While doing my rounds yesterday evening, I spotted a stinky visitor crossing the barn yard. He caught up with me some time later.
He moves pretty fast! :-D
I often see signs of where they have been digging up grubs during the night. Last night, I could hear their odd screeching noises out in the old garden – soon followed by some distinctive whiffs! – so I made a point of checking the area out when doing my rounds this morning. As long as they aren’t digging up our potatoes, I’m happy.
The potatoes beds are looking untouched. :-)
The kittens, meanwhile, are getting so much more active! And Beep Beep has been leaving them alone more often, even if it’s just to lounge nearby.
The kittens are also getting increasingly curious about that big world out there!
Leyendecker (the tuxedo) came very close to scrabbling his way out!
They may want to climb out, but if we actually take them out, they can’t wait to get back into their nest! :-D
Hard to believe they’re almost a month old, now.
With their increased activity, we’re going to have to find some way to set them up in the basement again. It is much safer for them down there.
Today, I’m hoping to get some more planting done, but at the moment, it’s amazingly windy out there! I was happy to find that our new garden bed, where we planted carrots and parsley so far, is quite sheltered from winds. Meanwhile, I’ve set up the trays of transplants in the open mini-greenhouse, next to the open door. I want to expose them to some wind as they harden off, but not too much! It’s a bit difficult to harden off the larger seedlings, when there are still new seedlings emerging in other ares of the trays.
Still no gourds, though.
Oh, my goodness! Looking out my window as I write this, I can see that the winds have increased again. Those maple branches are really swinging!
Hopefully, it will settle down a bit and I’ll be able to get some more planting done. Until then, I’ll use the time to head down to the basement workshop and help my daughter make some more plant markers. :-)
This morning, when checking the soaking carrot seeds, I FINALLY spotted some roots!
For those who are new to following this blog (welcome!), this video shows the technique I am trying.
The first thing I needed to do was make the conrstarch gel. I noticed in the comments that people found the ratio in the video made too thick a gel, so I used 2tsp cornstarch to 1 cup of water. I made more than I needed, since I figured if it worked well for the carrots, I would use it for other things with very small seeds.
It took a while to cook the mixture down to gel state, and I think if I do it again, I would increase the cornstarch a little bit more.
Once the gel was cooked and cooling down, we started getting the new garden bed ready.
I had already raked the soil to even it out, and we gave it a thorough soaking. Then I added a bit of peat to each section and raked it out evenly. After the above photo was taken, it was given another thorough watering.
The gel took a while to cool down so, in between getting things ready outside, I put some of the gel into slide lock bags to cool down after. Then put them in the fridge, and finally putting them in the freezer. They didn’t have to get cold, but they at least had to be cool enough not to harm the seeds.
I prepped 4 bags. One for each variety of carrots, plus one for the parsley.
The instructions for the parsley said to let the seeds soak for a half hour, so that was done while I worked on the carrots. I used a measuring cup to hold the bag of gel up.
Also, the cats somehow managed to knock one of the dishes of carrot seeds upside down. :-( It was the deep purple variety. I was able to salvage most of the seeds, but there was a fair bit of seed loss, too. :-(
Once the seeds were added, I squeezed out as much air as I could, then smooshed the package around to evenly distribute the seeds in the gel.
When it came time to plant the seeds, a corner was snipped off, to make like an icing bag, and the seeds were squeezed into the prepared soil in short rows. By the time that was all ready, the parsley had soaked long enough and those were planted, too.
I’m using a combination of techniques, and one of them is based on square foot gardening. Rather than long rows, they’re being planted in squares. I’ve got the carrots planted in alternating sections, and the parsley is in the middle of the group of three.
I found a roll of plastic in the basement (I think it’s for roofing), so we used some of that to cover and protect the seeds. Those will be removed as soon as sprouts can be seen.
The squares seem very close together, but there really is a fair bit of space in between the plantings.
Also, my daughter is a sweetheart.
