened soil, it wasn’t going to roll around out of position on me. Once that was on place, I could start debarking the log that would be set on top of it.

Debarking is pretty fast. It’s all those branch bits and lumps that slow things down!

After doing the top half, it started to get pretty painful on the back, so I used one of the poplar logs that will be vertical posts to raise the end. It worked for helping the back, but the saw horse kept rocking, and the poplar log kept wanting to roll! 😂

Once the smaller log was debarked, I use the baby chainsaw (electric pruner) to sort of flatten the base log from end to end. Mostly to get rid of some lumps where branches used to be. The smaller log was naturally flat next to a couple of branch stumps, so I took advantage of that and flattened the rest of the lot a tiny bit, to match the naturally flat part. It’s not a perfect fit, but I wasn’t really trying for one. I might level things off a bit more, but if I do, it’ll be when I have the chain saw set up, so I’m not killing the batteries on my mini chainsaw so quickly.

Next, it was time to work on the large log that will be the base log for the other wall of the raised bed. It had more branch bits to cut off than the other two, but once those were trimmed, debarking went quickly.

At that point, it was time to stop for the day – and for the draw knife to get a good cleaning and sharpening!

I expect to actually be home all day tomorrow, so I’ll be able to finally make more tomato sauce. When I get back to working on the bed, I plan to make use of the pieces of rebar I’d picked up for the shelter we could never get set up. I’ve got auger drill bits in that size. Once I’m satisfied with out the side logs are resting on each other, I will drill a pair of holes, then hammer in the rebar, so hold the logs together. When the time comes, the ends will be joined with 4′ logs, but first the ends of the side logs will have to be trimmed even. That will be much easier if I can do that while they are already secured into position.

As for the vertical supports, I am changing my mind on how to do those, again. I’d been planning to set the posts inside the raised bed, before they were filled. Setting them in the middle of the beds would result in a trellis tunnel that is 6′ apart across the top, and would give access to both sides of the bed for planting and weeding.

The more I think about it, though, the more potential problems I can see with doing it that way. Primarily, I’d have to treat the bottoms of the posts to prevent rotting. I was planning to debark and char them. With the winds we’ve been having, though, the chances of being able to get a fire going to do that don’t seem pretty good. Also, finding straight horizontal pieces that are 6′ long is going to be harder. I have enough vertical supports to have 4 posts for each of what will be 4 beds like this. I could try to harvest more poplar to have more verticals, but finding nice straight ones in the right size has not been as easy as I thought it would be, and I don’t want to be wasting trees. So if we have 4 verticals per bed, they would need to be 6′ apart, and I would need three 6′ pieces per bed – or 12 in total, for the 4 beds we plan to build here. If the trellis tunnel sides are also 6′ apart, that adds another four 6′ pieces needed per tunnel, making 20 horizontals in total.

Now I’m thinking I should attach the vertical supports to the outside of the beds, along each side of the tunnel space. I can see a few advantages to this.

First, I won’t have to dig any post holes.

Second, if they are attached to the outside of the beds, they won’t be buried in soil and I won’t need to treat them to keep them from rotting.

It will also be easier to find shorter, straight pieces for the horizontals, plus it will be easier to reach and work on the tops to attach them. Right now, I’m just aiming to do one low raised bed with a trellis wall. Even if we manage to get the second half done, the horizontals at the top don’t need to be until later. Plus, it will be much easier to attach 4′ lengths onto the verticals later on, than 6′ lengths with half a garden bed to work around.

By not having the verticals in the middle of the beds, they won’t take up growing space. Also, these beds are 18′ long, and 4′ wide on the outside. Our raised bed covers are intended to be interchangeable, at 9’x3′. Without the verticals inside the bed, we’ll be able to fit a pair of them over one 18′ bed, if needed. The logs are wide enough that the actual growing space will be closer to 3′, so the covers will have frame support.

The main reason I wanted to put them down the middle of the bed was to be able to reach the growing space from both sides. It had been my intention to reuse the hardware cloth and chicken wire from the old squash tunnel for this. However, as long as we use something with large enough openings, we’d still be able to tend the bed, through the trellis, just like we’ve been able to do with the cover currently on the high raised bed, made with the stronger fence wire and larger openings.

