2021 garden

Our 2021 garden: unexpected things

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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!

Little by little, it’ll get done!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: first loss

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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.

We’ll see what the day brings!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: transplanting Crespo squash

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Pretty much all of the squash, both winter and summer, that we chose are small varieties that mature quickly. The one exception was the Crespo squash. Of the 6 seeds we planted, one came up and got quite large. After we moved our seedlings from the aquarium greenhouses to the sun room, a second seedling sprouted.

That’s good enough for me!

As these are supposed to grow quite large, we decided they will get their own space. Near where we will be transplanting the Montana Morado corn is a very rough area; one of the worst areas from the shoddy plow job that was done before we moved out here. The plow had been turned in this tighter area, creating a particularly large lump of soil in the process.

I figured, we may as well take advantage of it, and turn it into a squash hill!

Yeah. That’s basically a dirt and crab grass hill my garden fork is stuck on. I’d already started to loosen the soil at the top of it. The grass is so tall, you can hardly tell there’s a hill there!

I used the hose and water pressure to soak and break up the soil, which made it easier to pull out vegetation and roots. And rocks, of course. There are always rocks!

It was also the first level of watering, and boy did the soil need it!

The next step was to layer on some straw, which got thoroughly watered while a daughter brought over our kitchen compost bucket. When that got added in, it got another watering. If we had other organic matter I could have layered on there, I would have, but this will have to do.

Hhmm. I neglected to take a picture of the next stage, which was to bring over a wheelbarrow full of garden soil to top up the hill. After creating a bit of a hole in the middle, that got another level of watering, then a bit more garden soil was added, to level it off. That got another watering in the middle. After the straw was added all around it, everything got another watering. The straw will help keep the soil from washing away, as well as keep down the weeds and help keep the soil moist.

Finally, the squash got transplanted. Since there was one plant per cup, they got dropped right in, with almost no root disruption.

I still had a little bit of the peat and soil mixture we used for the tomatoes left in the kiddie pool we used to mix it in. That got turned back into dirt soup, and was added around the seedlings.

To help with watering them at root level, I cut the bottom off of one of the distilled water bottles we get for my husband’s CPAP, and buried it top down in the middle of the squash hill. Another spade full of soil was added around the container, because it kept trying to float out of the hole it was buried in! :-D

The final step was to pull some of the damp straw up around the seedlings.

While the plants are small, we will make sure to water the straw to keep it, and the squash hill, moist but once they get bigger, we’ll be able to deep water them at the roots, through the container in the middle, and avoid getting their leaves and stems wet.

The entire hill got another watering, and it was done!

I really hope this does well. I honestly have no idea how these will grow in our zone. In doing searches for it, I am just finding the Baker Creek seed listing, and my own blog posts!

Well, I guess we’ll find out! :-D

One more transplant done!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: more firsts!

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Okay, this is getting ridiculous!

I don’t think the needle on that thermometer can go any further. What do you think that’s at? 65C/149F? Closer to 70C/158F? I don’t think I’ve ever seen that thermometer get that high.

Of course, the weather apps didn’t show temperatures that high. One of them allows me to look at historical weather. Our average temperature for June is 22C/72F, and our record high for the month was 37C/99F, set in 1995. I’m pretty sure we did beat that, today. The average low for June is 12C/54F, with a record low of 0C/32F, set in 2009.

This is the thermometer in the sun room.

This is with the inner door open, the screen window in the outer door open as wide as it can, and the ceiling fan going at its highest setting, and it still got to about 37-38C/99-100F. There are still a few trays of seedlings (and cups of dirt I’m pretending to expect things to germinate, still) in the sun room while I take the rest out to harden off. The trays outside got misted several times during the day, but a bunch of the squash and melons were really droopy by the end of the day. For all the misting they got, they still dried out quite a bit, so everything got a thorough watering before they came in for the night. Except the corn. They get put back into their bin, without the outer cups, so I put water in the bin for them to absorb from below.

When the girls went out as things started to cool down, they checked on the netting over the lettuces and beets. They ended up flipping one side up over the other, because there were so many insects caught inside. Including several of these guys.

This snowberry clearwing moth decided to just sit there and chill instead of flying away!

We also had a visitor, as things cooled down.

Madam Stinky came over for a snack! Later on, we saw a second one in the kibble house with this first one. I am loath to chase any critter away from food when it’s not doing any harm, but it’s really not good for them, and there is potential for harm. I think they are both hungry mamas. It’s certainly the time of year for them to have babies. When I used the hose to spray them away, the second one, which is quite a bit bigger than this one, did NOT want to leave! It kept grunting at me and trying to go back to the kibble house, until the water finally drove it away.

