Yes!!!!! We managed to finish transplanting tonight!
I thought we might have to move beyond the squash tunnel, but since these will be trained to climb, we were able to plant them closer together than we normally would, and they all fit. Also, I was sure we had the little pumpkins to transplant. I was wrong. None of them germinated. We didn’t plant many to begin with, but I’d hoped to have at least one!
At the far end of the squash tunnel, we have 4 luffa vines on one side, and 3 dancing gourd on the other. Next to them are the two varieties of winter squash, and the two varieties of melon.
There are a lot more melons than anything else (I REALLY love melon!), and that’s even with several cups that never germinated. There are some cups with summer squash in them that never germinated, either, which is why we have only 15 transplants. We all really love summer squash, so we would have enjoyed more, but it’s still a bit more than we had last year.
Now that the squash tunnel’s transplants are in, they, and the summer squash, will be getting a mulch of straw as soon as we are able to get back to it. Then I’ve got to get those bottom cross pieces in, so we can attach the mesh for them to climb.
That done, it was time to finish the new corn block. I’d put a fairly deep layer of grass clippings down, first, so I wanted to put a fairly deep layer of soil. Plus, the garden soil tested high in nitrogen, which corn uses a lot of, so I wanted to make sure it had at least that for the transplants to start in.
After the soil was in place, I made a trench in each row to plant into, then thoroughly watered the trench with water from the rain barrel.
Doing the actual transplanting was rather cringe worthy. I keep hearing from others that corn doesn’t handle being transplanted well, their roots don’t like to be disturbed, and so on. At the same time, I have heard from zone 3 gardeners that only start corn from transplants and never had an issue. Still, I really would have loved for the toilet paper tube plan to have worked. I don’t know of anyone who has tried to grow Montana Morado in Canada, never mind in our province, nor can I find anything online about it, so this is all completely experimental.
The biggest, healthiest looking corn plants tended to be the ones were all 4 seeds in the cups germinated. Except for when they were taken outside to be hardened off, the cups with their drainage holes were all in a bin that had water on the bottom, so they could take up water from below. Which means that there were strong roots at the bottom of the cups, and with anything more than 2 plants in a cup, that meant having to tear the roots apart to separate them.
I am really, really hoping they survived this.
They are, however, all in! I even managed to get some in the little half row I wasn’t sure if I’d be using. I went ahead and planted the little ones, too. Considering they tended to be a single plant per cup, they might actually end up doing better!
Also, the flash makes it look darker than it actually was. I did still have enough light to see what I was doing.
After they were transplanted, I gave them a gentle watering with the hose. It was amusing to see a flashlight coming through the increasing darkness. My daughters hadn’t realized I’d stayed out to finish transplanting the corn, and one of them came out to check on me. :-D Which was handy, because that meant I had help putting things away. The washing of the cups and trays, however, will wait until tomorrow!
The only thing left to do with the corn is put a mulch in the paths between the rows. More to keep the new soil in place while watering than anything else.
Now that this is done, the girls and I can head into the city tomorrow, and I won’t be angsting over getting the transplants in the whole time we’re out! :-D
I’m tired and in a world of hurt – and really, really appreciating having my husband’s bath chair to use in the shower! – but I am very happy. :-)
Just before heading inside to get out of the heat, I made sure to mist the transplants waiting for their new homes, and I found a surprise.
My apologies for the out of focus photo.
There is a new gourd seedling! A Thai Bottle Edible gourd sprouted! It wasn’t there when I took the trays out this morning. Not only that, but you can just see another Ozark Nest Egg sprout, pushing its way through the soil.
With their very long days to maturity, we can’t expect anything, but they will get transplanted out, anyhow.
We planted very few seeds from these, so we can try again next year. If we do, I intend to invest in a warming mat for seed trays – and start the seeds earlier! Clearly, we just couldn’t get it warm enough in the aquarium greenhouses for them to sprout, but this heat way seems to be waking them up!
We’re taking a break from our push to get the squash and corn transplanted today. Lots has been done, with lots more to do, but we just had to stop for a while.
My daughters didn’t take any photos of what they were doing, so I just have “after” pictures to show.
This is the summer squash. We have only 15 transplants; quite a few did not germinate, but we do have some of all 4 varieties. There’s an extra hill. Later on, straw will be added around the hills for mulch, and I will be adding stakes near the transplants, to train them to grow vertically. This is supposed to help prevent fungal infections or rot from touching the soil, increase air circulation, make it easier for pollinators to get to the flowers, increase yield and make it easier to harvest. The bottom leaves are supposed to be pruned away, and it will also be easier to water them at the roots.
