2022 garden

Our 2022 garden: first seeds started

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Though it is very early in the year, we have our first seeds started indoors today. A lot of people in our zone have already got seedlings, while still others are saying, it’s way too early.

So which is it?

I happened on a video today, talking about planting peppers and eggplants, which we are doing for the first time this year. Both are plants we never grew when I was a kid, so I have zero familiarity with them.

This particular video mentioned something I’ve never heard before, yet had wondered about.

When reading the seed packets, they say things like “start indoors 4-6 weeks before last frost date”.

Last year, we had a lot of issues with some things not germinating. Some took forever to germinate. Others never did at all. This was particularly true of various squash, plus all the Hope Black Dye sunflowers – with did finally all germinate, when I started taking the trays outside, while hardening off other seedlings.

What got mentioned in this video, is that when they say “4-6 weeks before last frost,” it’s actually from germination, not from planting the seeds. So if you have something that needs to be started, say, 6 weeks before last frost, but the packet says the seeds take 7-10 days to terminated, then the time to start them indoors is 6 weeks, plus 7-10 days.

That actually makes so much more sense to me.

I’d already made a list of which seeds needed to be started when, and these were the ones that needed at least 8 weeks.

The gourds were started first, as they needed extra steps. Among the things recommended that I wanted to try was scarification and pre-soaking.

So that’s what I started this morning.

Of the gourds we will be trying to grow this year, I chose the Canteen gourd to start early, as the gourds are supposed to get quite large. The other gourds I want to grow are smaller at full maturity.

Which lead me to another thing. With the luffa, we’re not after “days to maturity”, which is 110 days, if I remember correctly. We’re after the sponges, so we need for those mature gourds to dry out. That puts them at 200 days. Even starting now, we might not have that long for them. It will depend on whether or not we get another really long summer again. Of course, in the end, everything depends on the weather.

I chose 6 of the plumpest, healthiest looking seeds from each, then carefully snipped their outer shells with a nail clipper, before putting them inside the folds of a paper towel.

Then they went into sandwich baggies, and the insides were sprayed with water, before being sealed and left to sit. Most places recommended leaving them overnight, but I left them “overday” instead. ;-)

Then they went into planting pots filled with pre-moistened seed starting soil. My daughter used a chopstick to push them the inch into the soil they needed to go. Once covered, the tops of the soil got sprayed with water.

Then it was time to take a look at the rest of the seeds and see what we had to work with. None of the packets have a lot of seeds in them, but we are not after a lot of individual plants.

The Sophie’s Choice tomato was a conundrum for me. Everything I read about them said they needed to be started very early; a couple of weeks earlier than other tomatoes. Yet they are an early tomato, with only 55 days to maturity. At only 55 days, we could start them outdoors and they’d have plenty of time to mature. Odd.

For all but the Wonderberry, we decided to plant about 5 seeds per pot, and three pots each. With the gourds, that filled an entire tray.

The Wonderberry got planted using the double cup method. I reused some of the Red Solo cups we used last year, with the inner cups having drainage holes in the bottom, so they can be watered from below, using the outer cup.

We still had seeds left over, even with how little was in each packet, so that’s nice.

We used more boxes to bring the tray and cups closer to the lights, inside the big aquarium greenhouse. The heat mat fits under the tray. I’m hoping that just being near the mat as well as close to the light fixtures, one of which does warm up, will be good enough to adequately warm the Wonderberry in their cups.

The double cups got water in their bottoms before they were put in place, and water was added to the tray once it was settled on the heat mat. We do still have a little fan blowing into the tank, though it’s over the orchids and aloe in the other corner. We won’t be able to cover these with a plastic dome, as typically recommended, so I’ll be making sure to use a spray bottle to keep the tops moistened, since the smaller seeds are so much closer to the surface. There’s quite a bit of water in the tray so, with the heat mat, that should help increase the humidity levels, with the fan hopefully keeping things from starting to mold.

The heat mat doesn’t have a thermometer, nor do we have a soil thermometer, so we’ll have to monitor these fairly closely. Everything is plugged into a power bar, which gets shut off every night, so there will at least be that break. If it seems to be getting too warm – unlikely, for what we’ve got planted in there – we can put something under the tray to elevate it. Once the seeds germinate, we can probably take the mat out entirely.

The next things we’ll be starting are the onions, which won’t need the heat mat, but when it comes time to start the rest of the tomatoes, and all the squash, we’ll need both the heat mat and space – and space is going to be harder to come by! We do have a mini greenhouse, the frame of which we are currently using in the sun room to hold the heater bulb for Butterscotch and Nosencratnz, as they recover. We did try to use it in the living room last year, as it does have a zippered cover, but the cats still managed to get into it. If we could find some way to keep the cats out of it, it would go a long way to helping with our space issues!

We’ll figure something out.

The main thing is, we’ve got stuff started that need that extra time indoors.

Yay!!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: T&T Seeds order, forage radish in, and other supplies

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Well, the van did start this morning, so I went ahead and did our city shop without even coming inside from doing my morning rounds, other than to grab my purse. No morning kitty pictures, because I was wearing mitts. It was viciously cold out there! I can usually get away with just wearing fingerless gloves, or using my pockets, but not this morning!

