Well, we seem to be back to having all the rain systems passing us by again. We are a bit cooler – as I write this, we are at “only” 26C/79F – but our humidex puts us at 33C/91F. Which I suppose helps, as we didn’t need to water the garden at all, yesterday. I probably could have left them be for another day, but I used a water soluble fertilizer on most of it, this morning.
This is the biggest of the Pixie melons that I checked on this morning. I just love how perfectly round they are! :-D
We had a whole bunch of poppies blooming this morning, including this tiny one. So far, it’s the only one with petals that are almost the pink they are supposed to be.
Unfortunately, the potatoes are getting more grasshopper damage these days.
They seem to prefer to eat the flowers! There is a fair bit of leaf damage, though the potatoes are doing so well, they can handle it pretty well right now. Though this seemed odd.
The Purple Peruvian fingerling potatoes have virtually no damage at all! I think I found only two leaves that had been chewed on. That’s it. All the other varieties, meanwhile, have quite a lot of chewed up leaves. Apparently, these potato leaves taste bad to grasshoppers! :-D
I don’t know what it is about today, but the entire household seems to be having a hard time. Perhaps it’s the humidity? I’m actually feeling an oppressive weight in my upper chest and throat that gets worse when I lie down, making it hard to sleep, and my chronic cough has been an issue, even though the rain we did get cleared the smoke out of the air. I don’t know, but we’re all barely able to drag our butts around to get anything done, and we all feel like falling asleep where we stand. Even the cats are sprawled all over the house in furry puddles, sleeping.
Speaking of furry puddles…
The big woodchuck was under the bird feeder earlier today – along with a chipmunk! You can’t really see it in the photo, but the woodchuck’s back hips are just sort of flattened to the ground, like a puddle.
It came back again later, then got some company.
The little one wandered over and started munching. They look peaceable in the photo, but when the littler one got too close to the big one, the big one attacked it! Had it flipped over on its back, teeth at its throat, in a heartbeat!
Then it let the little one go. This was clearly a dominance thing, not an attempt to do real damage. The little one didn’t fight back, but submitted to the big one. Given the size – and likely age – difference, that was probably a wise decision on the little one’s part!
With today being a day where manual labour seems to be out of the question (and there is much of it that needs to be done, but couldn’t be, because of the heat we’ve been having), I decided it was a good time to write out some plans and lists, and make some diagrams, for next year’s garden. I’ve got our catalogues out and started some wish lists, as well as working out what we want to do for next year. The girls and I will go over things and hash out details, using what we learned with this year’s gardening. Having this worked out early will be useful as we clean things up at the end of this growing season. The main thing I’m trying to figure out is what to use to build the first permanent, high raised beds, which will be where we currently have the low raised beds bordered with logs. Buying lumber is out of the question for our budget, but the barn and sheds got picked over by our vandal over the years before we moved here, quite thoroughly. The barn used to be full of salvaged lumber. I have a few ideas in mind, but it looks like it’ll be a while before we can see if they’re even possible. Ah, well. We’ll figure something out.
For the past while, we have been pretty much constantly checking the weather radar. Yesterday evening, it was getting discouraging, and the predicted overnight rain kept getting pushed back and the weather system passed us by to the south. This morning, however, I was thrilled to see a system pushing rain right over is. Granted, based on the radar images, we should have been raining right at that moment, but at least we weren’t going to be missed entirely.
We did get at least some rain last night, as the ground was still damp when I came out to do my morning rounds. It even started raining while I was out there! A very light rain; the sort of rain that, had I not been outside being rained on, I wouldn’t have been able to tell it was happening, but still, it was rain!
While checking the furthest garden beds, I was accompanied by Creamsicle Baby, who has finally started to allow us to pet him again. Frustratingly, when the cats follow us around those beds, they have a terrible habit of going into the pea trellises. This morning, I had to chase Creamsicle off the pea plants he was rolling on, only to have him come right back and start playing with the trellis twice, pulling their pegs out of the ground and getting tangled in them!
Even as I checked the garden cam this morning, I saw Butterscotch going through the pea beds, all four kittens following along, and every one of them went through the pea trellises, running, bouncing and rolling around.
Those poor peas just can’t seem to catch a break!
Other things, however, are doing quite well.