She trimmed some branches and made labels for me. :-)
The way things are looking, and using the square foot gardening method, we might be able to plant more here than originally planned. The three varieties of beets will go here, plus I ended up buying some kohl rabi. I don’t know if we’ll have much success with the fennel transplants; there really isn’t much improvement there. What few have sprouted can fit here. The parsley and fennel was originally going to be planted in the old kitchen garden, but I think we’ll continue to build up the soil in there and save that for next year.
Today turned out to be surprisingly hot, so we didn’t stay out for too long. We were forecast to hit 22C (71F) this afternoon, but we ended up reading 26C (78F). We will continue planting tomorrow. I think it is safe for us to start planting things that are supposed to wait until after the frost date. Looking at the long range forecast, we seem to have passed that point early.
Which reminds me. I was hoping to use the fire pit and burn barrel in the next while, so I checked the municipal website to see what the burn bad status was at. We are now on a total burn ban, which means no fire pits or burn barrels, either. That sure didn’t take long! And we still have standing water in the ditches and ponds. Ah, well.
The next few days are going to be very busy ones, as we get more things out into the gardens! I’m looking forward to using that soil auger to prep where we will be planting our giant sunflowers. :-) My mother also gave us some pumpkin seeds that were being given away for free at her local grocery store. They had tiny little envelopes, each with 3 seeds in them, and I had grabbed one, not realizing my mother had already included 2 packets in with a bag of stuff she’d prepared for me to take home. I don’t know what variety they are, but my mom tells me her town has annual pumpkin growing contests, so these might be a giant variety.
I think we’ll just plant them and see what we get! :-D
It should be interesting to see how our first year of gardening since we moved here will turn out. :-)
We got some gardening done today, and in the process I made a point of seeing how the haskap bushes are doing.
The male haskap is leafing out very enthusiastically! It’s looking very healthy.
The female…
… is struggling. I couldn’t even get the camera to focus on those skinny little branches. It is still alive and leafing out, though, which is so much more than we expected, after seeing its condition last fall.
(The greenery popping out of the mulch in the background are flowers my mother had planted here; they grow quite tall and have bright yellow flowers. I have no idea what they are called.)
Normally, based on what I’ve read, the haskap would start producing in their second year, which would be this year. I doubt we will get any berries this year at all, though, as the female recovers from whatever almost killed it off last year. It had been doing so well, too!
If I get a chance, I will pick up another female this year. We can get up to 2 more, before we have to pick up another male, based on what I’ve read.
All part of our gradual plan to have lots of food bearing trees and bushes, that can survive our Zone 3 climate. :-)
I’m just loving the longer days and weather conditions we’re having right now. I was doing my evening rounds of the yard some time past 9:30 last night, the temperatures were perfect, and I got to watch this gorgeous sunset through the willow branches and spruce trees.
This morning, I was thoroughly entertained by feline antics.
David so wants to play with the kittens! When he jumps into their nest with them, though, and they come running over, he gets skittish and leaves. Lately, he’s taken to dangling at them from above, and waving his furry paws in the air above their heads. :-D
My day in town, after dropping my daughter off at work, turned into an all day in town!
I had a 9:30 drop off time at the garage for my van. As soon as he saw me, the mechanic came over to let me know that several other vehicles already dropped off ahead of me. I’d even come early! No worries, though. I was planning to meet my daughter for lunch, anyhow.
I did have some confusion when I parked next to what I thought was my mother’s car, though, and then saw my mother’s car in a different spot. I kept looking at the license plate, then back and the car, wondering how my mother’s car got so dirty? And why was there damage at the back?
And how did it turn into a Chevy?
It turned out to be another generic little black car with a license plate only one digit off from my mother’s! :-D The car I’d pulled up next to really was my mother’s car! :-D
There were a couple of downsides to having several hours to myself, but no vehicle. With the shut down continuing (and extended once again, as of today, even though there have been zero new cases of the Wuhan virus in our province, which never got hit hard by it in the first place), there was no place to go just to sit for a while. No seating in restaurants or coffee shops available, and what stores are open are not open to simply browsing anymore. The other downside is that it rained most of the night and even the outdoor seating was wet.
