2021 garden

Our 2021 garden: first corn block and mulberry are planted!

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My goal for this morning was to get the soil over to where we’re planting the Dorinny corn, before things got too hot. Normally, I don’t have breakfast until after I’m done my morning rounds, but I cut those short to quickly eat before I started hauling dirt. I probably should not have taken the time to eat, first! I got just over two rows done before I had to go inside. I couldn’t believe how quickly it got so hot!!

I didn’t get back to it until well into evening. While one daughter took care of the evening watering, and the other helped me prepare the corn block, things went much faster, too.

Once the soil was in place, my daughter dragged the hose over to give it a soak, while my other daughter and I checked out different locations and decided on where to plant the mulberry tree. It’s going in the strip between the garage and the road. Since we’ve already started cleaning up there, this spot will have the full sun it needs, while still being surrounded by enough mature trees to protect it from the harsher winds. We found a little cedar there, when we first started cleaning up in the area. Like the mulberry, it is not a zone 3 three. Nothing has been done to protect it over the winter, but it has survived, though it’s still very small. This, at least, tells me that the mulberry will have a chance of making it, in this location.

After picking a spot and raking away the thatch, my daughter started digging and immediately hit a huge root!!

So we moved the hole over a bit. :-D

While she dug the hole, I got the mulberry sapling, along with the rest of the pre-soaked peat we still had in the sun room, and a bucket of water. When I got back to my daughter, she had already hit gravel and was struggling to get out a larger rock. Between me with the spade and her with a trowel, we managed to get it out. Thankfully, it turned out to be wide and flat, which made it much easier to get out. Of course, for some reason, it got moved and didn’t end up in the picture. :-/

We certainly won’t have to worry about drainage here. Like everywhere else, there wasn’t a lot of topsoil. After that, it’s gravel.

We filled half the hole with the damp peat, added more water, planted the sapling with more peat, and placed a pair of bamboo stakes beside it for supports. The soil was returned and the cardboard packing material the mulberry came in, including what was keeping the root ball damp, was placed as a mulch. We even put the bigger rocks around to help keep things in place. Then I wrapped some cord around the sapling and the supports. Hopefully, this will also make sure no deer will eat it! I also picked the yellow rope deliberately. I’ve read that using ordinary yellow rope like this, strung in a rope fence around a garden, has worked to keep deer out, even though they can easily get by it. Apparently, there’s something about the yellow rope they don’t like. I figure it’s worth a try to use it, since I happened to find some in the sun room. If not the colour, then the stakes, should act as a deterrent.

By this time, my daughter that was watering things had brought the hose over as close as she could. We gave the mulberry a final watering – and then watered the cedar, too! Since we’ll be tending the mulberry now that it’s here, we’ll take the time to tend the cedar, too. Later on, I’ll bring some garden soil to place around both of them.

While I stayed to water things, my daughters put things away for the night, but I decided to go ahead and plant the Dorinney corn tonight, rather than wait until tomorrow.

After setting the seeds in water to soak, I used the handle of a trowel to make holes about a foot apart. Though my daughter had been able to set the sprinkler over the area for some time, the soil was still pretty dry further down, so I used a watering can to give the rows a deep soak before planting the seeds.

By deciding to put the soil over the grass clippings mulch, instead of the chopped straw, we lost a row – and it turned out there were enough seeds in the packet to need it! Since I’d soaked all the seeds, and I didn’t want them to go to waste, I made another row, instead. Once all the seeds were planted, I gave them another watering.

By then, the water barrel was needing a refill, so I set up the hose and hung around while it filled.

I got company.

Rolando Moon came for a visit today! I haven’t seen her in about a week, but this evening, she decided to keep us company. She even joined us while we were planting the Mulberry tree – and kept trying to drink the dirty water! At least here, she’s drinking the clean water that’s in the watering can. It’s kept filled, so it doesn’t blow away, and she had her head stuck right into the opening. Silly girl! :-D

With the corn planted here, we are done with the early planting, until the potatoes come in next week! Since those are going into grow bags, there are no beds to prepare for them. Everything else doesn’t get planted until after June 2.