I’m really impressed by how well these Hope Black Dye sunflower transplants are doing. These are from the ones we tried starting indoors, but never germinated until well after we’d direct sown the other half of the seeds outdoors. The seedlings have pretty much quadrupled in size since they got transplanted. I don’t expect them to have a chance to reach maturity, given how late in the season they got transplanted, but part of the reason we grow sunflowers is as a privacy screen and wind break, and these might still accomplish that. Assuming they don’t get eaten. This morning, I saw deer tracks in the soil at the very ends of two bean beds, but no signs of anything new critter damage, so here’s hoping!
Every time we go out to these garden beds, we can’t help but check on the melons. They are getting so big!! This variety isn’t supposed to get as large as, say, the cantaloupes we see in the grocery store, but they are still supposed to produce lots of 4-5 pound fruit. The Pixies are supposed to reach about 1 1/2 pounds in size. I’m really, really excited about these. Melons are among my favourite foods, but we rarely buy them, as they are a treat, rather than an essential.
One of the challenges we’ve been having as been with the potatoes. Since discovering some critter damage, we unrolled the feed bags we’re growing them in to full height. If these had been indeterminate potatoes, we would eventually have done that by continually adding more soil, but these turned out to all be determinate potatoes, so there is no advantage to doing that.
Unfortunately, that meant there was nothing to support the bags, and the plants kept flopping over. Especially while being watered. If we had mulch, we could have added that to help fill the space and keep them from flopping over, but we don’t have anything right now. At least it’s been working to keep critters out, but some of the bags were flopping over to the point that I was concerned the stems would all break, and they’re still in their blooming stage.
Last night, I think I found a solution.
This is how they looked this morning, so it seems to have worked!
What I’d done is cut small holes near the tops of the bags, then tied them together with twine. The double row was tied together in groups of four, while the bags in the front were tied in groups of three. Then, just in case, extra twine was run around the front, tying them to the chain link fence. So now, the bags are holding each other up, while also protecting the plants from critters. It’s just insects we’ll still need to keep an eye on.
Hmm. One down side of finally getting some rain. There are some storms passing to the south of us, which means we’ve lost internet. The WordPress editor’s autosave has been spinning for a while, and once that starts, it doesn’t recover even once the connection is back. Which means that I can’t save my draft, and once our connection is up again, I’ll have to open whatever draft was last autosaved, then copy and paste whatever got missed into it, before I can publish it, and close this window.
Oh, the internet seems to be back again! Let’s see if I can publish this!
I just have to start with the exciting part. We actually got rain today!
Okay, so it was maybe only for about 20 minutes, but it was a nice, gentle, steady rain, and enough that after several hours, the ground is still damp. Not only that, but we’ve got a 90% chance of more rain overnight and into tomorrow morning.
Thank God!
Hopefully, by then, the smoke will finally clear out of the air, and some of that rain will hit the areas that have fires right now.
It is not going to make up for months of drought and heat, but it will certainly help. Even the completely dry, crispy grass has started to wake up and show green already.
It was lovely and cool when I did my rounds this morning, then a daughter and I went and checked all the garden beds just a little while ago.
I’m really glad we set up the chicken wire over the gourds and cucamelons. I found this critter damage this morning. It looks like something, likely a woodchuck, leaned on the wire and managed to nibble on a leaf through the gaps. Just one leaf here, and another on the other side of the chain link fence. Without the wire, we probably would have had a lot more damage.
While I was checking on these, Nosencrantz was playing on the concrete block leaning on a tree nearby, so I paused to try and get her to come to my hand. I managed to boop Nosencrantz’s nose before she ran away. Toesencrantz, on the other hand, was far more interested in trying to get at a lump of dirt on the other side of the chicken wire! He could get his paws under the wire, but the tent pegs held and he couldn’t get the lump out. Not for lack of trying! So that confirmed for me that the kittens were doing the digging in the dirt. More reason to be glad for the wire! The dirt lump got broken up, so as to remove further temptation.
The cucamelon plants looks so tiny, but they are starting to develop fruit! The chain link fence gives an idea of just how tiny these are. I’m looking forward to seeing how they do in this location, which gets more sun than where we grew them last year. They produced quite well last year, for a plant that’s supposed to have full sun.