They’ll be back tonight, I’m sure! :-D

Before it had cooled down enough to start the evening watering, I checked on the garden beds to see how they were handling the heat. Especially the new transplants. I’m happy to say that the tomatoes and sunflowers were doing just fine. Only the bunching onions were starting to get a little bit wimpy.

While checking other beds around the transplanted sunflowers, I spotted little bits of green and pink.

We have beans!!!

These were not there when I checked them this morning, but both the yellow and green bean beds had sprouts, some still carrying their brightly coloured inoculated seed covering. The Royal Burgundy didn’t have any sprouts, but when I came back later to water them, even that bed had sprouts just starting to break through the soil. I’m so excited!!!

While watering the sunflower transplants, though, I got an even bigger, more exciting surprise.

This is a Hopi Black Dye sunflower seedling! I had to check and double check to be sure. I marked the spacing to plant them with flags, which are still there, so I could use them to confirm that yes, these are in the right places and everything. Considering how long it took for just one Hopi Black Dye seedling to sprout in the tray, I am totally stunned that they are already sprouting after being direct sown, just 5 days ago! All I can think is that the seeds we tried to start indoors were just too cold to sprout, even in the warmth of the sun room. Now that I’ve started to take the tray outside, to harden off the cucamelons sharing the tray, we might get even more of them.

The heat may be hard on humans and animals, but some of our plants are just loving it!

Hopefully, the extra watering they all got will help the ones that maybe don’t like the heat quite as much. :-D

After the watering was done, and things had cooled down a bit more, I did decide to do one transplanting job done today, but that will get its own post. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: more firsts, and silly kitties!

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Before I headed out to do my morning rounds, we had already hit 25C/77F. By the time I was done, it was already 30C/86F! Thankfully, there was still a breeze and some shade, so it didn’t feel too bad.

I made a couple of discoveries in the garden this morning, but before I get to those, I’ll back track to yesterday evening.

I used the cut off strip of mosquito netting left over from covering our lettuces and beets, some dollar store hula hoops, and lengths of old hose to cover part of the third spinach bed. This is just until we can make a wire mesh cover for it. I also took the trail cam from the tulips and moved it to overlook most of the garden. The only critter I saw in the files this morning was Nutmeg. :-D

After setting the netting up, I moved on to the far beds and blocks to water them. The water in the rain barrel is usually cool, but it was quite warm by the end of yesterday’s heat! On the plus side, it meant being able to use the watering can instead of the hose, and not shocking everything with cold well water, for almost everything. As the water level dropped below half, I started to refill it while still using the watering can, so it would be just cooler water instead of having to switch to the cold hose to finish watering.

I had company.

Rolando Moon has a thing about drinking from puddles! Once the water was absorbed by the soil, she decided to roll on the damp soil, then just hung out. I guess it’s nice and cool. At least she tended to stay in the middle, which is more of a trench for water, as the beans are planted on the sides. No beans are coming up yet.

Nutmeg was also hanging around. I caught him lying across some pea plants, chewing on the trellis twine! The little bugger! :-D

When I checked everything this morning, things were still damp and didn’t need to be watered, but I also spotted a whole lot of these…

The radishes are sprouting! The one in the photo is of the daikon type radishes, but I was seeing sprouts for the watermelon radishes in all the rows they were planted in, too. I was aware that radishes sprout quickly, but I’ve never grown them before, so this was a very pleasant surprise. They most certainly were not there when I was watering last night. :-)

Then I found another lovely sight.

The first potato leaves have emerged through their mulch! There are the purple fingerling potatoes. Sifting around in the mulch in the grow bags, I found other shoots coming through the soil, but these are the first ones to break through and leaf out. :-) I really look forward to seeing how these do in their grow bags.

We have a whole lot of squash transplants ready to go out, but I’m starting to rethink what to do with the summer squash. The plan was to make more beds like with the beans and peas. However, we have that long arc where we’d planted the sunflowers last year. In removing some of the old grass clipping mulch to use under some new beds, I couldn’t help but notice how much better the soil is, underneath. It’s still rocky, but we basically have a long row of soft soil, bordered by concrete hard soil. I’m thinking we should take advantage of this. It will need far less amending than starting new beds. I’m also planning to try staking the summer squash this year, but with our without stakes, deer don’t like those prickly squash plants, so it could act as a sort of fence for the rest.

