Gardening

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

Morning in the garden, and good cat news!

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What an incredibly moody atmosphere this morning!

This photo was taken shortly after 8am.

It was this wild combination of fog and bright sunshine. Just beautiful!

We were supposed to reach a low of around 11C/52F last night, but when I checked my phone at about 7am, one app was telling me it was 7C/45F. Another was saying we were at 10C/50F, but I think the 7C was the more accurate one.

With that sort of chill, I was not expecting to harvest anything this morning. Certainly, no tomatoes ripened overnight! Yet, I did find this!

There were quite a few larger Gold Ball turnips (they are being thinned by harvesting), and a single radish was ready to pick. In that bed, there are almost no beets coming up, and I’m not really seeing any spinach, either. I think the slugs got to them. But the radishes are coming up, at least. The others are still looking small, long and skinny. There was just this one that was ready to pick.

I also spotted this sleepy guy.

It was barely moving in the colder temperatures. It’ll be warmed by the sun, soon enough. According to my computer’s weather app (I really should get a thermometer for outside my window!), it’s 13C/55F, and we’re expecting a high of 21C/70F.

While checking the purple corn (which we are leaving to dry on the stalks, to collect seed), I could see the Red Swan beans we’d planted among the corn are getting bigger, with lots of flowers. I also finally spotted these!

These were planted late, specifically for their nitrogen fixing properties. I was not expecting to actually get a harvest from them, yet here they are! We should be able to start harvesting beans in a few days! I hope they taste good, because we ended up with a lot of these.

While checking on the old kitchen garden, one of the things I regularly do is look up into the lilac bush that the luffa is climbing, and try to see the little bitty luffa that are developing. There’s one that’s resting on a lilac twig, and it looks like it’s been damaged by the wind rubbing them together.

As I was trying to see among the leaves, I realized there was a much larger gourd developing, high up. I went around the other side of the wattle weave bed to try and see it better, only to discover this one.

It’s huge! Easily a foot long. It is completely hidden by greenery on the other side.

With a gourd this big, we might actually have a fully mature and tried out luffa to harvest by the end of the growing season! As long as the frost holds off.

As I was finishing up around the sun room before going inside, I saw a few of Octomom’s babies emerging from under the cat house. I also saw the black and white garage kitty, way off at the bowl under the grape vines. Nice to see that one coming to the house, finally!

I was in the sun room, just about to go inside, when another cat came up, wanting attention.

It was The Phantom! She’s back!!!

It took a bit of convincing, but when I opened the doors, she came into the house. I let her explore for a bit – and get sniffed at by other cats – when my daughter was able to pick her up and we put her in my bedroom.

The “isolation ward” is getting very crowded.

She’s settling in, though, and loving attention. As I write this, she is behind me on my office chair, keeping my butt warm!

The new kitten we brought in has no problem with her. They would remember each other. I think Decimus still recognized her, too. I’m not sure about Ghosty; they would have met before we brought Ghosty in, but she was so sick, and it was long ago enough that I’m sure she doesn’t remember Phantom anymore, even if her scent might still be familiar.

A couple of Decimus’ kittens were making themselves big, and Tin Whistle even hissed at her, but they now seem used to her and are ignoring her.

Snarly Marlee has been practically living on the window shelf. She is not happy with so many cats in the room.

I’ve no idea how TTT is; they would know each other, too, but TTT is in her favourite sleeping spot in my closet.

Speaking of TTT.

I am not happy with her.

I slept on the couch again last night. I had my mattress uncovered, with “Pet Fresh” carpet powder on the damp spots. I hoped it would be left alone, but when I came in this morning, there was a huge new pee spot, right in the middle of the mattress. There was also a “gift” next to the litter box under my desk, with a puppy pad all bunched up around it.

I ended up taking the box fan out of the window and found a way to set it up directly on my mattress. If nothing else, the breeze it’s creating is making most of my mattress an unpleasant place to be! There is one corner that’s got their bed blanket on it, and they’re not even using that, all that much. The kittens are playing around the fan, though, but they’re more interested in the cave it creates in my wall shelf behind it. A spot they are allowed to play in.