While checking things out with my daughter, I found new critter damage. When I checked the bed this morning, the damage wasn’t there. These are the Champion radish sprouts. Not all of them were eaten, and the purple kohlrabi sprouts next to them seem to have been untouched. Which would lead me to think it was grasshoppers, not a groundhog, except that after the rain, there were NO grasshoppers around. I didn’t see any in the morning, either, but I usually don’t, that early in the day. They tend to come out later.
Unfortunately, this bed has only the wire border fence pieces to hold up the shade cloth. We are out of the materials to make another wire mesh cover, so with the shade cloths not being used, this bed is unprotected, and there’s really nothing we can do about it right now. :-( On the plus side, it wasn’t a total loss, and I’m thinking the woodchucks, at least, are preferring the easy pickings under the bird feeder.
At the squash tunnel, we found this lovely friend, resting on a Halona melon flower. The melons, winter squash and gourds are doing quite well right now, though all the garden beds are due for another feeding. The baby melons are getting nice and big, and we keep finding more. I was really excited when my daughter spotted this, hidden under a leaf.
These are the first flower buds on the luffa! I was really starting to wonder about them. They started out well, then went through a rough patch, but since I started using the soaker hose, they are already looking more robust again.
In checking the onion beds, my daughter spotted an onion that had lost its greens completely, so she picked it. It will need to be eaten very quickly. It is so adorable and round! This is from the onions we grew from seed. Though I’ve trimmed the greens of almost all the onions, we’re finding some of them with broken stems. Most likely, it’s from the cats rolling on them, as I’ve sometimes seen Creamsicle Baby doing.
We also found a green zucchini big enough to pick. I’ve checked all the plants, and while there should be at least one golden zucchini, I’m not finding any. Every plant is starting to produce fruit now, too, even if just tiny ones, and no golden zucchini. Odd. Perhaps the package was mislabeled and we got a different kind of green zucchini instead? There are differences in the leaves that suggest two different varieties, even if the fruit looks much the same.
Oh, in the background of the onion picture is the Montana Morado corn. We’re always checking them and the nearby Crespo squash for critter damage. There does seem to be some, but I am uncertain what to make of it. One corn plant, in the middle of the furthest row, lost its tassels and top leaves, but none of the others around it were damaged. It has a cob developing on the stalk, so I pollinated it by hand. Then I spotted another stalk, in the middle of the bed, that also lost its tassels. But what would have done that, while ignoring all the other plants around it? Very strange.
And finally, we have the poppies.
The Giant Rattle Breadseed poppies continue to bloom in the mornings, loosing their petals by the end of the day. Their pods are so tiny at that point, but in my hand, you can see the pod from the very first one that bloomed. It has gotten so much bigger!
We also found a couple of these.
My mother had ornamental poppies in here, and even with the mulching and digging we did, some still survived. This photo is of the bigger of two that showed up in an unexpected place: where my daughter had dug a trench to plant her iris bulbs. Somehow, they survived, and now we have two tiny little ornamental poppies. :-D
In hopes that we will get rain tonight, we will not be doing our evening watering. If we don’t get rain, we will water everything in the morning, instead.
Today, I did something I haven’t done in quite a while; check things out beyond the outer yard. Everything beyond the fence surrounding the outer yard, plus the old hay yard, is rented out, and somewhat less than half of that is used for pasture.
This first photo was actually taken from within the outer yard.
Everything is bone dry and crispy, and you can see the haze of smoke from wildfires that are nowhere near us! Keep in mind that the camera automatically cleans up haze, so the view was actually smokier than this.
This photo was taken at the “gate” by the barn. You can see the renter’s electric fence wire ends here. The only green that shows among the dormant grass is dandelions, and even they are burnt red.
This is facing the areas behind the old barn. By the time the renter rotates his cattle here, this grass is typically 2, almost 3, feet high.
This old pond is typically a source of water for the cattle. I walked to the deepest part, and even there, the ground is bone dry.
Also, we would normally be able to see the neighbour’s tree line in the distance, about a mile away. In the photo, it’s just barely visible as a shadow.
This is the deepest areas of what used to be a gravel pit, but which became another dugout to provide water for the cattle. At the far end is a marshy area that eventually reaches as far as the roadway by the pond.
This is in the deep part of the old gravel pit. Most of the tracks look like they were made by deer, but I think I saw some that looked like there were claw marks. All the tracks are old. There hasn’t even been mud here for some time.
