I’m really impressed with this variety of spinach we tried this year. The plants are finally starting to bolt, but the leaves have not become bitter at all!
I picked some spinach to use for today, but the whole bed will need to be harvested. We can dry the excess leaves, and plant something else in the bed.
I thought I would be picking the last of the garlic scapes, but a couple more showed up overnight that should be ready to pick tomorrow. I don’t know if two scapes could be considered a harvest, though. 😄
Several of the strawberries I was expecting to pick this morning were gone. I found their remains on the mulch nearby. There were a few others that I could pick. They clearly did not get fully pollinated and are misshapen, but my goodness, they are tasty little morsels!
Once these are done, there won’t be anything that can be harvested for some weeks, or even months, and there are still things that need to go in the ground. The squash – including the mystery squash I transplanted near the rose bush – are finally looking like they’re getting stronger. I keep having to remind myself, we’re still in the middle of June. We’re actually ahead of the game a bit. It’s the heat that’s messing with my perception. Well, that and on some of my local and Zone 3 gardening groups, there are people sharing pictures of their huge gardens and the things they are already harvesting. !!!
It’s the delay in building things that’s really eating at me, though. It’s driving me absolutely bonkers So very frustrating!
Yesterday was hot, and today is supposed to be a hotter, so I made sure to give the garden a thorough watering last night. I think it really appreciated it!
The mock orange next to the laundry platform is just exploding with flowers. Even the smaller one against the east side of the house that I keep forgetting to water is starting to bloom (we really need to move both of them!).
I found a few surprises this morning.
We have ripening strawberries. The ones in the photo look like they had some pollination issues, but it looks like all the plants are producing.
The big surprise was finding Roma tomatoes! They’re not the first to start blooming, and where the third variety to be transplanted, so for them to be the first to have developing tomatoes was very unexpected.
Some, but not all, of the resown green beans have germinated. Even some of the summer squash have started to germinate. With the winter squash, while transplanting Jiffy pellets with sprouts in them, I also transplanted the pellets that didn’t germinate. At least one of those has sprouted with big, strong seed leaves emerging. All of the squash seem to be recovering from transplant shock, little by little.
There was one transplant I did not expect to survive. There was a squash of some sort that sprouted in the wattle weave garden bed, between a bell pepper and some shallots. I did not plant it there, and it would have to go, since a squash plant there would completely envelop the shallots and peppers. So I transplanted it to an open space next to the pink rose bush, where we grew leftover lettuce seeds last year. As I tried to gently dig up the squash plant, I discovered that it was far, far deeper than I expected. I’m guessing the seed came with the garden soil, which has compost in the mix. When I pulled it up, it was basically all long, buried stem, but I did see a hint of a root just under what had been the soil level, so I transplanted it anyway. When I saw it the next day, drooping on the ground, I figured it didn’t survive, but included it when watering, anyway. This morning, it was looking perked up and much stronger! So it might actually survive, and we’ll find out what kind of squash it is.
I also got a harvest this morning! We don’t have a lot of garlic this year, and one variety is a soft neck garlic, so even fewer will develop scapes. I’d noticed scapes starting to show up recently, so it was a surprise to see they were ready to harvest, this morning! I picked almost all of them. There are a few remaining that should be ready tomorrow or the day after. Then they will be done.
Next year, we have to make sure to plant a lot more hard neck garlic, and protect the bed over the winter more thoroughly.
In other things, when I came out with the cat food this morning, I saw Caramel out and about, looking very hungry. She even let me pet her, though I think that was more because she wanted food. I dropped a handful of kibble at the opening where she had her kittens. It wasn’t long before she eating it, and was back under the cat house. I could hear the squeaking of kittens. She may have let me pet her while she was on the cat house roof, but when I tried to use my phone again to look under the cat house, she was back to growling!
There was one unpleasant surprise this morning, though. When I got to the kibble house with food, I found blood all over the place! On the floor, in the empty trays, and even against the walls in a couple of places! I’ve seen blood around before. The cats do fight pretty violently at times. Never this much, though. While doing my rounds, I kept an eye out for an injured cat, but saw nothing. Not even blood on the grass to show me where an injured cat might have gone. I’m assuming it was from a cat, though it’s possible it came from a racoon. Definitely not a skunk, since there was no smell.
