Gardening

Cold progress

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Well, today has turned out to be a pretty miserable day, weather wise. It’s 9C/48F right now – as warm as we’re going to get today – but the “feels like” is at 6C/44F. After the heat we’ve had in the last while, this is sweater weather. A few weeks ago, it would have been t-shirt weather! 😄

There was some wind, but the direction changed, so I felt I could bring the transplants out for a few hours. They need to get used to the chill, too, before getting in the ground.

I had intended to take down some trees to use to build our trellis tunnel, and was planning to haul out the electric chainsaw and an extension cord. We do have a power outlet on the fence along the road that I could hook up to. There was, however, a constant threat of rain. The trees I singled out are not very large, but straight and tall. I could take them down with hand saws, but I really wasn’t up to that.

So, I worked to solve a problem, instead.

This one.

This is the bed the shallots were transplanted into.

Which the cats promptly started to lie on.

I put the largest of the old window screens we use for things like curing onions, etc. in the fall to cover it. It’s not quite bit enough, and I kept having to put it at more of an angle because, of course, the cats still went on top of it. Sometimes, I’d find one corner pressed down inside the bed. No damage to the shallots, but that’s just been luck, so far.

So this bed needs protection from the cats, with a decent amount of height to it. I rifled through some material we used to make covers for the long, low raised beds in the main garden area for wood. Those frames had started to break apart over the winter, but I was able to take them apart, and some of the wood was still useable. I brought over three lengths, which you can see in the background of the photo.

This bed is 4′ x 2′ in size, and the boards I brought over were 8′ long, so I was able to cut one in half for the sides of a frame, choosing the board with the least damage. From a second board, I was able to cut the end pieces, which are 2′, minus the thickness of two boards. Nothing is exact, so after marking 2′, I used the edges of the boards to mark of the actual length needed.

This would have been a good day to use the miter saw I got at the garage sale awhile back, but I would have had to bring it outside to use it, and I didn’t want to risk it getting rained on.

I took progress photos and will probably make a video of the process when it’s done, but I had to stop before it was finished. This is what it looks like, now.

The chicken wire and hula hoop pieces were salvaged from the old frames. You can also see that I used small pieces of wood to reinforce the corners, using 3″ long pieces of wood. I had planned to just nail them in place, but didn’t have good nails for it (I’ve never seen the tip of a nail bend like that before… 😲), so I had to use screws for those, too. I did break out the drill to make pilot holes. Thankfully, the rain held off while I was using it.

Gooby really wanted attention while I was working. Not good when using cutting implements or power tools!

To finish it off, I need to add chicken wire to the ends, plus add a support across the top – because you just know that a cat will try to climb or jump on it! I’m still debating whether I want to add a third hoop in the middle. For such a small frame I normally wouldn’t bother, but with the cats… it might just be worth it.

I had to stop because it finally started to rain too much to stay out in it. I had already brought the transplants back into the sun room.

What I’ve done here is basically a miniature version of what I want to build for the box beds the carrots and spinach are planted in, so in a way, this is a test run. Doing the ends is going to be a finicky, to work around the curves. Chicken wire is nice and flexible, at least.

So for now, the shallots are still not really protected, since the cats can just walk right through the open ends, but with the weather the way it is right now, I think they’re more likely to be hiding out in various warm shelters. This is the coldest it’s been outside since they were kicked out of the sun room, so we could use it as a greenhouse.

I don’t know how long this cover will last, but I used the least damaged wood and made sure to reinforce the frame at the corners. Given the small size, it has a pretty good chance of lasting a few years, I think.

The one last thing I’ll need to figure out is the best way to secure it to the frame. I don’t need to latch it or anything like that. I just need to make sure it doesn’t get pushed off. I had considered making the frame sized to fit inside the logs, but with their uneven surfaces and dimensions, I decided against that. Plus, having contact with the soil will make the wood rot faster, and it’s old and weathered enough as it is. I might take advantage of those corner braces and make “legs” that extend down the outside of the bed, so that if something does push against it, it won’t move more than a little bit.

But that can wait until later. For now, it really needs those ends closed off!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: Red Thumb potatoes are in

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Gooby tried to help.

He was not a very good helper!

The Red Thumb fingerling potatoes had to get into the ground, so they went into the beds that were ready.