Before heading to the city, I made a side track to check the mail and found a package waiting for me.

I’d completely forgotten that we’d be getting something in from T&T Seeds!

Most of what we ordered will be shipped in the spring. We’ll be getting a lot of stuff shipped at about the same time! All the companies we ordered from ship their perishable stock based on what zones the addresses are in, timed to arrive ready to be planted almost immediately. Last frost dates can still vary quite a bit within zones, though, so there’s a possibility some might arrive and need to wait a bit before planting. We shall see.

The Forage Radish seeds are a lot bigger than I expected, but then does grow into a big… well… long, radish. As this is a cover crop, it will be planted strategically in areas we want the soil to be broken up for planting next year, or in between things that might need some “tilling” around them, this year. I don’t expect we’ll use even half of this seed, this year. Unless we decide to start sowing in the outer yard, to lure the deer away! :-D

While in the city, one of my stops was at Canadian Tire, where we pick up the wood pellets we use as kitty litter. I hadn’t been able to get through to our mechanic to reschedule our oil change, so I took a chance and asked if they could book me in at the Canadian Tire, right away. Sure enough, they could fit me in, so I had about an hour to spend in the store.

It is very dangerous for me to be in a place like Canadian Tire. Especially since the oil change was going to be under budget, which meant I had wiggle room!

Along with the wood pellets, I snagged a small folding saw horse. The saw horses we have now are home built and very old, so they’re awfully wibbly. The one I found was on clearance, so I was happy to be able to take advantage of that. I also found some vegetable grow bags on clearance. I was going to make grow bags for the sweet potatoes, using feed bags like we did with potatoes last year, but these bags were so cheap, I went ahead and bought two. It will at least give us something to compare.

I also picked up a couple more trays for seed pots, to allow watering from below, plus one that had square Jiffy Pot type cups in it, for those smaller things we want to start indoors, and will do better if they’re transplanted with their pots, to avoid root disruption. So the extra time I had to spend in the store was productive.

Once the van was ready (complete with a printout of little things they found that I’ll take to our local mechanic to check), I headed to Costco to do the main shopping.

It’s very weird to shop at Costco and buy no meat. I just picked up some fish for my daughters. I didn’t need anything else. I love having such a well stocked freezer!

While there, I picked up a couple more small, plain aluminum baking sheets. I got some last spring, and they came in very handy for moving seedlings in and out of the sun room to harden off.

They also come in very handy as kibble trays for the outside cats, so I was down a couple! :-D

When I got home, the girls made sure to put Butterscotch and Nosencrantz into the carriers while we hauled things through the sun room, into the old kitchen. They even set the carriers up, so the cats could see and watch us. :-D

Then, while the girls put away the groceries, I loaded the van back up with garage for the dump. It’s open this evening, but I was done with driving. It can stay frozen in the van until the dump is open next, two days from now. That’ll give us a chance to gather the recycling together, too.

I’m thinking that tomorrow, we should start getting the luffa, and at least some of the onion seeds, started. I’ve been researching and will try something different with the gourds this time, to help improve germination rates. Of all the gourds we have, the luffa needs the longest growing time.

From the zone 3 garden groups I’m on, we should be starting the eggplant and peppers now, too. Our last frost date is a lot later than the people posting that, though, so holding off at least a bit longer would probably be a good thing.

When it comes to planting our garden this year, we haven’t quite planned locations all out, yet. The existing beds will be easy enough to work with, but we will also be building new – mostly temporary – beds, too, as we slowly reclaim more and more of the old garden area, and work our way closer to the house.

It was a bit funny when I was telling my mother about what we’ll be doing this year. She was having a hard time picturing where we are intending to plant the sea buckthorn and silver buffalo berry, as much as a living fence as for their berries, where we will be planting the Korean Pine, as well as how we haven’t quite decided on where to plant the Highbush Cranberry. She knows we plan to plant more fruit and nut trees, and made this surprising comment about how, if we plant all these trees, we won’t have any garden left. Not just because of the trees taking up the space, but their shade, as well.

There’s two reasons her comment was a surprise. The first is that she had already said to me before that, if it were up to her, she would have filled that entire area with trees by now. She did have a habit of sticking trees in, anywhere, without much thought to whether it would be a good place for them! The other reason is that my parents planted so many trees on the south side of the garden, closest to the house, that there’s not a lot that can grow there anymore. Too much shade! I know they planted these for protection from the wind, but if they’d planted them on the north side of the garden, it would have been just as effective, and wouldn’t have taken away so much prime garden location. It’s one of the main reasons we’re going to build permanent garden beds in the outer yard, where they will get full sun.