The weird part is, no one heard any fighting last night. My daughters have a window facing that way that is kept open all night. My older daughter was working all night, as usual, and she didn’t hear a thing. My husband’s window is closer, but between the fans and his CPAP, he would only hear something if he’s up and about already. It would take a lot of noise outside to wake him from all the white noise he’s got going around him, inside.
It is a mystery.
The kittens inside are getting more active. In fact, I found one crawling around on the floor! I don’t want to risk stepping on one during the night while going to the bathroom or something, so with the help of a daughter, we move the cat cave, with the whole family inside, into baby jail. One of my daughter has put strips of carboard around the bottom few inches, so if any of the kittens get out of the cat cave, they won’t be able to get through the cage openings. They’re still small enough to squeeze through!
So far, they seem to be okay with the new arrangement.
Well, we’re not going to hit our predicted high of 30C/86F, but got close enough to not matter!
I took this screen shot after my daughter and I got back from the city. Last night, my older daughter asked when I had time to go in, and since today was going to be basically heat stroke weather, I figured a trip to the city in an air conditioned car would not be a bad thing! Since my younger daughter had their shopping list, in preparation for joint Father’s Day and birthday celebrating, I went ahead and got a few things, too.
While today’s heat is not conducive to debranching and dragging out dead trees, I did manage to get some tiny steps done yesterday evening.
I marked out where the first pair of mid-height raised beds, with a permanent trellis tunnel, will be. I’m rather impressed with how close it matched the Ruth Stout potato and melon bed. That was determined by the size of the black tarp we lay down to start killing of the grass, first. The posts at the far end are just a few inches longer than the straw bed.
The posts across the ends are all 4 ft apart. There will be a path down the middle, and the logs for the walls of the beds will be placed inside the markers, so that they will be 4 ft wide on the outside. Yes, we will loose some growing space; especially once the vertical posts for the trellis tunnel are put in, but the width is for reach and accessibility, not growing space.
The beds will be 18 ft long – twice the length of the high raised bed beside it. I used the high raised bed to first mark out the south end and the middle of the first bed, then I could use those markers to help make a straight line to 18 ft at the north end.
My tape measure only goes to 16 ft. 😄 Not a problem, but it was funny! Once I had the corners of the first bed marked out, I used them to mark out the second bed.
I must say, trying to place those old conduit pipes I was using to mark the corners, really illustrated how much we need to make raised bed. I was able to use a piece of board to hammer most of them in, just enough that they could hold themselves up, but with some of them, they simply would not go into the ground. I ended up using a hoe to loose the top couple of inches, only for it to still not go into the ground. So I’d use the hoe again, until I could finally get the post to stay up. It wasn’t just that I was hitting rocks, but the ground in places were just as hard as the rocks! The only exception was when I pushed a post to mark in the middle, lined up with the north end of the high raised bed. That one post was in the middle of the amended garden space, and I was able to push it easily into the soil. The other posts were just along the edges of the amended soil.
The next step will be to remove the straw mulch from where the beds will be, and make a shallow trench were the long logs will rest on the ground, so they don’t roll away. For these beds, we’ll use salvaged shorter logs – we still have lots of 4 ft lengths from getting the chipping done available to use – and screw them into the ends of the long logs to hold them in place.
Once the vertical supports for the trellis are installed and the walls and ends secured, we’ll do some layering of organic material – the straw we took out, wood chips and whatever else we have available – before topping the space with garden soil.
Then I can finally transplant those melons we have waiting, and maybe even have space to do some direct sowing. At this point, anything we direct sow has to have a growing season of under 90 days, including the time needed to germinate. Under 80 days would be better.
If we can manage to get two beds with trellises done this spring, I will be very happy. We’ll be dropping quite a few things that I hoped to plant this year, simply because it’s taking so long for us to get these beds ready. Still, we did manage to get quite a few things in, among the various garden beds we have spread out around the inner yard.