I chatted with the Cat Lady this morning, very happy to pass on the news about Phantom. I also told her about what TTT is doing. She told me that this is apparently common with cats that lose a front leg. They can’t dig in the litter, so they go just anywhere. We didn’t have that problem at all with Ginger. After he had his removed and came indoors, he used a litter box right away, even though he’d never seen one before. As for TTT, considering how much she digs at the puppy pads to bury her poop, clearly, that is not the issue with her.

Butterscotch, meanwhile, is happy the box fan it out of my window. She’s contentedly laying on the window ledge, looking outside. I expected it to be Nosencrantz, considering how much she’s been trying to get behind the fan, but Butterscotch is more Alpha that Nosencrantz. 😄 Nosencrantz is in her favourite spot in the shelf beside the window.

Well, I hope things work out over the next while. Just a little while longer. Then Decimus, the no-name outside kitten and Phantom will all get spayed, then taken to their new home.

It’s a start.

The Re-Farmer

Morning harvest, and kitty status

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First, the good stuff.

This was this morning’s harvest.

Just tomatoes, almost all Romas, and a few patty pan squash, but it was still quite a haul.

The other good stuff is that the kitten I brought in yesterday did just fine, overnight. It was running around and playing with the other kittens when I came into my room this morning.

Which leads me to the not so good stuff.

I had to sleep on the couch last night.

I thought we had been doing well, but in the space of just a few minutes, my nice, clear, dry bed suddenly had a massive puddle in the middle. Not only was it large enough that I couldn’t even sleep on another part of the bed, even though it’s a king size, but it was in a spot that didn’t have any puppy pads under the sheets to protect the mattress.

The girls helped me juggle kittens and strip the bed, but as I soaked up as much as I could with more puppy pads, they were the ones that suggested I sleep on the couch. After getting it as dry as we could, we took off the mattress protector, too, and got everything in the laundry. We laid out more puppy pads, absorbent side down, then carefully covered them with a blanket to keep them in place. Then I left the room with the window fan going on maximum.

I did not get much sleep last night, though I have to admit, it was rather nice sleeping in the cat free zone. I was awakened early by cat arguments. Having had just a couple of hours of sleep, I got up long enough to feed all the cats, inside and out, before going back to bed on the couch.

While doing the feeding in my room, the bed was clear and nothing was destroyed, so I was very encouraged. So I went back to the couch and managed to get almost a couple more hours of sleep.

When I came back to my room, I found a “gift” on my bed. On the blanket, next to the towel I laid out under the kibble bowls while dividing up the wet cat food.

At least it was easy to clean up, but really??? There are so many litter boxes, but noooooo. Gotta use my bed!

Then I sat on the side of the bed to take my supplements, only to discover a wet spot with my butt. The colour and fuzziness of the blanket had hidden it. At least that was on top of a puppy pad!

I am getting so very frustrated.

I did get a chance to chat with the Cat Lady a bit, letting her know that the kitten did well inside. As long as the kitten is about 3 pounds, they will spay her, and I think she’s pretty close to that. With her being inside and getting regular wet and dry cat food, I don’t think it will be an issue by the time of the appointment.

No sign of Phantom this morning, though. We’re already discussing options, if she doesn’t show up in time. I’ll simply grab one of the friendly males. I wouldn’t be able to grab any of the other females. They’re not socialized enough.

Oh, just heard from the Cat Lady again. She says she will drop a trap off for us, tomorrow. If we can snag any of the moms with older kittens that would be good. Still, it would be ideal of Phantom comes back and we grab her.

In other cat related things…

This is the kitten we thought was female that turned out to be male.

What is it all the friendly ones are male? It was the same thing last year. The females are almost universally standoffish, while the males have been more easily socialized and love attention.

Then there are those that are just plain feral. Not semi-feral. Just feral. Like this one.