My mother and I talked a bit about our wanting to plant a southern shelter belt, because we have a gap that needs to be filled. I told her about the renter wanting to replace the fences (he’s responsible for the fencing, as part of the rental agreement), and that I’d suggested making a new, straight fence line from the barn to the road, rather than going around the old hay yard. It’ll mean a lot less fence to put in, though they’ll loose a small amount of pasture. If they do that, we’ll be able to plant shelter belt trees near it, and not have to worry about having to protect saplings from cows. My mother suggested planting lilacs as a hedge, but I told her that we need to start with something taller, first. Not too tall, though, or we’ll just end up with more shade problems. Many of the farms in the area are completely open, with just a block of shelter belt trees around the house and outbuildings – and their gardens are outside the shelterbelt, far from their houses. There just isn’t anywhere near their houses that gets enough sunlight for the size of gardens they are growing. Whatever trees w decide to plant on the south, I don’t want anything that will get as tall as the spruces we have by the house. They’re about 65ft high, and we’ve been watching how far their shadows are cast, at different times of the year. Since we will be planting permanent garden beds out that way, the last thing we want to do is plant trees that will get so tall, they’ll end up shading the garden beds. I figure we can plant trees that grow no taller than 30 feet and still get the shelter from the wind that we need. Especially if we also plant shrubs along the line, too.

But maybe not more lilacs. I’m thinking more along the lines of hazelnuts and berry bushes! :-D

No decisions can be made until there’s a fence, though!

So for now, we focus on the vegetable gardens!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: preparing to start seeds indoors

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Last year, we converted two unused aquariums into greenhouses, where we hoped to protect our seed starts from the cats.

It mostly succeeded.

Today, I prepped the tanks for this year’s seeds.

The small tank – a 20 gallon tank – was a real problem with the cats last year.

Even when we pur the original hard cover back on at the end of the season, using the space inside to store the light, etc., the cats still got into it!

The foil around the back and sides were to provide reflective light for the seedlings. As you can see, the cats have torn up the foil, and even left scratches in the rigid insulation at the back!

Last year, we had tried using the lid that came with the tank at first, but the cats would reach through the opening for the water filter in the back, even if it meant fighting past whatever we put to block the opening. They managed to reach in and pull up the seed trays, anyhow. Having to block everything meant no air circulation, so what the cats didn’t destroy, mold did it’s damage. I finally rigged a window screen and that worked, though it was far too late to save the onions we’d tried to start in there at the time.

This tank will be for onions again. After seeing that onion seeds can be planted very close together, and they don’t really get transplant shock, I’m hoping to be able to get all 5 varieties of onions we have in hear.

The problem is the size and shape of the tank is too small to fit any of the commercial seed starting trays we’ve been using. I want to be able to water the planting trays from below, which meant having to find something to use as a tray for the water.

I decided to try aluminum oven lines. They are pliable enough to bend to size, and strong enough that I could fold corners without it tearing. It’s not deep, but it doesn’t need to be.

There’s still quite a bit of space left. If needed, I can fold up another tray and overlap them. I’ll just have to make sure they are attached to each other with a water tight seal. Or we can just use the doubled Red Solo cups again, and not need to have a tray under them at all.

Then the screen window was brought back into action as a cover. A pair of 5 pound hand weights get added to the back, in case a cat walks onto the overhang in front. The metal screen is strong enough to hold their weights. The heavier cats don’t try to go up there, just the tiny ones, so that has worked out. If necessary, we have more weight we can put on it. At some point, I want to build a screened cover to fit, but that’s not an urgent thing.

Since we can’t change the height of the light fixture, the egg cartons are being used to bring the seedling trays closer to the light, and can be taken out to lower the base as needed.

One thing we found last year is that this room is pretty cold, which is why we added the insulation around the back and sides. It was still difficult to keep it warm enough for the squash and gourds we had in there. Onions are a cool weather crop, so they should be fine in here, as far as the temperature goes.

Then there was the big tank to do.

I had to take out the biggest pot with an aloe vera in it to make space for the boxes that are being used to raise the seedling tray closer to the light. Previously, the boxes were under that sheet of insulation at the base to create a raised floor, but with the plants still in there, we can’t do that this time.

This is where we will be starting the luffa, and probably a few other gourds, at the same time as the onions. They will need the heat mat we got for under the seed trays, which is why they have to go in this tank. The mat won’t fit in the small tank. Right now, the mat is under all the trays and pots, so the weight can flatten it out a bit. There’s just enough room left to hold the curing Tennessee Dancing gourds.

At some point, we’re going to have to take the other aloe vera and my daughter’s orchids out. We’ll need the space for the tomatoes, eggplant and peppers, which are the next earliest seeds we need to start. After that, we will need space for the winter and summer squash. Hopefully, by the time they need to be started, we can start moving the onions into the sun room. The orchids (you can see one has started to bloom again!) are here because it was too cold for them to hang at the window in winter. The aloe is there to keep the cats from digging in the pots.

Which happened with the one pot I did take out, while I was setting things up in here! I caught Nicco, inside the barriers I put around the aloe vera. She’s so long and skinny, she snaked her way through the gaps! The little beast!

We had another, larger pot with an aloe vera in it in. It had been okay for months but, a few days ago, we came out to find the pot all dug up, and the only remains of the plant in it were a couple of leaf tips. We never found the rest of the aloe, and have no idea what happened to it! I’m sure we’ll find it, desiccated, under the couch or in a corner somewhere, months from now. :-D

As you can imagine, I’m not too keen on taking the plants out of the tank. They’re doing very well in there! But we won’t have a choice.

We have many things we need to start indoors, but a lot of them will have only a few seeds per packet used. Particularly with the squash and gourds. For the tomatoes, the paste tomatoes are the only ones we will be planting a lot of, since those are determinates being grown specifically for canning. The others are indeterminates and will be more for fresh eating, so we won’t need more than a few plants of each. We have enough varieties that, in the end, there should still be quite a few to transplant in the spring.