I have no doubt I was crowding them a bit too much, but these are fingerling potatoes, so I hope that will make a difference. I still couldn’t fit them all in the bed along the retaining wall. The last of them went into the short end of the L shaped bed, where you can see the straw mulch. I was able to add straw mulch to the rectangular bed with the Irish Cobbler potatoes in it, too.

The extra height added to the bed along the retaining wall came in handy. I did work in some of the composted sheep’s manure first. The bed was already starting to compact! The height of the soil is almost as high as the retaining wall (it is settling a bit, still). The logs are high enough to hold the straw mulch in place.

Unfortunately, the cats seem to think that straw is there, just for them! Especially Gooby.

It started raining by the time I was ready to add the straw, but I gave all the straw a thorough watering, anyhow. They’ll get more deep watering, even with the rain. I’ve noticed that, if the straw doesn’t get saturated first, the top will get wet, but the bottom stays dry, so the moisture never quite gets to the ground. I want to get these beds soaked down through all the layers. Once that’s done, the beds will hold the moisture for quite a long time before they will need watering again.

The whole point of our wanting to use grow bags this year was because we have such a problem with slugs. I’m hoping that, by planting these in raised beds, it will be less of a problem. I suppose we could leave out some beer traps for the slugs, but I have no doubt the cats would be getting into them! I’d rather encourage garter snakes or toads and frogs.

Meanwhile, we’re also seeing peas starting to break ground. Just barely visible! We’ve got carrots sprouting, too, but they are very small and it doesn’t look like we have a high germination rate. They really should have had the plastic right on the ground until they germinated, instead of on hoops, but the hoops were as much to keep the cats off as to keep the moisture in. Hopefully, the heat inside didn’t kill off too many seeds. We do still have 2 other varieties of carrots to sow, so we should be able to make up for any losses.

We’re getting air quality warnings right now. There is a cold front moving in, so the temperatures will drop quite a bit, tomorrow (though not low enough for frost), and with it will come smoke from the many fires in Alberta. Rain is desperately needed, though with so many of the fires being started by people, more than rain is going to be needed to get these under control!

Along with rain today, we’ve also got a fair bit of wind. Nothing exceptional, but too much to take the transplants out. We have no way to protect them from the wind on the various surfaces we use to lay them out. So they remain in the sunroom, which isn’t much warmer than outside right now, with the fan and the lights, for today.

I’m glad I got the potatoes in right away. Rainy, grey weather like this always makes me incredibly sleepy. If I’d delayed it, I probably would not have been able to get it done. As it is, I think I’m going to have to lie down for a bit. I can barely keep my eyes open, as I write this!

So… all three varieties of potatoes are planted. Which means I can finally turn my attention to taking down the trees we’ll be needing to build the trellis tunnel. That should have been done, long ago!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 Garden: Purple Peruvian Potatoes planted

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Well, we got one out of two done!

I thought we would have more than enough old feed bags to use for both types of potatoes we have left to plant, but I was wrong! The Purple Peruvian fingerling potatoes alone, took 14 of the 19 bags we had!

I made a quick little video with the photos I took. It’s less than a minute and a half long. 😁

The first time we grew potatoes in feed bags, we were intending to do the tower thing, expecting to add more material to the bags several times throughout the summer. Then we found out that potatoes come in both determinate and indeterminate types – and we had determinates. They aren’t the right kind for growing in towers, so there was no benefit to adding more material. The plants got huge, though, and the bags couldn’t support them. With that in mind, this time I made sure to add quite a lot of straw to the tops of the bags. It should help support the plant stems, and hopefully the bags as well.

So now we have to figure out how and where to plant the Red Thumb fingerling potatoes.

I wonder if there are too many to plant in that bed along the old kitchen garden retaining wall I just finished reworking?

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden transplant status, and good car news

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But first, the cuteness!

I counted only 18 this morning.

Today has turned out to be a MUCH more pleasant day than yesterday. We did officially reach of high of 30C/86F, which makes the current temperature of 20C/68F feel downright cool! It was very refreshing while I was going my morning rounds and taking the transplants out for continued hardening off.

I took the folding set of closet doors I found in the shed and set it up on the hand rails of the laundry platform. It’s almost enough to keep the cats off!

You can’t really see them, but the squash and gourds in the bins on the left are getting huge! In the foreground, in the centre, you can see some new Zucca melon coming up enthusiastically. I’d planted more, since so few germinated the first time I planted them, but it’s taken this heat for them to finally get growing.

After I took this picture, a cat jumped up and nearly squashed them, but they seem to be okay!