As for the other garden beds, the girls checked under the plastic covering the beets and carrots in the old kitchen garden and saw sprouts, so those got taken off. The lettuces are also coming up; the seedlings are still tiny, but big enough that we can be sure they are lettuce sprouts, and not weeds! LOL My daughter planted her Black Form Iris near the poppies, which is right along where she planted her other irises in the fall. I was also able to confirm that we are seeing pea sprouts in all three beds. Just a couple, here and there, but they are clearly not weeds that have made their way through the straw and soil. There are some of those, too!

Looking at the long range forecast, we’re going to keep getting hotter for the next few days, then the temperatures will drop down to a more sane level for the last couple of weeks of May. If those temperatures keep steady through to June, there will be no frosts at all. Still, we will wait. We will use that time to finish preparing the other beds. The climbers will be doing in a bed next to the corn that was planted today; this is where we will be building a squash arch. It looks like the only gourds will be including there will be the dancing gourds and luffa, as there is still no germination in the other three types of gourds. It looks like we’ll have plenty of Halona melons to transplant. I’m seeing quite a few sunburst squash have germinated, but not very many of the other summer squash yet. I’m really excited by how quickly the Mongolian Giant sunflowers and Montana Morado corn have germinated! There are so many things sprouting in the sun room, it’s going to be a challenge hardening them all off at the same time. I’ve got the platform set up where the cats won’t get them, but there’s not that much room on it. We’ll have to work something else to use as well.

What an excellent problem to have. ;-)

Our 2021 garden: asparagus is in!

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Well, it hasn’t really cooled down all that much, but I wanted to at least get the asparagus planted.

The first thing was set the crowns to soak in water before covering the cardboard with a layer of soil, and laying out the sod around the edges to make a sort of wall to support the height of the bed. The base got a very thorough watering. Then we mixed a load of soil with peat, thoroughly soaking it in the wheelbarrow while mixing it with a spade.

That took a while. :-D

The wet peat mixture was used to create the hills for the crowns. They’re supposed to be planted 2 feet apart. With the bed being longer than 6 feet, they were staggered a bit.

They look a bit like facehuggers. :-D

The crowns were then covered with a rather deep layer of soil, and a light layer of mulch. From what I’ve read, they may need more soil added later.

We will have to make a point of watering it deeply over the next while, just to get the top layer wet through to the crowns. Wetting it in layers should help prevent them from drying out until that’s accomplished.

It’s past 8pm as I write this, and we are finally starting to cool down again. I’m going to see if I can get to bed before 3am for a change. I tried to do that yesterday, and ended up still wide awake at 4am. *sigh* Anyhow, I’d like to get out earlier in the day to continue working on the block for the corn.

Meanwhile, the girls and I have been talking about finding a different permanent spot for the mulberry. One of the best suggestions was to plant it along the north side of the big garden; we intend to plant fruit and nut trees in most of this area anyhow, so why not start now? Then I remembered that the location we were talking about has buried telephone wires somewhere in there. I had tried contacting the phone company about the location and was given the contact information for the Call Before You Dig organization. I ended up sending them an email with our longitude and latitude.

I’ve discovered why people have such a hard time finding our place in the process.

I tried several different map sites to pinpoint our location, but our physical address would not work. I finally just found us manually, and discovered that the road that goes past our place is not labelled. At all. This road has two names; one is the numerical grid number, and the other is my family name. Neither are on the maps.

All but one of the stop signs along our road with the name on them have disappeared. There had been one on one of the stop signs at the intersection near our garden, but not long after we moved here, someone broke the stop sign and the street sign on it disappeared. I am pretty sure this was no accident, since this happened after our first falling out with our vandal, but whatever. The road number was on the other stop sign, so it’s still there. I’d asked about having the road signs with the name replaced at all the intersections that are missing, but I think the councilor I spoke to (who also happens to be the guy renting most of this property) forgot about it. Anyhow. Now that I know that the road that runs past our driveway is unlabelled on any of the maps, I’ll have to find out how to get that fixed.

Meanwhile, I’ve not heard back from the Call Before You Dig people.

Until we do, we’ll avoid planting trees along that strip. There’s already a self sown chokecherry tree there. Those don’t get very big, so we should be able to leave it. The mulberry, however, gets much bigger, so we’ll have to think again about where to put it. It needs to go into the ground right away, so we can’t dilly dally about the decision!!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: order in, and digging trenches!

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Our Veseys order arrived in the mail a day early!! We are so thrilled!