The other major thing we will need to start indoors will be the kulli corn, but those won’t need to be started until about the middle of May, at which point the sun room will be warm enough to use.

We are expanding the garden a lot this year, and will be expanding it more again, next year. I expect to be expanding it every year for quite some time. Which means that we will be needing lots of room to start seeds indoors every year. Until we are at a point when we can get a greenhouse or polytunnel, a goal of mine is to set up a corner in the sun room for starting seeds. We’d need grow lights, so that we wouldn’t have to constantly turn the trays for even sunlight, and we would need a heater sufficient to keep the room – or at least that corner – warm enough for germination. Or use more heat mats, but there is no outlet in that room. We are using an outlet in the old kitchen, with an extension cord running through a window to a power bar, right now. So warming the room would be more practical than using heat mats.

It’s funny. As we work on what we are doing this year, my mind is already on what will need to be done next year.

And the year after.

And the year after that…

As we work on things, we get a better idea of what plans we have will work, what needs to be modified, what needs to be re-priorities, or dropped entirely.

I don’t think we’ll ever reach the end of that process. Which is good, because figuring it all out is a bit part of the fun!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: T&T order, and McKenzie seeds

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Well, this is it. Today, I placed my last order for our 2022 garden. While I was doing the first half of our monthly shop, I also picked up some pea seeds. I am now done ordering things we are planning to grow this year.

First, the peas.

There are so many varieties of peas, I have been struggling on which ones to pick. While at the Walmart, I saw a new McKenzie Seeds display, and finally settled on one. As much as I love edible pod peas, I decided to go with shelling peas.

Some selling points on these: very productive, heat tolerant and disease resistant. Plus, of course, they’re supposed to be tasty. While I hope we don’t get another drought this year, our summers to get as hot as our winters get cold, so heat tolerant peas are a good thing.

My daughters are not big on peas, but they have never had peas, fresh from the garden. The ones we grew last year did not really produce, due to the heat (just the odd pod, here and there), then the green peas got eaten by a groundhog! The peas sown late in the season, in with the corn, were planted for their nitrogen fixing qualities, and the few pods we got were there only because we had such a long, mild fall. Nothing reached their full potential in flavour. Hopefully, this year will be different, and we will get lots of delicious fresh peas!

Once I got home, I placed an order with T&T Seeds.

All images belong to T&T Seeds.

First up is Jerusalem Artichokes, or Sunchokes.

I just ordered the smallest size; a 10 pack. A friend on a neighbouring farm successfully grows them, so I know they will grow here.

We’re sort of taking a chance on these ones. We’ve never tasted them before. I’ve never even seen one in real life before. However, these are something that can easily be propagated from year to year, and are supposed to be quite delicious. If we like them, we have another good storage food to add to our inventory of foods for self-sufficiency.

If not, well, they are in the sunflower family and have pretty flowers.

We will be planting them in a location that can be permanent, so not anywhere in our main garden areas.

Covington Sweet Potato

This one is pretty much just for me, as I seem to be the only person in the family that actually likes sweet potato, so I got the smallest option; five slips.

This variety is the only short season variety of sweet potato that can grow in our zone that I have found. I think I will make a grow bag or two from our feed bags, and set these up somewhere near the south facing side of the house, just to hedge my bets, though I would need to make sure there is space for the vines.

Highbush Cranberry.

The girls and I debated whether to get Highbush Cranberry, or more raspberry bushes. We decided to work with the raspberries we already have, and go for the Cranberry. I ordered two.

In cleaning up along the east fence line in the spruce grove, I actually found an American cranberry (at least that’s what Google Snap told me it was). It now gets light and everything, but I would like to transplant it, eventually, to a better location. Not sure where, yet.

Forage Radish

Also called “tillage radish.”

We had tried to plant a daikon type radish to help break up the soil in the corn blocks last year, but I think something ate them shortly after they sprouted, because they all just disappeared. So I was quite excited to find these forage radishes.

They are sold as a green manure and a type of cover crop. They get planted, then left to die off. Their roots can reach up to 6 feet in depth, boring into the soil as they grow. After they die off and decompose, they leave behind root channels that other plants can take advantage of.

With our concrete-like soil, filled with rocks, the plan is to basically just scatter these in strategic areas, so we got the 500 gram/1 pound size, which can cover 5,500 square feet. I don’t expect to use it all this year, but who knows.

So that is it for this year’s seeds and trees, though it’s entirely possible we might still order more. I forgot to order more alternative lawn and wildflower seed mixes from Veseys, but those would be sown in the fall, anyhow. We shall see how the ones I sowed this past fall turn out, this spring.