The one real drawback is now to secure the verticals to the walls. I might still have to dig post holes.

I’ll figure that out, when the time comes.

In other things…

I did the running around I had to do; since I had to go to Staples to get the printer ink we needed, and it shares a parking lot with a Walmart, I took advantage of that and picked up a few things, including more of the shredded cat food the cats in the isolation ward prefer. Or maybe it’s me that really prefers it. It’s much easier to divide into bowls than paté.

Once we had the printer ink, we could print off the label we needed (frustrating to have to buy colour ink to print something that is black and white text!), then pack up the RAM that didn’t work with my husband’s computer and drive to a Purolator depot.

There is one thing that’s new right now.

When feeding the cats outside for the evening, I was able to catch a little black kitten.

I brought it inside.

It’s just the tiniest little soot sprite!

My younger daughter has always wanted an all black cat. Now, she will have one.

So far, it is not too keen on this whole “indoors” thing, and being surrounded by strange kittens. It doesn’t even seem to recognizes its brother. However, it quite enjoyed its first taste of wet cat food! I can hear it wandering around behind me, sometimes giving out a strange, hoarse little meow.

It will take time, but Pom Pom is starting to warm up to attention now, and hopefully that will encourage Sprite to accept attention from humans, too. If things go well, I hope to have it well socialized by the time my daughter gets back from house sitting. 😊

The Re-Farmer

Swinging

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While checking on the garden yesterday evening, I noticed some of the melons were getting pretty heavy, so I dug out something I’d made the first year we tried to grow melons, and succeeded. This morning, I got some photos.

Melon hammocks!

I might have to make more. There are quite a lot of melons getting nice and big in the makeshift trellis!

I look forward to when we have permanent and portable trellises. I am really happy with how some of our climbing vines have been doing. Especially the melons in their kiddie pool raised bed! There are three varieties in there, but they are all climbing so vigorously, the vines are all twisted around each other. We’ll figure out which is which, when it’s time to harvest them.

The Re-Farmer

Evening harvest and a change in plans

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Well, I’m going to be running around tomorrow, after all.

But first, while doing my evening rounds, I found myself bringing in a small harvest.

At first, I thought I’d just grab the few ripe Indigo Blues I spotted, but then I noticed the Red Swan beans, among the purple corn. The plants are small and sparse, but once I started looking around the leaves, I kept finding more and more larger bean pods! The yellow zucchini was one I looked at this morning and thought would wait until tomorrow or the day after, but it was noticeably bigger by the evening.

I really should know better than to move the peppers to see how ripe they are. Where the sun hits turns brown rather quickly, while the parts in shade stay green longer. They are completely ripe when they are all brown. The problem is, their stems are fragile, so when I move a pepper to see the other side of it, it just snaps right off!

Which is fine. My daughter is using it for her meal right now.

Meanwhile…

While still at my mother’s, I got a message from my husband letting me know there was something to pick up at the post office. One of the packages was RAM for his computer. He was very excited about it.

Some time later, I came out and noticed he wasn’t in his room. Eventually, I found him in the living room, reading on his tablet.

Not a good sign.

He had installed the RAM, which was absolutely the right hardware for his computer, but when he turned it on, it wouldn’t work. He just had a black screen with a spinning circle on it.

Turns out, this is a known problem with his brand of computer. It doesn’t like being upgraded.

After fighting with it for a while, he reinstalled the original RAM.

And it still didn’t work.

His computer was dead.

At which point, he pain killered up and lay down for a while, because installing the hardware really did a number on his back. When he couldn’t handle being prone anymore, he moved to the living room.

At least he was still able to research his issue, then try something else.

Ultimately, he was able to get the original RAM working again, and he has a working computer again.

He’s also going to return the RAM.

That requires printing out a return label.

The printer is in my room. We don’t need to print a lot of stuff, but the self cleaning uses a lot of ink, anyhow. I’m out of cyan and magenta. You’d think we’d still be able to print out a black and white label, but nope. Even when it’s set to black and white, if more than one colour of ink is out, the printer simply won’t print.