At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work. We shall see!
Next, they started building the beds at the squash tunnel. Priority for planting here are the luffa and dancing gourds and the winter squash. Oh, and the little pumpkins. We have quite a lot of melons to transplant, too, but if there is no room here, there is a lot more space where the sunflowers were planted last year.
What they were working on those, I worked on the new corn block.
I had turned about 2/3rds of it last night, so I didn’t expect it to take too long to finish.
Then I hit something, right near the end. Of course, I was hitting rocks the whole time, but usually I could just move the fork a few inches and keep going. Not this time!
I ended up using a space to dig around the rock. I dug up a few other rocks, but part of it seems to continue below where the soil is still undisturbed.
I used water pressure to clear the stone and try and see how much further it went, but that wasn’t much. My younger daughter decided to give it a try, and ended up bending the fork, trying to move the rock!
So… it will stay. :-D
The next step was to take out as many roots, rocks and start leveling things off.
That stick coming out of the ground in the background is a tree root. I have to grab something to cut it with!
For this part, I had a garden claw with a long handle we found in the basement when we were cleaning it out. What a back saver! You can see, all around in the grass, where the roots, crab grass and weeds were tossed. Rocks got tossed under trees, so they wouldn’t be “found” with the lawn mower. Of course, it’s not possible to get all the roots out, but I got most of them.
Finally, I could go over it with the thatching rake, which picked up a few more roots that I missed, as well as some rocks, and leveled it off a bit. I chose not to bury the big rock again, as it was so close to the surface. I’d rather see it and know it’s there, than forget about it and plant something on top by mistake.
One thing about this area; it has the deepest top soil of any part of the old garden, yet! I didn’t reach gravel until I started digging deeper to try and get around the big rock, and while I found other chunks of rock, I just barely reached the gravel layer. This is the soil my mother is talking about, when she talks about how great the soil used to be. Except for the rocks. She didn’t remember the rocks! :-D
The next step was to mark out for planting. I counted the corn plants this morning, and there are 65, plus a couple of bitty ones that probably shouldn’t be transplanted, but I likely will, anyways. I wasn’t sure if I’d have enough space, but with rows 2 feet apart, and the transplants 1 foot apart in each row, I will have enough space.
While the soil may appear good, all the soil tests I did showed a lack of nutrients, so it will still be amended. I used the flags to lay down grass clippings. I lay them out in rows, but I don’t mind them spilling over into the paths in between, to help keep the weeds down.
After this photo was taken, I used a watering can and rainwater to wet down the grass clippings, since the hose and sprinkler were needed at the other end of the garden.
Then we headed inside. We reached 30C/86F while we were out there! So we will take a few hours indoors and let things start to cool down before we continue.
We have predictions for rain tonight, and possible severe thunderstorms by tomorrow afternoon. They might even hit us. :-/ If it does look like we will get a severe storm, we have things we can use to cover the squash to protect them, though the corn would be on its own. It is, however, in a more sheltered area of the old garden. We shall see.
We might still hit our goal to get all the transplants done here by this evening! After that, we have transplants for the south yards, but they are not as urgent and can wait a bit longer.
As for me, I’m seriously thinking of joining all the cats on my bed for a short nap. I’m so tired, I have been falling asleep while writing this!
I’m going to be hurting so much by the time all this done, but it’ll be worth it!
While we have extra seeds that we got for this year’s garden that we will use next year, yesterday I bought the first seeds specifically for next year’s garden.
While going through seed sites with my daughters, we spotted these Yellow Pear heritage tomatoes and we all agreed that they were a variety we wanted to try next year. When I was helping my mother with her shopping yesterday, I spotted them in the seed displays and grabbed them. It’s too late to start tomatoes for this year, particularly in our zone, but I didn’t want to pass them up when I had the chance.
So… today didn’t go quite as planned, originally. What else is new? :-D
But first, I want to share this picture.
This bed is the yellow bush beans. The green and purple ones look much the same. Even more beans have been sprouting, and it looks like we’ve got an almost 100% germination rate already! Even in the spaces where there are no beans sprouted yet, I’m seeing bumps and cracks in the soil, showing that something is trying to push it’s way through. Some were so close to the surface, they got uncovered when I watered them!