We still have a monthly “seed” budget, though, and now it will go to other things we need. I did pick up more potting soil today, as we will be starting onion seeds and luffa soon, and have lots more seeds to start over the next few months. After much searching, the girls and I found some netting online that we will be using to help protect our garden from critters. It’s a netting that is 14 x 200 feet. We can get one roll this month, and another roll later. Some of it will be used for the temporary fencing we will need to build around larger blocks, such as the corn. We can also cut it to the sizes needed to cover individual beds. We simply have too much ground to cover, and beds spread out in too many places, to fence it all in from both deer and smaller critters. Particularly since so much of it is still temporary. We’ll also have to figure out what best to use to support the netting, in the different ways we plan to use it, and get what we need for that. We are shooting to have consistent sizes on the permanent raised beds, so that any protective covers we build will fit any raised bed. The low box raised beds are 3 feet by 9 feet (because that’s the size the boards I found resulted in). The high raised beds will all be 4 feet by 9 feet, but with the thickness of the logs we are using, the planting area inside will be smaller, and the 3×9 covers should still fit. Other beds, such as in the old kitchen garden, are oddly shaped, so they will need completely different ways to protect them from critters.

Little by little, it’ll get done!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: winter sowing experiment

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I was inspired by WolfSong to try something new – and help with that urge to be planting something already! Winter sowing.

Today, I finally got some seeds started.

We’ve been keeping a variety of plastic bottles and jugs for potential garden use. We’ve got mostly the blue water bottles. The distilled water we get for my husband’s CPAP used to come in the same type of jug as milk does, but suddenly all the brands seemed to switch to those blue bottles, all at once. Which was a problem, at first, because many of them no longer had handles of any kind. It made it very awkward for my husband to fill his CPAP humidifier, as the sides would collapse inwards as he poured. He ended up transferring the water to an empty jug with a handle, to keep from splashing water all over his CPAP!

People must have complained, because the next time I had to buy distilled water, the bottles had handles attached to their tops.

We have 4 different types of jugs, including two styles of juice bottles. I decided to try one of each.

I’ve been cutting plastic containers to use in the garden for some time, and it’s a real pain, so today, I took the easy route.

My wood burning kit includes a knife tip. The heated tip makes it SO much easier!

I started by cutting drainage holes in the bottoms, and air circulation holes at the tops, by inserting the knife through the plastic, then giving it a bit of a twist to widen the hole.

Then the jugs were cut most of the way around. With each jug having a different design, they each were cut at different spots.

How much was left uncut to create a hinge depended on how much of a flat area there was. Which, in the case of the blue jug, meant none at all, but that plastic was soft enough that it could still work. The juice jugs are a heavy plastic, making them the most difficult to cut, while the water jug that is the same as milk jugs is such a soft plastic, the melted plastic of the cut edges actually stuck together again in places, and they had to be recut!

I’m hoping the blue bottles work the best, because we’re going to have so many of them.

Just to be on the safe side, the hinges were reinforced with strips of duct tape. For the jugs with distinct handles, the hinge was placed just under them, while the one with indentations to create a handle had the hinge placed above, so the container wouldn’t squish into itself if grabbed by the handle.

The handle of the blue jug is at the cap, so it didn’t matter on that one. I just followed one of the lines, just above the middle.

That done, it was time to put some soil in them.

They all fit in one of the baking trays we got last year, to make it easier to carry seedlings around. Especially the ones in the red Solo cups. Those have come in very handy. I plan to get more They are very inexpensive at Costco.

I had the seedling mix potting soil recently picked up to use for this. Once the soil was in, it all got thoroughly watered.

The water almost immediately all drained into the tray.

I watered them more, drained the water out of the tray and used it to water the soil again. After doing that a few times, I used a spray bottle on the soil surface, while leaving the bottoms to sit in water.

Even then, only the surface became moist. The soil mix was still bone try below.

I spent a bit of time, working on moistening the soil before leaving it to sit while preparing the seeds.

I had already decided to try starting kohl rabi indoors, as our attempts to direct sow them outdoors last spring failed completely. It was the same with the kale. All I can think is that something ate the sprouts as soon as they emerged. It was the second year I’d tried kohl rabi, and the first year’s attempt also failed, with only a few plants surviving, only to be decimated by cabbage moths and flea beetles.

So this time, we’ll go with transplants and, if it works, we’ll be making sure to protect them from both critters and creepy crawlies!

Bahahahahahaha!!!!

Okay, I do remember, while going through our seed inventory, looking into the packet for Early White Vienna kohl rabi, seeing a few seeds, and deciding to keep them. Until today, I didn’t realize where was only five seeds left!

Once the seeds and their labels (strips of masking tape) were ready, I used a chopstick to make evenly spaced holes in the soil for the seeds.

Then I used the spray bottle to water into the holes, because it was still so dry under the top layer!

Because of the different shapes, they each fit a different number of holes in the soil for seeds. The jug with the indented sides for a handle meant it had space for only five holes, so that’s where I planted those five, lonely White Vienna Kohl rabi seeds. Being 2 years old, we may well have none at all germinate, but who knows? The white jug had room for the most seed holes, so that’s where the Russian Red kale went. The last two got the Early Purple kohl rabi seeds.

Once the seeds were in, covered, watered with a spray bottle, labels affixed, it was time to close the containers.

I used packing tape to close up the jubs. The tape is enough to hold them together while the jugs are being carried, but to also be easy to remove, later on.

At least I hope they’ll be easy to remove!

The tray was drained again, then it was time to take them outside.

There we have it. Four different jugs, sown with kale and kohl rabi.

I’m leaving the caps on, since they have air circulation holes, but if the holes turn out to be too small, I might still take them off. We shall see.