I’ve got things set up on the kibble house roof to support one end of the trays, making them almost level. The metal baking sheets work very well for that. I should have picked up more of them before Costco ran out! I didn’t expect them to disappear entirely.

I’ve started to take the trays with the most recently planted seeds out, too. A few are showing germinated seeds, and there’s no reason not to harden them off at the same time.

I might actually start planting some of the larger tomatoes and the first peppers this weekend. We’ve got one chilly night expected between now and then and, after that, even the one colder day forecasted has no risk of frost. I want to plant these peppers in the wattle weave bed, which will also give them more protection, as well as the full sunlight they need, plus they would be relatively easy to provide protection for there, in case the long range forecast into June is wrong and we do actually get frost.

The priority today, though, is getting the last of the potatoes in.

My daughter and I took my mother’s car into town to be checked out. All they were going to do was see why the check engine light was on. My eyes have been going wonky at times, so my daughter came along just in case I needed her to drive. We dropped the car off and I explained what was going on, then I took her for lunch. Well. Lunch for me. Breakfast for her. She hadn’t eaten yet! We basically just had to wait until I got text saying the car was ready to pick up.

There really wasn’t anything wrong. A couple of codes came up, but nothing of concern. His guess is that at some point, when we started the car, it got a low pressure reading on the oil, which was changed fairly recently. Once the light was on, it stayed on. He cleared it, but had no work to recommend getting done. He didn’t even charge me for the reading.

I talked to my husband later on about my not being able to use the OBDII reader he got me. It didn’t work before, because of a known Blu Tooth issue on my phone at the time. We traded phones, because his worked, but I’ve since gotten a newer phone. I didn’t expect to have the same issue with the new phone. When he realized the phone simply would not pair with the OBDII reader, he remembered that it works with his table. So if the check engine light turns on again, I’ll have to remember go use his tablet to try and get a reading. Meanwhile, the light has stayed off so far. Hopefully, it will stay that way!

It wasn’t a wasted trip, though. I got to spend some relaxed time with my daughter. 😊

I’m just glad there was nothing wrong with the car. Confirming that at the garage was also well worth the trip.

Well, things are going to start cooling down. Time to get to work!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 Garden: transplanting shallots

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We’re in that time when we can start transplanting things that can handle frost which, for us, is the onions and shallots. I started hardening them off earlier than the other transplants. It’s going to be very hard to resist transplanting more before our last frost date! Not only are we having a very warm May (today was supposed to reach a high of 18C/65F, but as I write this, at almost 6:30pm, we’re still at 20C/68F), but the long range forecast is showing warmer overnight temperatures well above frost risk. The problem is, long range forecasts are notoriously unreliable!

So, we continue to take it slow and continue to harden off the transplants. There is still lots to do to make room to plant not only all the transplants, but all the direct sowing we have planned, too.

This tiny little bed in the old kitchen garden is where the shallots are going, because we have the fewest of those. This is a new variety of shallots, and the first to actually really survive to the transplant stage.

Keeping the cats out of the living room made a bit difference!

I planted fairly densely, but there were still a few plants left. After taking this picture, the bed got a thorough watering. We will have to add a mulch as soon as the transplants are strong enough.

The last little transplants went into one end of the wattle weave bed. It has a thick layer of wood chips on the top that I had to move aside to reach the soil. Protected by the wood chips, the soil was nice and damp!

So those are now in.

I foresee only one problem.

The cats have gotten used to using the garden beds for napping and playing!

I’m hoping to avoid having to cover the beds, but we might not have a choice. For now, they have no interest in the wet ground.

In other things, I went through our collection of feed bags, and had more than I thought. We’ve got 11 bird seed bags (20kg size) and 8 deer feed bags (18kg size). More than enough for the remaining potatoes. The only difference between the bags, besides the label, is that the bird seed bags are longer.

I’m still not sure where to set them up. The best place I can think of is at the far side of the main garden area, but I really don’t want to be hauling garden soil that far, if I can avoid it! Ah, well.

I can use the exercise.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 garden: Irish Cobbler potatoes planted

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The girls and I are still trying to figure out the best place to set up grow bags for the potatoes, where they would get full sun, but also be closer to the house for watering. We don’t have a lot of the old feed bags left to use as grow bags, so we decided to use one of the Old Kitchen Garden beds that was recently fixed up.