Over time, we still plan to have garden beds built in the outer yard. With those, we can focus on having things that get harvested all at once in the fall in the outer yard, while things that get harvested throughout the summer will be planted closer to the house.
We’ll see how the timeline works out! I do see that we’re going to need at least another truck load of garden soil before then. That probably won’t be purchased until next year, though, at the earliest.
In the time it took me to write this, we are now past 4pm, and we’re still at 29C/84F, so we’re not going to be heading out to work on the garden beds tonight. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get out early in the morning, before things start getting too hot.
Meanwhile, my younger daughter and I got a big job, done in tiny snips, done this afternoon.
We decided to work on Decimus’ matted fur.
What we ended up doing was laying a towel on my bed, then putting all her kittens on it, then getting her out of the cat cage – a space she clearly considered her safety zone! – and putting her with her kittens. While one of us comforted her by stroking her head and neck, and holding her in place, the other worked on snip snip snipping away. We got a burr buried in fur off of one of her legs, and another off her back, before focusing on the big mat covering her back.
It was even bigger than we thought.
It was easily as big as my daughter’s hand.
While Decimus did try to get away or squirm around a few times, I think she could feel improvement, and became much more patient. As we took turns snipping away, depending on who could get the best angle at the time, I could see that her skin was pulled up and even twisted in places. You could see folds of skin dropping down, bit by bit, as we snipped the fur away. There was a lot of cat dandruff stuck in there, too, and we even found a smothered bug! No signs of any other insects or lice, thankfully. It easily took at least 10 minutes to get that one mat off.
Once we finally got the piece free, we let her go. She had been so patient! Her back is pretty much completely shorn now. There is another large mat on her back end, but we will give her a break before working on that one. Then there are all the little ones, all over.
As soon as we let her go, she ran straight back into the cat cage and lay down on the baby nest! Her little grublings, meanwhile, had been squirming all around while she was getting trimmed, trying to find some nip. They were very happy to be back in the cage with Mom!
I think Mom is a lot happier now, too.
As for me… I think I need to go wash my bedding and certain towel, now!
Well, we have now planted as much as we can until we build the new trellis beds.
The first job was direct sowing summer squash. I forgot that we have 5 varieties. Which worked out well. There were four empty mounds from yesterday, so prepping another row of six mounds meant two for each type. Much less than we would normally plant per type, but this year we seem to be more about variety than individual quantity.
The last row will not be used this year, since it gets the most shade. Each mound got two are three seeds – all the seed packets are from previous years, and several of them had only five seeds left in them. With older seeds, we have to consider that some of them won’t germinate at all. The varieties we have are sunburst and G Star patty pans, yellow and green zucchini, and Magda.
Next, the grow bags were gathered and filled.
The low, black ones were “raised bed gardens” we got from the dollar store last year. The green ones I picked up from the dollar store this year, and they are really good! I folded them down to about half height. The fabric seems really strong, and they have sewn in handles that also seem really strong.
Four of two different varieties were planted in the wider black bags/beds. Two each of a third variety went into the green bags. They all got Red of Florence onions planted around them. These are Early Sunsation, Early Summer and Dragonfly.
The last five feed bags were filled, and each got one Cheyenne pepper in them, with more Red of Florence onions. The last bag got all onions.
We still have lots of each type of pepper (and you can see the one late germinating Spoon tomato!), which can be given way. I plan to continue to interplant the onions any chance I get. We started a lot of them, because we use a lot of onions, and ran out fairly quickly, last year.
Oh, I didn’t bother taking a photo, but I also planted a few beans. The row of green Lewis beans had a lot fewer come up than the yellow Custard beans. The gaps in the yellow beans are minor, but less than half the green beans either didn’t germinate, or didn’t grow well once they did (some have just stems left, as if the leaves just died off), so I planted more.
We have so many varieties of beans I hoped to plant this year, but at this point, my priority is to get a trellis bed built so that we can put in our melon transplants.