One of the boxes was the Purple Passion Asparagus (6 crowns), and Black Form Iris.

The other box was our Illinois Everbearing Mulberry.

It even has leaf buds!!

We still need to take down a whole lot of dead trees in the area we want to plant this, and we’re thinking that for this year, we’ll plant it in one of the grow bags we made for the potatoes, then maybe keep it in the sun room over the winter. Either that, or find another place for what will become a fairly large tree that needs full sun, and zone 4 protection to survive in a zone 3.

The asparagus, at least, are decided on. While the girls did the evening watering, I started on trenching.

We’ve been keeping this space near the Strawberry Spinach bed covered with cardboard and regularly soaking it. The grass below was dying off quite nicely, and the ground was good and soft to dig in.

Well. Except for the big roots.

And all the rocks.

After the girls finished the watering and uncovering the sprouted beds, they came over to give me a hand. Most of the roots we could cut out with the loppers.

As with the other beds, this is going to be built up, so all I really wanted to do was take off the sod and get rid of the bigger roots and rocks.

Except for that really big root running across the trench, near the middle. Once we realized how big it was, we just left it.

One of my daughters took on stacking the rocks.

In a nice little display! :-D

There were too many to balance on the stump, so she stacked the rest nearby.

All these rocks, just from removing the top 3 or 4 inches. We could have pulled out many more!

Tomorrow, we start bringing in the new garden soil and plant the asparagus. The sod that was removed will be laid upside down along the sides to stabilize it. When we’re done, it should match the Strawberry Spinach bed in depth.

In two years, we should be harvesting our first purple asparagus! Before then, I expect to get more for planting elsewhere. My husband doesn’t care for asparagus, but the girls and I all like them, so that is reason enough to plant more than just these ones. :-)

Since none of what came in today will be planted until tomorrow, they are all sitting in the cool of the old kitchen.

I need to think about that mulberry. This is what it says on the Veseys page about planting them.

Planting:

Unless you have heavy clay soil, there isn’t much to do in terms of soil preparation. You can add amendments such as compost or peat moss to the soil and/or a layer of mulch over the root area after planting will help retain moisture, especially during the first year. While it may be tempting to add fertilizer or manure to your freshly dug hole before planting your new tree, PLEASE resist! Fertilizer or manure in close contact with the root system could chemically burn the roots and potentially kill the tree.

Mulberry trees can grow quite large, up to 15-20 feet tall. Avoid planting near walkways and driveways as the fruit will drop and create stains. Mulberries are self-fertile and require full sunlight. 

https://www.veseys.com/ca/illinois-everbearing-mulberry-37812.html

Our new garden soil has three types of manure and compost in it, but it is thoroughly broken down. Would it still be too much to plant it in? That’s what we would be using in a grow bag, if we did it that way for the first year. Maybe it would be better to just find a different spot and plant it permanently. I can think of a good area that would work; the only downside is that it would be more difficult to get water to it.

Whatever we decide to do, it’ll have to be done quickly!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: new growth

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Okay, so today, we didn’t end up hauling dirt. Partly because we need to take a bit more of a break from that. We’ll just have to make up for it, tomorrow. The Dorinney corn can wait another day or two before direct sowing.

Before I get into another reason why hauling dirt wasn’t going to happen today, I finally remembered to take photos of our seedlings, while I was spritzing and rotating them this morning.

We’ve got some summer squash, winter squash and melons growing. The melons are almost all the Halona variety, but one little Pixie melon is starting to push its way through!

They were too small to even try for a photo, but the pink celery is starting to sprout, too. Still nothing with the gourds.

I did have quite a surprise, though.

Quite a few of the Mongolian Giant Sunflowers were starting to show! That’s the photo on the left. On the right, those two, tiny, barely visible specks?

Those are the Montana Morado corn! I can’t believe how quickly they’re starting to sprout!!

While watering outside, I pulled the plastic back on the carrot bed in the big garden to give it a bit of a soak and thought I might have seen some sprouts. I put the plastic back, but made sure to ask the girls to check again when they were doing the evening watering. Sure enough, there were sprouts, and they took the plastic off. The Strawberry Spinach was checked, and they had sprouts, too. I’m not positive, but I think I could even see flashes of green in one of the spinach beds while I was watering it this morning. :-)

After we were done with our evening garden tending, the girls and I went to look at the crocuses, hyacinths and tulips. There are so many tulips pushing their way through the leaf litter now! They were planted under some plum trees, and I noticed the trees are starting to bud!