I spotted this one when I finally got out to do my morning rounds. Brussel’s kittens seem to have moved into the garage, more or less. This is the shier one, and the first time I’ve been able to get a good look at him/her. I had to move slow and zoom right in to get a picture, so it’s not a good image at all. What unique face markings!

I’ve seen its orange and white sibling closer to the house. I think I even saw it in the kibble house. This one, however, stays around the garage, and that’s it. I didn’t top up the food in the bowl I set up in the garage this morning, though. Hopefully, this one will get hungry enough to brave coming to the house. I also saw Octomom’s littles. Not all of them, but they seem to have taken up residence – at least for part of the day – under the cat house.

While doing my rounds this morning, I was pleased to find just one fallen branch. We had more rain and high winds last night, but it seems that weird climate bubble we have over us has protected us. The winds did knock quite a few crab apples off the trees, though. This morning, on one of my local gardening groups, several people mentioned their gardens were completely destroyed. One posted a photo of her crab apple tree, its apples knocked to the ground and lying next to hail almost as big as the apples! So far that I’ve seen, she was the only one that also reported damage to her home. Just a broken window, thankfully.

Today should be quite a bit more pleasant. I plan to be doing stuff indoors, though. Specifically, making tomato sauce. Lack of sleep is catching up to me, though, and I’m dropping off as I type this. I think I will try napping again. I think I can squeeze into the dry corner of my bed around the kittens. I’m afraid that if I try napping on the couch again, I’ll come back to more puddles or piles!

The tomato sauce can wait a couple of hours. I’m all out of energy drinks, and feel like I’m about to drop right on my keyboard!

The Re-Farmer

Morning harvest, and some kitty progress

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We had a really solid rain yesterday – enough to fill the rain barrel by the sun room to overflowing before I got the diverter on. It looks like we got more rain last night, too. The ground was still nice and damp in the garden beds this morning.

I got barely a handful of green and yellow beans this morning, and there aren’t many little ones developing, so those are almost done for the season. I got quite a few Romas, but only a couple of Indigo Blues. I haven’t harvested any Spoon tomatoes for a while, so there were some to grab this morning. We don’t have many plants, so this isn’t too bad.

Depending on what weather app I look at, we’re supposed to reach 26C/79F or 27C/81F today. I’ve got one app saying we’re just going to be cloudy, while another is warning of thunderstorms tonight. When I checked last night, the thunderstorm warning had been for this afternoon. We we’ll see what actually happens.

I chatted with the Cat Lady last night. Decimus is more than ready to stop nursing (though she’s on the bed nursing, as I write this!), and The Phantom has been really friendly again, so I let her know. She’s going to call the lady that wants the 4 females, 2 at a time, and then call a vet to arrange spays. I will be bringing the cats in, then she’ll take it from there.

Of course, The Phantom was nowhere to be seen, this morning. The next time we see her, we’re going to have to either find a way to keep her in the sun room, or bring her indoors until it’s time to take them in for spay and adoption.

I also sent new photos of the kittens for her to send out among her contacts for adoption. Hopefully, that will result in some new homes for the babies soon.

Today is looking like it’s going to be a fairly quiet day. I’m expecting a call from someone that’s selling some small scaffolding today, but I don’t have to drive anywhere to do errands or anything like that. Of course, now that I know I’m home, the heat is back. At least it’s supposed to cool down again tomorrow. From the looks of the long range forecast, there rest of August, and all through September, looks really good. We have lots of work to do outside, and I just haven’t been able to get to it. I’m also going to be down a body soon. My younger daughter is going to be house sitting for my brother while they are away for their anniversary trip. She’s going to be so spoiled, having a cat free house all to herself, and be both on an acreage, and have a fairly large town and easy bike ride away. Heck, if her hips start giving her grief again, they even have a scooter for when my mother visits that she can drive, instead!

I think she’ll enjoy the respite! 😁

The Re-Farmer

Plans changed… and I’m not surprised

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First, the more pleasant stuff!

It’s a wonderfully cool morning today. The entire time I was doing my morning rounds, it was gently misting instead of raining. And would you look at this!