Thankfully, all of these are short season varieties, so we should still have plenty of growing season left for them. The pole beans, however might have to be skipped this year. We shall see.
A high priority over the next while will be to mulch around today’s transplants, and the summer squash mounds. That means cutting more grass and collecting the clippings!
It’s only the 10th of June today. We should still have time. Plus, it’s an El Niño year, which means we should have a warmer, wetter summer and fall, and a mild winter, too. Anything that extends our growing season, I will be thankful for!
Well, I got them in, before things got too windy out there!
The winter squash were planted in the small Jiffy Pellet trays, six of each type. Of those where not all of them germinated, I still planted the empty pellets with ones that had germinated. They may not have had visible seedlings, but some of them did have roots showing through the pellet’s casing.
In the northernmost row, there are two Boston Marrow, two Winter Sweet and two Lady Godiva.
There were four Honeyboat Delicata seedlings to tranplant, but only two Little Gem/Red Kuri.
The North Georgia (I just noticed the typo I made when labeling the photo!) had the most seedlings, with five to transplant. There were three Pink Banana. That left four empty mounds. I’ve decided to fill one more row tomorrow, to direct sow summer squash in. We have four varieties, and I want to have at least two plants of each.
While I intend to mulch the rest of the patch with wood chips, I’ll be gathering grass clippings to mulch around the mounds of soil.
But not today.
Tomorrow is supposed to be cooler, with a predicted high of 21C/70F, which will be much more pleasant to work in. Especially since I plan to have enough soil brought over to fill grow bags.
Weather willing, we should be able to get quite a bit done tomorrow.
They have been transferred to baby jail and seem quite content. Decimous (or Decimus, as my daughter spells it) has been very quiet and attentive to her furry little worms.
My daughter has been staying in my room to supervise the family (the babies are so small, they could potentially squeeze through the openings of the cave) and keep an eye on how the other cats behave around them.
She fell asleep on my bed. I think she had a sleepless night last night, too!
Meanwhile, I headed outside and broke out the weed trimmer. I cleared around the pile of garden soil and then, since I had the trimmer out already, as much as I could reach around the burn barrel. I didn’t fell like adding another extension cord, so that area isn’t quite done, but close.
Then it was time to start hauling soil. I didn’t bother to sift it, though I did pause to pull out the biggest roots.
Where the sticks are, marks where we had squash growing last year. In each spot, we dug out the sod, then added fresh soil. Each squash got cardboard layers around them (we didn’t have enough to do the paths with cardboard, too), then mulched with straw, grass clippings, scythed hay – anything we could get our hands on. It took much of the summer to have enough material to mulch all the paths, too.
So now, each pot is getting more fresh garden soil and, now that we have so much of it, the rest of the area will be mulched with wood chips.
There are still two rows that I did not add soil to. They get a lot more shadow, so I won’t do those unless we really need the space. Instead, I will work on filling grow bags, next. Those will likely get peppers in them.
After I took this photo, I removed all the sticks marking the spots. Then I went around with the spade and flattened each hill and spread them a bit. Finally, I went around with the hose and used a higher pressure setting to drill water into the middle of each mound of soil.
I’ve left them to absorb the water while taking a break from the heat and the sun. Later today, I’ll go back out and start transplanting what winter squash we have that’s ready. We’ve got some melons to transplant, too, but they’re still pretty small, so they can wait. With what space I have left, if there is any, I want to sow summer squash.
We seem to have reached our high for the day – we’re at 25C/77F and pretty windy – and things are supposed to cool down slightly from now on. Tonight, we’re supposed to have a low of 12C/54F. That is going to feel glorious! My goal is to get as many of the transplants in that we can right now, so we can start dragging out those trees my brother cut down for me and begin working on the permanent trellis beds. If we can manage to get those done over the next while, we might still have time to direct sow things into them, as long as they have a short enough growing season.
This gardening year isn’t quite working out as planned, but it’s getting done, little by little!
Okay, so I managed to get a bit done in the garden this evening. Also, I had a wonderful surprise. Rolando Moon appeared! I haven’t seen her in at least a month, maybe two. At her age, we just never know if she’ll disappear and not return anymore.