I love trees that bloom before they start forming leaves. They are so dramatic and spectacular in full bloom!

I aaallllmost got the camera to focus on the minuscule spider in its web!

In between all this, my younger daughter and I made a trip into town, which included a stop at the post office on the way home. We got packages!! More on that in my next post. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: haskap and corn plot status

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The girls were able to come out and give me a hand this afternoon, so things got done a lot faster. Especially for me, when they booted me out of the garden and into the house. Apparently, I was looking pretty sun burned! Not feeling it, though. ;-)

In my focus on watering, I’ve been eyeballing the haskap bushes. The male is doing quite well.

It’s even beginning to show flower buds!

We planted these two summers ago, so this year should have been a year with good production.

That’s not going to happen.

I wish I knew what was going on with this poor female haskap! The only leaf buds are on the very tips of branches, and not even all of them. I’d expected to get more of them by now, but I haven’t seen any yet. We might have to order more online for next year, instead. We shall see.

With all the watering they’re getting, my mother’s yellow flowers in this bed are already starting to come up strongly in places. We’re not watering the entire bed as thoroughly; just the haskaps and the lilac bush. I expect the lilac to do better this year, now that the maple tree that was shading it has been cut down.

Meanwhile…

My daughters and I marked out a block for the corn we will be planting soon. This block is to the West of the peas, so it can actually be reached with the hose. One of my daughters worked on soaking the area while the other helped me with chopping up straw with the lawn mower to lay down in the block.

The rows are two feet apart, and the corn needs to be planted 1 ft apart. We just have one packet of these seeds, so this should be more than large enough. The variety being grown here is called Dorinny. While I found them at Baker Creek, apparently they had largely disappeared for decades, until they were rediscovered and reintroduced by Wood Prairie Farm. They are a Canadian heritage breed, can handle cold soil, and matures in only 75 days. I’m quite looking forward to them! These are a type that I hope to save seeds from.

One of the bonuses of these being planted earlier and maturing so quickly is that the chances of cross pollination with the Montana Morado we’ll be planting at the other end of the garden will be greatly reduced, even with our winds. They will mature at completely different times.

We know this area is low in nutrients, especially nitrogen, which corn needs a lot of, so we’ll have to take extra steps to ensure they have enough. The fresh, nutrient filled garden soil mix will be the first boost. We picked up a water soluble vegetable fertilizer that has higher nitrogen levels, but in cleaning out the old kitchen, we found a water soluble fertilizer that’s even higher in nitrogen. We also found a pump sprayer, still in its box, so we’ll be able to use it to feed the corn, even in the furthest plots, where the hose doesn’t reach. We do plan to pick up more hose but, for now, the rain barrel and watering can are working out just fine.

The chopped straw was also added to the rows of peas as mulch. Being able to run the lawn mower over the straw a couple of times really makes a big difference. I find myself thinking that I wished we’d thought of it earlier, but then I remember that when we were using the straw previously, we were having problems with the push mower that was here. I did use the new push mower to do it last fall, but that’s when it stopped working completely. I’d chopped up just enough to mulch the garlic for the winter.

One thing’s for sure: we’ve made a huge dent in that straw bale! We’ll need to get another one by the end of the season, for sure. :-)

The girls went on to thoroughly water everything for the evening. Tomorrow, we start hauling soil again… after soaking the ground some more, and stomping down the chopped straw. I do wish we had enough cardboard to lay over the grass, but there isn’t enough in our recycling to cover even a single row. I supposed that’s a down side of our bulk-buying, low packaging shopping habits!

Once this block is planted, we can move on to preparing the beds for everything to be planted or transplanted out here, after June 2. After the girls kicked me out of the garden so they could finish, I checked how things were growing in the sun room, and am very happy to see more summer squash and melons have germinated. It doesn’t look like any of the winter squash or pumpkins have started yet. Still nothing on the rest of the gourds, either. :-( I’ll be keeping a close eye on the climbers over the next couple of weeks. How many germinate will tell me how big of a squash arch we will be building.