My original plan had been to finish the new corn block, so the Montana Morado corn could be transplanted, after I got back from helping my mother with her grocery shopping. Instead, I decided the lawn needed to be mowed, first. Not just because we haven’t mowed it yet this year (even with the rains we did get, it wasn’t all that overgrown), but because I wanted the grass clippings. Which meant using the push mower, with its collection bag.
I started off dumping the grass clippings into the wagon, with the intention of hauling the clippings to the garden beds where they will be used as mulch, but I realized the constant stopping and starting and hauling would take too long; particularly since the wagon can only hold 3 bag fulls. Which is more than the wheelbarrows, but still…
So I started dumping the clippings into the compost ring.
This is the clippings from just the south yards, minus two bag fulls. The compost ring was almost empty when I started.
My only concern with this is all the Chinese Elm seeds in there. Piles of grass clippings get shocking hot, though, so I’m hoping that will kill off at least some of the seeds. :-/
When I started on the East yard, I had to find some place else for the clippings, so they got added to the old compost pile. The one we haven’t been able to use, because when we started to dig into it, we kept finding garbage and branches. I think we got all the garbage out, except for maybe a few stray bits. Then when the East and North yards were done, and I started on the West yard, I had to start a third pile.
I didn’t get all the mowing done; a couple of areas just don’t have enough grass to mow, and I didn’t try to go into the trees at all, yet. I want to mow the areas around the old garden, and the new garden beds, more to keep down the poplars that keep trying to spread, and we need to do the parts of the old garden we haven’t put beds into, as well. That part is the most difficult, because it’s so rough. Last year, even at the highest setting, I still kept catching rocks and clumps of soil. In some areas, it’ll be easier to use the weed trimmer, which we can actually do, now that we have enough extension cords to reach all of it.
After the mowing was done for today, I took the plants back inside before going into the house, and noticed some of the squash are starting to show flower buds! They need to get into the ground right away, so they’ll have the nutrients, space – and pollinators! – they need. The girls and I were going to make a trip into the city tomorrow for some shopping they need to do, but that will be pushed back. Instead, I will be focusing on finishing that corn block and transplanting the Montana Morado corn, while the girls will be focusing on building the squash beds. The summer squash will have beds build where the sunflowers were planted last year, where the ground had been mulched. The winter squash will need to have beds built at the squash tunnel, too. The bottom supports and mesh will have to be done after they are transplanted. They will be planted on the outside, so can work from the inside to avoid the plants, if we have to. If we end up having more transplants than there is space at the squash tunnel, the extras will also be planted where the sunflowers were last year, in the section that runs close to where the squash tunnel is. The only thing we need to make sure of is to leave a gap where we can walk through while dragging the hose to reach the rain barrel.
I figure, by the time we’re done, we’ll be out of grass clippings again. :-D
Just a quick post about what I found during my morning rounds, before I have to head out. It’s a bit of a mix!
Before I go into this morning, though, here is the progress I got last night in the new corn block.
I got about 2/3rds gone turning the sod before stopping for the night. It was past 10pm by then – the temperatures were lovely, but it was starting to get too dark! LOL I am hoping to get it done today. The corn really needs to be transplanted soon.
This is what greeted me this morning, when I came into the dining room.
Cheddar and Keith, enjoying the morning breeze while watching the birds outside. :-D The cats just LOVE this set up.
The door is secured with cord, just in case. Although it is locked, sometimes it simply pops open on its own. Which is not a problem when the inner door is closed, but would be kitty disaster otherwise!
After feeding the outside critters, I started taking the plants out of the sun room. One of our disappointments was that one tray with 3 different gourds in it had not germinated. Still, I kept them watered, and have started to take the tray outside, too. This is what I found this morning.
A single Ozark Nest Egg gourd has sprouted!
It’s way too late in the season, but when the time comes, it’ll be transplanted out and we’ll see how it does. Who knows. We might have a long summer this year.
Also, do you see all those seeds scattered about? They are EVERYWHERE!!! And this is why I’ve developed a hate-on for the Chinese Elm trees. We’re going to be fighting these in just about every single garden bed. :-(
While checking out the furthest garden beds, I had a bit of a disappointment.
Four Mongolian Giant sunflowers in one row had their heads chopped off. The one that had been eaten and pulled up before was in the other row, which originally had 13 transplants in it. This one had 11. So of the 24 we started with, we’re down to 19. At least the direct seeded ones are coming up, so we do have more. As long as they don’t get eaten, too!