Ah, well. I had a 5km goal in my Pokemon Go to meet, anyhow.
Which I hit rather handily.
One of the places I went through was a park near the lake, were I spotted this contented couple.
They were just fine ignoring me as I walked by. :-D
I also went to the beach.
Yes, there’s still some ice on the lake, some of which got blown into a corner against the main dock. The wind off the lake was freezing! That didn’t stop people from fishing off the dock, or families visiting the beach. There were plenty of joggers and dog walker, too. It’s the first day of a long weekend, and plenty of people were determined to enjoy it!
My daughter’s lunch turned out to be perfectly timed. It was nice and sunny by then, too, so we were able to eat comfortably on a picnic table not far from where she works. After lunch, I walked back to the garage and arrived moments after they’d finished with our van. I still had some errands to run that needed a vehicle, and by the time I was done, there was no point in driving all the way home, so I stayed in town until my daughter was done her shift.
It’s a good thing my to-do list for the day was kept flexible and tentative!
I did get one big job accomplished, and it was one I’d started last night.
We have had issues with our 20 gallon fish tank. Part of the problem is that it was next to the kitchen window. Sunlight tends to promote algae growth. The other problem seems to be our well water. While it’s great that we don’t need to deal with chlorine, when I did a 20% water change last spring, we had all sorts of problems show up, from a suddenly algae bloom, to pond snails appearing.
No, we don’t drink our well water from the tap anymore. I’m hoping, now that the sump pump is draining well away from the well again, these issues will resolve themselves!
We’d managed to get control of the algae a bit, though over the past year it killed off some fish and most of our plants. We’re down to one fish – an algae eater that doesn’t eat this type of algae! – and I’d fairly recently added a bunch of new plants. The snails, we were okay with, since they seemed to be helping keep the tank clean. There was some concern that they might take over the tank, but I think the fish keeps the snail population under control!
Then a few days ago, the water, which had been turning increasingly green, suddenly turned completely green and murky. We hadn’t even topped up the evaporated water or anything. The only thing that has been changing is the angle and amount of sunlight.
That poor little fish.
What we ended up doing was buying several 15L bottles of spring water and, last night, we completely emptied the tank and cleaned it out. I’d put some of the water in a gallon sized jar and stuck in the heater to warm it up before adding the plants and that poor little fish. The water was so murky, I couldn’t actually see the plants. I got them out by feel. At the same time, I removed sheets of algae growth that we couldn’t see through the water. !!!
The next several hours was spent emptying the tank, removing the substrate and decorations, scrubbing, rinsing and scalding everything we could – with no cleaners, since we didn’t want to accidentally poison the tank. I even kept what snails I could find. :-D
The cats were absolutely fascinated by the entire process.
In preparation for this, we decided on a new spot in the living room, found a old table in the storage shed, and set it up.
The cleaned out tank was then set up in its new location and filled with the bottled spring water and the appropriate additives.
The fish and plants, however, had to wait. The heater was set up in the cleaned tank, but it took quite a while to warm the water sufficiently. I wasn’t able to get the plants and fish in until morning.
We have an extra 15L bottle of the purchased spring water to top off the tank, instead of using our well water. Hopefully, this will solve the main problems. I don’t expect to never have algae problems again, but we shouldn’t get the crazy growth we had been!
Also, the cats are obsessed with all this. Susan is sitting on top of the big tank that we can’t use, since the part that broke on the filter during the move apparently is not available for purchase, even from the manufacturer. We found a way to cover the top solidly, and it has become a favorite place for the cats to hang out.
Now, they’ll have something else to watch from above!