I sorted through our transplants while hardening them off, and we have a lot of nice, strong melons. Between those and the winter squash, and the two types of gourds that successfully germinated, we might not actually have room for it all on the squash tunnel. So I’m thinking we can plant as much as we can fit of each type at the squash tunnel, then whatever is left over can be planted in other areas. Without trellising, these should spread out quite a bit over the ground, and we’ll be able to give them lots of space, and we would just need to haul soil over to make hills, rather than beds. This would allow us to compare how well they do, between left to grow on the ground, or up a trellis.

What I might end up doing is getting the Montana Morado corn done, first. They are doing very well, but will start outgrowing their cups soon. Since the toilet paper tube pots didn’t work out, I’m really hoping they won’t suffer from transplant shock too badly. In zone 3 gardening groups. I’ve read from people who warn against transplanting corn completely, because they don’t handle it well, to people who say they do it all the time, every year, and have never had issues. I suspect type of corn can make a difference, and I seem to be the first person in all of these groups to try and grow purple corn in our zone!

I’m really excited to see how they do!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: netted

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The heat has kept us indoors, for the must part, but a daughter and I did make a trip into town for some errands. I took advantage of the trip to see if the dollar store had stocked up on pinwheels and whirlygigs. They have not, but I did get their last hula hoops, to use as supports in the garden beds.

The post office was one of our stops, and happily, the mosquito netting we ordered has finally come in!

My daughter had ordered it to protect our lettuces in the retaining wall blocks, and the beets planted near them, from deer.

We used the T posts that I was never able to remove when we cleaned up the fence that used to be around this garden. Like most of what we’re doing this year, this is temporary, so we just used rope, tent pegs and clothes pins to drape it over the plants. It was long enough that we cut some off at one end, to use somewhere else. Holes and slits were cut into sections of it so it could be tied to the ornamental apple trees.

It should be interesting to see how it holds out if we get the potential storms over the next couple of days. I don’t expect the clothes pins to hold, but it’s attached to the trees solidly enough, it shouldn’t blow away completely. Meanwhile, it should be able to withstand normal rain and winds.

Even though we were doing this in the shade, it was still ridiculously hot, and we didn’t even try to do anything else outside.

I think the different things we’re using to startle away the deer seem to be working. The tulip cam is being triggered by wind blowing the dandelions in front of it. Other than that, we’re seeing the odd cat going by, or a bird on the ground in front of the camera. Nothing is going for the tulips, and aside from that one day, there have been no deer picked up by the camera. Not even a skunk, and I saw two of them in the yard, yesterday!

I’m thinking of moving the camera to overlook the big garden. Depending on where I set it up, it should be able to cover the beds near the house, as well as anything large enough that goes near the far beds. That should tell us if deer are still trying to go through the old garden area or not.

The forecasts have changed again, and they’re now predicting storms 2 days from now, instead of over the next couple of days. Once things cool down some more, and we go out to do the evening watering, we can move the trail cam over. The leftover mosquito netting is so light, I might just set it over the last spinach bed as a floating row cover, until we can build another wire mesh cover.

If this netting works out, we will order more. If not… well. We tried! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: firsts!

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We had a solid rainfall last night. With the sunflowers, tomatoes and bunching onions just transplanted yesterday, I was concerned over how they held up. I was happy to see that the tomatoes were looking very sturdy, and even the little bitty onions were looking stronger. It was the sunflowers that I was most concerned about, but they were also looking strong. Even the couple that were looking wimpy as they were being transplanted are standing strong, though the twine supports we added certainly helped that.

While moving seedlings out of the sun room this morning, I included the tray with the cucamelons. Not many of them germinated, but they are so prolific, we should still have lots. This same tray is where I’d planted the Hopi Black Dye sunflowers.

I had a surprise waiting for me.

The very first Hopi Black Dye seedling has emerged!! At this point, I thought for sure they were gonners. If I’d had any idea that they could take this long to germinate, I would have started them back in February!

I have no idea if more were germinate, or even if any will reach a point where it’s worth transplanting them. It’s so late in the season, but then, we do that the others that were direct sown, and who knows when those will germinate!

Meanwhile, we have another first this morning.

Our first harvest of spinach! Yes, we’ve been sneaking the odd leaf every now and then for a while, but they’ve reached a point where they need to be thinned out, so this morning I grabbed some from each bed. I could have had a lot more, but I could only reach so far under the two beds with chicken wire over top. Later on, when I have a second person to help out, we’ll move the covers off and thin them out properly.

After I finished cleaning the spinach, it was all I could do, not to just sit there and eat them all! Instead, I’m not eating some in an egg dish my daughters made for me for lunch. :-)

Things got hot really fast this morning, and it’s only going to get hotter. We’re supposed to hit 29C/84F this afternoon, 34C/93F tomorrow, which risk of thunderstorms, and 35C/95F with chance of thundershowers the day after. If we do get storms, we have enough things to use as cloche to protect the tomatoes, but I don’t know how we’d be able to protect entire rows of the sunflowers.