I was also happy to see The Distinguished Guest wander into the north side of the property. Happy, that is, until I heard a cat fight and discovered he had attacked Pinky, and I had to chase him off. *sigh*
I had some squash that were getting too big for their pots that needed to go in, so I focused on the hill we grew pumpkins in last year.
This is how it looked after taking a weed trimmer to it, after the mowing around it was done. Those bricks had been placed under the developing pumpkins to keep them off the ground. The round thing is an ant trap. There was two of them, but one disappeared when it got caught by the push mower, last year.
They didn’t work. The ant hill is still there.
Thankfully, the bug spray I used seems to do a good job of deterring ants, too. I dug up the bed with a garden fork and pulled out as many weeds and roots as I could. The ground was crawling with ants, but while I had them on my boots, that’s about as far as they went.
Before, this hill had only ever had two plants transplanted into it. After weeding it and working the last of a bag of sheep’s manure into the surface, I raked it out into a flattish square.
I fit 6 transplants in. The row of three on the far right are Zucca melon, from a second seed start. In the middle row, the two in the foreground are African Drum gourd, also from a second seed start. The other four were in an unlabeled pot. I restarted both the Zucca melon and Drum gourd at the same time, but one unlabeled pot got mixed up. I think they are also drum gourds, but I’m not sure. At this stage, the leaf and stem shapes look almost identical.
We’ll figure it out soon enough, if they survive.
I then filled in the last of the space available in the wattle weave bed.
I had removed the protective plastic from the Sweet Chocolate peppers, and they now all have support stakes. I left the protection around the one Classic Eggplant, though it did get its own support stake, as did the luffa in the corner.
I transplanted one of each variety of pepper seedlings we had waiting. Between the luffa and the eggplant is Dragonfly. The three around the curve are the Cheyenne, Early Summer and Early Sunsation. I wanted to get at least one of each type transplanted, just in case we aren’t able to get things ready early enough to get the rest into the ground.
To the left of the luffa is the largest of the 3 mystery squash that germinated with some Roma tomatoes. I think they might be luffa, but I’m 100% not sure.
As I write this, it’s coming up on 8:30pm, and we’ve finally started to cool down a bit. What I got done wasn’t a lot, and certainly didn’t involve much physical exertion, but it still left me dripping with sweat. The next few days are supposed to be every so slightly cooler, and then things are supposed to heat up again. And physical exertion is going to be the main work, because we have to start hauling garden soil over to the squash patch, so we can start transplanting. We can’t even start that until I take the weed trimmer to the tall grass around the pile that couldn’t be mowed.
It’s going to be hot, sweaty and disgusting work, but we’re running out of time. It’s not just prepping spots for the transplants. This year, I was going to try direct sowing the summer squash, and those seeds should be in the ground already.
I suspect that by the time we finish building the permanent trellis beds, it’ll be too late to direct sow a lot of things. I might try, anyway. We could find ourselves with a long, mild fall again.
There’s only so much we can do, though. None of us area handling this heat well.
I headed out to do the morning rounds a bit earlier than usual. We’ve finally been able to arrange for our septic tank to be emptied (usually we try to get it done in April or May, or as soon as the snow is gone). The truck is coming some time this morning, so I wanted to make sure the gate was open.
While continuing my rounds, I checked out the Crespo squash, and they are looking great! They are all getting increasingly robust, and I’m seeing roots forming all along the main vines. Two of the vines have started blooming already!
I’m quite happy with how these are doing.
This early in the morning, everything was feeling wonderfully cool, and everything was still very wet! For all the rain we got, it did reduce the humidity, but not by all that much, really.
Which might explain this.
I don’t know where Gooby was when I first came out with the kibble, but he was there when I got back to the house, and completely soaked! Only Decimous had wet fur like him, but only on her lower half, not all over, like he was. All the other cats managed to stay almost completely dry!