This pit used to be quite a bit deeper. Since it wasn’t being used for gravel anymore, there’s at least a couple of decades of pond sediment, decaying plants and cow manure building up at the bottom. One of these years, I would like to have it, and the pond, excavated again. Since we moved back here, this is the first time I’ve seen the old gravel pit completely dry. Even in last year’s drought conditions, there was still water in the lowest area, making it one of the few sources of water for wildlife in the area.
Here, I’m standing at the “end” of the gravel pit area. Behind me is more marshy area that extends to a “creek” that is part of the municipal drainage system, but tends to have water only with the spring runoff.
Heading back towards the house, I checked out an area that is mostly rocks and broken concrete that is overgrown with hawthorn and other bushes. This is the only thing there that has berries on it, and they’re not doing very well.
The white that you see on the leaves is dust kicked up on the gravel road, every time something drives by.
There has been a lot of road dust this year.
Another view of the pasture area, looking towards the pond.
Walking through all this, not only was everything crispy and crunchy, but ever step I took sent masses of grasshoppers flying. With things this dry, I don’t think even the grasshoppers can eat it!
There is but one area of relatively lush, green growth.
The septic field.
This is out towards the barn. Unlike a gravity field, our system pumps the greywater from the tank by the house, all the way out here. You can see the white pipe that is the outflow. It just sprays out from there. There is an entire low area beyond this that, in a wet year, forms another pond. It had been fenced off to keep the cattle out, since any water there would have septic water in it, too, but those fences have long since fallen down.
After I finished my walkabout, I set up the soaker hose at the squash tunnel, then decided to try an experiment.
Our green peas in particular are pretty much toast. Or should I say, toasted. They are still blooming and trying to grow pods, but between the heat and whatever is eating them, we aren’t going to get a crop from them.
The Dalvay peas are sold by weight, not seed count. Which means we had a LOT of seeds left over. Part of why I wanted to plant so many peas and beans near the corn, and to do it in this far flung area, was for their nitrogen fixing qualities.
So I decided to take the leftover seeds and plant them with the sweet corn.
Interestingly, not long after I started, I realized I was hearing the sound of a small engine vehicle moving around on the property. It turned out I was not the only one who decided to check conditions today. The renter had come over on his utility vehicle and was checking out all the pasture areas.
If he does rotate his cows here, I suspect he’s going to have to provide both food and water for them. Last year, he only had to provide water.
One of the things I’d like to do in the future, if we ever have the money to do it, is get those two water fountains going again. It would mean replacing our pressure tank with a much bigger one, as there had been in the past, and hiring someone to make sure all the pluming and the tanks themselves are in working condition. We don’t have cows of our own, but they would be good for wildlife, as well as the renter’s cows.
That’s something for the dreams list! :-)
I was almost done planting peas when my daughter came out to set up the sprinkler. Using a sprinkler feels like such a wasteful way to water, but for this area, we simply couldn’t water them as thoroughly as they needed, any other way. The other beds don’t have the same issues. It’s remarkable how different soil can be, even in a short distance. Since we started using the sprinkler, the corn and sunflowers have been doing visibly better.
There were so many peas left in the package, I was able to plant one pea for every corn in the block-and-a-bit visible in the photo. In these, I had planted a couple of seeds of corn a foot apart, then thinned them later. In the last block, I just planted a corn seed every six inches. Most of them germinated, so there wasn’t the space to plant one for every corn plant, so I planted one every 1 – 1 1/2 feet, depending on the spacing.
I still had enough seeds to plant more among the surviving Dorinny corn. Then I still had enough to plant with the Montana Morado corn (which seems to have been replaced at Baker Creek with Mountain Morado corn). And I STILL had seeds left over! Only about a dozen or so, but wow, was Veseys ever generous with their quantities!
Now, these seeds had been left behind in a storage bin we keep by the rain barrel next to the pea trellises. Which means that they’ve been out in this heat all this time. It’s entirely possible they won’t germinate. Or only a few will germinate.