My daughter and I had moved the trail cam over to this corner, but it’s not the wide angle camera, and I wasn’t sure if it caught this area at all. In fact, I was pretty sure it didn’t. So I shifted it and it now faces down the corn and sunflower blocks only.
When I checked the files, I found I was right. This row as off frame. I never saw what ate the leaves, but I did find this!
We had a raccoon pass through! Until now, the only evidence we had of raccoons here was the tip of a tail going past the camera when it was facing the tulips. It just wandered through, sniffing at some weeds.
The raccoon would not have been responsible for the sunflowers, though. I’m sure that was a deer. There was one other night time video, but whatever triggered the motion sensor was no longer in frame by the time it started recording. If a deer had jumped the fence nearby, it could have walked right past the camera and out of frame before it started recording. That’s the down side of setting it to video. It takes more time to start recording than just taking a still shot. I’m not using still because the shortest time delay between triggers is 15 seconds, regardless of whether it’s set to still or video. That’s a long gap, and much would get missed. At least with video, there’s that 15 seconds (or up to 1 minute, if I wanted to) of video to catch what’s going on.
Finding the damaged sunflowers was a disappointment, but I wanted to end this on a more positive note.
The honeysuckle bush in the old kitchen garden is looking amazing! It’s in full bloom, and absolutely dense in foliage and flowers. When we dug up along the house and laid down blocks and bricks to make a path, much of the soil that was dug up ended up around the bases of the honeysuckle and two rose bushes nearby. Between that and the extra watering they’ve been getting this year, they’re all looking better than ever. I’m very happy with how great they are doing this year! Even the little pink rose bush that got broken by something over the winter (likely a deer) is doing very well, after having the tree branch that was shading it pruned away, and a garden bed built up around it. There was just one stick of it left, but it’s now full of the biggest, healthiest leaves it’s had since we moved here!
So overall, we’ve had more increases than losses, so far! :-)
We managed to get outside for a bit more progress on the garden. One of the things I did was go through where we planted sunflowers last year, and dig out any remaining stumps. I am really impressed with how much softer the soil is. Well. When I managed to not hit any rocks, at least. ;-) I think using this area for the summer squash will work out. We just have to fight back the grass and weeds. :-/
Not yet, though. The new corn block will be the priority for transplanting.
This area has been covered with black tarp for at least 2 months. Almost, but not quite, enough to kill off the grass and weeds.
This area is remarkably rough, though. I had the hardest time mowing on this side, without hitting rocks or lumps of dirt. Partly because of this, I will be going things differently. I will actually be turning the soil here. Nothing extreme. Mostly just loosening it with a garden fork, while pulling out the larger roots and rocks. Once it’s loosened up, I plan to go over it with a thatching rake (we only have 1 thatching rate, and a bunch of fan rakes, so that’s the tool I’ll use! :-D ). That should pull up more roots, but mostly I want to level it off enough that I’m not tripping over dirt clumps every time I walk through!
I had gotten a start on loosening the soil at one end, when one of my daughters was able to join me. Together, we got to work on the squash tunnel.
We were able to get all the side cross pieces in place at the tops. A job that was much more difficult than it looks!
I may have mentioned this before, but… we’re a bit on the short side.
Oy, did that make a difference!
My daughter held the cross pieces in place while I climbed the ladder to drill the pilot holes, then put in the screws. It was very awkward and painful for her – especially with her gimpy shoulder! – to try and hold the pieces steady until I had the screws in far enough that she could relax. Some of the uprights had shifted, too, so not only was she holding a cross piece in place, above her head, but sometimes holding an upright in place as well. The fact that everything was different sizes and shapes didn’t help, either. Doing this in 27C/81F heat, and winds high enough to blow over the step ladder, certainly didn’t make things any easier.
Also, we really need a power screwdriver. Driving in 3 inch screws manually, while someone else was struggling to hold the pieces together, was another thing that made the job more difficult than expected!
But we got it done!
It is still incredibly wonky, of course. Good thing it’s not intended to be permanent! We also didn’t use as many screws as I intended. For some joins, it was because the pieces were not of a size or shape to add more than one screw. With others, we just needed to get it in place and move on to the next, due to how painful or awkward it was for my daughter to support the cross pieces.
I now need to cut cross pieces for the bottoms. When I put those in, I will take the time to add extra screws were they are needed at the top. If necessary, I’ll add extra support pieces at the corners, but I think once we add the wire mesh for the vines to climb, that will help stabilize it a bit more, too. I’m actually not sure how we will get the mesh over the top.
Did I mention we’re short? LOL
At least it’ll be easier to put in the bottom cross pieces.