I had originally planned to leave the jugs somewhere else, but decided that first spot was not visible enough. I had to consider things like cat and deer traffic, as well as where we shovel the snow from the paths. Hopefully, this spot will be easy to monitor, and they won’t get knocked about by critters. They will also get lots of sunlight, too.

Not that you can tell in the above photos. It wasn’t even 6pm yet, but it was full dark when I set these out!

I still have kale and purple kohl rabi seeds left. I might try starting some indoors, when we start other seeds, then direct sowing the last of seeds. That would give us a chance to compare all three methods.

It should be interesting to see how these do!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: Eagle Creek Seed Potatoes order placed!

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I wasn’t going to be able to place another order for our garden until next month’s budget, but thanks to my daughter, we now have our potatoes ordered!

While I was very happy with the potatoes we ordered from Vesey’s, we went with a new company this time – one that I have added to our Cold Climate Seed Sources list.

Eagle Creek Seed Potatoes is in Red Deer County, Alberta, so we can be pretty sure that anything we order from there will grow in our Zone 3 area. It was a company recommended in one of the cold climate gardening groups I’m on, and I really wish I’d discovered them earlier! Not only to they provide a lot of information on each variety of potato they carry, they even have a container and tower pack. That would have been very handy, for when we grew potatoes in feed bags, before we knew that potatoes came in determinate and indeterminate varieties!

This year, however, we are going to use our potato plantings to reclaim more garden space, and will be using the Ruth Stout method again.

These are the potatoes we ordered, to be delivered in May (they let you choose your delivery date range), since our last frost date is early June. They can be ordered as 4 packs, 1 kg or 5 kg sizes (1 kg = 2.2 pounds), and some are available in 14 kg bags.

All images belong to Eagle Creek. All links will open in new tabs.

Caribe.

This is an early maturing variety, though it’s said that they can get quite large if left until late in the season. We ordered these in a smaller, 1kg (2.2 pound) package, to stay under budget. They are listed as having excellent winter storage, and described as making the fluffiest mashed potatoes ever! :-D

Bridget.

This is a medium maturing variety (though the description also lists it as early maturing) with good yields in most soil types, good winter storage and good disease resistance. They are noted as being particularly good for making French fries, though that’s not something we normally do. They are also a good baking or mashing potato. We ordered this in the 5kg size.

All Blue.

Well, we just had to include a purple potato!!! This is a late maturing variety with great winter storage, and is good with pretty much any cooking method. We ordered this in the 5kg size.

Last year, we ordered 4 varieties in 6 pound packs, for 24 pounds of seed potatoes. We got a pretty good return on them, though nowhere near enough to store any for winter. This time, we’re getting about the same weight in 3 varieties.

As we are planning to use the Ruth Stout method again, we’ll have to be pro-active in combating snails. Our first year growing potatoes left us with soil that was much more workable when we converted the space into beds for onions and carrots. We pretty much doubled the length of the beds, and when we were harvesting and preparing the beds for the fall, we could really tell the difference in the soil between the two halves! Where the potatoes were grown previously, the garden fork easily sunk deep into the soil, but in the extended portion, once the fork got through the new soil we added on top of the beds, it was like hitting a hard floor beneath.

When we grew potatoes that first year, the only thing we had available for mulch was straw. It’s what we can get, so that’s what we will be using again this year. This time we can run the straw through the shredder chute on our wood chipper, first, so it will cover better and break down faster.

As far as quantities go, unless these all turn out to have amazingly high yields, this is not going to be enough to last us into the winter. Which is okay, because these are new varieties we are trying out. Over time, once we’ve worked out what grows best here, and which ones we like the most, we will get larger quantities of seed potatoes and, hopefully, be able to have enough to plant our own potatoes every year, instead of having to buy seed potatoes. At least, that’s the long term goal for the bulk of our potato growing. I suspect we will continue to try new and different varieties regularly, simply because we like trying new things!

One more item for our 2022 garden to check off our list!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: Mary’s Heirloom Seeds – they’re finally here!

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After spending a strangely long time in Illinois, our seed order from Mary’s Heirloom Seeds arrived today!

Yes!!! I now have the maize morado corn I thought I was getting from Baker Creek, based on the description and video they had at the time. Their name for the corn even changed at some point. It took quite a bit of searching, and I was very happy to find a source for these seeds. Since there were only 25 seeds per pack, I ordered four of them. For our purposes, planting only 25 seeds seems almost pointless. ;-) Plus, it was the only thing I was ordering from them, and with the cost of shipping, adding a few extra packets made it more worthwhile. Especially with ordering from the US and the dollar difference. I’m trying to focus more on Canadian sources, but none of them carry these seeds.

Last year, we started the Montana Morado/Mountain Morado corn indoors, then transplanting, and that ended up working very well. We will be doing that again. This year, however, we will work in making sure they are protected from critters, as much as we can, right from the start! I hope to be able to save seeds and, over time, acclimate them to our growing zone. This might take a few years, but I am determined! :-D

The corn was not the only thing in the package, though.

They also included some free seeds! :-) Dill Dukat. It’s not a variety I’ve heard of before. We’ve got dill seeds from plants my SIL gave us, but I’m more than happy to have another variety! From the description, these look like a good variety for harvesting more greens than the flowers or seeds, and I love dill greens!