We still have strawberries, blooming and ripening! Recovering from being eaten by deer has resulted in very late production. I’ll take it! 😄

I wasn’t able to get pictures, but I did have a small harvest today. I wasn’t expecting to, so I didn’t bring my colander and ended up using my shirt. I really ought to keep at least one of our harvesting colanders by the sun room! I was actually able to harvest some ripe looking Black Beauties today, as well as a few Indigo Blues. I left the Romas for later. There were some more summer squash to hand pollinate, as well as a couple large enough to harvest.

In looking over the winter squash and the melons, I just have to shake my head. The melons have been blooming like crazy, with both male and female flowers, but there are only 3 melons forming that I can find. This morning, however, there are suddenly a plethora of female flowers! Too many to even try to hand pollinate. With the size of the flowers, I’d have to use something like a cotton swab, anyhow. Hopefully, the insects will take care of it, though to be honest, it’s coming up on the end of August, so not much time for any fruit to reach maturity. Our first average frost date is Sept. 10, but with the strong El Nino this year, we might actually have a chance.

As for the winter squash, there had been two new Honeyboat Delicata forming, then one shrivelled up. The remaining one is getting noticeably bigger, every day. This morning, however, one of the other plants suddenly has a whole bunch of female flowers! Until now, it’s been all male flowers. One was open enough that I could hand pollinate it. The others should open over the next few days. Will they have a chance to mature? During a typical year, no. It would be way too late in the season. But if the frost holds off… we might just have some.

On a slightly more frustrating note, I saw Junk Pile again this morning. This photo is from last night.

That is one round belly.

I saw Caramel walking by this morning, too, and she’s looking pretty round.

More kittens at the end of August/beginning of September?

Crap.

Junk Pile has had a strange year. She had a litter of kittens extremely early and lost them. For a short while, she would follow me as I trudged through the snow to do my rounds and allow me to pick her up and carry her. She was clearly upset about losing her babies. After a few days of that, though, she went back to making strange. She will sometimes allow me to pet her when she’s on the cat house roof, eating, but that’s about it.

I’m sure she had another litter, but not being able to tell her and not-Junk Pile (now Two Toes Tony) apart, it was hard to tell. Once we saw not-Junk Pile/TTT with scratching wounds behind her ears, we could tell them apart, so I could see that it was TTT had a litter of six, though by the time we found her with the broken leg, it seems she was down to three. I would sometimes see that Junk Pile had active nips, but I never saw her with kittens. If her kittens are here at the house now, I don’t know which are hers, and the creche mothers – mostly Adam and Beep Bop – will nurse any and all kittens by the house that want to. Beep Bop is often seen nursing Caramel’s three – so I guess it’s no surprise that Caramel is pregnant again, too, even though her kittens are not old enough to be weaned.

*sigh*

Now, on to the main change of the day.

I’m not going to my mother’s.

I was indisposed when the phone started ringing, and it wasn’t even 7:30 in the morning yet. We get only two types of calls before 8am. Scammers, or my mother! 😄 I found a message from my mother, sounding very conciliatory, saying I didn’t need to come over. I could go to my appointment. She would be all right. (As if I needed her permission to go to my appointment??)

So I called her back. She told me she would take the shuttle bus for her errands. I could go to my appointment. She’d be fine. It’s only $6. She absolutely insisted I did not need to come over.

Which is fine, but between yesterday’s call and her attitude this morning, my suspicions are almost confirmed. She didn’t want me to come at all, because she had plans for my sister. She can talk my sister into taking her places that I can’t – or won’t! – take her. Considering the things she’s been saying about my brother lately, I have a very good idea of what that would have been, and there is no way I would have had the time to drive her around for that. Also, even if I did, there are things she can talk my sister into doing that she can’t talk me into. I sometimes worry about my sister’s cognitive abilities, to be honest, because she got talked into helping my mother stab my brother in the back, and she still seems to have no understanding of the harm she’s done, among other odd things.

Well, whatever. My day just went back to my original plans.

Sort of.

A nap is now part of those plans.