Though planting peas for a fall crop this time of year, to get a fall harvest, is something that can be done in our zone, this year is so hot, we might still have the same problem as with the ones I planted in the spring, even if they do germinate. However, that’s not what I’m planting them for. I’m planting them for their nitrogen fixing qualities. Corn are nitrogen hungry plants, and our soil is nitrogen depleted. Yes, we can use a high nitrogen fertilizer, but having a plant that will do that job is preferable. Plus, if they do germinate, the corn plants will provide shade for them, while also providing a natural trellis for the peas to grow on, as with beans in Three Sisters plantings. We only have bush beans, though, so they won’t climb the corn. People had been talking about the Three Sisters method of planting in some of my gardening groups. Some people found it worked well. Some found that the squash made getting at the corn difficult, or that there was just too much competition for nutrients, and some found peas worked better for them than beans.
So we shall see how this turns out.
As I’ve mentioned in the past, all of these far flung beds are temporary. We’re basically breaking and amending the soil in perpetration for future plans. With what we are learning this year, we are already adjusting some of those plants. We were talking about planting a nut orchard and fruit trees, which we’re going to have to do soon, because those can take years, in some cases a decade, before they start producing.
We’re going to be adding a step.
My daughters and I have been going through the Whiffletree catalog, repeatedly. With the soil conditions we have, we’re now thinking to start by adding hedges. There are several options available for zones 2 and 3 that not only produce edible fruit and do well in poor soil, but also help fix nitrogen in the soil. If they’re still available next year, we’ve decided on three different ones. Silver Buffaloberry, which is a zone 2 bush, Autumn Olives (also called Autumn Silverberry), which is a zone 3 bush that is semi-fertile, and Sea Buckthorn, which is a zone 3 bush that requires 1 male variety for every 5-9 females varieties. On top of producing edible berries, being able to grow in poor soil conditions, and acting as nitrogen fixers, these will also form a barrier that will not only give us a privacy screen from our peeping vandal, they are dense enough to form a barrier that deer can’t get through. Plus, they will be dense enough to act as dust barriers. We’ve worked out the areas we can plant in, leaving a gap over where we thing the buried telephone wires are. We never did hear back from the Call Before You Dig people, but I figured out an easy way to do it. My brother’s property is right across the road, and the lines run though his place, too. He has a gap in his spruce grove, over the phone lines. All we have to do is line up our gap with his! :-D Anyhow, after we start with these nitrogen fixing, berry producing bushes, we will then start adding fruit and nut trees in what is currently a big void in the old garden area. Little by little, year after year, we will be adding more food trees, strategically placing each of them, so serve multiple purposes. At least, that’s the plan right now! :-D
Meanwhile, by the time I was done with all the pea planting, the smoke in the air had gotten to the point that there was a haze in the yard. As I write this, I can see the live feed from the garage security camera, and I can see smoke in our driveway. We’re still getting rain in our forecast, but in millimeters. Some areas did get rain today, which I am happy to hear about, but none of it is reaching us. I would actually be okay with that, if we could at least get rain over those northern fires.
As we were reaching the hottest part of the day, I had concerns about the garden. Specifically, at the squash tunnel. The summer squash are well mulched and can stay cooler and moister longer, but the melons, winter squash and gourds are not as well set up, and they need more water than most other things.
I had an idea, so I headed out to the garden, only to get distracted as I walked past the concrete steps at the side of the house.
The woodchuck tried to get under the stairs again! I had checked it this morning, and it was not like this, so the attempt was made some time later.
It did not succeed.
I did see a woodchuck eating the sunflowers I scattered on the ground under the hanging bird feeder, and ended up leaving it be. I figure, it it’s eating bird seed, it’s not eating my garden. :-/
I put all the rocks back again, then jammed the boards you can just see in the photo, on top.
Anyhow.
On the way to the garden, I dragged the soaker hose over. In checking the plants at the squash tunnel, I found they were very wilted and drooping. I carefully set the soaker hose up as close to the stems as I could, making sure it went under any vines and leaves.
Which is why I finally was able to see this.
It’s a Pixie melon!! And so big, too! I’d been looking carefully to see if there were any melons forming, and never saw it until today.
I even found other ones starting to grow.
That is so awesome!!
The soaker hose is 50 ft long, so I was able to go around the entire outside of the squash tunnel, and even have about a foot and a half to spare that got looped back to the inside of the squash tunnel.
I didn’t want to be wasting water by watering the path, so I scavenged a piece of metal to put under it. It’s aluminum, the same as our eaves troughs, but it isn’t part of an eaves trough. I don’t know where it came from. We found it in the yard, by the back of the house, one day after some high winds. Wherever it came from, it didn’t blow off the house, which is the only place we have eaves troughs in that colour.