:-D
Hopefully, the surviving plants will establish themselves and spread, like they are supposed to. I saw some pretty good root systems had started to develop. Once we get some good plant growth in there, we will get a few more fish again. :-)
This turned out to be a much bigger – and longer – job than I expected. But it’s finally done, and I think the fish is much happier in clean water again! :-D
For the most part, the other cats have been ignoring the kittens. Sometimes, they’ll come over and peer into the nest, but that’s about it.
Then Beep Beep started taking Nicco out to a new spot under my crafting table, repeatedly. I thought I’d gotten her to stop, but one of my daughters found Nicco under my table – with David! The two of them were looking very confused at each other.
David is now very curious about the babies.
This morning, that curiosity got the better of him!
The kittens immediately went over to check out this furry new visitor! The tuxedo, now known as Leyendecker (I remembered it! LOL), was especially interested in burrowing into that luxuriant fur.
David was a little freaked out by that and left. He ended up on top of the nest, looking down at them. :-D
The babies, meanwhile, are now very active, if still very clumsy, running around, wrestling, climbing and generally being very playful.
And now I have to get some things finished early today. I am taking the van in after dropping my daughter off at work, for an oil change and getting the summer tires put on, so I may as well stay in town and have lunch with my daughter. :-) We’re supposed to hit 18C (64F) today, and while it will likely be cooler so close to the lake, we might actually be able to eat outside. Of course, if she ended up with a really early lunch again, and the van isn’t ready yet, we might not have much choice! :-D
Yes! Finally! The weather is cooperating, and I was able to get our potatoes in!
From a previous post, this is what I was starting with.
The frames are just there to mark out where the beds will be. As you can see, there’s a fair bit of grass and weeds. It has been a while since this area had any sort of gardening done in it.
While the no-till, no-dig method we’re using is something that can be done directly on the grass, I wanted to add at least some amendments, first.
I used a wheelbarrow to mix 1 bag of manure with a slightly larger volume of peat.
After spreading it out on one of the beds with a rake, I used another bag of manure mixed with peat on the second bed. I then topped them with a thin layer of straw, making sure to use the damp straw from the bottom of the bale, where it was starting to decompose already.
I had hoped to use some material from our own compost pile, but as I dug around, I did not find any usable material. I had tried to clean out some of the older compost, from before we moved here, but as I dug around, I found more stuff I missed. Twigs and branches are one thing. It looks like people had stared to use it for garbage, and I found pieces of wood that were probably used as support stakes, plastic trays from transplants, and even a piece of fabric. There was some well composted material, but it was so full of sticks, it was unusable.
I’m thinking we will need to start a completely new compost pile somewhere else. This one is looking like a write off. :-(
So, no compost of our own for the potato beds.
Once both beds were spread with the manure and peat mixture, I gave them a very thorough watering. Even though we’ve had rain for the past couple of days, the soil was still pretty dry.
After soaking the beds, I added the potatoes. Each box was 3 pounds of seed potatoes. That worked out to 3 rows of 6 potatoes (plus 1 extra, so I put 2 small ones together) in one bed, and 3 rows of 5 potatoes in the other.
After spreading the potatoes out, I went back to evenly space them and push them gently down to have contact with the ground. With one potato, I went to pick it up, but it wouldn’t move.
???
I tried again, but it was stuck to the ground.
Amazingly, in the space of a couple of minutes, this one potato that had direct contact with the ground and shot out a 3 or 4 inch root, with capillaries! I wish I’d made the effort to take off my muddy gloves to take a photo, but instead, I dug a quick hole in the ground where I wanted it to be and “transplanted” it. I still can’t believe a potato could grow a root so deep, so fast, even after seeing it with my own eyes!
The next step was to cover the potatoes with a deep layer of straw. Again, I used straw from the bottom of the bale, where more of it was already damp and some was starting to decompose already. I made a layer roughly a foot deep.
I then scattered more peat across the top, then tamped it all down with the back of the spade. This peat is as much to add some weight to prevent flyaway straw as it is to amend the soil.