I didn’t get much sleep last night. With TTT not using the litter, and peeing on my pillows, I think I found something suitable to block her preferred area. My husband got a wedge for his knees, years ago, but with his hospital bed, he no longer needs it. I brought it down from it’s storage spot and have it on my bed. I considered she might just decide to pee next to it or something, but she really seemed to be wanting to use my pillows, so I hoped it would work.

After being awakened many times by either the kittens running wild, or Snarly Marlee growling and snarling at them – even when they were nowhere near her! – I am pretty sleepy right now! I was, however, awakened yet again, shortly before my alarm was supposed to go off . A distinctive rustling sound.

Sure enough, TTT was under my desk. She’d dug around the puppy pads and took a dump, right next to the litter box.

At least it was on a puppy pad.

There was no puddle, however. I couldn’t find a puddle anywhere, which had me concered that she’d found some hidden corner to use that we can’t get at.

Then I sat in it.

I keep a towel on the seat of my desk chair. It’s fake leather and the surface has been peeling off, with more than a little assistance from cats. I have the towel so that I don’t have little pieces of fake leather stuck to my butt when I get up.

TTT had jumped onto my chair and peed on the towel.

With a litter box RIGHT THERE and easier to get to.

*sigh*

I’ll be sure to talk to someone at the clinic today about it, but to be honest, I suspect we won’t solve that problem until the kittens get adopted out. Too many kittens using all of the litter boxes.

I’d really like to adopt out TTT, too. She’s new to this indoor life thing, but I’m sure she would be better in a household with far fewer cats in it!

We’ll figure it out.

The Re-Farmer

Morning harvest, and follow up

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We actually got rain some time this morning! Not a lot, but enough to raised the level in the rain barrel, and for the ground to still be moist when I was doing my rounds.

This morning’s harvest was pretty good.

There are some green and yellow beans on the bottom. The bush beans aren’t producing a lot anymore, but there’s still enough for a meal coming off of them, every couple of days. The tomatoes are mostly Romas, of course, but there is an actual ripe Black Beauty in thee! Plus a green one that broke off when I was looking through the vines. The others are Indigo Blues. There’s just a couple of patty pans, with more ripening, including some yellow patty pans I hand pollinated. With rain collecting in the cups of the flowers, no insects were going to do it, that’s for sure!

Finally, there is a Sweet Chocolate pepper. It looks pretty green in the photo, but it’s just one little patch; the rest is deep, milk chocolate brown.

On a completely different note…

TTT got her last doses of medication last night. That’s going to make feeding the cats in my room so much easier! No more wrestling kittens to keep them away from the bowl of wet cat food while it’s being medicated, or keeping TTT from eating the kitten distraction wet cat food and becoming too full to eat her medicated food.

I’m happy to say that, so far at least, TTT has not left me a big, wet gift at my pillow since yesterday morning. I was awakened during the night by odd noises that I thought might have been her finding somewhere else not-a-litter-box to use, but the kittens were active, so I couldn’t tell what the noise was. I couldn’t see TTT anywhere for quite some time, but eventually she crawled her way out of my closet. I have some boxes stacked in there and the cats sometimes use the top as a very hidden away bed. I now think the noise that woke me was her scrambling up to this prime napping cave.

The puppy pad I put on the new litter box was wet, but I still couldn’t say it was TTT, or a bunch of kittens using it. I thought it might be safe to remove it, though, and expose the litter pellets below.

Eventually, I was able to get back to bed, though it was past 5am by then. When I got up for the day, sure enough, there was a “gift” under my desk for me – on a puppy pad right next to the litter box.

*sigh*

No sign of puddles, though. Anywhere. So maybe she’s at least peeing in a litter box now?

Tomorrow, she goes in to have her staples removed. I’ll see if I can get some advice at the clinic while I’m there. She’s not seeing the vet; just a technician, but I’m sure there will be someone I can talk to.

Meanwhile, I’m wondering what else I can leave on my bed to dissuade any possible puddles!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: two potato types harvested

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Well, the second bed of Red Thumb potatoes did better than I feared. Only a few surface potatoes had slug damage.