I also really appreciate that they included the information insert for starting seeds. That was going the extra mile. :-)

While I am working towards ordering seeds from within Canada more, if I do need to order from the US for something, this company is definitely staying at the top of my list. I’m quite happy with them!

The US postal service, on the other hand, seemed to be having difficulties. :-D

The Re-Farmer

A lovely day, and getting ready

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When we decided to go ahead and cancel our old satellite service outright, instead of waiting until the end of the month, after finding how excellently the Starlink system was working, I was working on the assumption that we’d have all sorts of cancellation fees. So, just in case, I budgeted more than what we would normally expected the bill to be, on top of adding on the new Starlink bill.

We were in for a pleasant surprise. We’re actually going to get a couple hundred dollars for a credit. We do still have to send back their transceivers (not the entire dishes, as I was mistakenly told) and their modems/routers/whatever they’re properly called. The packaging should be here when the post office is open again starting tomorrow. I figure we’ll get our credit once they get their items back. Until then, it still freed up a large chunk of our budget.

What a wonderful sense of relief that gives us!

While we did try to stock up as much as we could, the outside cats are going through the kibble a lot faster than usual. Which makes sense. There isn’t much for them to hunt these days, and they will be burning a lot more calories in the cold we’ve been having. Tomorrow was expected to be a warmer day, so I was going to make an extra trip into the smaller city to stock up on more cat food.

Today, however, turned out to be warmer than forecast, and already we’ve reached the high that we were supposed to hit tomorrow. So I decided to make the trip today. At -17C/1F, it feels like summer! Even with the -26C/-15F wind chill, which is coming from the north, so we are well sheltered from it.

The outside cats were practically having a party!

I had a surprise this morning, too. As I was coming back from leaving kibble in the tray under the shrine, I was startled by deer running through the gate in the chain link fence at the south side of the yard! This is the first time I’ve seen the deer going through, while I was outside. Then, when I came around the house with seeds for the feeding station, the doe and her little one were there. They hung back near the compost ring, before finally running off into the spruce grove, but they stopped and looked back repeatedly.

When I was finally ready to head out, I took a peek around the corner of the house and, sure enough, they were back and eating the seeds! They saw me and watched for a while, but didn’t run off until I crossed the yard to the garage.

I’m okay with them being used to finding food at the feeding station. I want them to associate that spot with food, not our garden beds!

Speaking of which, the new wiggle room in our budget meant I could get a few extras along with the cat kibble. Though I didn’t get as much kibble as I intended. They were almost entirely out of stock of the affordable big bags. I only got three. If I’d bought the six I’d intended, there would have been maybe one bag left, and I wanted to leave more for others.

Along with a couple of bags of seed starting mix, I got a heat mat. One of the big problems we had with starting seeds inside the aquarium greenhouses (besides the cats constantly trying to get at them!) is that the house is just plain too cold. Using things like heated rice bags or small water bottles filled with hot water helped, but some things just never germinated. I’m pretty sure that’s the main reason the Hopi Black Dye sunflowers didn’t germinate until so much later.

I went through our seeds to look at what needs to be started indoors and when. Actually, there’s two ways we can look at it. Most seed packets go by number of weeks before the last frost date. The other way is to look at how long until harvest, then count backwards from the first frost date in the fall.

Our first frost date, on average, is Sept. 10. For anything that requires more than 100 days to harvest, the latest we should have germination is about May 4. If we want to give up to 150 days, we’d need to have germination by April 30. I would calculate when to start the seeds from there, using the days to germination information on the seed packages.

Which isn’t too bad.

If we go by the package instructions using our average last frost date of June 2, we have several dates to go by. Four weeks puts us at May 5, six weeks at April 21, eight weeks at April 7, and ten weeks at March 24.

Having worked that out, however, there are still going to be things I plan to start earlier. Some of these, people on my Zone 3 gardening groups have already started!

The main one will be onions and shallots. With so many varieties and so many onions we want to plant, space would be the biggest issue… except maybe not. I found this, from MI Gardener.

Based on that method, we should have no problem planting all our varieties in just the big aquarium greenhouse.

The problem with that is, it’s currently housing several aloe vera plants to protect them from the cats, plus my daughter’s two remaining orchids. She’d had them safely hanging in front of the living room window, only to discover it was too cold for them there, and a couple of them died.

There is still the small aquarium greenhouse. Depending on what I have for growing trays, I could fit all the onions in there.

There are a few other things that need to be started very early, too. Among the things that can be started at 10 weeks are the eggplants and peppers (we will be starting just a few of those, since only 2 people in our household like them), the Sophie’s Choice tomato (just a few of those), the Cup of Moldova tomato (lots of those, since they are for processing), the Wonderberry (just a few of those) and the luffa (probably all the seeds we have left of those). All of these are things I’m seriously considering starting much earlier. Especially the luffa.

With those, we might be able to fit them all in the big tank, and still keep the orchids with them, but I have no idea where we can put the aloe vera pots that will be safe from the cats!

Among the things we can start at 8 weeks are the rest of the tomatoes, ground cherries, Crespo squash, Tennessee Dancing Gourds, and the Ozark Nest Egg gourds.