Which means that tomorrow, I have to go to the nearest place that sells this brand of ink.

Which is a Staples, in the smaller city.

Then, after the ink is installed the the labels printed, I’m going to have to go to a Purolator to send the return out.

Which is driving to either the town we usually go to, or the town my mother lives in. Considering were the Purolator depot moved to in town, there isn’t really any difference in time or distance between them.

So I’ll have a couple of hours, more or less, of driving to get the ink and bring it home, then another 45 minutes to an hour of driving to get to a Purolator.

A significant portion of the refund is going to have to go back to paying for the gas and ink!

Well, so much for starting on that tomato sauce tomorrow.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: the end of the Roma VF

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I noticed the leaves on the Roma VF were looking like they got a fungus. I don’t know if it’s tomato blight or something else, but they needed to be pulled.

I started by picking the ripe and almost ripe tomatoes first, then my daughter and I picked the green and mostly green tomatoes and pulled up the bamboo stakes. Then she pulled the diseased plants, while I picked ripe Black Beauty and Indigo Blue tomatoes.

The green and almost green Roma are currently on the screens under the old market tent, while the ripe and almost ripe went into a box for indoors. These corrugated plastic boxes are very handy, but they have air circulation holes on the bottom and sides that are a bit big for some of the tomatoes, so I lined the bottom with carboard egg trays to keep them from falling out.

The Roma tomato plants will be allowed to dry out and will get burned with our paper garbage. That might be a while, since we are actually getting rain today! I’m even hearing a bit of thunder.

We now have a whole lot of very ripe tomatoes ready for processing. I’ll be doing more tomato sauce, first. I’m thinking of dehydrating some in the oven, late, and preserving some of the dried tomato in olive oil.

I’m still looking at recipes for making tomato sauce using roasted tomatoes and figuring out how I want to do them. I want to use as few cooking vessels as I can get away with, so there’s less to wash up! 😄

The Re-Farmer

This crab apple bites back!

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While doing my rounds this time of year, I like to grab some crab apples from the one tree that has tasty apples to nibble on as I walk. High winds have knocked down a lot of the apples, so I don’t know that we’re going to bother harvesting them this year, but there are enough in reach that I can snack on them.

I grabbed a couple this morning, buffed the dust off one of them on my shirt, and was about to take a bite, when I saw something move!

This wasp had been asleep in the apple! It was still very groggy in the cool of the morning, and eventually squeezed itself out and promptly fell to the ground. 😄

Gotta be more careful when I pick things!

The Re-Farmer

Tiny harvest, kitten update, and a mystery

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I will start with the kitten update!

The kitten seems to be completely normal right now! No favouring the leg that was dislocated. No limp that I can see. The kitten stays away on its own, for the most part, but doesn’t run away when the other kittens come over to say hi. I’ve even seen TTT grooming in on the way by.

I’m also not finding any messes. Not even on the puppy pads under my desk. It looks like TTT has finally starting using a litter box. Not while I’m in the room, though, so I’m hoping she’s using the covered box in my closet – the only one I can’t see into – and not in some secret corner somewhere. I’m not seeing any tiny messes, either, so it looks like the kitten figured out litter boxes right away.

The main thing is, the kitten appears completely uninjured! I was able to sneak a pet this morning, but otherwise it stays away. Now that it’s indoors, socializing it will be much easier, so I am not concerned.

Today is supposed to be “cooler”, with a high of 27C/81F. We currently have weather advisories for smoke. I can see it on the security camera live fee, hanging in the old hay yard like a fog. It is worse now, than when I was doing my morning rounds.

Our squash flowers are very popular.

They are pretty much the only things blooming right now, other than some wild yarrow, so the bees are happy!

I wasn’t expecting to harvest anything this morning, but I found these!

I was surprised to find such large patty pans. They got missed yesterday, hidden under leaves, but this morning I could actually see them. I normally like to pick them a bit smaller, but these will still be tender, without a seed cavity yet.

I was not intending to pick the pepper, though. I had moved it to look at the back and see how much green there still was, and the stem broke off!