When we did as much as we could, I was ordered by my daughter to head indoors and out of the sun. Apparently, I was looking rather overheated!
So I am taking a bit of a break in the cool of the house. By the time I get outside again, more of the corn block I want to work on will be in shade, so that will help. I’m hoping to be able to get the corn transplants out by the end of tomorrow. We’ll see how it goes. I’ll be helping my mother with her grocery shopping earlier than usual, so that should work out.
Yesterday, one of my goals was to start on the lawn. We have yet to mow the lawn this year, but with how little rain we’ve had, it’s not really that overgrown. Other than some straw we still have left, we’re out of organic material to layer and mulch with, so it would be good to have grass clippings again. At the very least, I wanted to get out the weed trimmer and do the edges.
Then I got a phone call.
My mother was letting me know my sister was on her way to visit her, and they were planning to go to the cemetery, which is just a few miles away from us. They were planning to come here, after.
*sigh*
We had talked about this possibility just the day before, so I can’t say it was too unexpected, but I had advised against doing a cemetery trip when we were supposed to get so very hot again. She also knew that I like to have a lot more notice before visits, so we can be prepared. My mother actually sounded apologetic when she was telling me they were coming over, and added that she was good with not going into the house if we didn’t want her to. Which isn’t the problem, but whatever.
So the girls did a quick rush to try and prepare things, like making sure everything was clear from the sun room doors, though the old kitchen, to the bathroom (so my mother wouldn’t have to use the main doors, with all the little sets of stairs), while I quickly used the weed trimmer around the yard, between the main garden beds, and a few other places that I thought my mother might want to get at with her walker. I had thought to move the picnic table to a shady spot in the south yard, but my daughter reminded me that, when we moved it to where it is now, after it was painted, it was pretty rickety, so it probably couldn’t handle being moved so far, again. So she set up some camp chairs in the shade, and we used an overturned bin for a table. :-D My mother and sister had even brought some fried chicken, so we had ourselves a picnic lunch in the shade, before touring the yard and garden beds.
When they arrived, my sister passed me something my mother had for me. At her apartment building, they have garden plots available. My mother doesn’t do much gardening herself anymore, but she does tend the perennials that had been planted by some of her friends and neighbours who have passed on. The caretakers, unfortunately, have a habit of digging everything up at the end of the year, including a bush my mother described as having beautiful yellow flowers, followed by black fruit. She had no idea what it was; it was planted by someone who passed away some years ago. No one ate the berries, but it was lovely, and the caretakers dug it up and got rid of it. This spring, while tending some plants, she noticed that part of the bush had survived. Not wanting the caretakers to kill it off, she dug it up and put it in a pitcher with some soil. She wanted to give it to me to plant somewhere near the house. We have a grocery shopping trip arranged next week, and I was going to get it then, but with my sister coming over, they were able to bring it over early.
I’m pretty sure it’s a currant, though my mother says it’s different than what we have here. My sister, who is the one that gave my mother the currants that are here, thought it might be a gooseberry. Whatever it is, I made sure to transplant it as soon as things started cooling down a bit. I picked a spot right near where we’d had our picnic lunch. There is a flower bed with white lilacs taking up about half of it. After it was cleaned up, a couple of years ago, we were left with an empty spot that I decided to take advantage of.
I scraped away the wood chip mulch we’d put in, first – it was about 3 inches deep – and started digging. I had to shift the hole a few times, after hitting tree roots, but after clearing out a few bigger rocks, I finally had a space I could transplant into. It was bone dry. We don’t water this bed regularly, but I have been trying to water the lilacs and a low growing plant with variegated leaves I like. From how dry the soil was, you’d never know it had been watered recently! So I filled the hole with water, then got a wheelbarrow load of new garden soil.
After transplanting it into the hole with fresh garden soil, I put back some of the mulch and gave it another thorough watering.
So we now have a new, unplanned, fruit bearing bush in the yard. :-) Hopefully, it will survive.