Well, it’s coming in handy, now. It’s got bends in it that I’m taking advantage of to use as a trough to divert water from the soaker hose to the ends of the squash tunnel. It doesn’t quite reach the ends of where we planted, but it’s close enough.
Before turning it on, I made a point of unscrewing sections of hose as I walked back to the tap, to drain off the scalding hot water that was inside it!
Since this hose releases so little water at a time, we can hook it up and leave the water running for an hour or more, before we switch the hose to the sprinkler to do the corn and sunflower beds for about and hour, timing it so that we can then do the evening watering when it has finally started to cool down.
The melons, gourds and winter squash are all heat loving plants, so having this set up to water them more deeply should help them quite a lot as they develop their fruit.
I am SO looking forward to tasting our very first melons!
We’re hitting a milestone today. This is post 3000 since we started the blog!
I suppose it’s appropriate to mark the growth of the blog by highlighting growth in our garden. :-)
Starting with this strange looking growth!
I spotted this strange shape, hidden in near the middle of one of the garlic beds. It looks like a garlic bulb is forming in the stem, instead of the ground! Or, as well as? Will this garlic plant have two bulbs? I look forward to finding out when they are harvested!
While watering in the evening, the girls found that something had squirmed its way under this beet bed and nibbled on quite a bit of it. More rocks and bricks were added to hopefully prevent it from happening again. The beets here had been recovering quite well, once we’d put the netting over it. This damage was mostly likely done by a woodchuck.
Which reminds me…
Yesterday evening, as my daughter went out to water the gardens, she found TWO woodchucks, loafed in the carrot bed in the main garden. The two smaller ones, just sitting there. As she came closer, one ran off, but the other just hunkered down. When she came still closer, it ducked behind one of the logs framing the bed and watched her over the top. She says she came so close, she could have slapped it in the face, while trying to shoo it away! It just did not want to leave! If finally did run off under the garden shed, but she had to practically chase it the whole way.
Brazen buggers, aren’t they?
The summer squash is doing really well and getting quite bit. This is the only bed that is fully mulched, and it’s making a very clear difference.
Next year, we really need to make sure we have lots of mulch available.
The onions we grew from seed are also doing the best of all the onions. It may be easier to grow from sets but, at this point, it seems well worth the effort to start from seed, instead. It’s really just a matter of finding the space to do it. Especially as we plan to grow a lot more next year, with more dedicated interplanting, so they can protect other vegetables.
The Montana Morado corn is doing really well. Some of the plants are about 5′ tall now. If we were not in drought conditions, they would be much taller, but they are still doing better than any of the other corn. So much better that I think we will start all our corn indoors and transplant them next year. Except the Dorinny corn, if we grow that again, since that one is meant to be direct sown before first frost, not after. They may not be as tall as the Montana Morado corn, but they are more robust.
The Crespo squash is recovering from critter damage very well. It has shot out new vines, one of which you can see has latched onto some twine! The smaller transplant (on the right, in this photo) is now the bigger plant, too.
Also, it takes a special talent to put your finger over the lens while using a cell phone to take pictures. LOL!
One of the Mosaic Mix tomato plants has SO many developing tomatoes on it! I don’t even like tomatoes, but I am really excited over how these are doing.
The tomatoes have gotten big and bushy enough that even some of the branches that have grown through the chain link fence are needing support.
Speaking of support…
Once the cucamelons finally reached the fence, they just shot up new vines and tendrils! Hopefully, the fence will soon be dense with leaves.
I need to find a way to put the fallen soil back and keep it there. I think the kittens are playing in the dirt and spreading it around. :-D
Even the Ozark Nest Egg gourds have gotten to the point where they are starting to climb!
If we can manage to keep things alive, we should still have a pretty decent harvest in the fall.
Now that we have Halona melons developing, it is so much more fun to check the garden in the mornings! Check this out.
These melons are visibly bigger than they were when I looked at them yesterday evening. I checked them again this evening, and they are again, noticeably bigger! Not only that, but we are finding lots more new ones, plus some larger ones that we hadn’t seen earlier. None as big as the one I’m holding in the photo, though.