After the above photo was taken, I spent the next while thoroughly soaking the straw.
With this method, I saw recommendations of putting a layer of hay (which I don’t have, so I’m using straw) 2 feet deep. This is definitely not 2 feet deep. Over the next day or two, I plan to soak the straw some more, add another layer, then soak it again. After that, I should not need to water it much, if at all, for the rest of the growing season. I’ve heard people using this method say that no watering is needed at all, because the mulch maintains moisture as it breaks down, but I expect to need to water it at some point. It all depends on whether we have another drought this summer.
After the straw has started to settle and pack itself down, I will remove the frames to be used elsewhere.
Once this was done, I checked out the area we are planning to transplant our squash seedlings. We had covered this area last year with straw, then covered with tarps, to amend the soil and try to kill off the grass and weeds. We still ended up having to use Round Up. Even covered with tarps, weeds where pushing their way through the straw and lifting the pegged down tarps off the ground!
This is how the area looks now.
The black tarps in the back are there to warm up the mulched soil on that side a bit faster.
I could not do this here, last year. In fact, the soil was so hard, we were bending tent pegs while fastening down the tarps. While working on the potato beds next to this area, I would sometimes shove the fork or the spade into the ground to set it aside while I did the next thing, and ended up leaning them on the bale or wagon most of the time, because the ground is just so hard. Yet here, I could sink the fork’s tines their entire length down!
I pushed aside some of the mulch and dug around a bit. There are still a LOT of quack grass roots in there. I pulled some up, and you can see the bundle of roots in the above photo. The soil is quite “sticky”. The exciting thing was uncovering a worm. A very good sign!
Which means our efforts last year are paying off. The soil is already improving. When it’s time to transplant into the area, we will still be dealing with rocks and root systems, but the ground is now workable.
It’s amazing, what a mulch can do to improve soil conditions!
The orange ones now have names. The bigger one is Turmeric. The tiny one is Saffron. :-D
As I write this, Beep Beep is curled up with them, but things were not so peaceful, a little while ago. I heard some strange squealing and looked over in time to see her jump out of the nest, with Nicco in her mouth, then dash over to a corner under my crafting table. There is shelf under there that’s empty, since it’s unreachable, and she was starting to move him into it. I had to move some storage bins to be able to reach Nicco and bring him out, but she tried again, later. I’m hoping I’ve dissuaded her from moving the kittens into there. Aside from this being a hard, colder, smaller space, they would eventually damage the wood of the shelf, and the carpet in front of it, as they get bigger and start pooping and peeing all over.
I now have storage bins all over my bed. With the area uncovered, it’s less tempting of a potential nest!
Meanwhile…
While doing my rounds this morning, I paused to take another look at one of the chokecherry trees among the lilacs, and consider some possibilities. Here is how the tree is growing.
It’s hard to see among the lilacs, so I put in the lines to show how the main trunk is leaning.
Here is a closer look of the base.
While I was not planning to work on the lilac hedge for some time, I am debating with myself on whether I should just go ahead and clear out around this tree. It is pretty choked out by the lilacs, so on the one hand, it would make for a healthier tree and higher yields of berries as quickly as this summer. Now would be a good time to clear it out, before the leaves are in. On the other hand, this tree is leaning so far over, I think the lilacs may be the only thing holding it upright. Whenever I do clear it, I would add a support of some kind, and start training it to grow straight again.
What do you think? Should I do it now, or stick to my original plan of doing it when we work on the lilacs a year or two from now?
First, I wish to share with you this image of domestic bliss I get to enjoy from my office chair of late.
Just look at those blue, blue eyes! And the little guy, splayed on his back. We had been calling him Nicky Pants, but it looks like we’ve settled on Nicco for a name. Mini-BeepBeep, has earned a different name. She is growing much bigger than the other kittens, and is now known as Big Rig. :-D
One of the things I had scheduled for today was a quick stop at my mother’s. Originally, it was to hang up the beautiful flowers on the beautiful plant hanger my brother (who lives an hour and a half’s drive away) had bought her for Mother’s Day. Something lovely for her to see outside her window. I’d picked up some solar powered rope lights to wrap around it, so she could have something to see at night, too.