I think at 6 weeks is when I will start the kulli corn seeds which, according the the tracking information, has arrived in the city and should arrive at our post office in the next couple of days.

At 4 weeks, we need to start the cucumber, all the squash and melons, the rest of any gourds we will be trying this year, and the hulless pumpkins. It would also be the time for me to start the kohlrabi, if I decide I will try those again this year, since direct sowing them has been a complete fail for the past two years.

Everything else we’ve got can be direct sown, some as soon as the ground can be worked, and others after the last frost date.

I’m going to need more soil, but that’s something we can pick up little by little, as we need it.

I have to admit, I’m really torn right now about starting things too early. I know there are people in our zone that do it every year and have no problem, and others have started winter sowing outdoors, using this method. We don’t have a lot of milk jugs, but I’ve been keeping jugs from the distilled water for my husband’s CPAP, which would do. They are that blue, transparent plastic. Theoretically, we could set this up in the sun room, which does get below freezing, but still stays a lot warmer than outside. That would actually be a good experiment for the kohlrabi, now that I think about it. With so many yard cats, plus the deer, I’m not sure putting the containers outside would be wise, unless we can put some sort of protection over them. In theory, we could drag over the covers we made for the raised beds. They’re covered in snow right now, and probably frozen to the ground! :-D

For any experienced cold-climate gardeners reading this, what do you think? Would I be severely jumping the gun if I start our onions seeds this early? Or some of the tomatoes, the eggplant and peppers? What do you think?

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: Baker Creek seed order is in!

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Another seed order is in!

You can read about what we ordered from Baker Creek, and why, here.

The free seeds we got this time are an interesting addition! I was looking at them on the website, and had heard from people in local gardening groups that successfully grew them this past year. I decided against ordering them, since I was already ordering the Black Nebula carrots, and we still have seed left over from this year’s garden. However, now that we have them anyway, I’ll be happy to try them!

Here is the description for Uzbek Golden carrots from the Baker Creek site.

The delectable, lemon-yellow roots have a unique shape! These carrots have a fine-grained texture that is crispy and juicy with plenty of natural sugar. This variety hails from Uzbekistan and is popular across central Asia. Widely adaptable, this variety produced sweet roots even in the hot summer months during our Missouri greenhouse trials, but it is equally vigorous and tasty when grown in cool weather. Called “Mshak” in Uzbek, this variety is easy to grow in a range of soils and temperatures and the flavor is superb. We love this as a snacking or cooking carrot, and in Uzbekistan and Central Asia it is an essential ingredient in plov, or pilaf, a signature dish of that region.

https://www.rareseeds.com/store/vegetables/new-items-2020/uzbek-golden-carrot

Sounds like something that should grow all right in our region. The reviews for it are good, too.

At this point, we have only one more seed order still en route; the Kulli corn. Our next orders will be perishable stock, such as tubers, saplings and root stock. Those tend not to be shipped until ready for planting in our zone, but I still want to order them as early as I can!

It’s a good thing we’re planning to continually expand our garden over the years! We’re going to need more beds for everything we plan to grow this coming year, above taking into account the areas we grew in last summer will be used for planting berry hedges instead of vegetables next year. And we won’t even be planting everything I ordered this year! We still have a lot of work ahead of us before we reach our goal of growing sufficient vegetables and fruit to feed the four of us through the winter and spring, until the following year’s garden starts producing, with enough to share, too. I think we’re off to a pretty good start, though! As long as the weather co-operates. As much as I enjoy our relatively mild temperatures, we need more snow to help the water table recover in the spring, from this past summer’s drought!

The Re-Farmer

Our 2022 garden: Heritage Seeds, second order in!

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Brrrrr!!!

We dropped from 0C/32F yesterday, to -16C/3F today – with a wind chill of -27C/-16F! I did NOT want to do a dump run today, that’s for sure, but we weren’t able to get it done on Saturday, since that’s when my awesome brother came over to mount our Starlink dish on the roof. So today, it was!

Since we were out anyhow, we swung by the post office. I am expecting my Baker Creek order in tomorrow, but I still got seeds, today! My second order from Heritage Seeds was in! That was really fast. :-D You can read about our first order, here, and our second order here.

There was an extra packet of seeds in there – and this time, I noticed the “free gift” sticker. I went back to our first order and, sure enough, the extra packet of seeds we’d found last time did have the sticker, too. I just missed it entirely!

Of course, I had to look up what it was they sent us! This is their description for “Gold Ball Turnip”.

Gold Ball Turnip (1854) (aka Orange Jelly)

Introduced around 1854, this wonderful heirloom turnip has yellow fine grained flesh and reaches peak flavor when harvested at 3” although the yellow globes will reach 4-5” at maturity. Great storage variety. One of the best tasting turnips. (45 days to maturity) 

https://heritageharvestseed.com/products/gold-ball-turnip-1854-aka-orange-jelly

I like the “orange jelly” name!

I had been considering turnips as a good storage vegetable. It’s not something we normally buy, but not because we don’t like it. We just like other things better, and I usually get rutabagas instead, because they tend to be smaller. However, no grocery store carries this turnip variety! I look forward to trying them. It certainly meets what we look for when deciding what to grow.

This order coming in was just the thing I needed to cheer me up on a chilly day!

The Re-Farmer