We really, really need to get ahold of Decimous. She is so badly matted, I can see burrs stuck in her fur, there are some mats starting to dangle, I see bald patches and I’ve even found some of them in the yard. I’m guessing she’s been scratching at them. While I’ve managed to give her neck and ear scritches a few times, she mostly moves away before I can get close. Aside from trapping her (which is more likely to get other cats, first), if we even had a trap, trying to socialize her is the most we can do. It would be easier if we could offer her wet cat food, but if we did that, we’d have all the friendly cats crowding in for a treat.
Oh, and either she’s got a whole lot of mats around her belly, or she’s pregnant.
*sigh*
Well, we do what we can.
I now await the arrival of the septic truck. I want to be around when the septic guy gets here, mostly to make sure the cats stay away from the open tank while it is being worked on, and at some point I’m going to have to go out to pick up some packages. It seems that for one of them, Purolator decided not to leave the package at the store our post office is in, as they have been lately, but at the depot in the down my mother lives in. We’ve got two packages that are supposed to be in right now. When I check the tracking, it says that Canada Post had issues with delivery. Neither says they were to be shipped by Purolator, so I don’t know what’s going on there. What I really want to do is go back to bed. I got almost no sleep last night. It was finally a relatively cool and pleasant night, but I didn’t get to bed until late, and then got hit with busy brain. It wouldn’t be any better to get my daughter to drive, because I think she had an even worse night than I did.
We’ve had all sorts of things budding and blooming in succession. The most recent buds developing is the pink rose bush in the old kitchen garden.
This rose was almost dead when we first moved here. It took years to help it recover, and prune away enough of ornamental apple tree above it, so it was finally getting enough light. Now it’s starting to thrive and has SO many buds developing!
It’s past 6 as I write this, and we’re still at 31C/88F, with a humidex of 38C/100F. We’ve got all sorts of heat warnings going on. The hottest temperatures start at about 3pm, so I tried to do as much as I could outside, before we reached that point.
Today was a weed whacking day.
I was able to use the trimmer around all the raised beds. I could get in between them with the push mower, but that left a lot of tall crab grass and dandelions along the edges. The weed trimmer line can get under the logs a fair bit, so it makes quite a difference.
I also got the tall grass and weeds in the squash patch, then kept on going. Much of the area in the back is too rough for a mower, though my SIL did make a few passes across the area. I did the squash hill, and the corner on the left that’s in shadow.
I was really appreciating the shadows!
I did take a pause after the paths around the beds were done, to go to the post office.
My glasses were in!
The ones with the smaller lenses are what I wore as I continued working, as they were closer in size to my old glasses. They needed less getting used to. I didn’t want to be dealing with depth perception issues or head rushes while using the weed trimmer. I got use to the new prescription very quickly, though.
I’m wearing the larger lensed glasses now. Those are a lot like the glasses I used to wear through most of junior and senior high. I like the larger lenses, and I have better peripheral vision, but they do take a bit more getting used to seeing with.
After I finished the weed trimming and headed inside, I decided to try watching a movie on my desktop. I watched the entire movie, in one sitting, with zero eye strain! Not only that, but I can also tap or read messages on my phone, without having to take my glasses off!
I am quite happy with them, so far. I do feel nervous taking them on and off, though. The designs on both are a lot more delicate compared to my old glasses, so they feel very fragile. They aren’t, but it’ll take some getting used to!
After I had a chance to cool down and get used to my new glasses, I headed back outside to do a few things. One of those was to water all the garden beds. In this heat, even the stuff that is mulched is needing it.
Once again, I found so many frogs coming out from under the boards covering the Uzbek Golden carrots! I checked and saw that carrots were sprouted, so removed the boards. I set them along the edge of the bed, on top of the mulch, making sure to dampen the mulch first, so the frogs will still have somewhere moist and cool to rest under.
When watering the Spoon tomatoes I transplanted last night, I found on looking like it has slumped over in the heat. It turned out to be snapped above the lowest branch. I broke the top off the rest of the way, but the remaining stem may actually do okay.
There is more weed trimming to do, but I’m done for the day. In fact, I’m seriously considering going to bed once I’m done this post!
That is, if the cats on my bed would give me any space.
The Re-Farmer 