Some of the beans growing in the compost ring are completely dried on the vines, so I picked one of the pods. Once inside, I opened it up and found…

A mystery.

When I first opened the pod, I thought they were black, but once I uploaded the photos to the computer, I could see they are actually a deep, dark blue.

I have no idea where they came from.

I have never bought seed beans like this, nor do I remember buying dry beans like this. If we did buy some that I can’t remember, they would have been cooked; no viable, uncooked seeds would have ended up in the compost heap.

I’ve tried looking them up, but have had no luck. These had pale purple flowers, green pods, and now deep blue, almost black, seeds. I’ve found seeds similar to this, but they all come from yellow or purple pods, none green.

Well, whatever they are, we’ve got more of them with pods drying out on the vines. I’ll keep the seeds and maybe try growing them in the garden next year, and seeing if they are actually a tasty bean.

I’m considering a couple of things in the garden beds right now.

One is going to have to be done; it’s just a matter of doing it when it’s cooler in the day. The Roma VF look like they’ve picked up a fungus. I don’t know if it’s tomato blight or something else. Either way, all the remaining tomatoes need to be picked and the plants pulled. They will be burned, not composted.

I’m debating the bed along the chain link fence. The peas are pulled, but there are still some of those Czech lettuces in there that I’m allowing to go to seed. Plus the volunteer tomatoes.

The tomato plants are really small, but if the long range weather forecast is at all accurate, they still have more than a month of growing season. So I am thinking of transplanting them into the empty bed in the old kitchen garden, where the Irish Cobbler potatoes had been. I would need to protect them from the kittens that like to play or nap in there.

Once that bed by the chain link fence is clear and ready to be prepped for the winter, I’m going to make it a bit narrower. It’s too painful to reach near the chain link fence to weed. Plus, some of those pieces of concrete patio blocks I found run under one corner of the bed, and I want to dig those out.

I have those tillage radish seeds still. I am thinking, once some beds are emptied and cleaned up, I can plant some of those as a cover crop. They won’t reach full size before winter, but they should drill far enough to make a difference. These are meant to be left in the ground, where they will freeze in the winter, decompose, and add organic matter to the soil in the spring.

Amending this soil into something healthy again is definitely a years-long process.

The Re-Farmer

Kitty status and morning in the garden

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First, I have heard about how the adopted ladies are doing. They are recovering well at the Cat Lady’s home for now. The Phantom is being an absolute, loving joy. The kitten is also being really sweet.

Decimus is hissing and spitting and not a happy camper, but doing well, health wise! They have several catios, though, so they were able to let her go “outside” to get some fresh air.

My daughter and I went outside with the flashlight last night. Still no sign of Marlee or Butterscotch. We did spot a cat in the driveway that turned out to be Nosencrantz. Once my daughter started walking towards her, though, she ran off into the old hay yard.

If we’ve seen her, chances are pretty good the other two are okay, too.

Right?

As for the remaining cats in the isolation ward, the kittens are doing just fine, though getting very active and destructive! TTT spends most of her time in her napping cave in my closet, but she sure knows when the food is coming out!

She has also continued to make a mess on the puppy pads next to the litter box under my desk.

*sigh*

At least it’s on a puppy pad, and not my bed or the carpet.

She is also remarkably regular. She always goes in the same place, and even goes at almost the same time! I was awakened by the rustling of the puppy pad being dug into this morning. I found it was very wet and changed it, then went back to bed. Maybe an hour later, I was again awakened by that familiar rustling sound, and she’d dropped a load this time. Again, thankfully, on the puppy pad and an easy clean up, but I find it interesting that she has such a consistent habit of time and location!

Now, if she would just use that litter box, instead. The kittens are sure liking it. 😕

This morning, as I started getting the kibble ready for the outside cats, I spotted the stranger cat, inside the sun room!

For a stranger cat, it’s acting right at home.

S/He was even sharing a food bowl with Beep Boop and the friendly black and white kitten.

I feel I should know this cat. The face looks familiar. In fact, the face makes me think of Potato Beetle. The markings on the sides, though, are not at all familiar.