This type of weather is the sort of thing the squash would actually like – if they were already well established outside! We’ll continue making beds and transplanting, but will have to take steps to be able to protect them from storms as well.

For now, I’m just excited about our new sprout, and fresh spinach!!!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: transplanting tomatoes and onions

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After we got the sunflowers transplanted, the girls and I decided we would transplant the tomatoes today, too.

This is the area we prepared for the tomatoes, back in April, so that we can use the chain link fence to support them. You can read what we did to prepare it here. Though we have been wetting it down fairly regularly, there just hasn’t been enough moisture for the straw and cardboard to do much breaking down, and the soil layer was relatively thin.

Since the new garden soil is alkaline, and tomatoes like slightly acidic soil, we decided to make use of the last of our bale of peat. Before heading in for lunch and out of the heat, we took the time to mix the peat with garden soil and soak it down.

Basically, we made peat soup. :-D

The seedlings were brought over to wait in the shade, then we headed inside to let the soil and peat mixture absorb more water.

Do you see that cup with the itty bitty tomato plants in it? That is a cup with Mosaic Mix seeds in it. It took forever for one seed to germinate, so when the plants got moved to the sun room, we decided to keep it. Then, just about a week ago, the other seeds planted in the cup germinated! They’re really too tiny to transplant, but the girls wanted to, anyway. We’ll see how they do!

When we got back to it, the transplants were separated and laid out, after getting their bottom leaves and branches trimmed off. We did dig small holes for each one, but there wasn’t a lot of depth before we hit straw. Each transplant got some of the peat mixture built up around it, up to the lowest remaining leaves, so that the buried stems will grow roots and the plants will be stronger.

Then we added more garden soil in between each plant, to build up the soil depth in the bed, and to make sure the peat mixture won’t wash away when we water them.

The first things we started from seed were onions, but we lost all of our Red Baron bunching onions, due to cats. When we started using the Solo cups as pots, I decided to broadcast sow the last of the seeds we had in a couple of cups and see what happened. With one of them, nothing happened, but with another, they did actually sprout. They’ve been hardening off along with everything else, and onions are supposed to be good companion plants for tomatoes, repelling insects, so we decided to go ahead and transplant the onions, too.

Some of them are REALLY tiny, but the girls went ahead and planted them anyhow. They’ll either make it or not.

The onions got planted in where we added more soil, but you’ll notice a gap in the middle. The tomatoes in the foreground are the tiny Spoon tomatoes, while the ones at the far end are the Mosaic Mix tomatoes. In the middle are the super tiny, sprouted really late, Mosaic Mix tomato plants. They’re so small, no extra soil was added around them; they would have been buried completely! We’ll see if they survive or not.

As always, we thoroughly watered the soil before putting in the transplants, so when we did our evening watering, they only got a misting, to help settle the soil.

We did hit 29C/84F today. As I write this, it’s just past midnight, and we’re still at 20C/68F. Our expected overnight low is 17C/63F. Instead of having to watch out for a last frost hitting our transplants, we have to watch out for excessive heat! We’ll be doing a lot of careful watering over the next while.

One thing the girls and I did finally remember to do; we put our poor, bedraggled umbrella tree outside. It took three of us. One to carry the pot, one to open and close the doors, and one to keep the cats away! :-D

Tissue was watching me through the door!

Yes, the plant is on the stairs in front of a door. In this spot, it will get full sunlight in the morning, while it’s still relatively cool, but be shaded during the hottest parts of the day. We don’t use this door, so it can stay there. Right now, during the day, we open the inner door and set up a little step ladder, so that cats can sit on it and look out the window. The window is open just enough to allow a breeze through the house to help keep it cool. The outer door has a tendency to unlatch on its own, so to make sure the cats don’t accidentally end up outside, we have it secured with some cord. It has become a favorite place for the cats to see and watch all the birds outside! :-)

So the tomatoes are now transplanted. Between them and the sunflowers, I had a lot fewer plants to bring back into the sun room for the night! :-) The rest cannot be transplanted until we finish the squash tunnel for the climbers, and build beds for them, but they are all hardened off and ready for transplanting. So we need to get those done as quick as we can! Friday and Saturday as supposed to be scorchers, too. Ah, well. Better the heat for transplanting, than frost!

Little by little, it’ll get done.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: squash tunnel, day two

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Well, I’d hoped we could actually finish the squash tunnel today, or at least get the side cross pieces at the top done, but we didn’t get quite that far.