Well… to say that my mother was less than gracious about the gifts would be an understatement. Rude, angry, even cruel, would be better words to use. Now, I’ve reached a point where my mother’s behaviour can’t hurt me anymore. At least not in any tangible way. My brother, however is a better person than I am, and he still bleeds. When I spoke to her on the phone after the visit, and about my coming back to hang the flowers when it was supposed to warm up and stay warm, she continued with her ungrateful and hurtful comments.
So my brother drove the distance and took back the gift she made very clear she did not want. Keep in mind that my mother has always been an avid gardener, has two green thumbs, and was just complaining about how the caretakers had dug up all the annual flowers, including hers, and thrown them out. This gift was so that she could have flowers that the caretakers wouldn’t dig up.
The solar powered lights, she had told me, never turned on. It turned out there was a yard light outside her apartment, and it was simply too bright for the light string to turn itself on. When they were wrapped up on her couch, waiting for me, they did turn on, and she said they looked lovely – but she didn’t want them.
So my trip to hang up flowers became a trip to retrieve my unwanted gift.
I did, however, have a chance to talk to my mother on the phone about her behaviour and how hurtful she was. Her words may not have hurt me directly – I was not at all surprised by the behaviour – but to see how much she hurt my brother does make my heart ache for him. I tried to explain this to her. She is really big on people behaving “properly” (which typically means, they should act the way she thinks they should, dress the way she thinks they should, be interested in things she thinks they should, and not act, dress or think in any way she doesn’t like). So I told her that the proper way to respond when someone gives you a gift is to say thank you, and to be kind and gracious.
Well, she had all sorts of excuses to justify her behaviour, but I kept coming back to, “you can still be kind.”
Then we talked about when I could come over, and for her to meet me at a particular exit, since her building will remain locked down to the general public and most visitors for a while, yet. She was in need of some groceries, so I drove her over and she took advantage of having access to a vehicle and stocked up on more than her usual week’s worth of supplies. I helped bring all the bags to her apartment, and then left right away, but before I did, my mother seemed to make a real effort.
She thanked me. Then she talked about how grateful she was that I, and my siblings, help her out so much, and how thankful she was that we do.
Now, if only she would do this with my oldest brother! Of all of us, he is the one she has been the most unkind to. She had certainly tried it with me, since we moved out here, but it doesn’t work, so she has largely stopped.
*sigh*
So the whole thing went longer than planned, which would not have been much of an issue for what I wanted to get done today, had something else not changed. Today was supposed to be the day things started to warm up.
It hasn’t.
The forecast is still saying we’re supposed to reach of high of 11C (51F) with a “real feel” of 10C (50F) today.
They lie.
It’s been cold and damp and very unpleasant out there.
So instead of working outside and prepping the potato beds, I decided to focus on warm things. Like slow roasted ribs in BBQ sauce, and a massive batch of scalloped potatoes in a cheese sauce in the slow cooker. Both of which are being cooked low and slow.
The house smells amazing.
Oh, my timer just went off! Time to check on supper! :-D
They are quite liking the new set up. The kittens will wobble their way all over, then go back to their little bed for cuddles with Mom.
So far, it looks like all the kittens are male. There is only one, mini-BeepBeep, we haven’t been able to see.
While doing my rounds, I noticed these other babies.
This is a chokecherry. As the leaf buds unfurl, they reveal baby future berries! Those little clusters will eventually bloom and, if we have a good year, we will have lots of berries. This little tree is just sort of by itself in the middle of a grassy area on the North side of the garden. There are two more, among the lilac hedge. In the last couple of years, those ones produced berries, but this little one, not really. It looks like this year, it has reached production maturity!
The Re-Farmer 