The bed still needed topping up, so I started by adding some of the sheep manure I recently purchased. I didn’t add a lot, as this bed was filled with purchased garden soil, and it should still be pretty rich in nutrients. What’s missing is organic matter. This is a blend of compost and composted manure, so that will help a bit. This got worked in with a rake.

Also… do you see that bit of green poking out of the wattle weave bed?

It’s a stray onion!

I have no idea where that onion came from. This bed had never had onions planted in it.

I’m not going to complain, though!

Next, it was time to raid the garden soil pile and do some soil sifting.

Three wheelbarrow loads of the garden soil was brought over. The weeds are already starting to grow under the cover on that pile!

Some of the Irish Cobbler seed potatoes were very small, so to fit them all in the bed, I put some of the smaller ones together. Then they got buried as deep as I could, so they don’t need to be hilled.

As this area slopes away from the house, the far end of the bed is somewhat deeper than the end closer to the house, to level it off. Still, with this bed being newly rebuilt, and the layers of organic matter below, the top layer of soil still isn’t very deep.

Once the potatoes were planted, I scattered some stove pellets over the top, then began watering. Once the pellets had expanded into sawdust, I used a rake to spread it out evenly. This is not at all for the potatoes, but to protect the soil and help reduce soil compaction. Over time, we will continue to add grass clippings and wood chips as mulch. The potatoes will easily be able to grow through a mulch. With this bed being higher now, and not using straw for a mulch, hopefully, that will reduce the slug problems!

After spreading out the sawdust, I gave it a deep watering, and plan to water it again a couple more times, today. I want the water to go through all those bottom layers that were added, which will speed up their anaerobic breakdown, while also acting as a sponge to retain moisture. Once those bottom layers are good and moist, this bed should not need much watering at all.

Now comes the hard part.

Keeping the cats from digging in the bed!

The Re-Farmer

Finally done!

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I put together a video of the work I did yesterday. No audio, so I wanted to add music to it today.

I spent so much time trying to find public domain music that fit the mood I wanted. Then my daughter came in and helped me pick music that was already in the software I’m using, in a matter of minutes.

She’s now interested in making videos. I have no doubt she would do a better job than me! So at some point, you might start seeing better quality videos getting posted.

For now, this is what I got done yesterday.

We settled on this location for the new Liberty apple tree for several reasons. The main one is, it is a zone 4 tree, which means it will need more protection in the winter. Where I was thinking of planting it originally is far more exposed, and will remain so until the silver buffalo berry reaches maturity.

Here, it will get full sun, but also be sheltered from the north by the lilacs. It also needs another variety of apple tree for pollination. While I took down the one crab apple tree, there are the ornamental crab apples in the old kitchen garden, plus another crab apple tree, though we’ll see how well that one does. It will likely be taken down, eventually.

The little plum trees were also removed; we’ll see how the larger ones do this year. These are not edible plums, though my father did use them for wine making sometimes. They have almost no flesh around their pits.

If all goes well, we’ll start having apples to harvest in a few years. The new apple tree can reach a mature height of 18-20, so if we do plant any other fruit trees here, we will need to keep that in mind. If we do end up taking out the one crab apple, and possibly the remaining inedible plums, I figure we have room for one more fruit tree here.

My parents planted so many things in this little area over the years; I remember there being mountain ash (there are none left at all now), a pear tree, other crab apple trees, plus I thinned out caragana and lilac. Oh, and there’s the big linden tree at one end, now. It’s one of the few things that is doing well! I’m sure there were other things that came and went in the 30 or so years I’ve been away.

Now that I’ve cleared as much as I have, the lilacs will hopefully grow better. When I first cleared the area of dead stuff back in 2018, I found most of the lilacs had stretched to very unusual heights. They had leaves pretty much only at the top, as they struggled to get sunlight. They are recovering, but still a lot lankier than lilacs normally would be.

The main thing, though, is that the new apple tree and the tulips have that barrier around them. It’s small enough that I hope no deer will consider it worth trying to jump it. Over time, we will add things to the wire to blow, flash and make noise in the wind.

One thing I noticed only after watching the time lapse video I took.

I had a LOT of cats running around while I worked!

The Re-Farmer

Brothers, and some progress

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It’s not often I’m able to get these two brothers in one shot so well!

We’ve got Gooby, with one gooby eye, then Adam and Driver. Gosh, those two look alike! When the girls named them, the patterns in their fur hadn’t finished growing out, and they were really hard to tell apart. It’s easier now, only because Adam has enough white fur to not be a tuxedo.