The day after tomorrow, we should be getting our first batches of items in the mail from Veseys, including the mulberry tree. I am thinking of planting it in a grow bag this summer, though. There are too many dead trees in the area it will be going in permanently that need to come down. I’m hoping they are solid enough that we can use them for building materials.

Next week, the potatoes will be arriving, and we’ll set up the grow bags we made from feed bags for those. We settled on having them along the chain link fence near the storage house, where they’ll be out of the way, yet easy to access and tend to. Plus, full sunlight. Hopefully, using the grow bags will alleviate the slug problem I found we had, last year.

It feels so good to be getting so many things into the ground! Now we just have to wait and see how many will actually grow! ;-)

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: last beets, and mulching

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I’m taking a bit of a break from working outside, to avoid the hottest part of the day. We’ve reached 22C/71F, and our high is supposed to be 23C/74F.

One of the things I’ve been trying to do early in the day is water all the beds that we’ve planted. I’ve been concerned about them, since we are so incredibly dry right now. It’s hard to give the beds even a shallow watering, never mind the deep watering they need. The problem is that the surface dries out so quickly. What we need is a mulch. The only thing we have for mulch right now is straw. Which is fine if I’m mulching around larger plants, like when we transplant our squashes, etc. Not so good for things like greens.

What I do have, however, is a lawn mower.

So after I planted the last of our beet seeds – three types all mixed up – in the L shaped bed in the old kitchen garden, I brought out the mower.

We already had some chopped up straw that had been on top of the garlic beds; we’d removed most of it and it’s been sitting in the kiddie pool, waiting for use. I chopped all that up a couple more times with the mower, then filled the wheelbarrow with more straw and chopped it up several times, too.

The finished mulch, which now included leaf litter that was on top of the lawn, went back into the kiddie pool, which made it very easy to drag around to where it was needed.

The mulch is so light, I could let the wind distribute most of it for me!

The L shaped bed is all beets. I had thought to put some carrots along the edge of the bed, but there was no room! In fact, I ended up broadcasting the last of the seeds in another little spot.

The patch of mulched soil near the plastic and the tree is where the last of the seeds went. Almost all of these beets are last year’s seed, so who knows how many will germinated.

I then scattered mulch onto the poppy bed, too.

After thoroughly watering everything, I moved on to the big garden.

Once again, I could let the wind lightly cover the beds for me. The beds at each end, with the onions, got fully covered. The spinach beds have their first sowing in the middles only, so I just focused on that area. When we sow more in another week, we can add more mulch then.

Everything got another thorough watering. All the beds will be watered again this evening, when it starts to cool down.

Until then, my next job is to mark off and start preparing the block to direct sow the one variety of corn we have that needs to be planted before last frost. That’s going to be out by the peas, and that’s where we’ll be working on for the next while, as we prepare beds for the beans, corn and radishes, sunflowers, squash and gourds. Then, last of all, the block at the opposite end of the garden, where the Montana Morado corn will be transplanted. None of the sunflowers or corn starts have germinated yet, but it hasn’t been very long yet. I’m just impatient! :-D

We will also use the lawnmower to chop up more straw for more light surface mulch. That, at least, I’ll be able to work on in the shade this time! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: more beets and carrots

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So my darling daughters did some planting, while I fell asleep in a bed full of cats. :-D

The plastic covered bed in the foreground is two types of carrots, plus the kohlrabi seeds from last year.

The plastic covered bed in the background is the beets, including seeds from last year, so there are 4 types of beets in there, all planted in short rows. They also planted the purple kohlrabi in between the yellow onions and shallots. I’m quite excited about those!

While the girls finished up watering the seeds and covering them, I filled the paths with the old flax straw and, when that ran out, the wheat straw we still hadn’t moved off the septic tank, right around the corner or the old kitchen. I tried to pile it more against the sides of the beds than the middles, for erosion control. I think it’ll do the job for this year.

The L shaped bed has nothing in it!

There are still beet seeds from last year. I think maybe I’ll mix them up and scatter them, and we’ll have beet surprise! My daughter didn’t want to plant beets in there because she’s thinking the deer will get at them. We can protect the ones by the retaining wall more easily, but I’m sure I can come up with something to help protect them from hungry deer. Especially right in the middle of the garden like that. We still have pelleted carrot seeds left. The deer don’t like carrots, so interplanting the two might help as well.