In the first picture, the potatoes from the wattle weave bed are on the far left. I hadn’t planned on planting potatoes there, and had just shoved the last seed potatoes that didn’t fit in the other bed in there. This bed was different in that, when it was prepared in the fall, it was topped with a mulch of wood chips. I just dug holes for each seed potato through the mulch, leaving most of it undisturbed. Then, a straw much was added on top. To harvest them, I removed the straw mulch and dumped it on the other bed I’d just emptied, but the wood chip mulch got brushed aside. After harvesting all the potatoes I could find, the wood chips and soil got pushed back and levelled off, all mixed together. The wood chips had already started to compost pretty well since last fall, and should break down even faster, now that it’s mixed in with the soil and all the worms and insects I was finding!

The second picture is of all the really tiny potatoes I was finding, plus a few slug damaged ones. They actually look far bigger in the picture than they actually are!

For now, they’re just sitting in their little piles on rhubarb leaves. I’ll figure out what to do with them later!

The Purple Peruvian potatoes should be much easier to harvest. We just need to dump them out of their grow bags and onto a tarp or something. The first time we had potatoes in grow bags, we dumped them into the kiddie pool we had, but that’s got melons growing in it right now. 😄 It’ll be a while before we harvest those. They are only just barely starting to die back right now.

We already knew we liked the Purple Peruvians. So far, we’ve only had one meal with the Irish Cobbler and the Red Thumbs, and we enjoyed them, too. They were cooked together, though. We’ll try them each on their own next, and see how we like them. At this point, though, I’d say both varieties are ones we’d be willing to grow again. When we’re at a point that we can grow enough potatoes to last us the winter, we’ll have tried enough different varieties to decide on two or three to stick to and save our own seed potatoes from.

Little by little, it’s getting done!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: more potatoes!

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It’s a beautiful cool day! The weather apps can’t seem to make up their mind if we’re supposed to get rain or not in our area, which means we probably will not, so I worked on harvesting potatoes in the old kitchen garden again.

But first, I sorted through last night’s potatoes.

In the first photo above, I sorted the largest potatoes out for curing. The smaller potatoes are the smaller ones, which I brought in for immediate eating.

Not very many left, that’s for sure!

The Red Thumb fingerlings are split between two beds, and I started on the long, narrow one at the retaining wall. The first thing was to remove the mulch, and as you can see by the second picture, there were quite a few potatoes right on the surface, hidden by the straw.

I was also uncovering lots of frogs! With the cooler temperatures, they were pretty sluggish and snoozing under cover.

In the third photo, you can see all the Red Thumb potatoes I harvested from that bed (almost). They are fingerling potatoes, so I would expect them to be small, but they somehow seem smaller than they should be, for this variety. The yield is very nice, though. My guess is that, with better soil conditions, they would have been larger. Later on, we’ll go back to them and separate out the largest ones, and taken the smaller ones inside to eat right away.

What I didn’t get a picture of, but intend to later, are the ones that didn’t make it to the curing screen. I kept finding the tiniest of potatoes! Maybe the other potatoes had tiny ones that that, too, but I just didn’t see them. These potatoes are so red, I couldn’t miss them! I’m not sure what I’m going to do with them. They’re too tiny for eating. Just washing them would be very difficult. I don’t want to just toss them on the compost. I’m considering finding some out of the way spot and just burying them in the fall. Who knows. They might start growing in the spring, like some of our volunteers, this year! 😁

Once the retaining wall bed was done, I removed the mulch from the others in the wattle weave bed. As with the first bed, there were potatoes right on the surface, too.

Holey potatoes.

Some still had slugs on them.

After throwing away the first few I uncovered, I realized this bed was hit by the slugs quite badly. So I took the ones I’d already harvested and laid them out, then took a break. I’ll be getting back at it after I’m done this post. I hope it’s just the surface potatoes that are so badly damaged, but I don’t have high hopes for that bed’s harvest at this point.

The Re-Farmer