Could this be a yard kitten from last year that took off before we became familiar with it, only to come back now? It’s possible, but I don’t remember seeing a kitten with markings like that last year. Mind you, it might also be a slightly older cat, too. I still can’t come close to it, though.

After finishing my rounds, I noticed the bitty kitties around with Octomom (whose name is actually Slick, but I kept forgetting that). They were watching me, so I got out the lure – just some jute twine tied to a stake.

This adorable ball of fluff took the bait and started trying to catch the end of the twine. I was actually able to get hold of it and pick it up. It did not like that, though! I pet it for a bit, but as I was trying to put it back down again, it chomped on my fingers and left me bleeding.

It was worth it.

I didn’t intend to harvest anything this morning, though I did end up picking some Red Swan beans and a couple of yellow patty pans. Mostly, I was making sure everything was doing well.

While checking the Crespo squash, I spotted a female flower! There have been so few of those this year. Wild that one should show up so late.

Also, that’s 2 bees in there, one on top of the other!

I decided to hand pollinated anyway, just in case, so I went looking for one of the many male flowers that was open and found this.

So nice to see!

I picked a different one to hand pollinate the single female flower. One of the bees flew off, but the other stayed, even as I moved around the male flower stamen, then broke it off and left it in the flower, so the bee could do the rest.

This next slide show is the first time I’ve been able to upload a slide show and have every single photo work! After this, I had to do one photo at a time, because every group upload was thoroughly corrupted.

I really, really hope we have a long mild fall, because we suddenly have SO many new melons forming, along with the two big ones. The vines are so mixed up, there’s no way to tell which variety is which right now. There are many more female flowers and tiny melons that forming. If the weather holds, we might have a bumper crop!

Even the winter squash is seeing an increase. For example…

This is one of two Boston Marrow vines. Both had a single squash starting to form, but the one on this plant suddenly started to rot away. You can even see it in the photo. I broke it off but left it to break down where it was.

Now there are three female flowers blooming – and not a single male flower to be seen! At least not another Boston Marrow male flower. I ended up hand pollinating them with a nearby North Georgia Candy Roaster. With that combination, if we actually get something to harvest, I’d want to save the seeds. That sounds like it would make an interesting hybrid!

Speaking of which…

The candy roasters are doing really, really well. Check out this big beast of a squash!

I noticed a few small squash that were being eaten by slugs, but they seem to be leaving the big ones alone. Likely because the skins are harder.

When I saw an open flower with what I thought might be another bee in it, I found several slugs, isntead.

I picked he flower and stepped on it. Slugs have been such a problem this year!

The pink bananas are also doing very well. Not only are there a lot of huge squash like this, but lots of smaller ones, plus they are still blooming and producing both male and female flowers!

I noticed that one of the Honeyboat Delicata squash that hadn’t even bloomed all year, suddenly has both male and female flowers budding. Even the Winter Sweet plant that had nothing going on – the other one has a single developing squash – suddenly had a female flower blooming! I had to use another type of winter squash to hand pollinate it, though.

We’re at the end of August, though. Average first frost date is September 10. Long range forecast says we should have a high of 23C/73F that day, with a low of 13C/55F. In fact, if the monthly long range forecast is right, we won’t see frost until near the end of October. If that holds true (thanks to El Nino!), that will another 50 days or so to our growing season! That would make a huge, positive difference for the garden.

As for today, there’s a limited amount of work I can do outside right now. We’ve got high winds today. We’ve had predictions for everything from a thunderstorm this afternoon, to rain this morning (we didn’t get any), so rain overnight, to no rain at all.

This morning, when I saw the predictions for a storm, I checked the radar. I would see the system coming our way but, sure enough, by the time it reached our area it dissipated and split up around our weird “climate bubble”.

Which works out. We’ve decided to do my husband’s birthday dinner today, and he asked for take out pizza from a specific restaurant in town. He didn’t get his prescriptions delivered yesterday, as they were missing something, but it’ll be ready today, so I’ll be picking those up first, plus hitting the grocery store for a few things, before picking up the pizzas – which my daughter is kindly paying for as her birthday gift! My husband’s main disability payment came in today and normally I’d be going into the city for another stock up shopping trip, but I’ll do that tomorrow, I think.