Hhmm. We even still have some Merlin beet seeds left over from planting by the garlic beds. I could mix those in, too. I know the girls really like beets, so having lots will not be a problem. :-)

Speaking of the Merlin beets.

The plastic was blowing loose from the hoops over the Merlin beets, so we fixed those up a bit.

We cut about 1/3rd of the hoops off, then put them back on their sticks. The excess plastic on the sides were then wrapped around a couple of boards from the junk pile, to keep them from blowing around. Much better than the small rocks I was using before. It meant not needing the lengths of hose on the centre hoop, so those got added to secure the ends more.

This plastic is really, really thin – not at all the kind of plastic one would normally use as row covers – but it seems to be holding out okay. We’re even reusing pieces from last year, plus we still have quite a bit on the two rolls we found while cleaning up, if we need more.

After this, we prep a block for the corn that gets planted early, then I should be able to take a day or two off from hauling loads of soil. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: old kitchen garden, ready for planting!

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It’s finally done!!

The old kitchen garden beds are done and ready for planting.

These beds were made fairly deep, as they will have root vegetables planted in them.

The only problem is that the soil is going to fall into the paths without something to support the sides. For now, the flax straw I’d taken out and was going to chop smaller with the lawn mower is going to be laid down in the paths, along with straw, until we can get pavers or something to make more permanent paths.

After these photos were taken, I watered everything, including the poppies that were sown last night, and the lilacs, honeysuckle and roses. I do hope that little pink rose survives!

For now, the beds are sitting and warming up in the sun. Later on, the girls will do the planting. There’s a second type of beet, plus two types of carrots, to go in here. I also dug out the seeds left over from last year, which includes beet seeds left over from the variety pack we got last year. There was even some green kohlrabi left. So the girls will plant those, too. The purple kohlrabi is going to get planted in between the shallots and the yellow onions (I almost forgot about those!), which they will take care of today, as well.

Next, a block needs to be marked out and prepared for the one type of corn we have that needs to be planted before last frost.

Absolutely nothing we’ve planted outside so far has started to emerge. I know it’s too early, but I still can’t help but wonder if we did something to kill them off or something! :-D At least I’m finally seeing some summer squash and melon seedling starting to emerge in their cups in the sun room. Not very many, still, but at least I can be sure we’ll have a couple of varieties to transplant and a few weeks!!

My entire body aches from hauling all that soil and spreading it (yes, the girls helped – and they’re feeling it, too!!), but I’m so happy with how things are looking so far!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: getting things planted, and trying things out

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This morning, I wanted to get that half-bed planted with carrots. I was happy to discover that the Kyoto Red carrots I’d ordered were pelleted seeds (I’m sure I knew that when I’d ordered them, but completely forgot!), so they could go in right away. Before I did, though, I cooked up some cornstarch gel, and set the other two varieties of carrot seeds to soak. Last year, we used the technique described in the video below to plant carrot seeds, and it worked very well, so I wanted to do it again.

Those will wait until tomorrow, though. For now, the carrot bed in the old garden area is fully planted, and I covered them with plastic after watering them.

They’ll be checked often, and as soon as green can be seen, the plastic comes off.

The next job was the new garden bed beside the garlic.

Before topping it with fresh garden soil, I found what I could to shore up the sides, so things wouldn’t erode. This is a pretty small bed, so it only took two loads of soil to cover it.

Then began my experiment.

After planting the middle with Merlin beets, then surrounding it with the last of the yellow onion sets, I cut small lengths of poplar that were fairly thin. I’d opened up the three dollar store hula hoops I’d bought and removed the bits of what looks like decorative rocks that were inside, to make a rattling noise. The sticks were of a size to fit snugly into the openings of the plastic. I also cut lengths of old garden hose and split them lengthwise and grabbed some plastic that was used to cover one of the garlic beds over the winter.

I suppose I could have cut the plastic tubes from the hula hoops shorter, but I really didn’t want to fuss with it. I was able to fit the ends over the sticks and push them down quite far, even though some of the sticks were nubbly from twigs I’d cut off.

I used the pieces of hose to hold the plastic sheet to the hula hoops. Then I used packing tape to gather up the loose pieces at the end and pull things taught. I ended up getting a couple more piece of hose and used them to attach the plastic to the sides of the center hoops as well.