I’ve looked over the Pixie melons, and while there are lots of flowers, they all seem to be male flowers. Which is interesting, since the Pixies are 70-75 days to maturity, while the Halona are 75 days to maturity, so you’d think it would be the other way around.
This is a photo of our very first WINTER squash! *insert happy dance* They are starting to get quite big, and this type are quite enthusiastically climbing the squash tunnel. I forget which ones these are; the markers are hidden under leaves right now. :-D
Well, if I needed clearer proof that something is eating our peas, this is it. Half the pod of this purple pea got et. There were still a few that were ready to pick. Maybe 5 or 6 pods. Just enough to include with my breakfast, as an edible garnish. :-D
This evening, I refilled the patched rain barrel and, while I was waiting, I checked over the peas more thoroughly. Enough are showing signs of nibbles that I moved the garden cam so I can hopefully see what critter is the cause. We’ve seen deer and raccoons going by, but they’re not eating anything, however the camera was not being triggered by anything in the pea beds. In fact, last night, nothing triggered it at all, until I walked past it this morning. I now have it up against the lilac hedge on the North side of the pea beds, and lowered on the flag stand, so I’m hoping it will work.
Two more poppies were blooming this morning!
They drop their leaves by the end of the afternoon, though. I was talking to my sister about them and mentioned that they were supposed to have pink petals, not white, and she said that it’s from the heat. If things were cooler, they would be the pink they’re supposed to be. Interesting. She also confirmed that it’s likely the heat that is causing our peas to struggle. I agree that this would be the major factor, though I’m sure a combination of factors are just making it harder for them to thrive.
And that’s before having critters eating them!
In other things, my plans changed with a phone call, and I headed out for most of the day, but that will be in my next post. :-)
While going through the old kitchen garden this morning, I was seeing more of our beets, slowly being nibbled away. We’d added stinky soap, cat fur, hot chili flakes, and a motion sensor light. The only thing they seem to be doing is spreading out the damage, as the various things get avoided.
So today, we tried something else.
Since there’s no point keeping the mosquito netting wall up to keep the deer away from the lettuces that the groundhog decimated, it was taken down. The sheet was then torn in half, lengthwise, to be used as floating row covers.
One half was used to cover the L shaped beet bed. The other half was cut into two pieces, with one covering the beets by the retaining wall, and the other covering the carrot bed. The edges are weighted down with bricks and whatever rocks we could find that had some weight to them.
It won’t stop a determined critter, but it might be enough to convince it to not bother, and move on to easier pickings.
My only concern about that is, “easy pickings” would be the poppies and the couple of sunflowers growing next to them. They’re too tall to cover with anything, without damaging them, but not too tall for a critter to reach.
That done, we moved on to the cucamelons and gourds.
For this, we rigged a chicken wire “cage. The top is laced to the chain link fence with twine, above the cucamelons. Over the gourds, it’s just tacked in place at the end, so that a gap can be make for the plants to grow through. The ends were cut and folded in to close them off, and the bottoms are tacked down with tent pegs.
Again, this is not going to stop a determined critters. But it is better than nothing.
As I write this, it was past 9pm, and we are still at 30C/86F, with the humidex at 33C/91F. Tomorrow’s forecasted high is 34C/93F, with the humidex at 38C/100F. Hot, though not quite as hot as the previous heat wave. The girls have been diligent about the evening watering, though I think we’re going to have to keep it to just one watering a day, after something concerning happened last night.
The sweet corn and sunflower beds have been the most difficult to properly water, so we have started to use a sprinkler, turned on for about an hour before the rest of the watering is done. It reaches almost all of the corn and sunflower beds, leaving only a row and a bit at each end that need to be watered manually. Yesterday, as one daughter headed out to switch the hose from the sprinkler to the spray nozzle, my other daughter started to use the front hose to water the old kitchen garden.
This is something we have done before without issue, but this time, all pressure was lost. My younger daughter went into the basement to check the pump, and found it making that grinding noise we have managed to avoid for quite a while now, and the presser was down to zero. By the time she called me over to look, the pressure was back up to 30psi, which is where it should be, but the taps to outside were shut off, anyhow. After the pump shut itself off again, we turned the taps back on, and the girls continued watering, but with just using the back tap.