Then there are the two white and greys in the picture. They are among the unnamed ones, because we can’t tell them apart well enough to give them any! In the morning light, the one next to Gooby looks like it has an orange ear, but nope. It’s grey fur.

I got a decent amount of progress this morning. I started taking the transplants out to harden them off. The onions are still out right now, as they’ve been taken out for a while now, but the others were just for an hour. We weren’t able to make a dedicated surface for them, so the trays got laid out wherever I could find stable space. The laundry platform was covered and, with a couple of boards to support one side, others were put on the kibble house roof. The angle of the roof is pretty steep, so the cats don’t usually go on it.

The smallest trays went onto the shelf shelter by the sun room door. Only the more recent seed starts stayed inside – and I can see one Lady Godiva hulless pumpkin working on germinating!

Alas, while I was bringing things out, one of the white and greys went into the sun room and jumped up on the table, knocking things about, including the mini tray with the Classic Eggplant. Those were already struggling, and it looked like only one was surviving, and now even that one has been damaged. So frustrating! But we have so many things to grow this year, the loss will not be a problem, and we still have the Little Finger eggplant seedlings.

The good thing about starting to harden off the transplants is that it allowed me to arrange the trays more efficiently in the sun room when bringing them back.

Once they were back inside, I started the next big job, which I’ll be making another video of. The area around my daughter’s tulips has had the chicken wire fencing removed, the dead, dying and non-productive trees removed, and the new apple tree has been transplanted. I planted it closer to the lilacs, which will shelter and protect it from the north, while it will also get full sun – and be close enough to the ornamental apple trees for the cross pollination it needs for better production. Of course, it’ll be a few years before we get any apples from it!

By then, it was 22C/72F (as I write this, we’ve reached our predicted high of 23C/74F), and way too hot to keep working outside. Later on, the girls will clean up the branch pile for me, and we have to figure out how to put the fence wire back up, to protect the tulips and new apple tree from the deer. The wire had been held in place by the trees and stumps that I removed, so we’ll need to set up posts. We do have wooden fence posts, but they are being used to keep things from blowing away right now. There are also T posts we’ve found, but I have other plans for those. It’s not like we’re putting up permanent fencing, here, so that gives us some flexibility on what we can use. We’ll figure it out.

For now, though, we’re staying in the cooler indoors – even the sun room feels cooler than outside right now! – and staying hydrated, until it’s time to make a dump run and pick up a package at the post office. Things are supposed to start cooling down by then, so we can continue working around the tulips when we get back.

My daughter and I were also talking about the mulberry trees. Because they are so tiny, they should probably be kept in pots until next year, but we’re pretty terrible at keeping trees alive inside. The question is, would we be any better at keeping them alive outside?

Meanwhile, we need to get those potatoes planted soon!

Lots of work to do. The problem, aside from the heat we’re not used to yet, is that we’re all pretty broken, and can only work in short spurts to avoid hurting ourselves more, and rendering ourselves useless for days. Frustrating.

Well, we do what we can and adjust!

Little by little, it’ll get done.

The Re-Farmer

Quick morning update

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Check out the fur babies!

There was a milling crowd at the door when I came out with the kibble! I counted 20 this morning. Lots of hungry babies!

Yes, I consider them all babies. Including the old timers! 😄

We had a thunderstorm roll through at about 2am last night. I actually slept through it! My older daughter was up working, though, so after it ended, she went out and checked for any damage. Everything looked okay, thankfully.

While I did my rounds this morning, I spotted these.

Some of the tulips have flower buds!

Where my mother lives, just a 20 minute drive away, people have tulips that are already blooming, but we’re not quite there, yet!

It’s so nice to finally see things leafing out, too. Some of the silver buffalo berry have leaves showing, but their silvery colour makes them hard to see! Most other things just have leaf buds getting bigger, but not opening yet. With the rain we got, plus more in the forecast, things should start getting green soon.

I won’t be getting much work done outside today, though; I’m heading to my mother’s to help with errands. By the time I get back, we’ll be expecting more storms. We’ll see how things work out!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2023 Garden: peas are in!

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Our peas are finally in! They could have been planted as soon as the ground could be worked, which was a couple of weeks ago.

This row is about 20 feet long. We could succession sow peas elsewhere, but I think that this might actually be enough. Assuming a high germination rate, of course.

I really like fresh peas, though, so if we have the space to grow more elsewhere – together with some corn, perhaps – they certainly won’t go to waste!

The Re-Farmer