Meanwhile, I’m going to be watching the trees outside our windows closely, in case another one comes down in the wind!

The Re-Farmer

So many kitties, and trellis bed progress

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I headed out this afternoon, and got distracted by many adorable fluff balls.

I’ve only recently started using Instagram to upload my photos, since I’m running out of storage space on my WordPress account. WP does allow the purchase of extra storage space, without having to upgrade plans, but the cost for 50G is Cdn$68.54 PER MONTH!!!! – billed yearly. Which is insane. If I upgraded my plan to Business, it would cost Cdn$33/month, billed yearly, and that would come with 50G of storage.

So… uploading to Instagram it is.

The problem is, when I upload photos – especially groups of photos – the images are often corrupted. They seem fine right up until I hit “share”, and when I check them, there’s often something wrong with them. Some are so bad, most of the photo can’t even be made out. I thought the issue might be my computer, but when I double checked using my phone, the images were still corrupted. Today, I had to reload this next batch of photos three times before it worked, and even then, the third one is corrupted. At least it’s still visible, though!

These were my distractions.

That orange and white kitten is successfully socialized, and absolutely adorable. The tuxedo in Baby Jail is not socialized at all! I am happy that they are going in and out of the cage comfortably, though. If we ever need to suddenly keep a cat in there until we can take it somewhere, they will already be comfortable in the space.

Octomom’s babies are all over the place these days. The one using a brick as a pillow is just too adorable!

After I took those photos, I started walking slowly in between the cat shelters, and the orange and white kitten came over. I was able to pet him and pick him up, and he was purring up a storm. This made the littles very curious, and they started to come out from under the cat house to see what was going on. That they were willing to come within a couple of feet of me was quite encouraging.

I had to tear myself away from the kittens and get to work! It’s taken forever for me to get back to those poplars I cut for the vertical supports on the trellis beds.

I cut the logs to about 7’2″ lengths, in case the bottom ends need to be trimmed flat. In the first photo is the finished stack of 7′ lengths. I got three out of one log. Most of them got me two lengths. In the corner of the photo is the stack of log ends, or sections that were just too crooked to use.

It was as I was finishing up that I realized I was feeling really dizzy and getting the shakes. It was hot, yes, but “only” about 23C/73F Then I remembered.

I’d had a late breakfast, so when I lay down for a nap at about lunch time, I didn’t eat first. I forgot to eat something before heading outside.

Because I’m an idiot that way.

So I quickly cleaned up then headed in for some food.

When I came back out, I had to figure out the best way to get the logs to where the trellis beds are going to be. I got out the loppers and started clearing a path through the spruce grove. At one point, I had to get the baby chain saw to cut away a fallen tree that was half buried in the grass.

Once I was reasonably sure there weren’t any branches, bushes or small trees to get tangled on, I grabbed a log and carried it over. It was one of the bigger ones, but I could carry it on my shoulder easily enough. The problem was the distance. There was no way I was going to be able to carry them all out like that, without wearing myself out too quickly.

So for the other larger logs, I grabbed a rope to drag them with, which you can see in the second picture.

Of course, if I’m going to do this to make it easier on myself, I really need to make sure there are no stumps of branches to dig into the ground! I adjusted the rope to turn the log a couple of times. In the third photo, you can see all the grass that had been pulled up by what turned out to be two “anchors” on the log! After I got those facing up, the rest of the drag went much more smoothly!

I also took a video of it, to give an idea of just how far the logs need to be carried. For this, I chose a log light enough that I could carry it with one hand, while taking video with the other.

Also, my phone’s microphone really picks up the sound of my breathing! 😄

There’s a brief pause as I show were I had to clear the fallen tree. Just a little one, but too long to just move aside.

In the end, I was only able to move three lengths over. I used the rope to drag the third, bigger one over, after I took the video. It was just too hot for that kind of work. I can’t handle the heat like I used to!