Now, when we first noticed the pump making that noise and we would lose all water pressure, it was quite a concern. There was a possibility that the foot valve was leaking. We had two plumbers look at the pump, and one even crawled into the well shaft, and my brother even bought a new pump to replace this one, which is about 20 years old. The problem is, the system is so old, neither plumber was willing to chance doing the work, because the risk of something breaking in the well and losing our water completely was too high. At the very least, we’d have to hire someone to find parts for a system that’s almost 50 years old and are in different sizes than modern wells, break the well cap to access the well and replace the parts, or dig a new well.
Digging a new well was the recommended course of action.
None of this is an option for us, so basically, we’re being really careful. The main thing is that problems would start when water was being used faster than the pump could refill the pressure tank. As long as we don’t do things like run the bath as full pressure, or use multiple sinks at once, etc., we can keep it from happening. We know we’re on borrowed time, though.
The hoses do not use a lot of water at once, and even with both taps being used, we never had issues with the pressure before. So why did it happen last night?
I can think of only one thing.
The water table is dropping.
I don’t remember this even happening before, but I can’t think of anything else. It’s not like someone decided to take a shower or something at the same time – and we’ve even the shower get used by someone not knowing the hose was in use, with no loss of pressure.
So for now, we’re going to stick to watering just once a day.
Hopefully, it will be enough.
This is when we could really use more mulch! In the future, when we build our permanent garden beds, a drip irrigation system is also very much in the plans.
This is the Giant Rattle Breadseed Poppy, from Baker Creek. The flowers are very different from the poppies my mother grew with I was a kid; those had bright red flowers with black at the bases, similar to the Remembrance Day poppies. She may have gotten the original seeds from Poland. It should be interesting to see how big the pods get. The plants themselves had a rough start and are very small, even compared to the ornamental poppies. These are supposed to get very large (hence their name.. LOL).
Interestingly, the photos at the website show pink, not white, on petals.
We have been very excited by how well the Montana Morado corn has been doing. However, as some of the stalks have gotten taller, they have started to fall over. The soil around the plants seems to be washing away as we water them. So, this evening, I added more garden soil to the bases of each one.
While watering these, my daughter has been focusing on giving a deep watering into the paths in between them, then using a finer spray to water the entire bed, so as to prevent more erosion. A couple of the stalks are also supported by stakes.
We are very curious about what the cobs will look like. Some of the stalks, silks and tassels are very purple, while others are varying shades of green. These are all supposed to give us corn so dark a purple, it looks black. But is that what we will get? We shall find out! It does look like several cobs are filling out nicely. :-) I’ve taken to hand pollinating every now and then, just to be on the safe side.
Meanwhile, while watering the squash tunnel, my daughter found another little melon!
At first, she thought one of the ones she’d found before had fallen to the ground, but then she saw they were both still there, so she lifted the third melon onto the structure. This had me looking around for more, and I was very excited to see two of these.
Tiny little melons, juuuust starting to form!
This is awesome!
I checked the other melons, squash and gourds. The summer squash is getting nice and big, and I might even have a couple of squash to pick tomorrow. The other melons and the winter squash have flowers and/or buds, but no fruit forming. Same with the Crespo squash. The luffa isn’t even showing flower buds, but it is climbing the trellis.
Then we went looking at the tomatoes (so many fruits are forming!), and they are doing great. The tiny little onions we planted under them are still tiny and little. :-D I noticed this morning, however, that a couple of self seeded (likely from the bird feeder) sunflowers seemed to be gone. This evening, I looked again and found their stems, leaves all eaten away. *sigh* More of the flowers in the bed nearby have not only had their heads eaten away, but in one area, even the stems are being eaten. We will not be getting many blooms out of that bed this year!
That reminds me: it looks like a lot of our French Breakfast radishes have been eaten, too. Possibly grasshoppers.
When checking the cucamelons, it looked like some of them had lost a few leaves and vine ends, too! They’re such small, fine plants, though, it’s almost hard to tell.
Then I saw this. :-(
This is the Thai Bottle Gourd. We had the one transplant, and a second seed germinated next to it. Now, the little one has lost most of its leaves, and the big one has lost a couple, plus a couple more leaves are partially eaten.
No damage to the Ozark Nest Egg gourds. Which is good, but we have more of those!
Very frustrating.
This year’s garden has been such a mixed bag of stuff going well, and stuff going badly, due to critter damage!
The Re-Farmer 