But, progress was still made.

Most importantly, we got the supports up in the post holes.

In refilling the post holes and tamping the soil down, a few of them did need to have more soil added. A good way to reduce some of the lumps in the old garden, left from when it was last plowed before we moved here.

It’s very… rustic looking. That’s a trend now, right? :-D

And no, that middle pole isn’t actually tilted. The tree it’s made from is bent. All the pieces are wonky in shape! :-D

It’s also still very flimsy right now. Joining them at the sides with cross pieces should fix that.

It was already starting to get hot by the time this was done, so we took advantage of the morning shade to transplant the Mongolian Giant sunflowers. It wasn’t until evening that I was able to work on the next step for the squash tunnel. I cut a total of 8 of the 16 cross pieces needed at 5’6″, then trimmed matching flat pieces at each end.

I also trimmed one side of the flattened ends a bit; just enough to have a narrow flat surface on what will be the top.

The flat parts are intended to butt up against the upright and the top cross piece. It will wait until tomorrow, but the plan is to screw the cross pieces to the upright, then add one more screw through the top cross piece, down into the side piece – and hopefully not hit another screw in the process. This should give it some more stability. The other 8 cross pieces will be attached a few inches from the bottoms, which should strengthen it even more, as well as provide a place to attach mesh for the vines to climb.

There are a couple of problems we need to figure out how to get around, to finish the job. We do have a cordless drill, but both batteries no longer hold a charge, and the company doesn’t make them anymore. Until we get around to buying a new one, we have several corded drills to choose from. Getting extension cords to reach this far, though… that’s going to take a bit! We have a pair of 100′ extension cords, which won’t reach reach from the outdoor outlet on the side of the house. I remember how far I could reach while using the electric weed trimmer, and three extension cords. We’ve since gotten more cords, so I think we’ll have enough to reach around the structure.

The next challenge is, we’re short. Well, except my husband, and he’s broken. ;-) To be able to drill a pilot hole through the stop cross piece will require clambering up and down a step ladder. For our gimpy household, that is somewhat risky!

But, it’ll need to be done. With this structure, we can’t get away with tying the cross pieces on with twine, like with the pea trellises.

With 5 uprights and 4 cross pieces per side, only two cross pieces can be placed up against the overhangs at the top, so each side will have two cross pieces mounted just under the other two. Which will hopefully also contribute to the stability. If that’s not enough, we’d have to add supports on the inside of the corners, and I really don’t want to get that finicky with a temporary structure.

We may not have finished the squash tunnel, but we accomplish other things, but that is for my next post! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: it has begun!

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Today is our last frost day, and we’re in a heat wave! :-D If the long range forecasts are to be believed, we’ll “cool down” to the mid 20’s (Celsius) and stay there for the next couple of weeks.

Which means we should be safe.

We headed out early, while it was still cool, and set up the supports for the squash tunnel, which I will post about later today. That area is full sun, right from sunrise, so things warmed up fast. The corn and sunflower blocks were still in shade, so we took advantage of it.

Transplanting has begun!

I’ve really been wanting to get those Mongolian Giant sunflowers out, as they were getting so very tall and leggy.

They certainly did well with the beer cups for pots!

Each sunflower block had one free row and, since we have no Hopi Black Dye sunflowers to transplant, all the Mongolian Giants went into both. We marked spaces off at 18 inches apart to fit them all; the packet says 18-24 inches, and the seeds were planted 24 inches apart, but if we stuck to 24 inches, we would have had plants left over. Next, we put three bamboo stakes in line with the middle of each row. Once the spaces were marked, we dug holes through the added soil, and into the sod beneath, taking out any roots and rocks we found in the process. Each hole then got a watering before the seedlings were transplanted.

As added support, two lengths of twine were strung across with the bamboo stakes as support. The twine was crossed around each of the stems, as if we were supporting tomatoes, to help hold them up until they settle in and start growing again. As the seedlings get bigger, there is plenty of space for them to grow, so we could leave the twine if we wanted to. With the holes being thoroughly watered before the seedlings were transplanted, we did not water them again. Instead, we will give them a misting when we do the evening watering.

Yellow rope was also strung across the bamboo stakes. We are hoping the rope and the twine will act as deer deterrents. I’m going to have to look around to find something to tie to the rope or the bamboo states that will flutter or sparkle or make noise, as well.

While the girls strung the twine and rope, I washed out the beer cups, and they are ready to be used again, next year.

We then moved to the south yard, and started to prepare for more transplanting later today, plus we will need to continue working on the squash tunnel. More on that later.

We are so excited to finally be able to start transplanting!!

The Re-Farmer