Backtracking a bit; my mother and I had talked about her coming out to see the gardens later in the season, when things were more grown in, but she got a bit of a tour yesterday. I did appreciate her very visible efforts to not say anything negative, which is usually the only thing she’ll say. I think it’s a generational thing, or maybe a cultural thing, but my mother seems to believe in NOT saying positive things. Like it’s somehow bad to compliment people or something. I suspect it has to do with believing it would lead to pride or something along those lines, though I doubt that’s in any way on a conscious level. She did, however, manage a backhanded compliment on how healthy the garlic looked! So that’s progress. :-D
She was not up to taking the walker to the furthest beds, of course, but my sister did, with her ever-present camera, and she got lots of pictures. It was a long day for my mother, so they left almost immediately after touring the yard. Going to the cemetery, then coming here, was probably too much for her. :-(
After I’d taken care of the transplant my mother gave us, I started hearing thunder. We’ve been having thunderstorm warnings for a while, but they kept getting pushed back. We were hoping to at least get some rain! I could see the storm clouds, and the wind was picking up, so I brought our hardening off transplants back into the sun room early, and we even shut down our computers, just in case.
We got nothing. Not even a spit of rain.
By 9:30pm, I finally went back outside to water the garden beds. The rain did finally come, but not until about 5am this morning.
When I headed out to do my morning rounds, it was still raining! A lovely, steady rain. I got completely soaked. :-D So no pictures this morning. ;-)
While checking the garden beds, I had some more unexpected surprises. The sweet corn is coming up already!! New shoots, in all three corn blocks. I also found more Hopi Black Dye sunflower sprouts, but also some Mongolian Giant sunflowers have already sprouted! Clearly, they are loving our heat wave. The bush beans, meanwhile, are coming up like crazy. The purple ones are still a bit slower in coming up than the yellow and green beans, but once they do come up, the sprouts seem to be leafing out faster than the others.
I’m finding it awesome that so many things we direct sowed is sprouting already. We haven’t even finished putting out our transplants, yet! :-D
Of course, while checking the garden beds this morning, I was looking for deer damage. When I’d watered last night, I tied some plastic grocery bags onto a couple of the stakes supporting the Mongolian Giant transplants, as a noisy deterrent. Happily, there was no new damage.
Then I checked the trail cam.
There was one file triggered during the night. Off in the shadows, a single deer could be seen, walking through! It looked like it was going down the path between the corn/sunflower blocks, and the pea/bean beds. It didn’t stop or pause, but kept walking towards the spruce grove.
Today, I’m moving the camera again. I think I know where the deer came in, but there are a couple of places they like to jump the fence, and I want to cover both possibilities, if I can, and see if there are any other areas they might be coming through.
We shall see what the weather does today. Today’s expected high is “only” 25C/77F, with scattered showers. Which means we will probably not be able to use a power drill, with its 300 ft or so of extension cords, to finish assembling the squash tunnel. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get the summer squash in, though we might have to prioritize the Montana Morado corn. At least the place they will be planted is right next to what’s left of the pile of garden soil. We might end up having to use soil from the pile in the outer yard to finish transplanting. The good thing is, we actually have that second pile!
We’ve got some lovely flowers blooming in one of my mother’s flower beds.
This flower bed has lilies, roses and a current bush my mother had planted. These flowers are mixed together with another type, and are the first to start blooming. When these are done, the others will start blooming. I don’t think either were deliberately planted. :-)
While checking on the garden beds this morning, I found this.
One of the transplanted Mongolian Giant sunflowers was pulled up. With the leaves gone, I didn’t even see it at first. It was the gap in the spacing that had me looking for it.
Thankfully, it is the only one that was nibbled on.
I’m glad I moved the trail cam from the tulips to the garden. On checking the files this morning, I spotted a deer running by on the far side of the self-sown trees by the main garden beds. Something had startled it away, which is likely why there was only one plant eaten.
Right now, I’ve got the camera set up nearer the house, covering most of the main garden beds, with the far beds and blocks visible in the distance. We’ve got so many things around the main beds by the house, including the makeshift covers on the spinach, that I think they’re pretty safe now. I want to move it to cover the corn and sunflower blocks. I want to see where the deer are still coming in, to give me an idea of where we need to add deterrents. I think I’ll tie grocery bags to the stakes at the sunflowers to flap in the wind, too. It is very likely that the ones tied to the pea trellis are what startled the deer away, though there is no way to know for sure.
Today is not supposed to get as hot as yesterday – though previous forecasts had today being the hotter day, so who knows. We aren’t supposed to hit our expected high of the day until 7pm, though. Usually, the hottest part of the day is around 4 or 5pm. They’re also predicting thunderstorms tonight and tomorrow, and possible rain today. Looking at the weather radar, I’m expecting most of that to pass us by. I’m hoping to finally add the cross pieces onto the squash tunnel today, and maybe even find enough straight pieces to cut more for the bottoms of the frame.
The Re-Farmer 