This thing is going to blow away in our next stiff wind! :-D It is by no means durable! This is more about keeping the deer away than anything else.

One of the wind socks we got to help deter critters ended up being spun so much in the wind, the twine I used to tie it to a tree broke. It’s in the shape of a spiral, so I hooked it to the top of a bamboo stake, then wrapped the spiral around the bamboo. It won’t get blown around as violently anymore, but still moves around the stake, so it should still help startle critters away.

So that bed is now done and planted!

In between watering the new bed, I made sure to water the strawberry spinach bed, and covered that with plastic, too. Though we’ve been diligent about watering, these are almost surface sown, and the surface dries out very quickly. I’m hoping it’s not too late to put the plastic over them. :-/ We shall see!

So that worked out rather well. Tomorrow morning, I’ll see if the hoop cover is still there, of it it blew away during the night. :-D

The next job was much larger! But that will in in my next post.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2021 garden: outdoor planting – eventually. Also, we have flowers!

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Today was the day to start planting our onions. I wanted to get the transplants out, to make room for the squash in the sun room, and get the onion sets in.

The plan was to have onions on either side of the kale that has already been direst sown, in the bed on one side, then plant the rest of the onions in the bed at the opposite end, with kohlrabi in the middle (those don’t get planted for another week). Deer don’t like onions, so we’re hoping that between those, and the flashy windmills, they will stay away from the things they do like, such as the spinach.

This is one of the beds we made last year, that we simply topped up with new garden soil. I realized that the soil was starting to wash away on the sides, so I brought over more logs to act as walls.

Thankfully, these logs have been sitting out for 2 years, so they’re quite dry and light.

I didn’t have any short enough to use as end caps, though. We’ll have to take care of that later.

Once the logs were in place, I brought over more soil to fill in the sides, so I’d have room to plant into, without anything collapsing down into the logs.

My younger daughter joined me when I was just finishing up the first bed, so she continued to bring soil to add to the sides of all the beds, while I brought more logs to shore up the other bed from last year, that didn’t have any yet.

We’d used up the smaller logs when we first starting building the new beds, so the more logs I brought over, the bigger they were getting! Which is good, I suppose, since these are deeper beds than the new ones.

My daughter continued adding soil to the beds while I started transplanting the Nostar onions we started from seeds. There were three very different sizes! The ones that were in peat pellets ended up being the largest ones, while the ones in the K-cups had started out larger, but did not retain moisture as well, until I moved them onto their own tray, where they could be watered thoroughly without drowning the onions in the pellets. Then there were the ones that were started some weeks later. There are still some seedlings in the cups they were sown in; I only took the biggest ones to finish off the row.

On the other side of the kale, my daughter and I planted a three row grid of the Red Karmen onion sets that arrived in the mail yesterday.

By this time, we were done for the day!!

This bed is where the rest of the onions and the shallots will be planted, with the kohlrabi to go in the middle. The bed to the left is the one that’s half-planted with carrots. A second variety will go in the other half as soon as possible.

Oh, I almost forgot. When I was doing my rounds this morning, I took another look at some of the old corrals and other things around the barn and outer yard, hoping to find something we could salvage and build raised beds out of. There was nothing! Everything out there is just too rotted out. There’s possibly usable material that was stacked in an old shed, but the shed has collapsed on top of it, so we’d have to remove an awful lot of stuff, just to see one way or the other. It’s such a mess, just getting into there to move stuff has a high risk of injury. It’s unfortunate, but there’s pretty much nothing to salvage at all, never mind to build accessible raised beds with. Ah, well. It was worth a look!

After putting things away, my daughter stayed out to tend other things while I transferred the squash to the sun room and set up the lights as best I could. They are long aquarium lights, so I can only set them up vertically along the shelf. It will be good when we can invest in some grow lights, that we can hand over each shelf. At least the sun room does get a lot of natural light through much of the day.

While I was working on that, my daughter made an exciting discovery.

The crocuses have started to bloom!

They are so tiny!!!

I wasn’t able to get a photo of the third type, which are purple and white.

I will have to make sure to check these tomorrow morning, so see how much they open!

My daughters are just thrilled to see them. I don’t think either of them expected them to survive February’s Polar Vortex, having been planted just this past fall. So they are really excited right now!

An excellent note to end the day on. :-)

The Re-Farmer