I’m going to have to work on moving these early in the morning, before things get hot. I won’t be able to do much over the next couple of days. Tomorrow, not only am I going into the city for our first monthly stock up shop, but I’m losing a daughter for almost a month. She’ll be house sitting for my brother and his wife while they go on a trip of a lifetime, and going over early so they can show her what she needs to do and what to keep an eye on. So I’m losing one of the more able bodied members of our household!

Looking at the long range forecast, though, I see things have changed. We’re going to be getting hotter again. There’s even a forecast of 30C/86F on the weekend!

Which will be great for the garden. Especially for the squash and melons. The longer we have with warmer temperatures and no frost, the better our chances of having something to harvest.

Well, I’ll figure out what to do during the heat. We really need to get progress done on those beds! Plus, if I can get enough dead spruces cut down, I hope to get more high raised beds built, too, replacing some of the current low raised beds.

At the rate we’ve been going, though, I’ll be lucky to get just one trellis bed done!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 Garden: partial onion harvest

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One of the problems we’ve had is cats getting into the garden beds. They seemed to especially enjoy laying down on the onions!

As a result, we have a lot of onions with broken stems. Under normal circumstances, that would be a sign that the onions are maturing and ready to be harvested. If the stems are prematurely broken, the plants act as if they’ve reached maturity and won’t get any bigger.

I have been leaving them for the last while, which gives them time to develop that thicker, dry outer skin, but I didn’t want to leave them too long. So today, I harvested the first batch.

This is almost all of our yellow onions, though I did leave the ones that did not have broken stems. Normally, I would not have laid them out with the greens facing in and overlapping like that, but if the greens were hanging off the edges, they’d be way too tempting for cats to play with and drag around! Onions are toxic to cats, so we don’t want any sort of temptation like that.

After a couple of days, we’ll braid them and hang them in the cat free zone inside, aka our living room.

The potatoes that had been curing on these screens were put in cardboard boxes to store and are now also in the cat free zone. We’ll have to eat them fairly quickly. I didn’t bother picking over them to separate any for the root cellar. There just isn’t enough to make that worthwhile.

I did use some of the red potatoes with breakfast. I now know that the Red Thumb potatoes are not really suitable for making hash browns. 😄 They really wanted to mash, instead! Still tasted good, though!

The Re-Farmer

Morning harvest, morning kitties

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What a difference a warmer night makes!

Quite a few of the Roma VF could be harvested, and there was even a fair bit of beans to pick. I found a single ripe Black Beauty, and a couple of Indigo Blues. The Black Beauties are determinates, so when they finally start ripening for real, there should be lots of them all at once, like the Roma, but gosh, they’re taking a long time to get there! We might end up harvesting them all to ripen indoors, if the weather doesn’t hold.

Not too much action with the summer squash. There are a lot of female yellow patty pans blooming, which I’m hand pollinating, so we should have more of those later, but it looks like the green patty pans are almost done, and the green zucchini… well, those never really did recover from the slugs.

Meanwhile, we’re seeing all sorts of kittens around. In fact, last night, I think I spotted two “new” kittens, including a calico! Definitely much older kittens. We have never seen Sprout’s babies, so those might be hers. They ran off before I could get a good look at them.

Some of the older kittens, while still quite shy, are at least letting me come a bit closer before they run away. When it comes to feeding them, that usually means dashing under the water bowl shelter for the kibble tray there. That one is a favourite for all the kittens. Especially the littlest ones. Those would be Octomom’s kittens, and they were hanging out under the cat house, waiting their turn at the tray.

In the photo above, the tuxedo on the left is the one that lost its eye. The lids now appear to be closed, and it looks gummy, but it’s hard to tell. It will not let me come any closer than I did when I got the picture.

With so many cats and kittens showing up at different times, I have given up entirely on trying to get a head count. While the kittens may be closer to the house, a lot of the adults seem to be moving on. I haven’t even seen Gooby in a while, and he used to be among those that greeted me every morning. Now I’ve got a couple of white and grey males that are my morning greeters.

When it comes to the yard cat population, the adults seem to not like being around when it starts to get too crowded, and simply move on to new territory.

At least, that’s what I hope they’re doing. There’s no way to know what’s happened to them, once they disappear. I like to think they found new homes on their own, on one of the neighboring farms.

The Re-Farmer